Weight & Balance Woes

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Or why I had to turn down a potentially lucrative charter flight.

One of the things I’ve said again and again is that it’s nearly impossible to load a Robinson R44 helicopter out of CG. Nearly, but not completely.

What is CG?

For those of you unfamiliar with the term CG, it stands for center of gravity. All aircraft have a specific center of gravity or point at which they could (theoretically) be lifted and hung level. While an aircraft doesn’t need to be in exact balance to fly, there are limitations to which it can be loaded out of balance. These limitations form an envelope of acceptable loading and if you’re loaded within this envelope, you’re said to be within CG or simply in balance. The aircraft controls are rigged with this in mind.

If you load an aircraft out of CG, you’re asking for trouble. For example, if I load my helicopter too heavy on one side, I could run into trouble in a turn by not being able to move the cyclic enough in the opposite direction to come out of the turn. After all, all controls have limits, normally defined by a physical stop. Running out of right cyclic while trying to come out of a left turn would be very scary indeed. Of course, I probably wouldn’t get to that point because I’d feel the problem as soon as I pulled up into a hover — I simply wouldn’t be able to keep the aircraft from drifting left.

[Note to all you flight instructors out there; if I completely mangled this description — since I’m not a CFI — feel free to step in to clarify in the Comments. This is my understanding after 10 years and 2,000+ flying hours, but I never had to teach it to anyone.]

Pilots are required to have an aircraft Weight and Balance (W&B) calculation on board for every flight. This is part of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) in the U.S. In non-commercial flight, it’s usually enough to have the W&B for the empty aircraft. But in commercial flight, there are usually requirements for an individual W&B to be calculated for each flight with the given load.

So yes, when you fly on a commercial airliner, there’s a computer program somewhere that’s spitting out a W&B calculation for your flight. Your pilot has it in his possession in the cockpit.

Now you might say, “Hey, wait a minute. How do they know what I weigh?” They don’t. They’re allowed to use estimates. It all depends on the airline’s Operating Specifications (Ops Specs), which are established with the FAA.

I have Ops Specs, too, but I’m not allowed to estimate for my Part 135 Charter work. That’s why I ask for the name and weight of each passenger when I book a flight.

Four Fatties is Too Many

When I asked for names and weights yesterday while booking what was supposed to be a 2-hour aerial survey charter, I got three weights that I knew would be trouble:

A: 240 lbs
B: 220 lbs
C: 195 lbs

That’s 655 pounds of passengers alone.

Add the pilot (who is trying hard not to reveal her weight; don’t do the math, guys!) and you could only put on about an hour and 20 minutes worth of fuel to stay below the 2500 lbs max gross weight — the absolute maximum weight of the aircraft at takeoff time — limitation of my Robinson R44 Raven II.

Of course, the situation gets worse when you factor in the simple fact that all passengers lie about their weight. Every single one of them. If I put a scale out and made them stand on it, I guarantee anyone over 200 lbs. has shaved at least 10 pounds off their weight when reporting it. They either don’t figure the weight of their clothes or they’re in denial about their weight or they’re afraid that I’ll say they weigh too much. Even folks under 200 lbs are guilty of this. So I routinely add 10 pounds for each passenger. That 30 pounds corresponds to 5 gallons of 100LL fuel or 15-20 minutes of cruise flight.

Since I’m really supposed to have 20 minutes more fuel on board than I expect to need — per FAA reserve requirements — I was really sunk. Apparently, I’d be able to load up my passengers and just enough fuel to take us on a brief flight around the departure airport.

This is just the weight portion of the equation, which is easy enough to do. Add empty aircraft weight to passenger, baggage, and pilot weight. Then add the weight of required fuel. If the number exceeds 2500 lbs, something’s got to come off the aircraft. It can’t be the pilot and it can’t be the fuel required to complete the mission. Simple as that.

How the CG Stacks Up

While I could have done the math in my head, I did it as part of a complete CG calculation. It’s a pain in the butt do to one of those manually, but I have a spreadsheet solution that I worked up to do it for me. I punch in the weights and amounts of fuel and it draws the CG envelope with points for takeoff weight and empty fuel weight. So while manually doing this task would likely take 15-20 minutes of calculator punching, I can do it in about 30 seconds. I can also easily play “what if” by changing fuel quantities and moving the passengers into different seats.

Here’s what I got for the proposed flight and 2 hours of fuel on board:

Weight and Balance Example

Note that both points (square and triangle) are outside the boundaries of the CG envelope. The red line indicates the rotor mast. The points clearly indicate that the CG is way forward. In other words, I’m front-heavy. If I pick up to a hover, I’m likely to start drifting forward immediately. I may hit the back stop of the cyclic when I try to stop that forward motion. In other words, I won’t be able to stop.

Of course, the aircraft is also 100 lbs over weight.

Just for grins, I moved the passengers around in a what-if scenario. I’d put the biggest guy up front, since that’s where the leg room is. After all, maybe he’s not fat. Maybe he’s a former professional basketball player. It doesn’t matter for my calculation how tall a person is — all I care about is weight. But if he’s got long legs, he’s likely to be miserable in the back seat.

So I put the light guy up front and got something like this:

Weight and Balance Sample

A little better, but not safe or legal. But I kept playing. I really wanted to do this flight. The only thing left to fiddle with was the fuel, so I started off-loading fuel on my worksheet until I got within weight limitations. I needed to drop 99 pounds to get down to 2500 takeoff weight. That’s 16.5 gallons or about an hour’s worth of fuel. This what-if scenario would produce be for a short flight, with only 56 minutes of fuel on board:

Weight and Balance Example

And this is where the sad truth of the matter emerged. It didn’t matter how little fuel I had on board — we would always be out of CG for this flight. Too many fatties on board. Both points remain outside the envelope.

I called the client back and told him the problem. I said that together, we weighed too much. I gave him two options: leave one of the passengers behind or fly with a company that had larger aircraft. I suggested a company based in Scottsdale. He wasn’t happy, but he understood.

I’ll be interesting to see if the big fatty (A in my list above) gets left behind. If he does, we’ll be good to go — with full tanks, as you can see here:

Weight and Balance Example

10 Reasons Why I Won’t Follow You on Twitter

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My own list.

Twitter logoAs most folks who follow me have discovered (if they’ve bothered to look), I don’t automatically reciprocate follows. I check out new followers before I follow them. I also attempt to keep the number of people I follow down to a manageable count of 100 or so. That’s because I actually read the tweets that the people I follow post. And I interact with them.

I take Twitter seriously and have been doing so for the past 2 years. And with all the media attention it’s been getting lately, it bugs the hell out of me that people are trying to use Twitter as a meaningless chat room where the only thing that matters is how many people follow them.

Sheesh.

So I’ve come up with my own list of reasons why I won’t follow people on Twitter. If you’ve recently started following me and I haven’t followed you back, here’s why.

  • You’ve posted less than 5 tweets and/or your bio is incomplete. How am I supposed to get an idea of what you’re all about if I can’t see your tweet stream? And who are you? Unless I know a little more about you, I’m not likely to follow you.
  • You’ve posted less than 10 tweets and more than half of them are links to your own content on the Web. You might think that Twitter is a good place to toot your own horn and it could be — if your content is worth reading. I’ll follow @NYTimes and @NPRNews, which consistently tweet just links to their own content. But unless your content is as good as theirs, don’t expect me to follow you.
  • Your tweets add absolutely nothing of value to my day. Make me laugh or smile or see similarities between your life and mine. Teach me something. Show me something I’ve never seen. Give me a link to some content of real value. Help me understand the world. Be an engaging friend that can do more than use @replies to offer words of wisdom like “That’s cool!” or “Gr8!” or “LOL!”
  • You follow more than five times the number of people who follow you. First of all, I don’t believe you actually read the tweets of all those people. Second, the only people who follow like crazy and get only a handful of reciprocal followers are either spammers or complete losers. Why would I follow either one?
  • You consistently refuse to use standard spelling in short tweets. No, the letter b is not an acceptable alternative to the word be and the word sounds is not spelled sounz. Yes, I understand these are txt message abbreviations, but I see no reason for it in a tweet shorter than 100 characters when there’s plenty of room to spell it out, in English. I don’t think it’s funny or cute. I think it’s immature and a sad statement on our education system.
  • You end 75% or more of your tweets with an exclamation point. Are you really that excited about the sandwich you’re eating? Or the episode of Heroes/Lost/24/American Idol/fill-in-the-blank that you’re watching on television? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. There’s life beyond your tweet and the rest of us don’t find every one of your tweeted utterances exciting enough to warrant this particular type of punctuation. (See above comment re: education system.)
  • You consistently tweet very long stories by posting 4 or more consecutive tweets, each ending in “…” to indicate that there’s more to come. Unless the story has immediate value to your followers, save it for your blog. Twitter is microblogging. That’s 140 characters.
  • More than 50% of your tweets are about your follower count or tweet count or Twitter stats as calculated by yet another Twitter-based Web service. Does it really matter how many people follow you on Twitter? Do you really think all of them are actually reading every tweet you send out? Get a grip — and a life. And read this.
  • You are apparently stalking me. That’s how it looks, anyway. You use @replies to make mindless comments about my tweets that really don’t start or add anything to a discussion. And you do it all the time. Stop it. It’s freaking me out. If you keep it up, I’ll likely block you.
  • I’ve followed you and you’ve sent me an automated direct message or @reply. That’s an immediate unfollow in my book. It’ll also get you reported as a spammer to the folks who run Twitter.

Back in January, I linked to an article on Mashable titled, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter.” On reviewing the Mashable piece after I wrote the above, I realized that many of my gripes are the same as Atherton Bartelby‘s. I’m just apparently a lot pickier and more sarcastic about the way I present them. Still, I hope you’ll go read his take on this when you’re finished here.

And one more thing…don’t be offended if I don’t follow you or if I stop following you. It’s [usually] nothing personal. I only have so many hours in a day and a lot of that is taken up with work. Remember, I can only follow around 100 or so Twitter users before being overwhelmed.

I want my Twitter experience to be high-quality. I want it to build relationships. I want to learn from it. Just because I don’t follow you doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means you’re not making the “Top 100” on my Twitter user list. That doesn’t mean you’re not on the top of someone else’s Twitter user list. You’re just not on mine.

And let’s face it: does it really matter anyway?

THIS is Why I Left New York

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Well, one reason, anyway.

In the winter of 1994 (I believe), I was living in suburban New Jersey. I’d been in my house nearly ten years and had lived my entire 30+ year life in the New York City metro area. Although, like most people, I think snow is pretty, I never did like cold weather. And on one particular morning, I woke to 20 inches of the white stuff on my doorstep.

I couldn’t get the front “storm door” open.

If you live in Buffalo or Minnesota or Alaska or some other place where snow is a major part of your winter life, you might be thinking, “Twenty inches? Big deal.”

Well, it was a big deal to us. New York City rarely gets that kind of snowfall. And I decided that I’d had enough of it.

The following winter, I lived in Arizona for three months. The winter after that, I stayed in New Jersey, on the urging of my now husband. We had another tough winter. I vowed to move. The following winter, we had half our furniture put on a moving truck and shipped it out to Arizona. On January 1, I clearly remember shopping in the Peoria area wearing a t-shirt and jeans. No coat.

Today is a Prime Example

Not every winter in New York is brutally cold or snowy. But here’s today’s forecast for New York, courtesy of the National Weather Service:

Today…Snow. Areas of blowing snow. Total snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches. Windy. Near steady temperature in the mid 20s. North winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.

Tonight…Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of snow showers in the evening. Windy with lows around 14. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 20 percent. Wind chill values as low as 2 below.

2°F below 0? That’s nothing. I remember mornings in New Jersey when the thermometer registered -7°F without a wind chill factor.

Is that not enough for you? Well, there’s more. There’s also a Hazardous Weather Outlook, Short Term Forecast, Special Weather Statement, and Winter Storm Warning. They all warn about snow, cold temperatures, and wind.

Contrast that with what I’m expecting in Wickenburg, northwest of Phoenix today:

Today…Partly sunny. Highs 86 to 91. East wind 5 to 10 mph in the morning…becoming south in the afternoon.

Tonight…Partly cloudy and warmer. Lows 54 to 64. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph in the evening…becoming northwest around 5 mph after midnight.

We’ve got a Special Weather Statement, too. It warns us that due to a high pressure system, we’re likely to break record high temperatures of 90°F in Phoenix today.

All I know is that at 7:00 AM local time, we’ve got clear blue skies and a temperature climbing steadily through 48°F. Will we break a record here in Wickenburg? Probably not, but I’m thinking about wearing shorts while I do my errands.

Weather Changes Travel Plans

Of course, we do have some house guests staying with us. Mike’s mom and her friend. They’re in their 80s and not exactly what I’d call flexible travelers. They were supposed to go back to New York this morning. But yesterday, when we heard the forecast, we started working the phones. I could envision two possible outcomes if they didn’t change their travel plans:

  • Waiting hours at Sky Harbor Airport for their delayed flight to depart, only to be told that it was cancelled. Mass confusion as they deal with getting new tickets for another flight, claiming their luggage, and arranging for a ride back to our house.
  • Departing Sky Harbor Airport (probably late) and being forced to divert to Atlanta or Pittsburgh or some other inconvenient place, followed by mass confusion as they deal with making arrangements for the flight’s continuation, finding their luggage, getting transportation to a hotel, getting transportation back in the morning, re-checking their luggage, etc. This would be enough of a nightmare for me, a middle-aged, relatively fit person who never travels with more luggage than she can handle on her own. But for these two women, both of whom travel airports via wheelchair and have enough luggage to set up a home wherever they arrive, it would be impossible.

So we worked the phones. It took only two calls to USAirways to change their flight to the same flight on Tuesday. The sympathetic person who answered the second call made the change without an additional fee. When my mother-in-law wanted us to make sure she’d be sitting with her friend, my husband rolled his eyes and I said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” They have middle seats in Row 20.

JFK Weather
Current Weather at JFK.
Can you say whiteout?

But at least they won’t be stuck at an airport somewhere, waiting for the storm in New York to subside.

We can only assume this was a good decision — at least for them. Their flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 10 AM and it’s too early to get flight status information. But there is a travel advisory to New York right now and I’m willing to bet that their flight, which was due to arrive in NYC at 4:47 PM, will be cancelled.

Back to Arizona

Going back to the main topic of conversation here: weather in New York vs. weather in Arizona. You might be thinking, “Well, if it might get up to 90°F today — in the winter — how hot does it get in the summer. The answer is brutally hot. Think 110°F +. Think frying eggs on pavement.

So I’ve apparently changed one near-extreme (I can’t consider New York’s winter weather a real extreme) for another extreme (Arizona’s summer weather is definitely extreme). What’s the benefit of that?

The main benefit is that with the money I saved from moving out of a really expensive place to live (the other reason I moved) and coming here, I’m able to get out of town for the summer. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years.

Is there are perfect place to live? I’m starting to think there isn’t. But I will keep looking and report back if I find it.

Too Much to Do, Too Little Time

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And a check ride report.

I realized this morning that I never did report on my check ride. When I mentioned that I was prepping for it, I promised a report the next day. That was a week ago.

In my defense, I’ve been unreasonably busy. Here’s a rundown of how I spent the past seven days.:

Friday I’ve Got Flying on My Mind

On Friday morning, I took my Part 135 check ride with an FAA examiner. It was a non-event. I didn’t fly as well as I wanted to — I guess having an FAA inspector sitting next to you while you’re flying and wondering what he was going to do to play with your head (think pulling circuit breakers, chopping the throttle, etc.) is enough to make me a nervous wreck. But I flew good enough. And once I realized the test part was over, I actually flew very well. I want to write more about this, but don’t have the time right now.

When it was over and I put the helicopter away, I had to start prepping for another round of house guests. I ran around like a nut, taking care of errands and prepping my office for use as a second guest room. I was still at it when my husband arrived with the house guests: his mother and her friend.

Saturday at Buckeye

Saturday was our big annual Buckeye gig. This was our fifth year at the Buckeye Air Fair and I hope I can do it for 15 years. I enjoy it so much. I do cheap helicopter rides priced low enough that folks can (and do) bring their kids. I think I flew just as many kids under 15 as I did adults. One flight was just three kids aged maybe 4 to 7. It was nonstop flying from 9:30 AM, when the first takers climbed on board to 3:15 PM, a full hour and a quarter after the end of the event. I had to shut down once for fuel and a bathroom break, but I didn’t even get much to eat.

I wanted to write about that, too — especially about the flight down from Wickenburg — but I just haven’t had time. Now the memories aren’t quite as fresh and I don’t think I could write something interesting about it.

Sunday’s Road Trip, with Helicopters and Big Band Music

On Sunday, I was on the road at 7:15 AM, heading west in my little Honda S2000. Road trip. I had to go to Ventura for a week for work, but I wanted to stop at Anaheim on the way to check out Heli Expo.

HeliExpoThe show was at least three times the size of the last one I’d gone to, which was back in 2004 in Las Vegas. It was like a candy store for rotor-heads like me, with millions of dollars in hardware sitting out on plush carpeting for us to caress and drool over. And climb on board to sit in cockpits. I didn’t take many pictures — it was just to damn crowded.

One of the highlights was meeting a Twitter friend, Keith Gill. Keith flies the big iron — including Air Cranes — all over the world. He’d just come in from a firefighting gig in Australia and was prepping for another gig somewhere else. Keith writes a blog called “Helicopter Pilot, Will Travel” with lots of great, real-life stories about his flying and travel experiences. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in what being a helicopter pilot is all about.

Another highlight was meeting Dennis Raubenheimer of HeliNews. I’d written an article for them at it appeared in the current issue. He had two copies for me and I eagerly opened one as soon as I had it in my hot little hands. I was thrilled to see that they’d used all of the photos I sent, many of which featured my helicopter. My only regret is that the magazine is based in Australia and few U.S. pilots (or helicopter operators interested in hiring pilots) would see it. Can’t wait to hand off a copy to Ed, my local mechanic, who is featured in a bunch of the photos.

After leaving the show at 5 PM, I took a roundabout route up to Burbank, successfully avoiding any Oscars traffic in the Hollywood area. I was meeting another Twitter friend, SaxDiva (Leanne), for the first time. She’s a college professor who teaches business by day and plays saxophone and other woodwind instruments in the evening. She was doing a big band gig at a Burbank restaurant called Victorio’s. I’d been wanting to meet her for a while and we finally connected. Another friend of mine, Deb Shadovitz, joined me for dinner. Leanne sat with us between sets and we got to meet a bunch of the other band members, including a singer who sounded an awful lot like Tony Bennett. There’s nothing quite like good food and good music at the end of the day. If you live in the Burbank, CA area, I highly recommend Victorio’s on a Sunday evening for a casual night out with live music and dancing.

From there, it was a nightime drive to Ventura. I only made one wrong turn getting on the freeway. I was in my room, 400+ road miles from home, ready to pass out, by 10:15 PM.

Talk about a long day.

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday: Work, Work, Work

I spent much of the first three days of the week in a soundproofed booth, recording a new video for Lynda.com. The rooms are like isolation chambers that completely shut out the sound from outside them. The work is pretty basic, but often frustrating as I trip over my own tongue to get the words out. I’m not really at liberty to say what the course is about yet — I’d rather keep it a surprise to the folks who don’t already know. (No spoilers in the comments, please!)

We did the live action footage yesterday. That’s when I get dolled up with makeup, etc. and talk to a camera. I was fumbling through the takes and was starting to think I’d never get it right when I absolutely nailed the last one. What a relief!

The Week’s Not Over

The week has two more days left in it and I’ll be working in Ventura both days. I think I’ll need both of them to get the material recorded. If I finish before noon on Friday, I’ll drive home. If I finish after 3 on Friday, I’ll spend the night here again. If I finish sometime between noon and 3, I’ll make a decision then.

At home, Mike is entertaining our house guests. They leave on Monday. I have nothing scheduled next week, but I know I’ll be doing at least one flight, probably to Sedona. I already have a flight booked for the week after that, too.

Too much to do. Too little time. It seems to be the story of my life.

I need a vacation!