Cockpit Distractions

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There’s a reason for a “sterile cockpit.”

The other day, I wrote a blog post about the four recent helicopter crashes that occurred during cherry drying operations here in Washington State. My point was to explore the possibility that pilots and operators were not taking this potentially dangerous work seriously. You can read that post here.

In giving this some more thought, I think that post neglected another indicator of not taking this work seriously: the concept of flying in a distraction-free environment — a so-called “sterile cockpit.”

Sterile Cockpit Defined

From Wikipedia:

The Sterile Cockpit Rule is an FAA regulation requiring pilots to refrain from non-essential activities during critical phases of flight, normally below 10,000 feet. The FAA imposed the rule in 1981 after reviewing a series of accidents that were caused by flight crews who were distracted from their flying duties by engaging in non-essential conversations and activities during critical parts of the flight.

Obviously, most — if not all — of a helicopter’s operations are below 10,000 feet. And helicopters performing cherry drying services aren’t subject to the same rules as airliners. So my point isn’t that helicopter operators are required to follow this rule. My point is that this rule exists for a reason.

When I went through the process of getting my Part 135 certificate, the topic of maintaining a sterile cockpit was brought up. My FAA POI was concerned about distractions during critical phases of flight. For my Part 135 operations, which consist primarily of tour and air-taxi services, that meant times when I’m in tower-controlled airspace, when I’m landing, or when I’m taking off. It also meant phases of flight operated at or below 300 feet AGL. The point being that when I’m communicating with a tower or close to the ground, I need to minimize distractions.

Distractions come in many forms. My POI’s main concern for me was chatty passengers. While I can normally perform landings at easy landing zones (LZs) without any problems — even while conducting a conversation with someone — when you add the need to listen to and look for other traffic, communicate with a tower, or deal with unusual conditions such as crosswinds or difficult landing zones, things are tougher.

For example, just the other day a very chatty passenger decided to start a new conversation just as I was on final approach to an off-airport, confined area LZ with a crosswind of 29 mph gusting to 36 mph. (We were about 1/2 mile from the airport, so that reading comes from an AWOS and is accurate.) When I didn’t answer her second question, she got the message and shut up. I have a switch I can flick to turn off cockpit chatter among passengers, but since I don’t usually need to use it, I didn’t flick it for that flight. Although the landing was fine, I’m thinking of a better briefing for passengers in the future.

Maintaining a sterile cockpit means eliminating all non-essential communication. It means reducing or eliminating distractions during critical portions of the flight.

Sterile Cockpits in Agricultural Work

Cherry Drying Near Wires
This is a photo I won’t show my mother. The helicopter’s airframe is probably about 20-25 feet from the wires in this shot by Patrick Schroeder. That’s as close as I’m willing to get.

Agricultural flying such as spraying, frost control, and cherry drying can be pretty intense. All of them require precision flying. Spraying is low level, at a relatively quick speed. Frost control is very low level, pretty slow, and usually done at night. Cherry drying is very low level and very slow, sometimes during or after weather that can obscure cockpit views. Obstructions are usually a concern for all agricultural flying work. These are conditions and flight profiles that could definitely benefit from a sterile cockpit.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most aircraft set up for spraying — whether they are helicopters or airplanes — are either labeled “Experimental” or have just one seat. These are not aircraft set up for passenger flight.

Imagine this scenario: A helicopter pilot is sent out to do some cherry drying. He’s been hanging around all day with a buddy who might even be another pilot. He invites him to come along. They head out over the orchard and the pilot gets to work. While he’s flying, he and his buddy are talking. Maybe one of them tells a joke and they laugh. Or maybe the buddy is texting with someone they both know and is relaying the conversation to the pilot. Or, worse yet, maybe the companion shows the pilot a photo from last night’s trip to the local sports bar on his smart phone. The pilot is not giving his full attention to the task at hand. He’s being distracted by his companion.

The Orchard Block from Hell
Who plants cherry trees under wires? Too many growers.

This isn’t so far-fetched — especially in a situation where the pilot and passenger aren’t taking the work seriously. Sure, the pilot is just hovering and the pilot has been doing that since he learned to fly. It’s not very difficult for an experienced pilot to do. But add obstructions and wind gusts during slow flight and it isn’t quite as easy. It requires more concentration — less distractions.

A sterile cockpit.

A Coincidence?

There were two people on board when three of the four cherry drying crashes occurred in this area over the past twelve months. I pointed this out in my recent blog post, but didn’t really think about the second person as a cause of distraction.

Could that have been a contributing factor? That the pilot was not focused on the work and allowed himself to get into a dangerous situation? That he didn’t react promptly because of distraction?

It’s certainly something to think about.

The Serious Business of Flying

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When you’re operating in three dimensions, carelessness can be deadly.

There was a helicopter crash on Tuesday afternoon not far from my summer base. It was another cherry drying pilot, flying another helicopter a lot like mine. He had someone on board with him — I don’t know why — and when the helicopter’s main rotor blades hit a power line and the helicopter crashed in the orchard, this companion was killed. The pilot himself had serious injuries and was rushed to the hospital in Seattle for surgery. I don’t know what his status is.

This was the fourth cherry drying accident in this area in less than 12 months. The other three were in July of last year:

  • July 12, 2011, Wenatchee, WA – Hughes 269C with two people on board “experienced a loss of power” and crashed into an orchard. The two occupants suffered minor injuries; the helicopter was substantially damaged.
  • July 25, 2011, Brewster, WA – Sikorsky S-55B with two people on board descended into an orchard when, per the NTSB’s determination of probable cause, the private pilot flying for hire failed to maintain rotor RPM. Neither occupant was injured, but the helicopter was substantially damaged.
  • July 25, 2011, Chelan, WA – Sikorsky S-55B collided with power lines, impacted terrain, and caught fire, killing the pilot, who was the sole occupant on board.

Questions and Disturbing Trends

I can’t make judgements on any of these accidents. In all cases except one, the NTSB has not released a final determination of probable cause. Only limited information is available. But if I could have any questions answered honestly, these are the ones I’d ask:

  • Why were there two people on board for three of these flights? What was the role of the second person? Were the dual controls in? Who was manipulating the controls throughout the flight? Were flight duties shared? (This article, which covers the two July 25, 2011 crashes, sheds some light on the matter.)
  • In the Hughes 269C, what was the gross weight of the aircraft at the time of the accident? What are the operating limitations at the accident weight, temperature, and altitude? What was the exact flight profile in the minutes leading up to the accident? Did the aircraft really suffer a “loss of power” or did the pilot demand more performance than what was available by performing an aggressive maneuver — such as a quick stop with a tailwind — in a heavy aircraft?
  • How many hours of pilot in command time did the pilots have? How much time in that aircraft type? How much of their time in that aircraft type was within the previous 3 months?
  • Were these pilots wearing protective gear? Helmets? Nomex Flight suits? Would wearing such protective gear have minimized injuries or prevented fatalities?

I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among cherry drying operators to employ low-time, limited experience pilots to do this kind of work. These pilots are cheap — they’ll work for next to nothing just to get experience. Indeed, I’ve had more than one pilot offer to fly for me without pay — I can only assume that other operators are getting the same offers.

I’ve heard about several operators conducting training during actual cherry drying flights. The orchard owner or manager will pay to have his cherry orchard dried while a student pilot pays to fly with a flight instructor to get the job done. So not only is some or all of a flight being conducted by a low-time pilot, there’s a possibility that the person actually doing the flying might not be a certificated pilot at all.

I’ve noticed that a remarkable percentage of pilots doing this kind of work don’t wear any protective gear. On the morning of the Wenatchee crash, I met the pilot of the Hughes 269C at the airport. He wasn’t wearing a flight suit — I don’t know if he put one on before flying. The photos in the newspaper for this week’s crash clearly showed the pilot being taken away on a stretcher wearing shorts and a t-shirt. And one of the pilots I worked with last year was wearing shorts and sandals for at least one flight.

What are these people thinking?

It’s Mostly about Time

I debate regularly with my friend Jim about flight time as a measure of experience. While we both agree that not all 500-hour pilots have the same skill level, Jim is usually less convinced than I am that a cherry drying pilot needs to have at least 500-1000 hours of flight time to be safe.

Part of the reason for that is that Jim was a low-time pilot many years ago when he began doing this kind of work. He projects his own experience onto others. He figures that if he could do it safely as a relatively inexperienced pilot, others could too.

I agree — to a certain extent. But what Jim wasn’t considering was the type of experience most low-time helicopter pilots have. Most pilots build their time as flight instructors. That means they’re spending a lot of that “pilot in command” time sitting beside someone else who is manipulating the controls. They’re not actually flying the helicopter.

Jim and I, on the other hand, are helicopter owners who built our time flying — instead of teaching others to fly and keeping them company while they got proficient. We had our hands on the controls for every single hour logged while we owned each of our helicopters. How can someone compare that kind of experience to a flight instructor sitting beside other pilots day after day for hundreds of hours of logged time? Jim shouldn’t assume a 500-hour CFI has the same level of hands-on experience as someone in our shoes. There’s no way he could have that experience.

R22
My first helicopter was an R22. I put over 1,000 hours of time on that ship in about four and a half years.

And then there’s the helicopter type to consider. The helicopter that crashed the other day was a Robinson R44. Few people learn to fly in an R44 because it’s so damn expensive compared to its little brother, the R22. Most people learn in an R22 and step up to an R44. Flight schools don’t offer their instructors much opportunity to fly R44s because there aren’t many people training in them. As a result, most low-time pilots who fly R44s have far fewer hours in an R44 than an R22 — or some other helicopter they learned to fly in.

Sikorsky S-55CHere’s an example of a Sikorsky S-55C. Photo from Wikipedia.

The two Sikorsky crashes are another example. No one learns to fly in a Sikorsky S-55. It’s far too expensive to fly for flight training. How many hours of flight time could a young, low-time pilot possibly have in a ship like this?

You might argue that stick time is stick time. What’s the real difference, for example, between an R22 and an R44?

Well, one difference is the length of the rotor blades. An R22’s blades are 12-1/2 feet long. An R44’s blades are 16-1/2 feet long. That means you can — for example — get about 4 feet closer to power lines in an R22 than in an R44. (Just saying.)

Other differences include hydraulics, smoothness of controls, sensitivity of controls, operational power. Last year, I spent an hour in an R22 that was painfully difficult — at least at first. Even though I have over 1,000 hours in R22s, I certainly would not step into one to dry cherries — not without at least 10 to 20 hours of practice time right before the contract.

In talking to Jim about all this the other day, I tried to express how I feel when I’m flying my helicopter. I get in, buckle up, and fly. The helicopter becomes part of me — I’m in tune with it and know exactly how it will react in most situations. I should, shouldn’t I? After all, I’ve put more than 1,450 hours on it in the past 7-1/2 years.

When I’m drying cherries, I’m “in the zone.” I fly up and down the rows with both hands and feet on the controls, making minute adjustments that raise and lower the helicopter or adjust the yaw, sometimes by inches. I know where the tail rotor is; I know when I have to fly sideways to maintain low-level flight over the treetops as I fly downhill. It doesn’t require much thought — it just happens. My brain instructs my hands and feet without even thinking about what needs to be done to move the way I need to move.

Can a pilot with less than a few hundred hours in a certain type of aircraft be so in tune with it? Can a pilot who splits his limited flight time among different aircraft types ever really know any one of them?

I don’t think so.

Flying is Serious Business

But it all comes down to taking the job seriously. And based on what I’ve seen and heard in the five years I’ve been doing this kind of work, I’m starting to doubt whether the pilots — or the operators, for that matter — are taking the work as seriously as they probably should.

Height-Velocity Diagram for R44 HelicopterCherry drying is very unforgiving work. In most cases, you’re hovering less than 40 feet off the ground over treetops at less than 10 miles per hour. That’s right, smack dab in the deadman’s curve.

If you have an engine problem or you hit an obstruction and lose control, there’s only one place you’re going to go: down into the trees. Helicopter parts (and branches and leaves and cherries) are going to be flying everywhere — maybe even into the cockpit. A helmet could protect your head; a face shield on a helmet could protect your eyes. If the fuel tank ruptures, there could be a fire. A Nomex flight suit can protect your body from burns.

I’ve never seen a utility pilot anywhere doing a flight without a helmet and flight suit. Ditto for EMS and police pilots. And military, of course. Do you think they wear this stuff because they want to look cool? No. They wear it because they want to be safe. They want the protection these garments offer.

Yet why do so many cherry drying pilots continue to work without this gear? And why do the operators that hire them allow them to do so?

And what of the operators? Why are they allowing flights with two people on board? The “spotter” argument doesn’t have any traction with me. The pilot should be his own spotter. Hell, he’s only flying at 5 to 10 miles per hour. It isn’t as if wires and wind machines are going to come up on him suddenly. And wouldn’t you want full visibility in the cockpit? Hard to get that if there’s another guy in the seat next to yours and you have to look around him.

And why are the operators hiring insufficiently experienced pilots? I heard a story the other day about an operator that sent a JetRanger to a contract, then sent a pilot who had never flown a JetRanger along with a non-pilot who knew how to start one. They were supposed to work as a team to get the thing started and fly the contract. Pardon me, but what the fuck? Obviously, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates an important point: that operators are more interested in putting cheap, warm bodies and helicopters on site for contracts than providing experienced pilots who can get the job done efficiently and safely.

They’re not taking it seriously.

And people are getting hurt and killed.

It’s only a matter of time before the FAA takes notice — if they haven’t already. Then the regulation process will begin. Special equipment, special certification. Added expense for everyone involved. Costs will rise enough to push the small players — like me and Jim — out of the market. Prices will rise enough to make growers wonder if the service is really worth the cost. Everything will change.

I just hope I’ve moved on to the next thing before that happens. I like the work, I like my clients, I like the good feeling I get when I literally save their crop. It’s serious business for me and the people who hire me.

And I take it seriously.

Retina Display Updates for Computers that Don’t Support Retina Displays?

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Really, Apple?

Fellow author Jeff Carlson recently commented on Twitter:

The Retina Display is a new feature of certain Macintosh computers announced the other day at Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC). While it’s nice to know that my next Macs will have a better display, there’s really nothing wrong with the displays on my current Macs: a 27″ iMac, a 11″ MacBook Air, and a 13″ MacBook Pro. The oldest of these computers (the MacBook Pro) is only about two years old and I have no plans to buy a new Mac for at least a year. Indeed, my desktop Mac, which is less than a year old, probably won’t be replaced for at least 2 years.

Unfortunately, in order for the folks who buy these new Macs to take advantage of their hot new displays, Mac OS applications have to be rewritten to support them. Apple, of course, is leading the pack by updating its apps. Jeff, who writes about iMovie, was pointing out the size difference between the old and new versions of that app.

Wow is a pretty good way to sum up the 179% increase in the app’s size.

Software Update Woes
Great! Now I can use iMovie in Thai!

I wondered whether the update would be pushed through to all Macs, regardless of whether they supported the new Retina Display. My answer came this morning, when I ran Software Update. If I wanted to update the Mac OS apps on my iMac with the software announced at WWDC, I’d need to download almost 2 GB of updates — most of which would not benefit me in the least.

Really, Apple?

This is the best way you can come up with to roll out updates for new hardware features? You can’t create an “HD” version of your apps and let the folks with new machines upgrade to that version? You can’t have Software Update distinguish between computer models and roll out the updates specific to that model?

Really?

I’m on the road this summer. I get all my Internet access for my desktop Mac through a hotspot connection to my New iPad. It’s 3G here and I pay roughly $10 per gigabyte of data. That means these “free” updates — which will not benefit me at all — will cost me $20.

Ouch.

And if I don’t update, I won’t be able to take advantage of new features in those apps as they’re rolled out.

I’m fortunate that I can take my two laptops to a nearby coffee shop for updates. At least the $20 I’ll spend there will buy me lunch. Still, a portion of the limited disk space on my MacBook Air will be gobbled up with assets I don’t need.

Thanks, Apple. You might not have as many updates as Microsoft does for Windows, but yours certainly hurt more.

Real Life Flying: Planning and Executing a Complex Helicopter Charter Flight

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It’s not all fun and games.

On Wednesday, the assistant for one of my new clients called. She wanted to know about my availability the following Monday. Her boss wanted to take two companions with him on a flight to seven off-airport landing zones within 100 air miles of his office.

This wasn’t the first flight I’d done for this client. The previous Monday, just the two of us had gone flying to two off-airport landing zones. Two days later, he’d added a companion for a flight to one of those landing zones but had added off-airport pick up and drop off locations. Now, it seemed, he was putting me to the test by filling the helicopter with people for a whirlwind tour of a bunch of properties.

The first two flights were relatively simple, but this last one required some serious information gathering, planning, and math. And that’s the part of real world flying that the flight schools kind of gloss over in their sales presentations and training.

In this post, I want to dissect the planning required for this trip to give folks an idea of what they really need to know to become commercial helicopter pilots.

Feasibility with a Weight Limitation

The very first question that had to be answered was whether or not the flight was possible with my equipment. I fly a Robinson R44 Raven II, which is a remarkably capable helicopter. But every ship has its limitations and I knew as soon as I heard “three men” that I might be bumping up against one of them: weight.

My helicopter, with its new bladder fuel tanks installed, now weighs 1517 empty. Max gross weight — which must include me and the fuel I need to fly, along with my passengers and their stuff — is 2,500. So the first thing I needed to do was calculate the total weight of my passengers plus me, some under-seat gear I usually bring along, and the helicopter and subtract it from the max gross weight.

I asked how much the passengers weighed and got the following information: W: 180, D: 190, A: 240

Normally, I’d add 10 pounds to each person’s weight because everyone lies, but in this case, I knew the numbers were reliable. These folks often fly in a small airplane piloted by my client and I was confident that he got accurate weights from them. I could also weigh them before taking them onboard, but at this point, I wanted to see if the flight was even feasible before I hung up the phone with my client’s assistant.

I did the math on a piece of scratch paper. Me + gear + passengers + helicopter = 2,327 pounds. That’s less than 2,500, so we can fit.

But, of course, we still need to take on fuel — and it has to be enough fuel to get us where we’re going, as well as an airport where we can get fuel if we need it. So more math: 2,500 pounds max gross weight – 2,327 pounds payload (without fuel) = 173 pounds available for fuel.

100LL fuel weighs 6 pounds per gallon. How much could I take? 173 pounds ÷ 6 pounds per gallon = about 28 gallons of fuel.

How long could I fly with 28 gallons of fuel? The helicopter burns 15 to 18 gallons per hour, depending on load. I assumed we’d burn a lot since we would be heavy and I’d be flying at maximum cruise speed. So 28 gallons ÷ 18 gallons per hour = about 1.5 hours.

How far could we go in 1.5 hours? I felt confident that I could maintain an average cruise speed of at least 100 knots. 100 x 1.5 = 150 nautical miles.

Was there fuel available within range? Yes. (After all, it isn’t as if we were flying in the wastelands of Nevada or the Navajo Nation.)

So after all this math, what did I know? I knew that the flight was possible. I could book it.

Planning the Flight So I Know Where to Go

The next challenge was knowing exactly where I had to go. For the previous two flights, we’d had lots of fuel on board and no time issues. I planned the flight based on estimated waypoints, then let my client point me in the right direction to our destinations and guide me to the desired landing zone. Although this worked, it wasn’t the most efficient way to plan and execute a flight. (I can assure you that having a client point in the right direction and say things like, “Do you see that poplar tree?” when you can see about 200 poplar trees within the next five miles is not a very good method of homing in on a destination.) I needed more data in advance.

Although the assistant had initially identified the properties with their names and general locations, that information was pretty meaningless to me. I wanted GPS coordinates that would get me to the property so we could minimize flight time by flying direct. So I did what any computer-literate pilot would do: I asked for addresses.

She sent me a list of the property addresses. One by one, I plugged them into Google Maps. I dropped markers and wrote down the GPS coordinates. I then created waypoints in Foreflight on my iPad and plotted the route. It came out to a total of 205 nautical miles. Clearly, we’d need a fuel stop, but if I planned it right, we’d only need one.

Here’s my thinking on this. I was going to be making several off-airport landings into landing zones I’d never seen before. They could be confined spaces, like the location where I was supposed to pick up my client at the start of the flight. (More on that in a moment.) In a confined space, I’d need to make a steep approach and steep departure. This could be difficult to do with a heavy ship, especially as the day warmed up and performance started to decrease. To maximize safety, I wanted the minimum amount of fuel on board when I needed to make these landings and departures.

The First PlanThe plan I came up with (illustrated here) was to visit the first four properties, which would take us to our farthest point from home. While my clients tended to business at that last property, I’d buzz over to the airport to get fuel. Then I’d come back to get them and we’d hit the other two properties on the way home. This fit in well with my client’s plan.

This assumed, of course, that I did all my fuel calculations properly and we could go that far. By staying on course throughout, I’d have a much better chance of making it work. Otherwise, we could refuel at an earlier stop — most of the landing zones were near a few airports with fuel.

Knowing When to Say No

The First Landing ZoneOf course, the very first landing zone was going to be a problem. It was in truck loading zone on the side of a hill. There were various obstacles in three directions and a steep approach/departure was required. This was my client’s workplace (or near it) and he wanted me to pick up him and his companions there.

I didn’t feel comfortable taking off from that landing zone at max gross weight. It was just too tight with no room for error. So I did something some pilots think you can’t do: I said no to the client.

And the client did something that only the best clients do: he said okay. He asked if I could pick him up there and pick up his companions at the airport nearby, which was on the way. Since I knew I’d have no trouble departing from the big ramp area at the airport at max gross weight, I agreed. Problem solved.

Calculating CG to Determine Passenger Seating

So now I knew that the flight was possible and I had a flight plan to make it work. Next, I needed to know where my passengers had to sit to keep the aircraft within CG.

An R44 helicopter is not easy to load out of lateral CG, but longitudinal CG is another story. Unfortunately, I’m not a small person. Put another very big person up front with me with other folks in the back and a light load of fuel and you’ll get an out of CG situation. (This is just one of many reasons why it’s important for a helicopter pilot to stay slim.)

Out of CGNow, I like to be able to put the biggest person up front with me. Big people usually need more space, including more legroom, and the front seat has more legroom. But when I put 240-pound A up front with me, the CG plot points were outside the envelope. That means that I might not have enough aft cyclic to arrest forward motion. In other words, I might not be able to stop.

In CGSo I recalculated with the big guy in the back. The plot points slipped back inside the envelope. Problem solved.

I do want to point out here that in most cases, it really doesn’t matter where passengers sit in my helicopter. It’s just when we’re heavy with a big person up front that there’s a possible problem.

Getting the Fuel Right

Before I conducted the flight, I needed to fuel the helicopter. (I have a fuel transfer tank on my truck that I use when I’m in Washington.) And I needed to be very precise about how much fuel I added. I wanted to add as much fuel as I could to wind up with no more than 28 gallons on board when I picked up the client’s companions at the airport.

More math.

I figured that between warm up (twice), shut down (once), and travel time to the client and then to the airport from his LZ, I’d run the engine about 30 minutes. At 16 gallons per hour — a good estimate for burn rate during solo or otherwise lightweight flight — I’d burn 8 gallons. So when I left my base, I should have 28 + 8 = 36 gallons on board.

Unfortunately, my helicopter does not have precise fuel gauges. Although they’re pretty accurate, they don’t tell you how many gallons are on board. You have to “guestimate” based on the gauges and your knowledge of how the helicopter operates. I’ve been flying this helicopter for 7-1/2 years now, so I have a pretty good handle on it. I figured I had about 6 gallons on board. That means I needed to add about 30.

Another unfortunate thing is that the fuel meter on my truck’s fueling system is inaccurate. It always understates how much fuel is being pumped. I figure it was understating fuel pumped by about 10%. So if I wanted to add 30 gallons, I needed to measure out 33 gallons with the meter.

I can’t make this stuff up.

And yes, if I were smarter, I’d have an accurate stick for the tanks. But I simply haven’t gotten around to making one.

Conducting the Flight

I was due to pick up my client at 7:00 AM at the first landing zone, which was 20 minutes away. I like to get there early whenever possible — it’s never a good idea to make the client wait — so that meant I needed to leave my base at 6:30 AM.

I needed to remove the blade tie-downs, add fuel — I’d gotten back after dark the night before and was too tired to do it then — and preflight. Then I needed to start up and warm up. So after slugging down an excellent cup of coffee, I walked out of the mobile mansion at 6:10 AM.

(That’s another thing flight schools don’t mention — clients don’t usually have bankers’ hours.)

At the Ag StripIt was a beautiful morning — cool with calm winds. I’m based at an ag strip and I was very surprised that the pilot wasn’t flying. After all, the sun had been up for over an hour and the conditions don’t get any better for spraying crops.

In addition to fueling and doing all my usual preflight stuff, I also cleared every bit of unneeded equipment out of the helicopter. As I loaded this stuff into my truck, I realized that I’d probably been underestimating its weight for quite some time.

The flight to the client’s LZ was uneventful. I arrived right as planned, at 6:50 AM, and shut down to wait.

My client arrived right about 7 and climbed aboard. A short while later, we were picking up his companions. My reading of the fuel gauges had me right around 28 gallons.

Mattawa

Benton City

Ice Harbor

Saddle Mountain

We started with the two landing zones I’d already visited with the client. Because they were working at one property, we landed in a slightly different location nearby. But rather than hit the third landing zone, my client asked to skip over it to the fourth. He suggested that we get fuel after that one and, while I was refueling at the airport, he and his companions would drive to the other property. Because they normally fly in a small plane to that airport, they keep a car there.

Using Foreflight for guidance, I found the next property and then followed my client’s directions to a suitable landing zone. It was another tight spot at the bottom of a hill, surrounded by trees and fruit boxes. I was glad I wouldn’t have to take off at max gross weight from that spot.

But as I shut down the engine and they drove off with the man who’d met them there, I started wondering whether we’d actually make the next airport. It seemed that our fuel consumption was higher than I expected. It could have been the added time for the cool down and warm up at each destination. I studied the gauges and didn’t like what I saw. The airport was 15 miles away. I should have enough fuel to make it with the reserve, but would I? Would I see the dreaded low fuel light?

Of course, I worried for no reason. We made it to the airport with fuel to spare. The biggest challenge was finding the FBO ramp at an airport I’d only been to once before — and that time, from a completely different direction. They drove off in their car and I shut down, then went inside to place a fuel order. Then I had lunch: a granola bar and a bag of cookies.

(Yep, that’s another thing the flight schools don’t tell you about: the joys of finding a meal (or a clean bathroom, for that matter) when on a job.)

By the time they returned, time was short. My client had to be back at the office by 1 PM for a meeting. We had enough time to visit one more property, then headed back home. I dropped my client off first, made an easy departure from that confined space with light fuel and just the two bigger men on board, and then dropped them off at the airport.

When I lifted off solo with only about 10 gallons of fuel on board and no extra junk under the seats, the helicopter seemed to leap into the sky, tilting backward at a crazy angle. But that’s only how it seemed after being so heavy all day long.

I was back at my base by 1:30 PM.

Looking Back

I’d flown a total of 3.1 billable hours and had landed at five different off-airport landing zones, two of which I’d never been to.

This was not a difficult job, although planning did require a lot more effort than most of my jobs do. Just figuring out where I was going based on street addresses was a chore that took at least 30 minutes to complete.

But most of our flight time was spent over farmland with very little time over “remote” areas. That takes a lot of stress out of the flight. In the event of a problem, I could always set down at a farm for help. Not so with many of the flights I do in Arizona — some of which are in areas so remote that aircraft have been known to disappear for over a year.

My client and his companions also made the trip very enjoyable. Although they talked business most of the flight, they also joked around with me and answered my few questions about some of the farms and orchards we flew over. After years of flying in Arizona’s desert, it’s quite refreshing to get a view of a whole different world from my seat. Having passengers who can help explain what I’m seeing really makes the flight enjoyable for me.

But I like this client for a more important reason: he understands the value of the service I offer with my helicopter. On the way back, we talked about how much time it would have taken to drive to the same places. They agreed it would have taken at least 7 or 8 hours just do do the driving. We did it in six, including stops as long at 30 minutes in some places. And although my client could fly faster in his plane, he can’t land at each of the properties. He has to spend additional time driving between them and the closest airport. A helicopter can land onsite — that saves time, too.

For people who know that time is money, money spent flying is money well spent.

Sometimes, I REALLY Love My Job

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I experience a “magic moment” in the course of doing my summer job.

A little backstory…

Cherry drying (or blowing) is one of those things most folks don’t know about. The short version is this: in the two to three weeks before the cherries are ready to harvest, if they get rained on they can split or rot, making them unmarketable. If a grower loses 50% or more of his crop to splits or other water damage, he won’t bother picking at all and the entire crop is lost.

So to protect the crop from this kind of damage, growers hire helicopter pilots with helicopters to stand by during the period before harvest. When it rains, they call us out to hover low over the trees. Our downwash blows the tree branches and shakes the water off the fruit, “drying” it. It’s tedious work that requires a good bit of concentration to deal with wind and obstructions. And it can be dangerous — in fact, there were three crashes in the area last year, one of which took a young guy’s life.

This is my fifth season doing this kind of work.

It was late afternoon on a day with drifting storm clouds. I was on call for cherry drying and had already gone out once, earlier in the day.

When I wasn’t flying or prepping the helicopter, I’d spent a good part of the day watching the weather radar on my iPad. Various colored blobs were drifting across from the west, after a gradual shift from their southwest to northeast direction earlier in the day. Rain varied in intensity from a light drizzle to torrential downpour. Every time a storm hit or missed an area, there would be another one right behind it to possibly do the same. Sometimes the rain was so intense that the storm would drain itself and the colored blob would fade as it tracked across the screen.

I was only on contract with one orchard: a 30-acre block of mostly very mature trees near the Columbia River. The grower was very careful about his orchard and, during the vital period, normally spent all day just about every day among his trees. Sometimes he’d mow the long strips of grass in the aisles between them. Other times he’d tinker with the tractors and other equipment he needed to care for his crop. Still other times, he worked on his shop, patching insulation, repairing a roof, adding a wall. Smart phones and good cell service — not to mention a good pair of eyes — had made it relatively easy for him to track the weather throughout the day. But he occasionally called or texted me at my base seven air miles away, where I had a better look at the sky and a bigger screen to watch the radar blobs.

I saw the storm coming on radar and confirmed it with a look outside. It was across the river to the west, heading right for the orchard. While there was a chance it might rain itself out before it arrived, I suspected it might not. Already still suited up from my flight a few hours before, I headed back to the helicopter to pull off the blade tie downs and prepare to fly.

Low CloudsThe sky was intensely dark out toward the river and the storm was definitely heading in my direction. But what was even scarier was the low hanging cloud near me that seemed to be swirling gently like something from a Weather Channel tornado special. I watched it for a while, wondering whether the storm was really intense enough to get a tornado going. It didn’t seem to be.

My phone rang. It was my client. “Work your magic,” he said.

It took me a second to comprehend his words. “It didn’t even start raining here,” I said.

“It poured like hell on the orchard,” he told me. “It’s stopped now. Come on out and dry.”

I hung up and moved my truck out of the way. By the time I was hurrying back to the helicopter, big raindrops were falling on me. The swirling cloud was gone.

I started up and began the warm up process. It wasn’t until I was pulling on my helmet that I realized I’d forgotten to take my door off. This could be a problem if the sun came out and it warmed up; the helicopter would become like an oven every time I faced the sun. But the sky was dark and that didn’t seem likely. Ah, little did I know…

By the time I lifted off the pad, the rain was dumping on me. The cockpit bubble was wet with a million drops. I pushed the cyclic forward and accelerated into my climb. The drops ran off the sides, clearing the window enough to see. I turned to the west and flew right into a wall of hard rain.

When I flew at the Grand Canyon back in 2004, we had a sort of mantra for dealing with heavy rain: if you can see through it, you can fly through it. This rain was so intense that I could barely see brightness in the sky beyond it. I was flying at about 200 feet off the ground — just high enough to clear the local power lines but probably not high enough to clear the high-tension power lines I knew were up ahead. The air was remarkably calm, so at least I didn’t have to deal with turbulence. I climbed cautiously, heading west, flying at 110 knots, focused on reaching the orchard quickly.

The sky brightened. The rain lessened. Then I was through the storm, on the other side, flying into what looked like a beautiful day.

A really beautiful day.

Ahead of me, the sun was shining brightly, sending patches of light through broken clouds onto the yellow-green hillsides beyond the Columbia River. Some low-level clouds were floating at my altitude over the river and beyond. Wisps of clouds were wrapping themselves around hilltops like winter scarves around thick necks. The sky had a kind of three-dimensionality I rarely get to see.

And over my right shoulder, back in the dark storm I was passing, was a double rainbow.

There are times that I can only classify as magical — times I wish I could bottle up and save, just so I can open them up to re-experience them when I need a little magic in my life. This was one of those times.

I realized, in a flash of clarity, that I really loved doing what I do.

I call myself a writer, but in all honesty, there’s no way I can express, in words, the feeling I get when I experience one of these moments. I can try to describe what I see. I can try to paint a picture for my reader to see something similar in his own mind as he reads my words. But in truth, there’s no way to share this kind of experience after the fact. It’s a moment in time and space — something that becomes part of me. It’s like a happy little secret I’m forced to bear, unable to share it with anyone else.

It’s moments like these that make my life worth living.

I cleared the big wires, reached the edge of the plateau, and lowered the collective almost to the floor to start a steep descent down to the river. The water was smooth, reflecting the clouds in a magnificent sky. Everything below me looked fresh and clean and wet. I descended at 1200 feet per minute over the river, then pulled the cyclic back gently to slow my airspeed and descent rate. Coming in over the orchardI came in over the orchard in a grand, swooping arc, settling in at the southeast corner in a hover over trees nearly as old as I am.

And then I got down to work, hovering back and forth, up and down the rows of trees, performing the tedious task I was paid to do.

From my seat only a few feet above the treetops, I could clearly see the bright red fruit and the droplets of water clinging to them. I could see my downwash shaking the tree branches all around me. Everything was very wet, but with only one pass, most of that water was shaken and blown down to the ground.

Sunset Cherry Dry

Golden Light

I stole glimpses of the river and sky and cliffs. It was early evening on a Washington day when the sun would set well after 8:30 PM. The sun played peek-a-book with thin strips of clouds. The sunlight illuminated the cliff faces in a golden light.

On the ground out on the road in front of the orchard, my client stood outside his truck, snapping photos with his camera. Inside the front passenger seat, I saw his mom. She waved once but, with both hands fully occupied, I couldn’t wave back. Later, the truck was in the orchard, near the shop building. The photos started arriving on my cell phone, which was docked in a cradle within reach, a while later. I wouldn’t be able to see them until much later.

It took over an hour to do the whole orchard. It always does. It’s a tough dry, with trees of varying ages and heights, a gentle slope, a deep gully, and some nasty wires right at rotor height along one side of the orchard. I spend a lot of time flying sideways so I can keep low on a downhill stretch without getting my tail rotor in the trees behind me. But finally I was done. I did what I think of as my “victory lap,” a fast, low-level flight diagonally across the orchard, gaining speed before pulling the cyclic back to start a steep climb up the cliff face.

At the top of the cliff, thin clouds were thickening, forming a fog layer that would soon be too thick to pass through. I squeezed through a gap in the clouds and pointed the helicopter east, toward my home base.

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Note: Many thanks to Patrick, my client, for providing the in-flight photos that appear in this post and on Facebook.