Life in the Slow Lane

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Quickly makes you lose your mind.

Were you one of the three thousand or so cars that passed me today? I was driving the 1994 Ford F150 pickup with the bird cage stand in the bed, towing a 21-foot travel trailer from Wickenburg, AZ to West Wendover, NV.

The truck can pull the trailer, but barely. I’m lucky if I can get the speed up to 65 mph. Where the speed limit is 75 mph, everyone whizzes past me. Heck, they whiz past me just about everywhere, since I can’t keep the speed above 50 if I’m going uphill.

And there were lots of hills on this trip.

We — Alex the Bird and I — departed Wickenburg at 7:05 AM. The route, which was determined by Google Maps and adjusted to avoid Hoover Dam traffic, took us up U.S. 93 to I-40. We took the Interstate through Kingman, AZ and exited at Beale Street. Normally, we’d continue north on 93, but since I didn’t feel like dealing with a TSA search of the camper prior to crossing Hoover Dam, we hopped on State Route 68 to Bullhead City, crossed the Colorado River at Laughlin, and continued west on State Route 163. Then north on U.S. 95 to I-515 through Las Vegas. Then I-15 north to U.S. 93 north to S.R. 318 to U.S. 6 to U.S. 50 (briefly in Ely, NV) to U.S. 93 to U.S. 93A to West Wendover, NV.

Whew!

We were in the truck for 12 hours. I made one bathroom stop and two fuel stops, one of which included McDonalds. This was the first time I’d eaten at a McDonalds in at least three years. I hate myself for loving those fries.

I’ve never before been so aware of hills. The truck does okay on level ground and it even does pretty well going downhill. But get it on a slight incline going up and it’s an absolute dog. I mean, at times, I couldn’t even keep 50 MPH. When it dipped below 45 MPH, I had to turn the flashers on, like an underpowered, overloaded big rig climbing a hill.

Did I mention that quite a few of those passed me, too?

It’s funny, because everyone warned me to “take it slow” and “watch out for speed traps.” Hell, I’m more likely to get ticketed for driving too slow than for speeding.

Of course, there were exceptions. The ride down 68 to Bullhead City had a 6% downgrade for about 12 miles. I think that’s the only time I’ve ever been on a stretch of road with two runaway truck ramps. To save the breaks, I popped the truck into 2nd gear a few times to slow down. Worked like a charm. I had to repeat this exercise after a grueling climb up the other side of the Colorado River Valley on 163 when there was another section of road with a 6% grade.

I stopped for fuel at Searchlight, NV. Poor Alex seemed shell-shocked. I changed out his food and his water and closed him back in his box. (Alex travels in a lucite box with air holes, a perch, toys, and bowls for food and water. It’s really important to keep his box out of the sun when traveling.) I went into the camper to use the toilet and noticed that the fridge wasn’t running right. Later it seemed to be okay.

Then on to Las Vegas. I got a phone call from one of my cherry drying connections just as I neared the network of freeways there. When I hung up, I realized I was on I-515. I was supposed to be on I-15. But since the two highways merged north of the strip, I stuck with it. I had to pull over to make a phone call and I had to pull over again to check the bike rack after a passing car signaled me that it was loose. (It wasn’t that loose.)

Eventually, north of Vegas, I took the exit for 93 north. That started another trip through another featureless desert valley. Or maybe there were two of them. It’s easy to lose track in terrain like that. The mountains on either side were nice looking examples of uplifted sedimentary rock. But 93 miles of road with only 2 gas stations. And that’s where I nearly made a very big mistake.

The truck has two gas tanks. They each hold about 16 gallons of fuel. I usually stick with one tank until I get to E, then switch to the other. I’d switched to the second tank and had 3/4 tank left. So when I passed that second gas station, it never occurred to me to buy fuel.

I drove another 100 miles before I reached the next gas station. By that time, I’d completely drained the second tank — the engine was sputtering when I flicked the switch to change tanks. I was back on the first tank, seeing how far into the red I could get on its gauge when I reached the gas station. I would have been completely out of gas within five miles.

The pumps were so old that they couldn’t handle the math for fuel prices over a dollar. You know the kind of pumps. The digits aren’t created with LEDs or LCDs — they’re on a wheel and roll over as the numbers change. The owners of the place had taped the per gallon price ($4.28) written on a piece of cardboard over the place where the purchase total usually appears. I got out and spoke to the two women in the shack adjacent to the pumps. “I sure hope those pumps work,” I said. They assured me that they did.

I got two bars on my cell phone and used the opportunity to call Mike and check in. Good thing I did. An hour later, I had no cell signal at all. And I wouldn’t have one for more than two hours.

If you’ve never driven through the emptiness of Nevada, you probably have little idea of what it’s like. I’ve driven in every state of this country except Minnesota and there’s no state that has more nothing than Nevada. Sure, the rugged, rocky, barren mountains are pretty — for the first hour or so. The valleys between them are often nothing more than vast plains of nothingness. Think salt flats or dry lake beds or mile after mile of scrubby vegetation clinging to existence on scant rainfall and harsh winters.

I’d hoped to write something interesting about the drive, but there’s nothing memorable about it other than miles of straight, empty blacktop cutting through the desert. If I’d broken down, I’d have to hope one of the dozen or so cars who passed each hour would be kind enough to stop. At least I was dragging along a little house with me if I had to spend the night out there.

Things changed when I neared Ely. I’d climbed into high desert, over 6,000 feet. The truck seemed to be wheezing for breath in the thin air; I was lucky to get 40 miles per hour when we climbed through the pass just south of town. I decided to call it quits for the day. It was 5 PM and I was getting tired.

But Ely — no offense to the people who live there — didn’t have much to offer. Sure, there was an historic downtown that looked kind of interesting. But I needed to park an RV and I needed to spend the night in it with Alex the Bird. (How many hotels do you think take parrots?) There was a casino on the east side of town with a sign promising $15 RV sites. But the parking lot was dirt and the whole place looked sad and neglected. I kept driving.

An hour later, I reached a crossroads. I was supposed to turn left on route 93 to head north toward Wells. But Wells, which was 78 miles away, was a speck on the map on I-80 and I didn’t know what I’d find there. If I kept straight on 93A, I’d reached West Wendover in 59 miles. The map promised a bigger town. What I saw inmy mind was a Nevada gambling town on the border of Nevada and Utah, right on I-80. I imagined casinos with big parking lots for trucks and RVs. It wouldn’t take me too far off course. So I continued on 93A.

I rolled into West Wendover around 7 PM. It was exactly as I’d imagined it. Bigger, in fact. I homed in on the casino with the brightest lights and biggest parking lot. I pulled into a spot at the far end of the parking lot and used Google Maps in my Treo to look up the casino’s phone number. Minutes later, I had the security department’s permission to park there rather than in the truck parking lot across the street. This shot was taken with my Treo a while later, after dinner in the casino’s steakhouse.

I’d been on the road for 12 hours with six short stops. I’d covered more than 650 miles. I was halfway to Quincy.

The Fournier Non-Jump

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The question is, why?

Like most of us these days, I’m on a number of e-mail distribution lists maintained by friends and acquaintances who like to pass along interesting photos and links. One of them is maintained by Edward, a fellow pilot and aviation buff.

On Monday, he sent out an e-mail message with an article about French skydiver Michel Fournier. Mr. Fournier planned to attempt to break the altitude record for skydiving later that day. I followed the link in the message and learned that he’d be doing the jump over Canada from a helium balloon when it reached 40,000 meters or 25 miles up, on “the edge of space.”

Today, Edward sent out a single link as a followup: “French skydiver fails record freefall bid.” From the article:

French skydiver Michel Fournier’s bid to set a new altitude freefall record was scuppered Tuesday when the balloon that was to carry him into the stratosphere separated from his gondola.

The balloon had been scheduled to take off at around 4:30 am (1030 GMT) from North Battleford in western Canada’s Saskatchewan province, but somehow detached from the gondola and drifted away, leaving the 64-year old parachutist behind on the ground.

Wow. Didn’t anyone think to check the connections between the balloon and the gondola?

Later in the article, I learned that:

He had two earlier unsuccessful attempts too, in 2002 and 2003. His balloon tore in 2003 and he had bought a new one for this trial, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars. For a balloon filled with 600,000 cubic meters of helium. To take a 64-year-old man into the sky so he can try for the third time to break a record.

What will this record prove? Well, the original idea was to prove that space shuttle astronauts could safely eject from a landing shuttle in the event of a problem. Of course another man, American Joseph Kittinger, had already survived a jump from 31,333 meters for a medical experiment in 1960. But I guess that wasn’t good enough for Fournier and the money men behind him. When the European Space Agency abandoned that mission, Fourier continued the project with private financing.

My question is, why?

How many hundreds of thousands — if not millions, at this point — of dollars has Fournier pissed away on this ego trip? There are people starving throughout the world right now as the cost of basic staples like rice climb sky high (no pun intended). AIDS continues to spread. People are dying for want of something as simple as a mosquito net to protect them while they sleep. The money handed over by Fournier’s deep pocket friends could have helped hundreds, if not thousands of people, meet a few of the necessities of everyday life.

Instead, it was caught up in a lost balloon that, although recovered, can never be used again.

Don’t get me wrong — I have nothing against achievements that can move man forward in science. While it might be nice to know that a properly equipped, financed, and trained man who has made over 8,000 jumps can survive a jump from 25 miles up, how is that going to impact scientific study? The article did not mention that he was bringing along any experiments — just a camera and equipment to record his sonic boom. (I assume that was for the documentary they’d likely make and sell in an attempt to cash in on this project.) I don’t see this as being more than just another wasteful and frivolous stab at fame.

Am I missing something? It’s possible. I certainly haven’t been following this story. If you know something that justifies this stunt, please do use the Comments link or form to share what you know.

And please don’t think I have anything specifically against Mr. Fournier. I don’t. There are other men and women of many different nationalities — including more than a few Americans — who similarly attempt and either fail or succeed at record-breaking stunts apparently designed to stroke their egos and feed our need for sensationalist entertainment.

But when you consider the big picture and the wastefulness of these attempts, it just seems very, very wrong.

Viagra Light Switch

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More humor from a friend.

Viagra Light SwitchThis has evidently been circulating around the Web. I received it with a note this morning from my friend, Tom, and thought I’d share it here:

Okay, I have to confess my feeling that prescription drug advertising is inappropriate. Well, here’s a doctor’s office promo that’s at least humorous…

I think it’s hilarious. Slightly risque, but not, by any means, obscene. And it certainly gets the point across — especially when you consider that up is “on” and down is “off.”

Just be sure to report to your doctor if it’s on more than four hours.

February 11, 2009 Update: I was just contacted by the creator of this image, Einav Jacubovich. She says she created it as a project for an ad class. She’s wondering how it got out to the Web. Although she’s given me permission to continue displaying it here, she would appreciate any information that might help her find out how it was released to the Web.

My Neighbor’s Windmill

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Things change.

There were a few things that drew us to our house in Wickenburg back in 1997 — beyond the obvious benefits of living in a recently built home. Situated in a hilly and rocky area on the edge of town, our 2-1/2 acres of horse property ensured plenty of privacy. Indeed, to this day we often sleep with the curtains wide open to the night sky. We had few neighbors and the ones nearby were generally very quiet. The dirt road we shared with two neighboring homes was in such bad shape that we didn’t have to worry about strangers bothering us. The Jehovah’s Witnesses have only found us twice in 11 years.

But one of the best things about our house was the view out the back. I’m not talking about the glimpse of nearby Vulture Peak. I’m talking about my neighbor’s home and its windmill.

My Neighbor's HouseThe house was one of the very first built in our area. It’s a one-story structure with just two bedrooms and two baths, perched on a rocky, lichen-covered outcropping. At the base of the rocks was a densely vegetated flood zone, filled with local trees and bushes slightly higher than the level of Cemetery Wash, which also flows through our property. Up at house level were irrigated trees so mature that they blended in perfectly with the home. The house seemed to be part of the landscape. And in the morning, when the first light of day hit it from the east, it glowed red, as shown in this July 2007 photo.

But what I loved most was the windmill. This wasn’t a decorative lawn ornament — it was the real thing. It looked ancient and antique, but it caught the wind faithfully and pumped water from a well. Enough water for my neighbors to have a fish pond. A pond big enough to attract herons — yes herons! — in the desert.

Sometimes on a quiet evening, when the wind blew from the west, I could hear the mechanical clanking sound of the gears and pumps. The rhythm varied with the wind speed. And we could look outside during daylight hours and see just how windy it was.

When we first moved in, I came very close to choosing the back guest room for my office just so I could look out at that windmill while I worked. But late afternoon sun shining in that window convinced me that the front bedroom was a better choice if I wanted to leave my blinds open.

Time went on. And on. My neighbors decided to move. They put the house up on the market and about sixteen months ago, just before the real estate bubble burst, sold it for their asking price. I heard about the new owners through the local grapevine. Wealthy people who had another home. This would be their “guest house,” one person told us. They have horses and kids. They’re going to use it for a vacation home.

Before long, the workers arrived. They enlarged the horse enclosures on the property’s lower level and put in a welded pipe fence to create an arena. I worried when they put up tall poles for lighting and hoped they didn’t plan on keeping them on every night. More workers came with chainsaws and heavy equipment. Over a period of several days, the removed all the natural vegetation below the house, leaving the land barren. They’re putting in an irrigated pasture, one neighbor said. They used earth moving equipment to pile sand in berms that they evidently expected to protect the newly cleared land. They fenced in all of their flood plain property, putting an access gate in the deepest part of the wash.

Then they disappeared.

For a while, there was a red truck in the driveway. A caretaker, someone told me. Lights were on at night. The house looked a bit lived in. But then the red pickup stopped coming. A single light was on all the time, like a blind eye in a forgotten home. Then even that went out.

Flood!Monsoon season came and the first heavy rain brought a massive flash flood. The sand berms were no match for the power of flowing water. The water coming down the wash was no longer held back by the dense vegetation that had grown below the house. The wash changed its course, flooding the undeveloped “pasture” and cutting across the bottom of our access road. The rushing water completely flooded the sandy area in our part of the flood plain and, for the first time ever, our entire fence was washed away.

Washed Out FenceWhen the water subsided, parts of our neighbor’s new fence were tangled across the access road to our neighbor’s house. Cinderblocks from their corral area littered our lower horse corral. Their “pasture” was filled with sand. Lucky they hadn’t set up the irrigation yet; it would have been destroyed.

No one came to fix their fence. My neighbor dragged its remains aside so he could drive through. After a while, tired of chasing trespassers in quads out of the wash, he spent a whole day repairing the damage.

Still no one came.

Throughout this time, the windmill kept turning. But the fish pond was empty and the riparian wildlife was gone. The irrigation must have been turned off because trees close to the house began to die. It made no sense; the water was free. Why not take care of the trees that depended on it?

This winter, I noticed that the windmill was making more noise than usual. It squealed to life in a heavy breeze, then clanked and screeched as it turned. I wondered why, after all these years, it was having these problems. Finally, after a few weeks of listening to it, I tracked down the former owners and asked them. Did the windmill require maintenance?

Oh, yes, I was told. “We had the pump people come in once a year for preventative maintenance.”

I asked if they could get in touch with the new owners and tell them about the problem. They said they had no way of getting in touch with them. We said goodbye and I hung up with a feeling of foreboding.

More time went by. The squealing and clanking got worse. It wasn’t a happy sound; it was the sound of neglect, the sound of the windmill’s pain. Neighbors who lived closer to the house must have taken action. Perhaps they called the owners. But the solution was not the one I wanted to see.

Headless WindmillWhile I was out one day, workers took the head off the windmill and left it on the ground, at the base of one of the dead trees.

That was two months ago.

Today, the windmill’s tower stands topless, like so many deserted windmills throughout the desert. The trees closest to the house are dead. There are no flowers, no cars in the driveway. A single square of light looks out toward our house every night — the burned out lightbulb replaced by someone who checked in one day. The house seems dead and forgotten.

To me, the death of the windmill is a symbol of what’s happening to Wickenburg. With our 50% seasonal population, there are many homes that stand empty and neglected when summer comes. As developers take horse property and turn it into CC&R-controlled subdivisions, the people who moved to Wickenburg years ago for a taste of the old west are moving out. The new people don’t care about horses and natural desert vegetation and wildlife.

And apparently they just don’t understand the powerful emotions generated by watching an old windmill turn in the breeze.

Cherry Drying 101

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I learn the basics of drying cherries with a helicopter.

Before I go into some details of the cherry drying training I received last Sunday and Monday, I need to issue a warning to pilots: This article is not intended to substitute for any one-on-one training with a qualified and experienced cherry drying pilot. It’s just a summary of my training experience. As such, it’s likely to give you a rough idea of what kind of flying a cherry drying pilot might have to do. Actual cherry drying work should not be attempted without sufficient specialized training.

And no, my lawyer didn’t make me say that. Common sense did.

Too many people are willing to attempt difficult flying jobs without the proper training or experience. It’s generally agreed that a cherry drying pilot should have at least 500-800 hours of helicopter flight time — if not more. I believe that at least 300 hours of that time should be in type so the pilot has a good feel for how his particular aircraft flies. The more logged helicopter time, the better. Cherry drying should not be considered a time-building job. (Neither should aerial photography, but I won’t go there right now.) Don’t try to con your way into this kind of work unprepared. Don’t become a statistic.

And remember, I cannot guarantee the accuracy of anything here. This article summarizes my training experience — not my actual cherry drying experience. Don’t read this and think you know everything about it. I don’t, so there’s no way this article can explain it all to you.

My Teacher

I was fortunate enough to get an offer of training from a Portland, OR based pilot named Dave who had spent at least six seasons drying cherries in R44 helicopters. He’s friends with my cherry drying partner, Erik, and was one of two pilots who prepared Erik for his first season two years ago. Dave did this for me (and Erik, for that matter) as a favor, offering to tell and show me as much as he could to prepare me for the work. He was not interested in receiving payment for his time or making any kind of logbook signoff or endorsement. In other words, he was doing it as a friend and would not take responsibility in any way if I had problems while working.

I found our arrangement satisfactory. I also considered myself lucky to be able to spend time, both on the ground and in the air, with him.

One more thing: Please don’t try to look up Dave and get him to train you. For one thing, you won’t find him. His real name isn’t Dave. For another, he did this for me as a favor. I don’t think he’d like it if 50 helicopter pilots he didn’t know tracked him down and asked for the same favor. If you want training, make your own contacts among your own friends. Please don’t think this article is an open invitation to approach my contacts or friends. Doing so will only force me to stop sharing experiences like these with blog readers.

Ground School

We started off with coverage of some topics in a discussion over dinner. Dave was joined by George (not his real name), another experienced cherry drying pilot, and I was joined by Louis, the pilot who accompanied me on my flight from Wickenburg to Seattle. Although the conversation wandered quite a bit, Dave was pretty good at getting it back to the topic of cherry drying.

The first thing he told us was that it was the most difficult and dangerous work he had ever done. I got the feeling that it was why he didn’t do it anymore.

He pulled out a notepad where he’d listed a bunch of discussion points. I took notes.

  • Altitude and speed. Varies depending on grower preference, age of trees, and type of cherry, but generally 10 to 15 feet off the treetops moving at 4 to 6 knots. I’d have to eyeball the altitude and monitor the speed with my GPS. The whole time, I’d have my head out the window, monitoring my downwash to see what it was doing.
  • Wires. There are wires at all heights, from simple lines at treetop level to high tension powerlines overhead. Wires criss-cross the orchards and can be anywhere. I should drive or walk the orchard before my first flight over them. Dave drew several diagrams showing the kinds of wires, where they might be, and how I might fly the field to avoid them.
  • Wind. It’s not uncommon to be flying in wind up to 30 knots. More than that and the cherries dry themselves. Because flight is up and down the rows, I might be flying with strong crosswinds or tail winds. At slow speeds, this could easily become a pedal dance.
  • High density altitude. The fields I’ll be drying are at 1,200 to 2,000 feet. Add 95°F to pump up the density altitude. Although this shouldn’t be an issue for my R44 Raven II with just one person on board, it could be an issue in high winds if I bring along a passenger. (I don’t plan on doing that.) It could also be an issue for a lesser-powered helicopter, like an older Raven or Astro.
  • Fans. Some fields have fans for drying cherries. These aren’t very effective, but they do move a lot of air. Dave advised me never to enter a field when one of these fans were going. “Tell the grower to turn them off,” he advised me.
  • Bird cannons. Some fields also have cannons that send out a loud burst of compressed air to scare birds away. The cannons are not dangerous, but they are loud and sound like backfires. I should expect to be startled. (Erik later added that some of these cannons have motion sensors that the helicopter will set off.)
  • People in orchard. While I’m drying, there may be people below me, in the trees, working. They shouldn’t be a hazard, but they’ll be there.
  • Sprinklers. Some of the orchards use overhead watering systems for the early part of the season. The sprinkler heads stretch up higher than the tree tops. (I actually saw these the next day, when I went to Quincy. They’re on poles about two feet taller than the trees.)
  • Other obstructions. Buildings and pump houses, which could be in the fields, almost always have wires going to them. Some fields are surrounded by tall trees planted as wind blocks. It’s necessary to dry the cherry trees that are adjacent to them. Some fields are planted on steep slopes; it’s best to start at the top and work your way down, keeping the main rotor blades in mind.
  • Cherry types. Some cherries can withstand more violent winds than others. Bing, for example, is very sturdy while Rainier cherries bruise easily. You have to know what kind of tree you’re flying over and adjust the velocity of the downwash accordingly.

He gave me some other advice that should be a no-brainer — for example, always know where your tail rotor is. This is especially important with an R44, since its tail is so damn long. Knowing what’s behind the helicopter will determine how I make my turns at the end of a row.

He recommended that if I got into trouble and needed to get out of my current position in flight, I should always try to bail out to the right to use less power. He was very concerned about density altitude. I admit that I’m not quite as concerned, since I almost always fly at higher density altitudes than the cherry drying fields and I’m usually heavy when I do it. (Hell, I live in a higher density altitude than those fields!) I put nearly 700 hours on my Raven II and have a very good idea on how it handles in many situations — which is why I recommend at least 300 hours in type for any cherry drying pilot.

Considering that I’d be operating in the shaded area of the height-velocity diagram for the entire flight, we also talked about what to do if I had a chip light or a stuck valve or a dead mag. His advice was basically to forget what the operating manual said about chip lights and most emergency lights — just land immediately, wherever there was space near the field. If a power loss meant I was going to crash, he recommended aiming for a spot between the trees and pulling the cyclic back a little to land tail first. He seemed to think that the crumpling of the tail would help cushion the impact. Any crash in an orchard would destroy the helicopter; my main goal should be to walk away from it.

Practice Flight

There weren’t any cherry trees in the area, but Dave knew a spot on the Columbia River which was undeveloped and had trees similar to cherry trees in branch strength and consistency. We took off from Troutdale Airport and headed right over the river, eastbound. Dave did the radio calls — Troutdale is towered — and I followed his directions to Reed Island.

I had my POV.1 video camera mounted on the helicopter’s nose for the flight and I turned it on not long after takeoff. I recorded the entire training flight so I could review it later. Here are the first 4+ minutes, which should give you an idea of how low I had to fly over the treetops. The cockpit voices you hear are mine and Dave’s; you can also hear the tower talking mostly to other aircraft.

[Video WAS here but the host, Viddler, has decided to end free hosting of videos and I can no longer access it. I’ll try to find a copy of it on my hard disk, but the chances of that happening are VERY slim. After all, it was done back in 2008. – Maria 5/26/14]

I had my door off for the flight, since Dave recommended that I keep monitoring what was going on beneath and behind me. In fact, in the video, you’ll hear Dave remind me once or twice to look outside. Later in the full-length video, we discuss flying slightly sideways, perhaps pointing the nose at the 1 o’clock position, so I could see what was below and behind me without having to twist my neck so far. If the wind is cooperative while I’m flying, that’s exactly what I plan to do.

In this video, you really don’t see the trees moving at all. That’s because the camera is pointing out the front and the downwash hasn’t reached those trees yet. But beneath and behind us, the trees were going wild — “hammered,” as Dave said. The downwash was even getting between the trees, giving every branch a good shake. I’d have to adjust altitude based on the type of cherry I was drying so I didn’t bruise the fruit.

The speed indicator was my GPS. The airspeed indicator is pretty useless at speeds less than 10 knots. But the GPS clearly showed how fast I was going, in tenths of a knot. Dave seemed to think that 5 knots was a good speed. (Later, on discussion with my main contact for the growers, I was told they preferred 10 to 15 knots. Again, I think it will vary by grower.)

I had no trouble keeping the altitude he wanted, although I did vary my speed as we talked. It’s the old chew gum and walk at the same time problem. I can do precision flying or I can talk, but when I talk, I lose precision in my flying. I kept noticing that my speed was popping up to about 7 knots and I kept slowing down. Sometimes I fixed the problem before he noticed but sometimes I didn’t. I’m hoping that without a companion to talk to, I won’t have to worry about distractions. (I’m also hoping that this kind of work becomes so second nature that I can listen to music or podcasts as I fly.)

Later on in the flight, he showed me some techniques for drying trees that were growing close to wires or taller trees. This basically means moving up rather quickly — maybe at 10-15 knots? — on a tree and then pulling back the cyclic to slow/stop and climb slightly. This directed the downwash forward. It was a lot like doing the flare in a quick stop. It’s important to keep high enough so the tail rotor stays out of the trees behind you, and high or low enough so that your main rotor blades stay out of any wires or tall trees ahead of you. I didn’t include this in the video because you simply can’t see the effect of the maneuver because of camera placement.

We also discussed how to use the wind in your favor when drying trees at the edge of an orchard. If you stay upwind of the trees, the wind will blow the downwash to the trees. Pretty simple stuff. Of course since you can fly in any direction, you can play with this technique to get at most trees in windy conditions — provided you can maintain control of the helicopter at slow speeds in those winds.

We played around with a few other techniques, flying up and down the low trees alongside the river for nearly an hour. When he felt as if he’d drained himself of advice and seemed comfortable with my flying abilities, we decided to call it quits for the day.

I Learned a Lot

I learned a lot about the job ahead of me. I can’t thank Dave enough for taking the time to share his experience with me. Thanks to him, there will be a lot fewer surprises in store for me when I get to work in early June.