A Trip to California

Posted on by
Comment

I take a trip to California with my family to see Zero-Mike-Lima.

I’d been wanting to see my helicopter being built. And I’d been wanting to get a look at the recently expanded Robinson Helicopter factory in Torrance, CA. And I needed an interesting outing to take my sister, brother, and sister-in-law on. So I made a few phone calls and got an appointment for a factory tour.

I wanted to fly us all out there and make it a day trip, but it would have cost $200 per person and I wasn’t willing to dump $800 on airfare. So on Monday morning, we packed overnight bags and hopped in Mike’s new Honda Accord. Road trip!Torrance is about 350 miles from Wickenburg. MapQuest, which I consulted before the trip, said it would take about six hours. But I had some side trips planned for along the way.

The first was a brief stop at Quartzsite, AZ, where I hoped to do some helicopter rides in January. I needed to find a good landing zone that was highly visible and safe. I thought that the area near the first Quartzsite exit (coming from the east) would work. Sure enough, it had the right layout for an operation. But I had a strong feeling it would be occupied in January when I wanted to use it. We stopped for lunch at a McDonald’s drive-thru and I made a quick trip into the nearby truck stop to buy a map of California. (Yes, I’d actually left the house on a 350-mile road trip without a map.) Then we hit the road again.

The Langer KidsAbout an hour later, we passed through Chiriaco Summit, which is the highest point between Blythe, CA and Palm Springs, CA. Five minutes later, we turned on the exit for Joshua Tree National Park. This would be my third visit to Joshua Tree and, like all the other visits, it would be a visit where I just have a few hours to drive through. But one of these days, I need to come to Joshua Tree and spend some real time. It’s a great park, with mountains, valleys, two different deserts (Colorado and Mojave), and lots of vegetation. On Monday, it also had snow — quite a bit of snow, in fact, especially on the northern side of the park. We drove through the park, making a few stops here and there. Norb, my brother, and Missy, his wife, did a little hike to a dam. My sister, Laura, and I would have gone with them, but we were wearing the wrong shoes for a trip through the snow. So we hung out in the car and listened to the XM radio.

We exited the park on the north side, then drove down the west side, back to I-10. By this time, it was late in the day and the sun was sinking low in the horizon. Sun glare was a real pain in the neck for about 20 minutes. Then, with the sun behind the mountains, we emerged at I-10 near Palm Springs and the windmills. The windmills impressed my passengers quite a bit. I was more impressed by the high-rise casino hotel that had sprung up between Palm Springs and Banning.

We took I-10 to 60 to 91 to the 605. My companions were introduced to Los Angeles area traffic, which was as bad as usual. We wound up on the Pacific Coast Highway near Long Beach and, after driving through a few bad neighborhoods, made our way to downtown Long Beach. The Renaissance Hotel there looked very inviting after so many hours of driving and traffic, so we pulled in and got two rooms. Then, after a quick meal at the brewery across the street, we turned in for the night.

I was exhausted, but not too exhausted to sleep past 3 AM local time. I spent two hours lying in the dark, trying to get back to sleep, before my roommate, Laura, woke up. Then I busied myself with the previous day’s USA Today while I lounged in bed. Laura and I went down for breakfast an hour before my brother and his wife were due to appear. By the time we were eating, I’d already been awake five hours.

FishWe checked out, stowed our luggage in the car, and walked down to the Aquarium of the Pacific, which was just opening for the day at 9 AM. I’m rather fond of fish — I have a 55-gallon fish tank in my living room — and I think aquariums are very interesting. But this one went beyond that. The highlights: the jellyfish displays, the shark-petting tanks, and the lorikeet feeding aviary. We spent two hours there and enjoyed every minute of it.

After a brief stop at the Queen Mary — which I personally don’t think is worth $20+ to tour — we hit the road for Torrance. Our tour was set for 1 PM. We arrived 20 minutes early and Milly Donahue, who is in charge of dealer/factory relations, met us in the lobby. She took us for a quick walk-through both factory buildings. Robinson Helicopter Company has owned a 360,000 square foot factory on the southwest corner of Torrance Airport for quite some time now. This year, they added a 315,000 square foot building right beside it. They moved the machining equipment from the old building to the new building and bought a bunch of new machining equipment to help fill the space — and to help them fill orders for helicopters. Robinson makes almost every single part in the helicopter (other than the engine, which is Lycoming) and they’re all made on the premises. My personal highlight for the walk-through came only moments after stepping out onto the factory floor. The helicopters are built on a series of assembly lines. The serial number for each helicopter is plainly written on the back wall of the cabin. 10603, which is my helicopter’s serial number, was the second R44 cabin frame I laid eyes on. I was actually looking at my helicopter before it hit the assembly line!Milly let my companions take my picture standing beside what was essentially Zero-Mike-Lima’s skeleton. Then we did the walk-through, returning to the lobby just before 1 PM.

The tour, which was led by Milly’s assistant, Vanessa, was more comprehensive, although it didn’t go into the new factory building. We were accompanied by four Asian men, of which only one spoke English, and a man who turned out to be from Prescott, AZ, who was thinking of buying a helicopter. Vanessa led us around the factory, stopping to explain many of the assembly areas. That’s when I realized that the assembly line had shifted up one space, leaving an empty space at the end. The last helicopter on the line was 10602. We walked around the factory and into the finishing area. We also stepped into the old delivery room, which was being used by a maintenance class to work on helicopters. Ed Taylor, my mechanic, was there, working on the cyclic control for an R44 with two other mechanics. I stopped and said hello, then left him alone to learn. When the tour was over, we passed by the end of the assembly line again. The last spot wasn’t empty anymore. What would be N630ML was sitting in its place on the line.

N630ML Under ConstructionI ask you: what are the chances of visiting a factory the very day that the item you’ve purchased goes onto the assembly line?

We climbed back into the Honda, feeling good about the tour. After a quick stop at a fast food place (can’t remember the name of the place, but its logo has a smiling star), we hit the highways (and traffic) for the ride home. It was about 2:40 PM. Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the world. It took us a good two hours to clear it. We stopped at the new casino between Banning and Palm Springs for a bathroom break and gas. Norb drove the rest of the way home. We got home at 9:15 PM local time and went right to sleep, exhausted.

Books of 2004

Posted on by
Comment

I bring readers up to date with the titles I churned out over the past year.

I realized, in writing my last blog entry, that the last book I’d mentioned finishing on these pages was my Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide last October. Don’t think for a minute that I’ve been idle since then.

It’s been just over a year and, believe it or not, I had to consult a list of the titles I’d put out to see just what I’d been up to. I just couldn’t remember them all. Here they are:

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide was the most recent revision of my Excel for Windows book. Not much new in the way of content because there’s not much that Microsoft can already add to that feature-packed program. It came out in December 2003.

QuickBooks Pro 6 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide was a brand new title for me (and Peachpit). I’d proposed it early in the year, when I was looking for work and it took several months for them to say yes and come up with a contract. By that time, I had other work lined up. (Feast or famine.) The book underwent a lot of content changes as I wrote. For example, it was originally going to include payroll coverage, but since payroll is done with a separate program bundled into QuickBooks and the future of the bundling was questionable, we decided to drop it. (Frankly, I think payroll is so confusing that a whole book could be written about it, but don’t think I’m volunteering.) The book came out in May 2004 and is doing surprisingly well. So well, in fact, that Peachpit wants me to revise it for the recently-released new edition.

Quicken Premier 2005: The Official Guide is the sixth revision to my original Quicken Official Guide. It was finished in June 2004 and published in August 2004.

Creating Resumes, Letters, Business Cards, and Flyers in Word: Visual QuickProject Guide was a brand new title in Peachpit’s brand new Visual QuickProject Guide series. The series is great for beginners or people with computer phobias because it shows every single step in a process, with callout lines and numbered instructions. It makes a VQS look like a technical guide for MBAs. And it’s in full color! It’s 160 pages long and costs only $12.99. A great deal. The only thing I don’t like about it is the title — it’s way too long! It came out in September 2004.

Creating Spreadsheets and Charts in Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide is another brand new book for me. This one offers the basics of working with Excel spreadsheets and charts in a format anyone can understand. It’s eight chapters took me eight days to write and lay out. (That’s not the record. My record is a 350-page book that I knocked off in 10 days back in 1993. Of course, I didn’t do layout for that title.) I think it’s a great book and I’m extremely pleased with the way it came out. Like the Word book, it’s cross-platform. It came out in October 2004.

Microsoft Word 2004 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide is the latest revision to my Word for Macintosh book. It has a bunch of new stuff inserted throughout the book and a brand new chapter covering Word’s new Notebook Layout view feature. I finished it two days ago and it’ll go to the printer today. I expect to see it by the first week in December and, of course, it’ll be at Macworld Expo.

So in the course of a year, December to November, I finished six books. Of these, three were revisions and three were brand new titles. (That’s not a record. My record is 10, set a number of years ago, and I hope I never do that again. Talk about burnout!)

In addition to writing all those books, I also managed the Wickenburg Airport’s FBO (for a short time, anyway), did helicopter tours in the area, got a part-time job flying at the Grand Canyon, and wrote a handful of articles. So anyone who says I have an easy life obviously doesn’t have the big picture.

I’m not complaining — certainly not! I usually take a week or two off between books and spend that time catching up on things like bills, surfing the ‘Net, shopping, and writing in my blog. If I had a helicopter, I’d be flying, but I’m between ships right now and grounded. This week, I’m trying to write three or four articles that I owe various editors. I knocked off one yesterday and started a second one. I’ll finish that and write at least one more today. Tomorrow, my brother, his wife, and my sister are coming in for a week, and my mother and stepfather are showing up on Tuesday for a week, so I’ll spend time with them.

Then it’s back to the salt mines for me. Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is on its way and I have to revise the existing book to turn it into Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: Visual QuickStart Guide. I always have the first Mac OS book out in stores and I’m not about to ruin my record this year.

After that, it looks like a QuickBooks revision, but if I’m lucky, they’ll let me write one or two more Visual QuickProject Guides. I proposed a bunch of titles, and they finally seemed to like one of them. Cross your fingers for me. I’m also writing an eBook about iBlog 2.0 for Spiderworks. I’ll probably finish that sometime in December, if I can find time for it between my work on the Tiger book. I’m also working on a book about the Grand Canyon with a photographer and hope to have that ready for publication in May. It’ll be nice to have a book that doesn’t need revising every one or two years. (The Canyon doesn’t change much.) And I’ll always be writing articles. Informit.com likes my work and I like writing for them. FileMaker Advisor also wants me to write for them, but I’m always having trouble coming up with fresh ideas for them, so we’ll see how I do.

That’s it in a nutshell: the past year and the next four to six months. Busy, busy, busy.

I Bought an iPod Photo

Posted on by
Comment

I didn’t want to do it, but I had to.

The biggest problem I have as the author of computer books and articles is that in order to write about hardware and software, I have to own it. Or at least have it in my possession for enough time to learn and write about it.

That’s why I bought an iPod years ago. I had to write about using iTunes with an iPod for my Mac OS X book. I couldn’t get a loaner from Apple and I didn’t know anyone who had one. So I had to buy one. I still have it and still use it. It’s the original iPod, which held 1,000 songs on its whopping 5 GB hard drive. At the time, it was an incredible breakthrough in MP3 technology. But today, it’s a dinosaur, almost embarrassing to admit owning. (I own a Newton, too. But let’s not go there today, huh?) But it works, so I don’t care.

Want to know where I spent the most time listening to my ancient iPod? In my old helicopter, Three-Niner-Lima. I had Paul, my old mechanic, install an audio patch into the intercom system and put an RCA jack on the side of the instrument panel. I bought a nice leather case for the iPod with a mounting do-dad so I could hang it beside that jack. Then I used a standard Radio Shack cable (not bought locally; those guys don’t have anything you need when you need it) to patch the iPod into the helicopter’s intercom system. I could listen to tunes while I flew. Best of all, when there was a radio transmission, the music would automatically cut out so I could hear the radio. Ditto when I talked on the radio. A great arrangement. It made some of those long cross-country flights over Arizona and California and Nevada deserts a bit more pleasant.

The iPod Photo came out about a month or so ago. Probably less. I can’t remember. Anyway, Apple took the next logical step and made it possible to put photos on an iPod. So they’re worth looking at, they changed the screen to color. And since 10 or 20 GB isn’t enough to hold all your music and photos, they come with either 40 GB or 60 GB worth of storage.

I tried to get one from Apple as a loaner. They have an editorial loan program that is extremely difficult to get hardware from. I succeeded twice times in the past — I got an iBook loaner once and an iMac (ET style) loaner another time. But this time I wasn’t as lucky. I was told the waiting list was “a mile long.” Wow. So I bought one.

It came yesterday. I had company so I couldn’t tear open the box and immediately play with it. So I took it to work this morning. I’d just finished work on [yet] another Word book and was waiting for the index to come from the indexer so I could lay it out. I’d promised articles to two publishers. But I could spare a few hours to configure and learn about my new toy — I mean, vital piece of hardware.

It’s cool. No doubt about it. The dock it comes with sure beats that FireWire cable I left on my desk for syncing and recharging the old iPod. And the color screen is beautiful.

I stuck it in the dock and immediately started putting songs on it. I was able to fit my entire iTunes music library, which really isn’t much — only about 1,600 songs. (No reason for me to copy all my CDs to my computer’s hard drive when they weren’t going to fit on my iPod anyway.) Then I copied my iPhoto photo library to the iPod. All 2,600 photos. When I was done, I’d used less than half of the iPod’s 40 GB. Sheesh.

I got an e-mail from one of the editors waiting for articles and wrote back to her, mentioning that I’d just gotten an iPod Photo. How about an article that explains how to create a custom slide show with music on the iPod? She wrote back saying that they’d been talking about iPod photo in a meeting that morning. Write the article! So I did. And I submitted it this afternoon.

So I guess it must be an important piece of hardware, necessary for my work. After all, I’d owned it for less than 24 hours when I wrote an article about it that earned me $300. Another article and it’ll be paid for.

And yes, the new helicopter will be iPod-compatible. It has a built-in audio jack. But I think I’ll stick the old iPod in there, just for old time’s sake. After all, 1,000 songs really is enough.

Busy Busy Busy

Posted on by
Comment

I realize that I’ve been so busy that I haven’t made a blog entry in nearly a week.

I’ve been busy this past week. Too busy to write in my blog.

I’ve been working hard on my latest book, Microsoft Word 2004 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickStart Guide. I was moving along at a pretty good rate — about a chapter a day. I expected to finish it on Friday, but a sudden storm moving in sent me home early that day. I arrived home to get the horses out of their lower corral in the wash just as the water started flowing. So I finished it today. This afternoon and tomorrow, I’ll be going through the edits. The index should arrive from the indexer on Thursday. The book goes to the printer on Friday. I’ve lost count again, but I think this is either my 59th or 60th book. I dedicated it to Ted Waitt, my editor on this project. I’ve kind of run out of people to dedicate books to.

The book has a picture of Ted in it, too. Chapter 17, I think. I don’t remember the page number. There are a few other interesting photos in there, including the one Bert Monroy helped me cook up for Flying M Air marketing materials.

Speaking of that, the postcards I ordered arrived and they look absolutely fabulous. I spent part of today distributing them around town. I picked up the slides last Monday and dropped one of them off at the movie theater when we went to see The Incredibles. (What a really great movie!) It should be in the tray by now.

I also talked to my editor at Informit and she’s very interested in getting some new articles from me. I told her the best time to get work from me is between books, so I guess I’ll have to start producing this week. I figure I’ll knock off 2 to 4 articles for her. I also have to write one for FileMaker Advisor.

Vertical wants to publish my jumper article. I had a nice conversation with the publisher, Mike Reyno, the other day. But I’ve spoken to the folks at Papillon and they’re not too happy about the article coming out. So I’m not quite sure what to do. I certainly don’t want to piss them off.

I ordered and received some Robinson R44 materials, including a maintenance manual, parts catalog, and passenger briefing card. This is all stuff I need for my Part 135 certificate. I haven’t done any work on that since my meeting at the FSDO last Monday.

Today I stopped by Kwikprint to get a tabloid-size document printed (my printer doesn’t print on paper that big). Later I went back with a new order for business cards and letterhead. With luck, that’ll be ready by next week.

On Sunday, I met someone who has read all of my blog entries. She’s married to someone Mike works with down in Phoenix. She and her husband and his mother came up to Wickenburg for the Bluegrass Festival at the rodeo grounds. I didn’t go with them. I’m not much of a bluegrass fan. Anyway, she already knew what I looked like from photos in my blog. She talked to me a little about my entries. It was kind of weird. I didn’t think anyone read what I wrote here. She’s probably reading this right now!

Hello Barbara!

Right now, as I write this, I’m listening to a live audio stream from JFK Ground/Tower. You can listen online via a link on www.liveatc.net. JFK tower is kind of cool because the controller has an unbelievable New York accent. It’s like being back there again. I didn’t think it would work on my Mac, but when I clicked the link, it automatically opened in iTunes and started playing. Way cool.

I also spent a few minutes bothering my brother via MSN Messenger. Why people use chat software when they can just pick up the phone is beyond me. My brother types very slowly. I’d much rather talk to him on the phone than wait for him to type messages to me.

He and his wife and their dog are coming with my sister on Saturday. My mother and stepfather arrive on Tuesday (next, not tomorrow). They’re all coming for Thanksgiving Dinner. So I have to get all my work done this week so I can spent the whole week with all of them.

Two days after all of them leave, Mike’s mother and her friend come for 10 days. Then it’s his turn to do the entertaining. I have to start another book.

Busy busy busy. No wonder I’m so tired at the end of the day.

They’re with the FAA and They’re Here to Help

Posted on by
Comment

I meet with the FAA and am pleasantly surprised by how helpful they really are.

It’s an old joke among pilots. You’ve just landed at the airport and parked your aircraft and a man walks up to you. “I’m with the FAA and I’m here to help,” he says. That’s the joke. When the FAA approaches you on an airport ramp, they’re probably there to do a ramp check. It’s like getting pulled over by a cop who wants to check your paperwork and the condition of your car. How helpful is that?

Well, this isn’t what happened to me, but it was on my mind when I went to the FAA’s office in Scottsdale for a meeting yesterday morning. But before I continue that story, let me take a few steps back.

I’ve been running a Part 91 helicopter tour business since October 2001. “Part 91” refers to the part of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) that covers the type of commercial operation I did. It’s highly restrictive, but not highly regulated. Basically, anyone with a commercial pilot certificate and an aircraft — even a rented one! — can become a Part 91 tour operator without so much as filing a form with the FAA.

Part 91 is highly restrictive. For example, I can take passengers on “sightseeing” tours within 25 statute miles of my starting point. Draw a circle with a 25 mile radius around Wickenburg and you can see my general operating area. On the east, it stops just short of Lake Pleasant. On the North, it’s around Peeples Valley. West, it doesn’t quite make Aguila. And south, puts me somewhere beyond that mountain range south of Vulture Peak. So I’ve had to routinely turn down requests for flights over Lake Pleasant, Bagdad mine, and various locations in the Bradshaw Mountains.

Part 91 does not allow me to land and discharge passengers. So although I could show people Gold Bar Mine from the air, I couldn’t land on that nice piece of road on the ridge and let them out to explore. I also could not pick up the odd miner (read that any way you like) who wanted to be picked up in Wickenburg and dropped off on a mountaintop twelve miles away. This hurt business, especially when I had Tristan’s 4-seat helicopter last season. The most painful was a local resident who wanted me to be his air taxi service and take him to places like Meteor Crater and Sedona. Those flights would have been extremely lucrative for me and a lot of fun. Having to turn them down was probably the prodding I needed to take the next steps in my tour business.

Those steps were to buy an R44 helicopter (a 4-seater) and to apply for a Part 135 Air Carrier Certificate.

Buying the helicopter was a tough first step. The first hurdle was getting a good deal on a ship that would meet my needs. Justin at Hillsboro Aviation helped me out there. He cut me a great deal on a brand new ship. The next hurdle was coming up with $25,000 in cash as a deposit. It took me a few weeks of scraping, aided by a nice royalty check, to get the money together. I placed the order on my birthday, June 30, and asked for the custom N-number N630ML.

Thus began the 6-month waiting period to get the helicopter. Robinson sells more helicopters than all other helicopter manufacturers combined, and their factory in Torrance, CA was in the process of being expanded. But I could wait 6 months. It would take me that long to scrape up the rest of the down payment and arrange for a loan. Besides, who wants to fly a helicopter in Wickenburg in the summer? Air conditioning was not an option.

To make the helicopter pay for itself — at least in part — I’d have to expand the tour business beyond the 25-mile, no stopping limitations set by Part 91. So in October, I applied for a Single Pilot Part 135 certificate.

Part 135 has three types of certificates. The basic certificate is for a large operation, like Papillon, for example, which has multiple helicopters and multiple pilots. I was a Part 135 pilot for Papillon’s Part 135 operation. Then there’s a single pilot-in-command certificate, which is for operations that have multiple aircraft and pilots but only one pilot who will act as pilot-in-command (PIC). This is primarily for operations with multi-pilot aircraft so there’s a handful of second-in-command (SIC) pilots to fly with the PIC. Finally, there’s a single-pilot Part 135 certificate. That’s for organizations like mine. One pilot will be doing all the flying in at least one aircraft that’s owned or leased.

Although I could apply for a basic Part 135 certificate, there’s no reason to. It’s a lot more paperwork and it takes a lot longer for the FAA to process. And there’s absolutely no benefit for me, since I’m the only pilot.

The application process is a bit lengthy. First, you go to the local Flight Standards District Office (FSDO, pronounced fizdoe) and watch a video that outlines the certification process. I did that last year, in the summer, when I was toying with the idea of applying. (That was an expensive trip to Scottsdale. I wound up buying a new car while I was down there.) I was hoping to lease Tristan’s helicopter for the season and when he didn’t come through right away, I abandoned the idea of applying. But the FSDO sent me a package of materials to get started anyway and I kept it. So when I decided to get off my butt and apply, I had everything I needed. I filled out the Pre-application Statement of Intent (PASI) form and sent it in along with a cover letter. That was on October 18. And then I waited.

One thing I know about government agencies is that they sometimes need to be gently reminded that you’re waiting for something. (I worked for the New York City Comptroller’s Office for five years, so I know exactly how bad civil servants can be.) So on November 3, I called the FSDO to see how far my form had progressed. After a bit of research, I was told that my case had been turned over to Charlie for processing. But Charlie wasn’t in. I should call back tomorrow.

I called back. Charlie didn’t know anything about it and didn’t seem too happy to hear about it. He asked me if I knew that the process usually takes three to four months, possibly five. I told him, choosing my words carefully, that I’d heard that it could take that long. He told me I’d need a Statement of Compliance and that usually took a very long time to prepare. And a HazMat training program. I asked him what the next step was. He said a pre-application meeting. And then he did something that surprised me: he offered to meet with me the following Monday morning at 9 AM. I jumped on the suggestion and agreed.

Over the weekend, I did my homework. I spent all of Saturday working on a Statement of Compliance so it would apply to Flying M Air. It took most of the day and required me to read every paragraph of FAR Parts 119 and 135, understand them (the tricky part), and determine whether they applied to my operation and, if so, how. I learned a lot about the FARs that day. When I was finished, the document was 47 pages long. I included a title page and table of contents, along with headers and footers, so it would look professional and be easy to read. I also went through all the documents I could find in my package and online — the Atlanta FSDO’s Web site was extremely helpful — to learn what I could about the process. I wrote down questions. I wrote down assumptions. I got together additional documents, including my resume, a formal application letter, a copy of my purchase agreement for the helicopter, and a summary of my logged helicopter hours.

On Monday morning, after printing the Statement of Compliance and other documents at my office (no printer at home), I hopped in the car and began the long drive to Scottsdale. It had rained overnight and was still raining in parts of Scottsdale. Arizona drivers are completely clueless about driving in the rain. Fortunately, they tend to be more cautious than less. Unfortunately, that means they drive a lot slower. So it took me a full 90 minutes to get to North Perimeter Road, off Princess Blvd. I got a parking space right out front and went in.

After I signed in, Charlie was summoned. He didn’t look happy. He said, “I’m not the person you’ll be working with. But I’ll take you to that person.”

I was already being shuffled around. I remembered my audit days at the City of New York, when the civil service shuffle was a part of my daily life. But I could deal with it and would.

He took me through a maze of cubicles and stopped in front of one, where a man was working at a computer. He looked up. “This is Maria,” Charlie said. “I told you about her this morning.” He turned to me. “This is Bill.” And then he left.

Bill looked flustered. He admitted that the first time he’d heard about me was that morning and that he didn’t realize I was coming in that day. Mentally, I prepared to be dismissed. But he grabbed a white binder and led me to a conference room — the same room I’d seen the video in over a year before. There was a big white board on the wall that listed all the Part 135 certificates in progress. Flying M Air was the second from the bottom, with a date of 10/20/04. That was a good sign. I was on the board.

The binder he’d brought with him was not mine. He left me in the room while he searched for mine. He came back empty-handed twice, but vowed to find it. After about 15 minutes, he returned with the binder and another man, Rhuno. Rhuno, it turned out, was his boss. At first, I thought he was only going to stay in the meeting for a while, but he wound up staying for the whole meeting.

Bill went over a extremely large, scary-looking flowchart that described the Part 135 process. And I started pulling documents out of my briefcase. The Statement of Compliance. The formal application letter. My resume. My flight hours. The helicopter purchase documents. They were surprised. I don’t think many applicants bring so many documents with them on the first meeting. But I was driving down from Wickenburg and didn’t want to make the drive more often than necessary. I also wanted to do my part to keep the ball in their court, minimizing delays.

Bill looked at the flowchart. In that one meeting, we’d made our way through about 1/3 of it. He and Rhuno got other documents for me. The HazMat training program. (Even though I won’t carry hazardous materials, I have to have a program that identifies them so I won’t inadvertently take them on board. HazMat now falls under the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), so my program will have to be approved by them.) A sample Operations Specifications. A minimum equipment list (MEL) for R44 helicopters. I don’t think they could have been any more helpful. I left with twice as much paper as I came with, even after dropping off my 47-page Statement of Compliance.

Along the way, I asked Rhuno how long he thought the process would take. He said that since I’d obviously done my homework and a Single-Pilot certification was usually a lot faster and easier than a basic Part 135.

“What do you think?” I asked meekly. “Is it possible to have it done by January?”

“Sure,” he said, meaning it. Later in the meeting, they led me to believe that they might be able to have everything done except the aircraft inspection before my helicopter arrived. And that’s only a month from now!

We had a great talk at the end of the meeting. They were surprised that I was the only tour operator in Wickenburg. I told them a little about Wickenburg’s economy and the difficulty in selling tours to people who were either conservative about their entertainment or on a low budget. I told him I planned to supplement my Part 135 work with Part 91 rides at special events.

In discussing Wickenburg’s growth, I mentioned Prop 421 and how glad I was that it had failed. Rhuno said it was a good thing it had failed. He said that zoning was vital in growing communities. He compared Carefree to Cave Creek, two communities, side by side. From the beginning, Carefree had always had strict zoning while Cave Creek did not. I’m familiar with the two towns. Carefree is a much nice community with higher property values and a more pleasant atmosphere. I’d much rather see Wickenburg get like Carefree than its neighbor.

Rhuno had heard about my work at Wickenburg airport, back when I had the fuel manager’s contract. He’d heard a lot of good things about the terminal’s renovations and new services there. I told him I’d given it up because of employee problems and an overload of frustrations. I also told him my honest opinion, which is that the town doesn’t care much about the airport. I told him about the jets that come and go all winter long and the big money that comes to town with them. More money arrives in Wickenburg by jet than by car. (My favorite story is the family that arrived last December in three Lear jets for their annual family reunion/vacation at Rancho de los Caballeros. The Dad handed over a check for $30,000 and told the los Cab guy to tell him when that ran out. And I’m not making this up. I was there.) You think the town would make the point of entry for these people a little more pleasing? You think they’d provide some additional services — like a fuel truck — to help service the jets that bring them? You think they’d try to get a restaurant built at the airport to attract more fly-in visitors? The unfortunate answer is No. And that’s why Wickenburg loses so much Jet traffic to Glendale, Deer Valley, and Scottsdale. The pilots would rather stay in these metro areas — and fill up while they’re there — than what they see as neglected outpost of civilization. Remember, they’re basing their opinion of Wickenburg on what they see at the airport and it just doesn’t stack up to what they see elsewhere.

Don’t let me get started.

Anyway, when I left my meeting with Bill and Rhuno, I was extremely impressed and happy. I’d started my certification process late, but it looked as if I’d get it all done by the time the season got up to full swing. The FAA wasn’t trying to hold me back — as I’d thought it might. It was trying to help. And I drove away from the Scottsdale FSDO with new respect for the folks who control aviation in this country.