Again, but this time with video.
The initial call about the January photo gig at Lake Powell came in December through one of my Russian connections. Apparently, two Russian businessmen who were attending the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas wanted to photograph the Lake Powell area from the air. They were willing to pay me to fly up to Lake Powell from Phoenix and make at least two flights totaling 3 to 5 hours.
Trips like this are extremely costly — after all, the client has to pay for 4 hours of flight time just to get me up there and back — and I honestly didn’t expect it to happen. But a week before the chosen dates — January 12-13 — I got the green light and the all-important credit card number I needed to get paid for that 4 hour repositioning flight plus a standard overnight fee to cover my expenses and compensate me for my time away from home.
The Gig
I admit I wasn’t looking forward to the gig. The two photographers claimed to weigh 242 pounds (converted from kilos) and I knew they likely weighed more fully dressed and carrying camera equipment. I calculated the weight and balance as soon as I had this information and discovered that I’d have to strip all non-essential equipment out of the helicopter to lighten it up so we could take enough fuel for 2 hour flight segments (plus FAA-required reserves). Anything that was left on board would have to be shifted from under my seat to under the seat behind me, just to shift weight backwards. Having two fatties — yes, including me — up front would make us front-heavy. Having two fatties on the left side would make us heavy on that side. But even after adding 15 pounds of weight for each of them, I confirmed that’d be in balance with 2/3 fuel or less on board.
The other thing that bothered me was weather. Page, AZ was having unseasonably cold weather with daytime highs barely getting above freezing. Flying a helicopter with two doors off guarantees plenty of outside air inside the cabin and no amount of heat is going to win against 30°F outside air. So not only did I have a bit of a challenge ahead of me with a listing (but still within acceptable CG) aircraft to fly, I’d likely be freezing my ass off.
As far as the helicopter goes, I wasn’t worried about the cold weather affecting operations. My R44 Raven II is fuel injected, so carburetor ice is not an issue. I’d flown it in cold weather before and it was always peppy — once I got it started. In fact, that was my only real concern: Lake Powell photographers usually want to get off the ground at dawn for morning flights and with overnight temperatures under 20°F, I worried a bit about getting the helicopter started for its morning flight.
But the gig did have one big thing going for it: at least 4 hours of revenue time. And if there’s one thing I’m interested in, it’s getting paid to fly.
The Flight Up
Lake Powell is about 200 nautical miles north of the Phoenix area. Since my clients were paying for a 2-hour flight, my goal was to make it there in two hours. That meant flying as close to a straight line as I could.
Using Sky Vector, I plotted a course from Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (KDVT) to Page Municipal Airport (KPGA) with only one waypoint in between: the Little Colorado River Gorge (LCRG) on the east side of Grand Canyon’s Special Use Airspace. I wrote down the coordinates for the LCRG to punch them into my GPS — a recent GPS battery change had wiped my user waypoint list clean. The flight path would take me north along the east side of I-17, crossing it just before it dips down to Camp Verde. I’d cut across the Verde Valley between Sedona and Cottonwood, then climb the Mogollon Rim west of Sedona, pass east of the restricted area for the Navajo Army Depot, west of Flagstaff, and west of the San Francisco Peaks, the tallest mountain in Arizona. From there, I’d drop back down into the Navajo Reservation, flying over its western edge, hop the Echo Cliffs, and drop back down to Page, AZ.
And that’s mostly how it all came off.
I departed Deer Valley at about 8:45 AM under partly cloudy skies with little or no wind. It was a cool morning, with temperatures just climbing through the 50s. I crossed Deer Valley’s runways at 2000 feet MSL as required by the Tower there and got right on course, aiming for the LCRG waypoint I’d added to my GPS.
It was interesting and different to fly a straight line route through an area I knew so well. After all, I’ve been flying from the Phoenix area to Sedona, the Grand Canyon, Flagstaff, and Lake Powell for years, so it’s not as if the area I’d be flying over was new to me. But I usually fly with passengers on board and, to make the flight more interesting, I fly over or past various points of interest, such as towns, highways, mine sites, and canyons. On this flight, speed was the goal — I wasn’t interested in scenery. But I got scenery anyway — how can you fly a helicopter through Arizona without seeing something spectacular every mile?
As I flew, my GoPro Hero camera recorded a 720p widescreen video of the flight. Mounted up front, it offered an unobstructed view of everything ahead of me. The wide angle lens brought in details of what was close while pushing back distant points. Later that night, I’d watch much of the 2 hours of video and remember the various points of the flight.
What fascinated me was the way the light changed throughout the flight. At first, it was partly cloudy. Then the sun slipped behind the clouds and it was cloudy. Then the sun began to break through, speckling the mountainsides with light. This still image, captured from the video, gives you an idea of what I mean. The light changed numerous times over the two-hour period of the flight — at one point, clouding over completely only 1,000 feet above me — giving the illusion that the flight was conducted over multiple days.
It wasn’t just the light that changed, of course. It was also the terrain. Flat desert in the Phoenix area, soft mountains studded with saguaro cacti as I headed north, flat mesas with steep basalt sides, deeply carved canyons, wide valleys, red rock cliffs and hoodoos, alpine forests blanketed with snow, tall mountains, ancient cinder cones, flat “painted” desert, deep gorges, buttes, uplifted cliff faces, slot canyons. I saw it all over the course of my two hour flight — all without trying to see it. My nearly straight line course simply put me over the top of all these things. I sat comfortable and warm in my seat, admiring the view as I glided over it.
Glided is definitely a good word. There was hardly a breath of wind during the entire flight so it was amazingly smooth. A pilot’s dream. And although outside temperatures dipped as low as -5°C, I was cosy and warm with the heat up only about halfway.
One of the highlights of the flight was crossing the red rock cliffs west of Sedona and climbing up over the Mogollon Rim. The light was absolutely perfect, breaking through light scattered clouds to illuminate the rocks with a soft golden light. Absolutely breathtaking and the GoPro camera captured the whole thing.
Beyond that was a surprising amount of snow and a light overcast layer that shrouded the top of the San Francisco Peaks. The temperature there was around 0°C, but the Flagstaff ATIS reported -5°C — a real thermal inversion only 10 miles east. The low cloud layer and dimly lighted snowfields made me feel claustrophobic. Ahead of me, it looked as if some precipitation could be falling from the clouds. That got me a bit worried about icing, but I continued on. By the time I got to the point I thought I’d seen rain or snow falling, it had stopped — and so did my worries.
The only surprise on my flight was upon reaching the GPS coordinates for the LCRG. Simply said: it wasn’t there. It was about 10 miles northwest of where I’d plotted it to be. I can only assume that I’d punched in a wrong digit when I entered the waypoint into my helicopter’s GPS. So rather than fly over its most dramatic point, I crossed a bit to the east and kept going. I deleted that waypoint so I wouldn’t depend on it again. Oddly if I’d made a serious mistake in the entry, I would have noticed it a lot sooner. But because it was only off by a little bit, it wasn’t until I passed the waypoint that I realized the error. I’ll definitely be more careful in the future.
When I got to the empty expanse of the Navajo Reservation, I dropped down and flew low over the ground. There were few homes in the hundreds of square miles and only a handful showed signs of life. In the video, my helicopter’s shadow is clearly visible: small when I’m flying higher and larger when I’m flying lower. The video makes it seem as if I’m going much faster during this portion of the flight, but I’m not. I managed to keep a steady 100-110 ground speed for most of the flight. It’s just an illusion: the closer the camera is to the ground, the faster I seem to be flying.
I crossed over the Echo Cliffs at Cedar Ridge — at least I think that’s where I was — and sped across more of the Navajo Reservation north. In all, I think about 45 minutes of the flight was spent over the Rez. It’s an amazing land of stark beauty, sprinkled with traditional homesteads, more modern yet simple homes, and, on its far western reaches, the ruins of abandoned homesites clearly visible as rock rings and corrals. The traditional Navajo home is a round or octagonal building called a hogan and they are clearly visible from the air. Also visible on most days are livestock such as cattle and sheep and wild horses.
I descended down toward the lake, flying at a low enough level that I didn’t actually see its clear blue water until I was about 15 miles out. Of course, I could see other landmarks — notably the bulk of Navajo Mountain about 50 miles to the east of Page and the Navajo Power Plant, with tall stacks belching ugly smoke into the air just outside of town. The radio frequency was silent as I descended toward the airport. I lined up with the taxiway and set down on one of the helipads.
The Video
Later, after doing 3.4 hours of photo flying around the lake and points east, I watched the video shot by my GoPro Hero. It was probably some of the best footage I’d ever captured with the camera. My only regret was that I hadn’t shot in in 1080p.
Over the course of two days, I assembled a movie from seven-second clips shot during that two hour flight. Last night I added titles and music. I exported it for my iPad and uploaded it to YouTube. Here it is. Enjoy.
I’m working on an itinerary for a Flying M Air excursion client. They’ve decided to customize their Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure to add another day at Page, AZ, as well as an overnight stay at Bullfrog Basin about halfway up Lake Powell.
Over time, the water has carved a series of narrow slot canyons through the red rock sandstone. Two of these slots are open to the public. Upper Antelope Canyon is south of route 98 (see top satellite photo); Lower Antelope Canyon is north of route 98 (see bottom satellite photo). Examination of satellite images of the area show additional slot canyons along Antelope Creek, but they are not open to the public.
Upper Antelope Canyon is, by far, the more visited of the two. I think there are two reasons for this:
Lower Antelope Canyon has far fewer visitors than Upper. Unlike Upper, no tour companies — at least none to my knowledge — visit it. In addition, the canyon itself requires a decent amount of physical fitness. There are ladders, narrow passages, and various places where scrambling on the smooth sandstone is necessary. Heck, even the opening of the canyon, where you descend into a crack in the rock (shown here) seems designed to keep certain folks out: a fatty simply wouldn’t fit through it.
The great thing about Lower Antelope Canyon, however, is that you have up to four hours to explore it pretty much on your own. This gives you plenty of time to shoot photos or lose yourself in thought between the smooth sandstone walls. Because there are far fewer visitors, it’s a more relaxed and pleasant place to visit. You can probably guess that I prefer it.
Ready to go, I wait for Mike, who is only half dressed and still working on his laptop. I pull out my iPad and check the weather for Las Vegas. Later, when I’m waiting for my passengers at Prescott, I’ll check official weather with Duats and file a flight plan, which is required for my Part 135 operation. I waste some more time playing with 
I make a radio call on the practice area frequency as I fly over Anthem, a master-planned community north of Phoenix, and then leave the urban sprawl behind me. Ahead of me are rolling hills climbing into the high desert. I fly over the freeway toward Prescott, passing over a handful of scattered homes and dirt roads. Somewhere along the way, I realize that changing the battery in my Garmin 420 GPS has erased my custom settings; I make some display changes on the map page. I tune my main radio to the Prescott tower frequency and tune the radio on my GPS to the Prescott ATIS frequency.
I come into a hover over the numbers 30 on runway 30. I’m told to switch to a ground frequency — something that very seldom happens — and I get sloppy with my 3-foot hover while using my left hand to tune in the frequency. I call in and get progressive taxi instructions to the Legend ramp. I land in a t-spot, glad that they use chains instead of ropes to tie down the planes. I shut down and send an OK signal from SPOT to Mike.
Tower finally tells me to depart along taxiway Delta (parallel to runway 21L) and maintain taxiway heading. Then switch to the other tower frequency. That controller finally clears me to turn on course. I turn right heading 295 degrees, which will take me directly to the Hoover Dam 160 miles away. Controller asks what altitude I want and I tell him 500 AGL.
Clear of Prescott airspace, I turn into the FSS frequency and activate my flight plan. Passengers are happily chatting away about the places we’re flying over. I answer questions when asked. Terrain is high desert hills with piñon and juniper pine. Some evidence of lava flows along basalt cliffs. We climb to 6,500 feet to clear small mountain ranges. There are no paved roads, no buildings, no vehicles. Only scattered cattle ponds and the occasional handful of cows.
We cross I-40 just east of the junction of state route 93, far to the east of we cross a few more mountains, then drop into a Valley inexplicably marked on the charts as Cottonwood Cliffs. (What cliffs?) We’re still heading roughly 295 degrees. There are scattered homes beneath us now.
We near the area where the tour pilots fly between Boulder Airport and Grand Canyon West, so I tune into their frequency to monitor communications. Lots of chatter using landmarks and reporting points I don’t know. The only comforting information is their altitudes: higher than mine. The desert flattens out with scattered communities. We overfly two paved roads.
We cross over the road to Temple Bar and pick up state route 93 as it snakes into the hills. The pair of two-lane roads looks freshly paved. At the turnoff to Willow Beach, I veer off the main road to the west. We catch a glimpse of the Colorado River as we head toward the dam.
Listening to the Las Vegas ATIS, I learn that the helicopter frequency is in operation. I call the tower and request inbound heading to Stratosphere, then turn for landing at Atlantic ramp. I receive a squawk code and clearance to do as requested. Ahead of us, a thick blanket of white smog covers the Las Vegas skyline. The Stratosphere tower, rising 1,149 feet above the Strip, is barely visible in the haze.
We were staying at the 
I thought about how I was neglecting my blog. (This is the first real entry in over a week.) I wished I could write and post something about my trip — the great fish dinner on the first night, one of the other wives getting her luggage lost by the airline and our subsequent shopping spree at Target, the luggage size of our companions who apparently packed for three weeks instead of three days, the great deal I got on a rental car, the surprisingly peppy ride of the Hundai Accent I wound up with. Or maybe the authentic Spanish tapas I enjoyed with my family in Saint Augustine and the huge ice cream sundaes we consumed afterwards. Or the weather, which dipped down to the 20s (F, not C) at night, with a wind that obliterated the wonderful reflections I’d photographed from our room the day we arrived and ruined what might have been a nice walk along the ocean on the last day of our stay. I couldn’t blog about any of this because (1) typing a long document on the iPad’s “keyboard” is likely to result in insanity (2) I didn’t have access to the Internet to post anything.
With all this in mind, it’s pretty clear to me that I should have brought along the laptop. With it, I could have used my phone to get online. I could have blogged daily. I could have kept up-to-date with tweets. I could have realized that the weather would turn sour and those wonderful reflections on the pond outside the hotel would be gone the next day, giving me no second chance to photograph them properly.