Category Archives: Flying

Stories about flying — for pleasure or for hire — and the things I’ve learned.

How Helicopters Fly

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Maria Speaks Episode 12: How Helicopters Fly.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to episode 12 of Maria Speaks, How Helicopters Fly.

I thought I’d take a break from my usual computer related topics to talk about something I really enjoy doing: flying helicopters.

For most of my life, I thought it would be pretty cool to know how to fly a helicopter. In October of 1998 I had some extra money and a flexible schedule so I took the plunge and began taking flying lessons.

A lot of people think you need to learn how to fly an airplane before you can learn to fly a helicopter. That just isn’t so. I don’t know how to fly a plane, and frankly, I have no interest in learning. Helicopters have fascinated me since my first helicopter ride at age 8. Airplanes just aren’t as interesting to me. So I skipped the airplane stuff and went right to helicopters.

It took me a year and a half to get my pilot certificate. This wasn’t because I was a slow learner — at least I hope not. It was because I took lessons part time, only an hour or two a week. When summer came, I took the summer off. No one wants to practice doing hovering autorotations when it’s a 115°?F outside. I finally got my pilot certificate in April 2000.

I soon realized that I had a problem. I had a pilot certificate but nothing to fly. The closest place to lease a helicopter was Scottsdale, about 70 miles away. I’d drive down there, fly for an hour, and drive back. It wasn’t fun.

Fortunately, I had a good year and some extra money and was able to solve the problem. I bought a used Robinson R22 helicopter. And what I found is that the more I flew, the more I wanted to fly. As I’ve said elsewhere in my blogs, flying is addictive and I’m hooked.

Years went by. I got my commercial helicopter rating and starting taking passengers up in my two place helicopter. I got a summer job at the Grand Canyon flying LongRangers with up to six passengers on board. Then I decided to step up and buy a larger helicopter, and to expand my helicopter tour business. Today, I have 160 hours on my new Robinson R44 four place helicopter. And I still can’t fly enough to satisfy me.

If you like reading flying stories, check my blog. It has lots of stories about flying.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was how helicopters fly. Most people are familiar with the way airplanes fly but few know anything about helicopters. I find myself explaining the controls to passengers all the time. Now I’ll explain them to you.

First of all, a helicopter does indeed have wings. But rather than having big, bolted-on wings like an airplane, a helicopter’s wings are its narrow rotor blades. My helicopter has just two of these blades, but they’re very long — about 16 and a half feet each. Other helicopters have three, four, five, or even more blades, depending on the design and size of the helicopter. Generally speaking, the more blades a helicopter has, the shorter they can be. Of course, if the helicopter is very big, the blades need to be big, too.

To understand how a helicopter’s main rotor blades work to produce lift, start by thinking about an airplane. Everyone has seen an airplane taking off — or has been in one when it took off. It rolls down the runway, gathering speed. This moves air — referred to as relative wind — over the airplane’s wings. The wing is shaped like an airfoil, so higher pressure builds up below the wing than above it, producing lift. Before the pilot reaches the end of the runway, he pulls the airplane’s nose up, which, in turn, changes the angle of attack — the way the wings cut through all the air rushing past. This increases the lift and the airplane takes off.

A helicopter’s rotor blades are also shaped like airfoils and they work pretty much the same way as an airplane’s wings. But instead of speeding forward to increase relative wind, the helicopter rotates the blades while parked. The faster the blades spin, the higher the relative wind. Once the blades are spinning at 100% RPM, the pilot lifts the collective, which changes the pitch or angle of attack on all of the main rotor blades. The result: the helicopter lifts off the ground.

Now I just mentioned one helicopter control: the collective. The collective changes the pitch of all of the main rotor blades the same amount — or collectively. This up-and-down lever is what a helicopter pilot holds in his left hand while flying.

There are three other controls.

The throttle, which is a motorcycle-style twist grip on the end of the collective, is what the pilot uses to add or reduce power. You see, the higher the pitch, the higher the drag. To overcome this drag without losing rotor RPM, the pilot must increase the throttle. Fortunately, most modern helicopters have a correlator or governor or some other kind of device that adjusts the throttle automatically as needed. This greatly reduces the pilot’s workload.

The cyclic is the control the pilot holds in his right hand while flying. The cyclic changes the pitch of each rotor blade individually as it moves to change the direction of the rotor disk. Think of it this way: the rotating blades are like a disk when they’re spinning. The cyclic tilts this disk in the direction you want to fly. Push forward, the disk tilts forward and the helicopter moves forward. Pull back and the disk tilts back and the helicopter slows down or backs up. Left and right do the same thing to the left or right. The cyclic is an extremely sensitive control and doesn’t need to be moved very much to get results. In fact, the hardest part of flying a helicopter is getting a feel for the cyclic.

The last controls are the anti-torque pedals. Remember Newton’s Laws? One of them says that every action has an equal but opposite reaction. Think about the main rotor blades spinning. If the blades spin to the left, the fuselage wants to spin to the right. So a helicopter has a tail rotor (or something equivalent). The blades on the tail rotor are mounted sideways so the “lift” pushes the helicopter’s tail to the right, thus pushing the nose to the left. The anti-torque pedals, which the pilot works with his feet, change the pitch on the tail rotor blades to increase or decrease this lateral “lift.” This keeps the helicopter from spinning out of control.

Sounds pretty simple, no? Well, it isn’t — at least not when you first start practicing it. You see, every time you make a control input with one of the controls, you have to adjust one or more of the other controls. For example, when you raise the collective, you increase drag on the blades, so you (or the governor) have to increase the throttle. But when you increase power with the throttle, the helicopter tries harder to spin to the right, so you need to add left pedal. Since you’re using up some of your power to generate more lift on the tail rotor, you might need more throttle. Get the idea?

One of the most difficult things to do in a helicopter is hover. Hard to believe but its true. It takes the average pilot 5 to 10 hours of practice time just to be able to do it. It took me about 7 hours. I thought I’d never be able to do it and then, one day, I just could.

Hovering requires that you make multiple minute control inputs all the time. There’s no “neutral” position you can put the controls into. It takes constant effort. Add some wind — especially from one of the sides or the back — and you’re working hard. After all, the helicopter is like a big weather vane and the wind just wants to push it around so the nose faces into the wind.

That’s the basics of flying a helicopter. There’s lots more to it, of course. But it isn’t that hard to learn. I like to tell people that if I can do it, just about anyone can.

One more thing. Lots of people think that if a helicopter has an engine failure, it’ll drop out of the sky like a brick. If the pilot does what he should be doing, however, that just isn’t so.

Here’s how it works. Suppose I’m flying along and my engine quits. My main rotor blades were spinning when the engine quit and they have lots of energy stored in them. There’s also energy stored in my altitude, airspeed, and weight. The first thing I do is lower the collective to reduce the drag on the blades. This helps keep them spinning. The helicopter starts a steep descent. I look for a possible landing area — a field, a parking lot, a dry river bed (we have lots of those in Arizona) — and steer towards it as I glide down. About 30 feet off the ground, I pull the cyclic back to bring the nose up and flare. This reduces my airspeed and transfers some of that energy to the main rotor blades. I level out and pull the collective up just before hitting the ground. Remember, pulling the collective up increases lift, so if I do it just right, I’ll cushion the landing. This whole procedure is called an autorotation and I’m required to demonstrate it annually as part of my FAA Part 135 check ride. I also had to do it to get my private and then commercial ratings. In other words, I have to prove that I can do it.

Of course, if I screwed up and didn’t lower the collective right away, drag on the unpowered blades would slow them to the point where they wouldn’t produce lift. Then I’d be in big trouble. Like a falling brick.

Have you ever gone for a helicopter ride? If you haven’t, you should. It’s quite an experience. If you do go soon, remember what I’ve told you and watch what the pilot does. If you’re sitting up front with him, don’t be afraid to ask questions once you’re under way. Most pilots like to talk to passengers about what they’re doing.

I remember a helicopter ride Mike and I took back in 1995 (or thereabouts) while driving cross-country. It was in Florida in the panhandle. There was a Bell 47 parked on the side of the road with a sign that said “Helicopter Rides, $25.” Mike and I climbed aboard and I sat in the middle. I told the pilot that I wanted to learn to fly a helicopter and when we were in cruise flight, he let me put my hand over his on the cyclic. He wanted me to see how little it needed to move to change direction. It was nice of him to do that for me.

Well, I could keep talking about helicopters all day, but I won’t. I’ll save some other stuff for another day.

I hope you enjoyed this topic. It was nice to take a break from talking about computers. I’d love to hear what you think about this episode and my podcasts in general. Write to me at mariaspeaks@mac.com.

Thanks again for listening!

Weird Flying

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I fly over 7 hours, doing weird stuff with my helicopter.

No doubt about it: this was the weirdest weekend of flying I’d ever had.

Weird Flying 1: The Camping Trip

It started with the camping trip drop off on Saturday.

Jason and his girlfriend, Becky, had planned a trip to Red Creek, a tiny dirt airstrip on the Verde River. Jason flies a Citabria and has flown and out of there many times. Becky has come with him on several trips, but this was the first overnight trip they’d planned.

They arrived at the airport, where I was out on the ramp cleaning dust out of the inside of Zero-Mike-Lima. I hopped in my golf cart and rode over to Jason’s hangar to say hello. Becky was excited about the trip. She talked animatedly to me while Jason loaded their camping gear. I told them that I was planning a flight out that way, too. I was just waiting for someone to show up at the airport to come with me. I told her I’d rather fly with someone else than alone. She suggested that I stop by their campsite for a visit. “There’s horseshoes there, you know.”

I should mention here that even though Red Creek’s airstrip is extremely difficult to get to by wheeled vehicle, over the years, pilots and others have added amenities like a horseshoe pit, picnic table, fire pit with grills, lawn chairs, water jugs, etc. You can find all that near the strip on top of a small mesa overlooking the river. But my favorite camping amenity is found closer to the river itself: shade.

I agreed that I’d come visit and I hopped in my cart and put it away in my hangar. Then I went back to cleaning dust out of my helicopter.

A while later, I heard an airplane engine start. It may have sounded rough — I don’t know. To me, all airplane engines sound a little rough. It ran for about three minutes, then shut down. A minute or two later, it ran for another minute. Then silence.

I was wiping dust off the inside of the cowl near the hydraulic fluid reservoir when I heard my name called. It was Becky.

“Jason’s plane isn’t running right,” she told me. “The needle is going up and down. He says it might be the spark plugs. So I was wondering, could we charter you to take us to Red Creek?”

I thought for about two seconds. “Sure,” I told her. “It would be fun.”

We loaded all their gear into the helicopter. It fit under the seats and on one of the rear passenger seats. We put Jason up front because he’s tall and his long legs wouldn’t have fit comfortably in the back. I started up, warmed up, and took off. It was Becky’s first helicopter ride and she let out multiple squeals of delight as I climbed up over route 60 and back toward the east. I showed them my house from the air and continued toward Red Creek, adjusting my course slightly to overfly a waypoint north of Cave Creek that I’d already programmed in.

We talked the whole time. I showed them the abandoned mansion overlooking Lake Pleasant and they were surprised to see it — like most local pilots who understand the joy of flying low and slow, they’d explored quite a bit of the area in Jason’s Citabria. I was going to show them the ruins on Indian Mesa, but they’d already seen them. So we continued over the Agua Fria Arm of Lake Pleasant, climbing as I flew over I-17 in preparation for the high mesas ahead.

I saw a mesa that seemed broken off from the main mesa and pointed at it. Jason said, “Yeah.” In the back, Becky was fiddling with my iPod.

We were nearly up to this mesa when I said, “Wow. Doesn’t that mesa look like an island in the sky?”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed. When Becky didn’t reply, he added, “Look, Becky. Doesn’t that mesa look kind of cool?”

She looked. “Yeah,” she agreed. But she didn’t sound very interested.

“I bet the views from up there are great,” I said, starting to slow down. The mesa offered excellent views of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Cave Creek, Carefree, and Deer Valley to the south. “The lights at night must be incredible.”

“Yeah, this is a really great spot,” Jason said. “I think we should camp here.

That got Becky’s attention. “Here?”

“Yes. What do you think, Becky? Should we camp here?”

By this time I was circling, looking for a good landing zone.

“No!” Becky yelled, sounding a bit frantic at the thought.

I almost laughed into my microphone.

“Red Creek is better. It has horseshoes.”

This time I did laugh.

“We can go to Red Creek anytime,” Jason said.

“That’s right,” I said. “But you can’t land a plane here.”

“But…”

“I want to camp here,” Jason said firmly. His tone of voice suggested that when he really wanted something badly enough, Becky usually gave in.

“It’s a really nice spot,” I added. “And the views are great.”

“Well, if we’re going to camp here, then maybe we can find Skeleton Ridge and camp there,” Becky said. “Or someplace where there’s indian ruins. Let’s find someplace with ruins.”

“We can’t tie up Maria all day,” Jason said.

By this time, I’d found a spot to land and was just waiting for the cue to start my approach. Becky gave it.”Okay,” she said.

I made my approach to a spot near the middle of the mesa. When I set down, I was less than 100 feet from the waypoint I’d programmed into my GPS that morning.

They unloaded their gear. Becky wanted me to shut down and hang out with them, but I’d been experiencing intermittent starter problems and did not want to get stranded on top of Black Mesa with them. So I left the engine running and held the controls while they unloaded. I told Jason to stand back when I took off, wished him luck, and lifted off.

Of course, I was in on the whole thing. Jason had called a month before to reserve the drop off and pick up dates with me. He’d sent me GPS coordinates, a map, and this photo only days before. He was planning to propose and to make the event more memorable, he thought a helicopter drop off and pick up at a remote location where no one would bother them would be ideal.

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Who says men can’t be romantic?

From Black Mesa, I headed up to Prescott. Oddly enough both the folks at Guidance Helicopters and I had golf ball drops on Sunday: we were hired to drop golf balls out of a helicopter onto a target. The closest golf ball(s) win a prize. Its a fund-raising event. Theirs was for Special Olympics. Mine was for Wickenburg Youth Football. At Prescott Airport, I got a chance to see the device the Guidance folks had rigged up for the drop. It was very impressive. Guidance never does things halfway. Of course, it was not the kind of thing Mike and I could whip up in two days. We’d have to come up with a different solution.

While I was up there, I hopped in my old Toyota MR-2 and took it to the malls. As usual, that little car started right up and seemed eager to roll. I hit a few pet store places, bought a coffee pot for my Braun coffee machine (which I’d broken the morning of a dinner party, forcing me to buy a piece of crap coffee maker in Wickenburg to make coffee for my guests), and bought a bunch of fish for my big fish tank, which I’m just getting restocked after the fish from hell ate all his companions. I came back to the helicopter, loaded all my purchases under the seats, and buzzed back to Wickenburg.

I left the helicopter out on the ramp overnight. I had to fly it the next day.

On Sunday, the first order of business was to pick up Jason and Becky. I was late getting to the airport, primarily because I had to stop at my office and pick up a few things I’d need later on. Although my fuel level was lower than I wanted, I decided to pick up Jason and Becky first and get fuel afterward. I didn’t want them waiting on top of that mesa in the sun, wondering when I was going to get there, when they were expecting me at nine.

I made excellent time flying right to the mesa. At first, I didn’t see them. But then I spotted them on the north end of the mesa, right where it narrows to join the larger mesas to the north. There was an excellent landing zone nearby: level and rock-free. The only catch was that there was only about 10 feet of mesa in front of me and thirty feet behind me — beyond that were sheer, 500+ foot cliffs. A real pinnacle landing. I made it without trouble and was comforted by how firmly the helicopter sat on the ground. I frictioned-up the controls and got out to help them load. Becky showed me her engagement ring. Not only was Jason romantic, but he was generous and had excellent taste. The ring was a real beauty.

I asked them if they minded going to Deer Valley for fuel before I took them up to Peeples Valley. No problem. I lifted up, added forward cyclic, and gave us all the incredibly unsettling feeling of falling off a cliff. (For sheer thrills, a helicopter flight off the edge of a cliff can’t be beat. Unlike amusement park rides, it’s real and passengers must wonder whether they’re going to come out of it alive.)

Deer Valley wasn’t busy but the folks at Cutter were. They were terribly slow. I bought 15 gallons at $4.06/gallon. It took nearly 20 minutes to get and pay for it. Then we were on our way, first west per the controller’s instructions and then north toward Peeples Valley.

It was a pleasant flight: nice and smooth. I showed Jason how my traffic reporting system works. I also told them about how the helicopter works. Jason wants to learn, but not unless he could buy a helicopter. “That’s the tricky part,” I told him. “Anyone with time and money can learn to fly a helicopter. But to buy one isn’t quite as easy.”I showed them the canyon where the Weaver cabins are. We couldn’t see them from the air. Then we hopped over the top of East Antelope Peak and the town of Peeples Valley was before us. I descended down to the runway Jason had carved into a pasture at Becky’s house and landed. Becky’s parents came out. I told Becky to give her mother the news while I helped Jason unload.

It was a happy scene and it felt great to be part of it.

Weird Flying 2: The Golf Ball Drop

From Peeples Valley, I flew back to Wickenburg, where I topped off the tanks. Mike and I rolled the helicopter back into the hangar so we could work on it. We still needed a golf ball dropping solution. But Mike wanted lunch first and I needed to run home to get the golf balls we had for experimenting. We wasted about an hour on all that. Mike took the fairing off the pilot side front skid leg so it wouldn’t get damaged when we dropped the balls. But we couldn’t come up with a solution. In the end, we decided to use whatever bag or box the group provided.

We did take off and drop a bunch of balls out in the desert. I wanted to make sure that the balls wouldn’t bounce up if they hit the skid. They didn’t.

We flew back to Wickenburg and landed at the golf course, right on the fairway near the green where we’d be dropping the balls. Mike got out to watch my tail while I cooled down and shut down. It was a good thing he did. Three young boys came running toward the helicopter’s tail while it was still spinning. Mike’s loud whistle and hand motions stopped them in their tracks and got them into a retreat.

Up at the event, things weren’t nearly as busy as I’d expected. Christie, who I was working with, greeted us and showed us the duffle bag the balls were in. We decided that we’d put the bag on Mike’s lap, strap them both in, and let Mike just dump the balls out. We had some iced tea while we waited. Then, at 1:50, we went down, put the Mike and the balls in, and started up. A few moments later, I was airborne, moving into position about 200 feet above the green where they’d marked a silly little target.

We did the drop. I circled around. We’d hit the green but pretty much missed the target. When I landed to give back the bag, they asked me to do another drop. Mike said no, but I said okay. All the kids who had been watching sprung into motion to gather up the balls. Within two minutes, all 1,000 of them were back in the bag. A man helped Mike load the balls back into the helicopter on his lap. Then I took off again. This time, a bunch of the balls were inside the target. Enough to award prizes. We dropped off the bag and left.

Weird Flying 3: Follow that Car!

Back at the airport, we put on the helicopter’s doors. I didn’t even bother shutting down. We were due at a proving grounds an hour away at 3:30 PM for my last weird gig of the weekend. It was already 2:20 PM. I punched a waypoint into my GPS and we took off.

My flight path took me over Glendale Airport. The controller there was cranky. We listened to him scold a pilot before calling in. He instructed me to cross over the airport at 2600 feet. Nosebleed territory for me. I obeyed, wondering whether I’d be punching into the bottom of the Phoenix Class B airspace. As soon as I was clear of Glendale’s space, I dropped back down, closer to earth.

We passed over the proving grounds on our way to a nearby airport for fuel. They were spraying water alongside a road for a landing zone. I waved to the folks who looked up and continued to the airport.

After refueling, we landed on a road at the proving grounds. That’s when the really weird assignment began.

I’d been hired by a carmaker to take a photographer around to video a car on the track. That’s not so weird. Yet.

The video crew was not from this country and spoke very little English. Since I had four seats, they wanted to fill them all. But I’d been told that there would be only one cameraman and I’d topped off the tanks, so I couldn’t take three passengers, especially when I may need all the power available to me. So they settled on the director and the cameraman. They wore harnesses and we strapped them in with the cameraman behind me and the director beside me. All doors were off. The cameraman’s camera was rigged to a viewer that the director held in his hands, so he could see everything the cameraman saw. The director also wore two headsets: mine and his. Mine was attached to the voice activated intercom system and his was attached to a radio in his pocket. He held a push to talk switch for that so he could talk to the driver. One headset’s ear cup was on one ear and the other’s was on the other. But every time he talked to the driver, I could hear him because of the mouthpiece on my headset. That didn’t matter much because he was speaking their language and I couldn’t understand a word of it anyway.

I took off and began flying in formation with…well, a car. It was a bright blue car that’ll probably never be sold in this country. I don’t know much about it and even if I did, I couldn’t tell you. Mike signed a nondisclosure form for me and I’ll accept that as binding. It doesn’t really matter anyway.

First the car drove clockwise around the track. Since the cameraman was behind me, I flew on the outside of the track, following him. The entire time I flew, I heard words, commands, and conversations in that other language with the occasional “faster,” “slower,” “higher,” “lower” thrown in for me. The track was easy to follow, but there were some obstructions: a tower on the one corner was the first concern. Later, as I flew lower and lower for them, I worried about telephone poles with wires and other larger obstructions. I surprised myself with the amount of flying skill I had. We did flybys and other shots that amazed me. My favorite was this. I’d hover about 3 feet off the track while the blue car raced towards us. Then, when it was about 20 yards away, I’d pull pitch and rise 20 feet straight up. The car would pass beneath us.”Beautiful!” the director would exclaim.

So this is what the helicopter pilots who flew movies did. Cool. I could do this.

The cameraman only puked once. He was obviously very experienced at this. He puked right out the helicopter and didn’t get a drop of it inside.

This went on for over an hour. My right wrist was getting sore from the deadman’s grip I had on the cyclic. And I think I built new muscles in my left arm from manipulating the collective as much as I did.

The director called for a break and I went back to the landing zone where I shut down. The crew guzzled Diet Coke. I drank water.

We put three of the doors on, leaving the front passenger door off for the cameraman. The director sat in back. The director wanted to put a third person in again but I said no. With the kind of flying they were asking me to do, less was better than more. Then we took off to do the dusty part of the filming. The car would drive on an inner dirt track.

It was more of the same with a bit of out of ground effect hovering thrown in for good measure. No playing chicken this time; there was too much dust.

The sun got lower in the sky. I told the director it would set in less than 20 minutes. They got a few shots from the east with the sun shining through the dust churned up by the blue car. Then the sun was down. Now we chased the car around the track, videoing its red taillights in the dust.

I think we would have done that all night if I didn’t pull the plug. “I can’t see the wires anymore,” I told the director. That was a lie, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to see them in another 15 minutes. And I wasn’t looking forward to flying back to Wickenburg at night, without a moon to light the way.

I landed and they got out. I calculated the charges for this extravaganza. Over $1400. My contact, who spoke perfect English, gave me a credit card.

Everyone was happy. Even I was happy, although I was exhausted.

It was about 40 minutes past sunset when Mike and I took off. We had plenty of light for the first dark part of the flight but it was pretty dark by the time we got to Glendale. It was 7 PM by then and the cranky controller had gone home. I overflew at 2000 feet, turning the pilot controlled lighting runway lights on just to watch them light up as I flew over. When the last light of the city passed beneath us, I shifted to the east to follow the lights of Grand Avenue the rest of the way to Wickenburg. I set down on the pad, locked up, and went home.

The Mohave County Fair

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We give Kingman residents and visitors helicopter rides.

I started planning for the Mohave County Fair at least a year ago. I exchanged phone calls and e-mails with the folks who handle the concessions for the fair, including Betty Watters and her son Phil Richardson. I flew up to Kingman in June to check out possible landing zones. That’s when I paid the fee for my “booth” in the north parking area. The dates September 15-18 went from pencil to ink on my calendar.

Mike and I went up to Kingman early Thursday morning. I flew, Mike drove. Mike brought our camper up there. It’s a 3-horse slant trailer with living quarters. I left about an hour after Mike and arrived at the fairgrounds the same time he did. I did a lap around Kingman, planning my route for rides, while Mike parked and secured my landing zone. Then I landed in a huge cloud of dust, cooled down the engine and shut down. We spent the next two hours setting up boundaries for the landing zone, putting up banners and signs, and doing housekeeping chores in the camper. The nice folks at the fairgrounds allowed us to park the camper at one end of the landing zone. On the other side of the fence were a few portable toilets (which we wouldn’t need) and the trailers and living quarters for the carnival folks. Beyond that were the carnival rides and attractions. And beyond that was the rest of the fair.

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Mike made a trip to the local True Value hardware store to pick up a sprinkler and another hose. Phil had run his own hoses to the landing zone and we decided to use a sprinkler, which we’d move periodically throughout the day, to keep the landing zone damp. That would keep dust down. Mike also had to take a trip to town to fill the camper’s two gas bottles so we’d have refrigerator, hot water, and stove use. The camper also has a full bathroom with two holding tanks, so we could use our own clean toilet and shower daily.

We also had Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird with us. Jack had to stay on a leash. Alex stayed under the trailer’s awning in his cage. Neither of them were bothered by a helicopter taking off and landing about 150 feet away from them.

Betty had asked her neighbor, Tony, to give us a hand. Tony is on permanent disability after being hit by a truck years ago, but he was fully capable of helping us with the things we needed to do. He wound up working with us on Thursday and Friday and lending moral support on Saturday.

By 2 PM, we were ready to do rides. The only thing we needed were passengers. That was the problem. It was 2 PM on a weekday. Kids were in school, parents were at work. No one was interested in the carnival or our rides.

The ride took off from the north parking area. I had to make a crosswind departure, since heading into the wind would have taken me right over the carnival rides. From there, we flew up the east side of Centennial Park, north of Wal-Mart, just north of the I-40 pass through the mountains, down to the Beale Street exit on I-40, along the south side of Andy Devine Boulevard, across Hualapai Mountain Road, and up the east side of the fairgrounds. I made a 1807deg; turn at a cell tower north of I-40, then came straight in to the landing zone, landing right into the wind. Total time was about 6-8 minutes.

I’d priced the rides at $25 per person including tax. This was before fuel prices went up, so it was a real bargain. My usual ride prices are $30 to $35 per person for an 8-10 minute flight, but the fair folks practically begged me to keep the price down. So I did, depending on the cheaper price to attract more passengers and shorter ride length to make it profitable.

We managed to give 11 rides on Thursday. Very disappointing. We went to the Dambar restaurant for a good dinner, though.

On Friday, things weren’t much different. I walked over to the nearby junior high school around 10 AM, suggesting that a few of the teachers might want to walk students over to see the helicopter and get one of my presentations on aerodynamics or how helicopters fly. The school was very interested, but Fridays are half days so classes are shorter. There wouldn’t be enough time for any of the classes to walk over and back and get the presentation.

Things picked up late Friday afternoon. We did 10 rides, most of which were after sunset. The moon was big and full and beautiful and the carnival rides looked great from the sky.

By that time, our two helpers, Alex and his college buddy Ryan, had come to help out. There wasn’t much for them to do. They pitched their tent behind our camper, uncomfortably close to those portable toilets on the other side of the fence. We ate carnival food for dinner and walked around the fair.

We were pretty disappointed at the turnout so far.

Saturday changed everything. Although I wasn’t supposed to start flying until 10 AM, my first passenger arrived at 9, before the fair even opened. Heck, I didn’t care. I gave him a ride. For the next two hours, I did a few rides. Then the dam burst (so to speak) and I had a nonstop flow of passengers. Mike, Alex, and Ryan loaded 2 or 3 people on board for each flight. The only time I shut down was to get fuel at the local airport 5 miles away (three times!) and to take a 20-minute lunch/bathroom break. I put 5.5 hours on the helicopter’s hobbs meter that day — quite a bit when you consider that the hobbs only ticks when I’m in flight so my time spinning on the ground didn’t count. I figure I took about 100 passengers for rides that day. Most of them were in a helicopter for their very first time. I gave all the kids who flew with me helicopter toys (while they lasted). One guy liked it so much he went up twice.

We celebrated with four steak dinners at the Dambar.

Sunday looked as if it might be a repeat of Saturday, but the flow of passengers was starting later. The wind was stronger than the previous few days and it was warmer, so taking off with a crosswind (rather than a headwind) when I was heavy was tough. I did about 20 rides before we decided to call it quits. It was 1:30 PM. We packed up, said goodbye, and got ready to go.

I stopped off at the carnival office to leave a card for the carnival owner. I’d had a good event and was interested in working with carnivals to do it more often.

Mike left with the camper and I took off with Alex and Ryan. We took the scenic route home: to Bullhead City and down the Colorado River to Parker, where we refueled (at $4.54 per gallon!). From there, we hooked up with the Bill Williams River, overflew Swansea and the Alamo Dam, and returned to Wickenburg.

We’ll go back to the Mohave County Fair next year. But we’ll just spend all day Saturday and Sunday. I’m already looking forward to it.

My thanks to Betty and Phil for all their help.

Breakfast in Winslow…No, Page…No, Marble Canyon

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I start off on a flight to Winslow and end up at Marble Canyon.If you regularly read these blog entries, you may know that I had breakfast in Winslow, AZ the other day. There was a second item on La Posada’s breakfast menu that I wanted to try. I thought I’d go back today.

I invited my friend Elizabeth to come with me. She lives, with her husband Matt, at Howard Mesa year-round. I took Matt and two of their friends for breakfast at Sedona for my birthday a few weeks ago. Matt is on a business trip, so I thought I’d invite Elizabeth this time.

I also invited Larry Fox, another Howard Mesa full-timer. He’s an older guy, 65, and apparently old fashioned. He said it wouldn’t be appropriate for him to go on a trip with two other women without his wife present. I invited his wife, too, but he says she’s afraid of heights. I’m starting to think that he’s afraid to fly with me….

Matt and Elizabeth's HouseElizabeth arrived at 7 AM and I was ready to go. We started off with a little tour of Howard Mesa. Elizabeth used my camera to take a photo of her house (see photo). I pointed out all the little cabins and sheds and trailers that you can’t see from the road. Then we went up to Valle and followed 180 east. She showed me where some friends of hers had just bought some land and I showed her Red Mountain. From there, we headed north. It had rained the day before and I was interested in seeing if there was water in the Little Colorado River. There wasn’t. I took her to the Little Colorado Gorge lookout, just outside the Grand Canyon SUA, and was disappointed to see the canyon bottom just as dry as it had been the last time I flew over.

At that point, I realized that we were probably as close to Page as we were to Winslow. I checked my GPS and learned that we were actually 2 miles closer to Page. I asked if she wanted to go to Page instead. “Sure,” she said.

Near the GapAs we flew along the cliffs near The Gap, she admitted that she’d never been to Page. I told her a little about it. I figured we’d land at the airport, then take the free shuttle to the marina where there was a restaurant. But when I pointed out the Vermillion Cliffs in the distance ahead of us, I got a better idea. Marble Canyon. The runway is right across the street from the lodge and restaurant. Elizabeth was game. Actually, I don’t think she cared where we went. I didn’t really care either, for that matter. Elizabeth took a few photos of the landscape we flew over, including this shot in the Cedar Ridge area. She was fascinated by the geology of the land, especially the tilted layers of multi-colored rock. I explained how some of the more obvious formations were made and told her I had a book about Grand Canyon geology that probably explained a lot more. We were flying over the Navajo Reservation and, when we were away from the main road, we saw lots of ruins of old hogans and animal pens. That’s the kind of stuff that interests me. I especially liked the animal pens that had been built into natural rock formations — like a box canyon with its open side fenced off or animal pens built entirely of stone.

N630ML at Marble CanyonWe crossed the Colorado River at Marble Canyon and landed at Marble Canyon’s airstrip. I set down on the dirt ramp area and shut down. It was about 8 AM and the morning sun was still low enough to make the Vermillion Cliffs behind us…well, vermillion. In my opinion this is the most scenic spot anyone can use as a backdrop for a photo of their aircraft. In fact, it’s enough of an excuse to fly in to Marble Canyon. Just be advised: the runway is very narrow.

Marble CanyonWe had breakfast at the lodge restaurant. It wasn’t anything special. I think our waitress may have been more interested in listening to her MP3 player than serving us. Afterwards, we climbed back on board and took off to the north. A plane had just taken off from Marble Canyon’s runway, so I had to stay a bit low until it passed over us. (I didn’t use the runway.) Our flight path gave us great views of Navajo Bridge and the river at Lees Ferry, as well as Horseshoe Bend further upstream. Elizabeth kept snapping photos, like this one, which kind of gives you an idea of the visibility in a helicopter. Don’t mind the reflections in the bubble; I was wearing my loud white pants again. And yes, that’s my hand on the cyclic.

I wanted to get fuel at Page before going back. I figured I’d show Elizabeth a little of the town and the lake and Antelope Canyon, too. Page airport was hopping, with lots of planes coming in. I slipped in behind a Cessna and set down at the helipads. Representatives from both FBOs came out to meet me with carts. Their fuel is the same price, so I picked Classic, since my friend Rod works for them. It took a while for us to finish up the transaction because the guy in the FBO office was new and was completely over his head. Elizabeth paid for the fuel, which was very nice, considering she’d also paid for breakfast. We got a ride back out to the helicopter and took off over the lake. I got to see the new Antelope Point Marina, then followed Antelope Creek until it dried up and we saw the two slot canyons.

From there, we followed the edge of the Grand Canyon SUA back to Howard Mesa, making a few detours to check out some ruins, a canyon, and a controlled burn. We buzzed Larry Fox’s house — well, not really — before heading up to my pad on top of the mesa.

It had been a nice morning out. But then again, what morning spent in flight isn’t?

The Winslow Loop

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Satellite PhotoI check out a few points of interest from the air.

As you may have read in another entry, I am addicted to flying. If I don’t get a “fix” every few days, I get crazed. And here at Howard Mesa, where there’s not much else going on to keep me busy, I get crazed a lot easier than I would elsewhere.

Today I decided to make an early morning breakfast run. The destination was Winslow, which has a restaurant at the airport, but there was no reason to go straight there. (Especially since “straight there” would require me to overfly Mt. Kendricks, which is a bit too tall to fly over comfortably.) So I decided to swing north for the flight out and south for the flight back.

I was ready to leave by about 6:30 AM. Horses fed, masked, and sprayed. Dog confined in screened-in room. Bird in cage. iPod, camera, handheld GPS, and decibel meter on board. I started up, warmed up, and took off. I reset the trip computer and track log in my handheld GPS. I just got the GPS for my birthday. It’s a Garmin GPSMap 60c. A bit of a step up from my old GPSMap 12. I wanted it because it could store more maps than the old one and had WAAS capabilities, which could make it more accurate — something I’ll need if I ever get serious about geocaching. I left the GPS on to track my progress. The idea was to transfer the resulting tracklog to my laptop and use Terrabrowser to superimpose it over either a topo map or satellite photos. (I’m writing an article about doing this for Informit.com, so I don’t want to go into any detail here.) Here are the first pass results of this experiment. The white and black areas are ones I didn’t have satellite images cached for. The red letters are referenced throughout; A is my starting point at Howard Mesa.

Red MountainI headed northeast, right into the sun. Not good. I’d forgotten to put my hat on and the sun was shining right in my face, flickering through the blades. (I hate when that happens.) So I moved my headset down around my neck, put my hat on, and then put my headset back over my ears. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, does it? Well, you try to do it with one hand — your left hand. It was worth the struggle, though. The hat shaded my eyes nicely. I hit route 180 and followed it east, toward Flagstaff. I wanted an aerial view of Red Mountain, which I wrote about in another blog entry a few weeks ago. I had my camera and managed to snap two photos. Here’s one of them. Neither really shows the mountain well, but it’s hard to take pictures left-handed while flying a helicopter right toward a mountainside.

Then I headed on a more northerly track. I wanted to intersect with the Little Colorado River, but didn’t want to fly as far as Cameron. The high desert I flew over was deserted — at least at first. Then I flew into the outskirts of the Navajo reservation and began seeing small ranching settlements beneath me. There were some cows, but mostly sheep. The homes out there were picturesque, with rolling green hills all around and a good view of the San Francisco Peaks, which is one of the Navajo’s sacred mountains. I saw round hogans with doors facing east, livestock pens, and outhouses. Life is simpler out there. Way simpler. I crossed highway 89, which runs from Flagstaff to Page, and got into more rugged terrain. There were fascinating rock formations below me and, every once in a while, another Navajo homestead. Then I spotted the Little Colorado River valley. I reached the river and was very disappointed to find it dry. I turned right (B) and followed it toward Winslow.

Little Colorado RiverThis was my second trip along the Little Colorado River. It isn’t a very exciting flight, but it is mildly interesting. There are a few remains of Navajo homesteads and something that looked like an old mine. The highlight, of course, is usually the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado. But without any water falling over the big cliff, it was extremely disappointing. From that point, I headed pretty much straight toward Winslow cutting across the high desert, 300 feet above the ground at 100 knots.

I landed at the airport (C), shut down, and went into town. All that is covered in another entry I wrote earlier today.

After chatting with two guys who had flown in from Redlands, CA to look at a business in Winslow — I can’t imagine what business in Winslow would be worth flying 450 miles in a Cessna to see — I climbed back on board and started up. While I was waiting to warm up, I used my decibel meter to get a reading on the ambient noise level inside the cockpit. About 100 decibels. Not good. I wanted to get a reading because I want to be able to fly with Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird and I’m worried about damaging their hearing. Alex travels in a lucite box and the sound levels are probably lower inside it, but I can’t imagine them being that much lower. Oddly enough, I checked the sound levels again after taking off, at 100% RPM, and they were pretty much the same. I didn’t expect it to get quieter, of course. But I also didn’t expect it to stay the same.

Meteor CraterI headed west along I-40 for a short while, then spotted the “mountain” formed around Meteor Crater and headed straight toward it. I’d tried to get a summer gig at the Crater and they wanted me, but they also wanted $15 million in insurance, which I cannot get. (I don’t know anyone who can, either.) I like to fly over the crater when I’m in the area. I think it’s the best view; about 400 feet above the rim. I circled it once (D) and took a few pictures, then headed back toward I-40 again. I followed I-40 for a while, then decided to follow the traces of old Route 66. I did that past Twin Arrows, Winona, Flagstaff, Belmont, and Parks. It’s interesting the way the road fades in and out of existence along the way.

Grand Canyon RailroadWhen I got close to Williams, I caught sight of the black smoke spit out by the Grand Canyon Railroad’s steam engine. I caught up with it just short of Howard Mesa and managed to take a halfway decent photo of it from the air. (Remember, I’m doing this left-handed, and, in this case, through the passenger side window, while flying a helicopter. So cut me some slack.) Back at Howard Mesa, I followed the state road up to my property. I flew low and slow, trying to check out the road work they’d been doing. They were still working on it. I probably gave the road grader guy a mini heart attack when I passed him 50 feet off the deck about 100 feet to his left at 60 knots. (He’ll have something to tell his wife tonight.) I set down on my pad and shut down. I’d logged 2.1 Hobbs hours and had gotten a good fix.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering about point E on the photo map, that’s the Grand Canyon. I didn’t fly over it, but doesn’t it look cool from space?