Category Archives: Flying

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

Blessed by Arizona Highways

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A great magazine gives my business a much needed shot in the arm.

Arizona Highways has long been one of my favorite magazines. There’s no other magazine that consistently shows off the beauty of our state with high quality photographs and articles that paint pictures with words. I’m sure that more than a few people have been lured to Arizona by something they saw in the pages of Arizona Highways. And I’m sure plenty of us have remained to make Arizona our home.

Last fall, I had to follow the route of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. I’d hired a video production company to make a promotional video about my company and wanted footage from every location we visited, from Phoenix to Monument Valley. There would be a videographer on board for the entire six-day trip and another following in a truck with equipment they expected to need at each location. Since I had a spare seat on the helicopter, I decided to offer it to two different high quality travel publications. The idea was to put a photographer or writer on board and maybe build a relationship with that publication to trade flight time with advertising.

At least that was the idea.

The Arizona Highways editor responded quickly. He assigned one of the magazine’s writers, Keridwen Cornelius, to accompany us and write up a story about the excursion. If everything worked out well and they could use what she wrote, they’d send a photographer out to get pictures later.

Arizona HighwaysI was thrilled, but didn’t really expect much. I certainly didn’t expect the 10 pages about my Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure that appeared in the May 2009 issue.

I got my advance copies about two weeks ago. I ate up Keridwen’s words and aerial photographer Adriel Heisey’s photographs. The article is amazing. Keridwen gave readers a look into her mind as she experienced each part of the excursion, from our departure from the Terminal 3 Helipad at Sky Harbor Airport to our winding canyon flight down the Verde River — and everything in between. For the first time ever, I’m able to understand how people who don’t usually fly around Arizona in helicopters see and feel about the magnificent terrain.

(By the way, this is one of the reasons I like to fly people who don’t usually fly. I get to experience a bit of the wonder of it all through their eyes.)

The magazine reached subscribers on Friday, April 10. That’s when my phone started ringing. I’ve been answering questions and sending out printed literature ever since. The Flying M Air Web site has also been busy, with about four times the hits it usually gets. The magazine just hit the newsstands and the Arizona Highways Web site. I formally announced it on Flying M Air’s Web site and began offering a 10% discount for all excursions booked before June 30.

And yesterday I booked an excursion for a couple from Pine, AZ for the last week in this month.

To say that this is a breakthrough for me is an understatement. One of the toughest things about building a small business is getting the word out about your services — especially when your services have a limited market and are relatively costly. My company is the only one in the country offering multi-day excursions by helicopter. But I can spend thousands of dollars on advertising and not be able to reach the right people. After all, ads are ads — we see so many ads, we know how to filter them out. But editorial content is different. And there’s nothing better than seeing a positive report about a product or service written by an objective third party.

I feel extremely fortunate to have my business covered in such a way.

I hope everyone reading this goes out and tracks down a copy of the May 2009 Arizona Highways. I really think you’ll enjoy every single page.

Another Season of Cherry Drying Planned

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I finally have a plan for the summer.

Yesterday morning, I received a fax I’d been waiting for. It was from a helicopter services company based in central Washington state, not far from the Columbia River. I’d worked as a subcontractor to a subcontractor for them last year to dry cherries with my helicopter. This year, with the middle man out of the picture, I contacted them directly, offering my helicopter and services.

And then I waited.

Normally, cherry contracts start going out in March. This year, with the economy so questionable, the contracts went out a month late. My buddy, Jim, got his on Friday. When mine didn’t arrive by Saturday, I assumed they had enough pilots. After all, there’s a glut of them without jobs and plenty of flight schools that are finding themselves with plenty of helicopters and CFIs but not enough students. I assumed they’d chosen someone else — likely someone closer to the orchards — instead of me.

But on Monday morning, the fax arrived. It laid out the terms for my minimum 21-day contract. The money offered was the same as last year. If fuel prices stay stable — rather than spiking to new highs as they did last year — I’ll do okay. If it rains a lot — and I have my fingers crossed — I’ll actually bring home a decent amount of money. Maybe even enough to pay off my camper loan.

The Logistics

Although a specific start date wasn’t mentioned, I could start the contract as soon as May 15. It’s more likely, however, that I’ll be starting around June 1, as I did last year. Apparently, the cherry crop is running late again.

I told them I need a week’s notice to get the helicopter into position. Because of the distance involved — I’m about 1,000 miles away — it’s a multiple-step process to get all my playing pieces on the board:

  • Ferry the helicopter from Wickenburg to Seattle’s Boeing Field. I have two empty seats for this flight and am actively seeking one or two people to fill them. You can learn more about it here; I can’t exaggerate what an incredible experience this flight is — especially since I let my passengers choose the route. This flight will take 2 to 4 days, depending on what my passengers have in mind.
  • Drop off the helicopter for its annual inspection. I use the services of Rich Carter, who is probably one of the top 5 Robinson mechanics in the country.
  • Fly via airline back to Phoenix.
  • Prepare my camper and truck.
  • Drive from Wickenburg to my first base of operations in Washington State. If my truck behaves and the weather holds, I can do the 1,200-mile drive in two long days.
  • Set up the camper in a campground or grower field.
  • Take an airliner from Wenatchee, WA to Seattle, WA.
  • Ferry my helicopter from Seattle to my first base of operations.

I figure the absolute quickest I can do all this is five days. I’m hoping I get seven.

Of course, I can do a lot of the preparations this month, so when I return from Seattle, I can just hook up the camper and go. The preparations include giving my camper a total check out, loading it up with the things I’ll need to live and work in it for up to eight weeks, and fixing a few little broken things, like the DC jack in the kitchen area, which I use to power my iPod. I’m also considering the installation of a satellite dish that’ll get me Internet as well as television — although I don’t usually bring a TV with me.

Well, at least I can try to do the preparations. I’m working on a book this month and promised my editor I’d be done by month-end.

The Ferry Flight

San FranciscoThe ferry flight is the part I’m looking forward to most. Last year’s route took us due west across the Arizona and California deserts to the coast at San Luis Obispo. We then flew up the coast all the way to San Francisco, where the marine layer pushed us inland. We overnighted at the north end of Napa Valley, then pushed on to Portland the next day, doing a good portion of that flight over the coast, too. The last day, we made the quick flight to Seattle with a flyby of Mt. St. Helens, which was steaming. I still remember those towering waterfalls from snow melt off the cinder cone. You can read about each day of the flight and see more photos here, here, and here.

It’s pretty important that I get paying passengers on board for this flight, so I’ve cut my usual charter rate down to below my cost in an effort to attract deal seekers who want a once-in-a-lifetime flight experience. That’s my preferred approach.

Plan B is to offer the flight to helicopter pilots who want to build time in an R44. The trouble with this plan is the extra effort involved: I need to get the pilot on my insurance, which means he needs to have a certain minimum number of flight hours in R44s and has to have taken the Robinson factory safety course. The rate I offer these guys is lower than my charter rate, so I’d have to eat more of the ferry cost. And, of course, if someone is paying me for the privilege of flying my aircraft, I have to let him or her fly it. Frankly, I like to fly — even 10 hours worth — and would prefer to fly it myself. So Plan B, while certainly possible, is not my preference.

Plan C is even more distasteful. It means flying up there by myself. The good part of that is that I can do all the flying on whatever route I choose. The bad part is that I won’t get any of my ferry costs covered. And since my ferry costs are significant for a 10-hour flight, I’d rather get them covered than have the pleasure of a solo flight.

Besides, it’s nice to have company.

Settling In

Once all my tools are up there, I can settle in to wherever I’m based. I’ll likely spend 3 weeks at the first base and, with luck, get moved to another base farther north after that. Last year I started on the Columbia River near Quincy (south of Wenatchee), moved north to Pateros and Brewster, and then moved back to the high country around Quincy. Then I was done, having been on call for seven weeks with only two days of flying.

No, last year was not profitable. I just about broke even. But it was nice to get away from Arizona’s heat and do something that wasn’t tourism-related.

My TrailerHow much I “settle in” is questionable. While I had the trailer parked in the same campground spot for almost two full months last year (see photo) and spent 10 days at a motel in Pateros, this year I’m more likely to be moving the camper around. It’s pretty much self-sufficient — with solar panels that should keep the batteries charged on those long, summer days — but I’d like to get a full or partial hookup. I’m not opposed to parking on a grower’s property or even at an airport where the helicopter would be based.

I would like to minimize the number of times I have to move it, though. It takes about an hour to set up or break down camp, due to the nature of the pop-out beds. I don’t mind doing all this work, but if it happens to be a very rainy season, I’m not sure whether I’ll have time to do it. I’ve been told to expect 10-hour flying days if it’s a wet one.

Looking Ahead

I’m looking forward to the trip and the challenges it presents. I had a pretty crappy winter here in Arizona, dealing with a lot of bull that I’ll likely blog about sometime in the future, when it’s all a dim memory. While my company’s inclusion in the May 2009 issue of Arizona Highways magazine is already helping me book excursions for the upcoming fall flying season — and perhaps even one or two excursions before I leave for the summer — it’s not going to help me in the summer months, when I really do hate flying here. You cannot imagine the heat, and escaping the heat to the high country introduces all kinds of problems because of high density altitude. Cherry drying is challenging, tedious, and dangerous work, but it’s a change.

And I thrive on change.

Read More Posts about Cherry Drying:

How to Start Your Own Helicopter Charter Business

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A guide for the folks who really want to know.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of blog comments and e-mail messages from wannabe helicopter pilots. They’re seeing the reality of the current helicopter job market: too many entry-level pilots, too few jobs, low starting pay, and training that’ll cost them $60,000 to $80,000.

On Job Markets & Flight Schools

They might be reading about this in a post that remains the most popular of all time on this blog: “The Helicopter Job Market.” I wrote this piece just over two years ago, in March 2007 at the height of Silver State’s rise to power as a helicopter flight school. I was tired of seeing young guys (mostly) get conned by promises of $80,000/year jobs that just didn’t exist for newly minted commercial helicopter pilots. I wanted to warn them, but without actively speaking out against Silver State and the companies that had adopted their strategy to turn a quick buck. In all honesty, I didn’t want to get sued. I just wanted readers to consider reality before signing on the dotted line.

We all know what happened to Silver State. It was a Ponzi scheme of sorts that built a massive flight school on the money of tomorrow’s students. When students stopped signing up — due to their inability to get financing or a case of the smarts — and bills came due, Silver State collapsed, leaving many students in debt without their certificates and hundreds of low-time pilots looking for work. It’s a tragedy, not only for the people scrambling to pay the cost of the flight training they may or may not have gotten, but the dumping of so many low-time pilots on the job market made it easy for employers to pick and choose and drop pay rates. The best of the desperate got the entry level jobs they wanted. The others were left out in the cold.

And when the economy began to tank, even the employers cut back. Big seasonal employers at the Grand Canyon and Alaska hired fewer pilots than ever this year and even employers in the Gulf of Mexico began laying off pilots.

The Do-It-Yourself Alternative

Some wannabe pilots think there’s another way to build a flying career, a sort of do-it-yourself method.

Maybe they see from this blog that I didn’t go the usual route — that is, private pilot to commercial pilot to certified flight instructor to get that first 1,000 hours to get an entry level job, etc. Instead, I got my commercial ticket and started my own helicopter charter business. Then I got a bigger helicopter and a Part 135 certificate and, for all appearances, seem to be happily raking in the dough while flying around in my own helicopter.

That’s what they see, anyway.

Lately, they’ve begun commenting on this blog and sending me e-mail, asking for advice. While requests for advice from new or wannabe pilots aren’t anything new, what is new is that the advice they want is about how to start their own helicopter charter companies. Apparently, they believe that since they won’t be able to easily get a job, they will be able to start their own business as a kind of “shortcut” to the career they want.

Here’s My Approach

So I’ve written this blog post to answer these questions from my experience. Here’s my step-by-step approach. If you’re looking for the secret of my success, you might want to print this out for future reference:

  1. Spend $50,000 to learn how to fly helicopters and get a commercial helicopter license.
  2. Spend another $30,000 to $50,000 to build time so you can fly safely under most conditions.
  3. Spend $346,000 or more to buy a helicopter, about $10,000 per year to maintain it, and $12,000 to $32,000 a year to insure it.
  4. Spend 4 to 24 months preparing the paperwork and working with the FAA to apply for a Part 135 certificate. Then take and pass a Part 135 check ride. Then repeat the check ride process every year.
  5. Spend another $10,000 to $30,000 on advertising and marketing.
  6. Take lots of calls from people who can’t understand why you can’t fly them around for the cost of fuel or want you to fly them for free or are trying to get you to donate to their charitable cause. Then get the occasional call that leads to real work for someone who appreciates what you do and understand what it costs.
  7. After ten years and close to a million dollars spent building and maintaining your business, sit back and watch your investment in time and money languish in an economy where few people want to or can spend money on your services.

Get the idea?

At the Big Sandy Shoot
My $346,000 investment, parked at an event in the desert.

There’s an old saying: “The best way to make a million dollars in aviation is to start with two million dollars.”

I’m not complaining. It’s nice having a helicopter. It would be even nicer if I could afford to fly it whenever I wanted to.

But the simple reality is that starting a helicopter charter business is a huge money suck. My aviation business spends more money than most pilots earn each year. If I didn’t have another good source of income, I wouldn’t be able to afford having this business at all.

In Conclusion

If you think that starting your own helicopter charter business is a quick and easy, money-saving way to build a career as a helicopter pilot, think again. It’s neither quick nor money-saving.

But sure. It’s easy. Just add time and money.

Escalante Run (by Helicopter)

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Another high-speed run up a canyon.

I don’t want anyone to think I do this regularly. I don’t. It’s dangerous. An engine failure at this altitude/speed/terrain combination would be very, very ugly. I won’t do this with paying passengers aboard — unless we’re on a video mission that requires it. I do wear a life jacket any time I’m flying over a body of water beyond glide distance to land. Yes, I do take risks when I need to. But I also try to minimize them any way I can.

I needed this footage for one of my video projects. I figured that it might make an interesting video, if set to music, on my blog. So here it is.

How Much Wind is Too Much Wind?

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For helicopters, that is.

Tomorrow, I’ve got a lengthy charter booked with a new client. It’s an animal survey mission, which will likely require me to fly low and slow over varied terrain. The job’s starting airport is at 5,600 feet, so the whole job will be at high density altitude. Fortunately, there’s just two of us on board, so power shouldn’t be much of an issue.

Unless the wind becomes one.

When I checked the weather on Saturday for Tuesday, it was forecasting winds 12 to 24 mph with gusts up to 37. I imagined myself battling a 13 mph gust spread with a tail wind when I was flying at 40 to 60 knots. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

I e-mailed the client and suggested that we move the flight up to today (Monday) or earlier on Tuesday, before the wind kicks up. I knew he was traveling, so I figured I’d follow it up with a phone call later in the day.

When I checked it again last night, the winds in that area had dropped considerably and forecasted gusts were only 25. That was more reasonable. I called the client and left him a voicemail message on his cell phone, explaining the situation and offering to change the date and time, but not making it seem so urgent.

This morning, the forecast is as follows for tomorrow in the flight area:

Sunny, with a high near 72. South southwest wind 7 to 10 mph increasing to between 15 and 18 mph. Winds could gust as high as 30 mph.

I sure wish the National Weather Service would make up its mind.

So the question is, how much wind is too much wind to fly?

My Experience with Wind

Although I liked (and still like) my primary flight instructor very much, there were two things he “babied” me on in initial training:

  • Radio work. I was crappy on the radio — which is odd, considering how well I can let my mouth run when around family and friends — and he made it a non-issue by handling many of my radio calls for me. I developed an early attitude of avoiding radio communication with ATC by actually altering routes to avoid airspace. I’ve since gotten over this problem and will talk to anyone on the radio.
  • Flying in wind. If wind speeds got over 8 or 10 mph, he’d cancel our lesson. I don’t think it was because he was afraid of the wind — he had over 1,000 hours of flight time. I think it was because he was afraid of letting me try to fly in the wind. Maybe he was worried I’d have a lot of problems. It didn’t matter. He made me afraid of the wind, which is ridiculous when you consider I’m flying a helicopter and can take off or land into the wind anywhere.

As a result of my initial training, I always faced windy flying days with caution. Maybe too much caution.

I remember flying my R22 from Wickenburg, AZ to Placerville, CA years ago. I was supposed to do it in one day. I got an early enough start. But I hit windy conditions at the Tehatchapi Mountain pass where I’d planned to cross from the high desert near Edwards Air Force Base to California’s Central Valley. Anyone who knows the area shouldn’t be surprised. It’s lined with dozens, if not hundreds, of windmills for a reason. But I was afraid to brave the pass and wound up spending the night at Rosamond, CA. I don’t recommend doing that and I certainly won’t do it again.

Could I have made the trip safely? Nowadays, I think I could. But then, I wasn’t sure.

I built all my flying time in my own aircraft on personal and commercial flights. When I got to 1,000 hours, I applied for a job at the Grand Canyon. I had a friend who recommended me to one of the tour operators there. I had a good interview and got the offer. Flying at the canyon had always been a dream of mine, so I happily took the job.

One thing about Arizona in the spring is that it’s windy. One thing about northern Arizona in the spring is that it’s very windy. I soon learned not only how windy it could get at the Grand Canyon, but how much wind we were expected to fly in.

Our company had two methods for determining whether it was too windy to fly:

  • We’d fly until one of the pilots came back and said it was too windy. Now most of the pilots were guys and most of them were in the 24 to 30 year old range. They spent their pilot lounge waiting time watching car races and extreme skateboarding shows on the television there. There was a definite testosterone thing going on. Obviously, if you came back from a flight and said it was too windy to fly, you were a sissy. So none of the young guys did it. There were also two women on staff, including me. Neither of us would call it because then we’d be confirming that we were sissies, which the guys already suspected. (Frankly, my personal gauge of what was too much wind was way off and I couldn’t trust my judgement anyway. I figured if it wasn’t too windy for everyone else, it couldn’t be too windy for me.) Fortunately, there was an older pilot named Ron who didn’t care about macho bullshit. When Ron went out on a flight and got tossed around too much in the sky — usually by the Dragon’s Tail or Dragon’s Head (two calling points on the Dragon Corridor) — he’d come back in a huff, go straight to the lead pilot, and shut us down for weather. The rest of us would breathe a silent sigh of relief.
  • When the wind in the company’s tower at the Grand Canyon Airport hit 50 miles per hour, we’d shut down. And yes, if Ron wasn’t around, we’d sometimes fly right up until that point.

So, as you can imagine, I quickly learned how to fly in high winds.

LTEThe only time I got into any real trouble was one day when I was landing on a pad in front of our terminal at the Grand Canyon. There was a good, stiff crosswind coming from my left as I hover-taxied into position. I was flying a Bell 206L1 C30P Long Ranger. Anyone with any experience in Bell products should be able to imagine what a 1000-hour pilot brought up in Robinson equipment might experience in such a situation: LTE (loss of tail rotor effectiveness). I started rotating to the right. I added left pedal and nothing happened. I added more left pedal and got a tiny bit of response. I was now almost 30° off center and my tail would soon be approaching the fuel pit. I slammed the left pedal to the floor, spun the nose of the helicopter around to face the front of the pad, and brought the collective down swiftly, for a rough yet straight landing. It was my first LTE experience and it scared the hell out of me. Robinson puts a hell of a lot more authority in its tail rotors than Bell does.

As another flight instructor once told me, “The wind is your friend.” He was right — but I couldn’t understand why until I’d flown in windy conditions. That taught me how the wind could help me take off and land with a heavy load or get to my destination faster. And how it forced me to dance on the pedals for a crosswind landing, or milk the collective to avoid the [over-]sensitive low rotor RPM horn on takeoff or landing.

The Risks of Wind

LTE is only one risk of flying in windy conditions. As I fly tomorrow, any time I’m in a crosswind situation, I need to worry about the aircraft trying to weathervane into the wind. If the wind is from the left, LTE becomes an possible issue — although I’ve never had an LTE problem in a Robinson. We’ll be flying light with just two on board, so I should have enough power to handle the situation. The trick will be to either avoid it (which I prefer) or recognize the onset and avoid it before it causes a problem.

Another risk of high wind to semi-rigid rotor systems (which is what most two-bladed systems are) is excessive flapping. This was our main concern flying Long Rangers at the Grand Canyon in high wind. (And you thought it was pilot air sickness.) When Ron came back and shut down flying for the day, he’d come into the pilot room and tell us all how crazy we were for flying. It was dangerous, he’d say. But what did we know? We were 1000-hour pilots, many of whom had no real life flying experience. How many of the former flight instructors around me did what my first CFI did and keep their students — and themselves — out of the wind?

My main concerns tomorrow will be keeping the aircraft under perfect control as I fly a search pattern. There will be a lot of turning back and forth and maybe even a little hovering. I’ll have to keep track of where the wind’s coming from and what low-level obstacles — think hills and ridges — it has to cross to get to me. Each little bump in the ground means a bump in the air on a windy day.

How much wind is too much?

I know a lot of pilots who won’t fly in what I now consider moderate winds (10 to 25 mph). This past February, I was in Parker, AZ, doing a video flight for an off-road race. There were a bunch of helicopters working for various race teams or video production crews. Before dawn, as the cars were lining up at the starting line, they took off, one by one. The winds were 13 gusting to 18. I was prepping my passengers for the flight when the pilot of a Jet Ranger came over and asked if I was going to fly. I told him I was and I think he was surprised. He told me it was too windy for him.

Anyone with significant flight time who reads this should be able to give me an idea of their own personal maximums for wind. I’d love to get your feedback here. Use the comments link or form. And if I’ve said anything absolutely stupid in this post, please correct me gently.

At this point, I’m thinking that 30 mph with a gust spread of no more than 10 mph should be okay for this mission. If I find out I’m wrong, I’ll be sure to let you know.

In the meantime, I’m hoping my client calls to start the mission an hour or two earlier. I think if we can finish up before noon, we’ll avoid the worst of the wind.