A Friend Drops In…Literally

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How I’m pleasantly surprised by the visit of a good friend.

It was about 5:30 PM and I was just getting ready to step out of the shower when I heard the helicopter fly over the house. I immediately assumed it was LifeNet, the local medical evacuation company, which is based in Wickenburg. They often fly over our house on their way from Phoenix to the airport for fuel. But this helicopter was a lot lower than LifeNet usually flies. And, as I reached for my towel, I realized it was coming back for another pass.

It must be Jim, then, I thought to myself. Jim, who lives in Wickenburg, flies a Hughes 500c. Sometimes, when he’s out flying around, he’ll fly past my house. But Jim normally flies in the morning, not in the evening. I wrapped my towel around me and went out on the upstairs patio to take a look.

It wasn’t Jim. It was a Bell 206L LongRanger. With a rainbow colored paint job. And that meant it could only be one person: Rod Carr.

He came by for another pass as I waved wildly with my free hand. The other hand was holding my towel on. He must have seen me, because he veered away suddenly, climbing out toward the airport.

Rod Flies InI ran downstairs and grabbed my aviation radio. I turned it on and tuned into Wickenburg just as he was making his call.

“Hey, Rod. You’re landing at the airport?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Going to be here for a while?”

“Just a bit.”

“Let me get some clothes on and I’ll be right over.”

I got dressed in a hurry, loaded Jack the dog into the Jeep (since Rod likes Jack), and raced to the airport. Raced is actually the right word here. I caught myself going faster than I should have several times and slowed down each time. It was getting late and the sun had already set. I figured Rod’s visit would have to be short since he probably wouldn’t want to fly wherever he had to go in the dark. It gets very dark out in the desert around Wickenburg.

But when I got to the airport, Rod was tying down the blades. That isn’t the kind of thing you’d do if you were only going to be around for a short while.

Turns out, Rod was working out in Salome, which is about 60 miles west of Wickenburg. He was on a Game and Fish contract that had something to do with counting bighorn sheep up in the mountains. He’d flown into Salome a while before and shut down for the night. But when he met up with his fuel truck driver, he learned that there were no more motel rooms in town. (Frankly, I didn’t even know Salome had a motel.) So he decided to fire his helicopter back up and fly to Wickenburg, where there were lots of motels.

Of course, I wouldn’t let him stay in a motel. I helped him close down the ship for the night, then loaded his gear into the back of the Jeep. Then he, Jack, and I went home.

We had a nice evening, with dinner at House Berlin (the local German restaurant; highly recommended) and then several hours of chatting out on the back patio. I heard all kinds of helicopter pilot stories — Rod is full of them. Then we all turned in for the night.

This morning, Rod reported that he slept like a log. He said he got his helicopter log book up to date, then laid back on the bed and — pow! He was dead asleep. He didn’t get up until almost 7 AM.

I took him back to the airport and helped him with his preflight. (After all, not long ago I was preflighting helicopters just like it.) Then, after listening to him thank me about a dozen times, I watched him climb into the cockpit. I retreated with Jack in the Jeep to give him some space. He started up and took off to the west.

And I’m looking forward to the next time he buzzes my house.

BFR Blues

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I go for my R22 and R44 biennial flight reviews and come away feeling as if I should have done better.

If you’re a pilot, you know that in order to stay current (that is, legal to fly), you must take a flight review with a flight instructor every two years. This review is referred to as a biennial flight review (not bi-annual flight review, as many pilots call it), or simply BFR.

I took two BFRs yesterday down at Scottdale. I flew with George McNeil, one of the owners of Universal Helicopters. Universal has four locations: Scottsdale, Provo UT, Long Beach CA, and somewhere else in the southwest. (Heck, I can’t know everything.) Universal’s Scottsdale students often come up to Wickenburg for their cross-country flights. Their blue and yellow helicopters are easily recognized, and easy to spot in the air.

I had to take two BFRs because I currently fly two kinds of helicopters: the Robinson R22 Beta II I currently own (which is for sale) and the Robinson R44 Raven II I will soon own (which should be emerging from the factory in mid-December). These two helicopters are so similar that if you can fly one, you can pretty much fly the other. The only differences are size (the R44 is bigger), hydraulic flight controls (the R44 has them; the R22 does not), and fuel injection (the R44 Raven II has it; the R22 does not). So starting the two helicopters is a bit different because of the fuel injection and they feel a tiny bit different in flight because of the hydraulics. Frankly, flying an R44 is a lot like flying a Bell 206L Long Ranger; they have very much the same feel.

I didn’t have to take a BFR for Bell Long Rangers, which I can also fly because 1) I don’t foresee myself flying one in the near future and 2) the Part 135 check ride I took back in April or May covers me for that type of helicopter until April or May of 2006. That’s a good thing, because getting an hour of flight time in the R44 was expensive enough. I can’t imagine what it would have cost in a Long Ranger.

A BFR consists of an hour of ground review followed by an hour of flight time. I was able to do the R22 and R44 ground review together, saving time and money, but the flight time had to be done in each ship. I brought my R22 to save me some money and it did.

The ground part of the review went well. As with any good BFR, the pilot should learn something new from the instructor. I did. George gave me a good rule of thumb for operating at high density altitudes. It requires you to compare two power settings, get the difference, and use that difference to decide whether the landing can be to a hover, straight to the ground, or run-on. We also reviewed the usual things I always forget: light signals at airports (in case the radio goes out), weather minimums (the weather in AZ seldom goes below minimums), etc. I also proved that I knew a few of the weird little things R22 pilots know; for example, the minimum rotor RPM for flight: 80% + 1% for each 1,000 feet of density altitude.

The ground part done, we went out to fly. We flew one of Universal’s R44s first (see photo; no, that’s not me flying). I did a complete preflight. I needed George to remind me where few things were, since it had been about 6 months since I’d flown an R44. I used a ladder for the preflight; Universal doesn’t like students climbing on the helicopters. Of course, I don’t like climbing ladders. Doing this preflight reminded me just how much bigger an R44 is. I’d better get used to heights, since the main rotor hub is about 12 feet off the ground.

PhotoI’d had trouble starting the last Raven II I’d flown (about 14 months ago, in St. George, UT), so I was very surprised when this one started right up for me. We went through all the checks and I brought it into a hover without really thinking much about it. It did feel a lot like the Long Ranger and it had been less than a month since I’d flown one of those. We went out to Deer Valley where I did some maneuvers; steep approach, normal approach, maximum performance takeoff, normal takeoff, hovering autorotation, straight in autorotation. Along the way, I got a throttle chop (simulated engine failure), which I handled pretty well. (I have pretty good reaction time.) But I did have a bit of trouble with the steep approach when the governor was disabled — kept chasing the RPM with the throttle. And my autorotations, although “survivable,” were not very pretty. Afterward, we went over to the Cave Creek Dam (the earth dam) for a pinnacle/confined space landing. Although I did a perfectly fine landing, George said he wanted to hear more from me as I did my reconnaissance. That’s a problem I have, though. I don’t vocalize what I’m thinking and seeing when I fly. Unfortunately, flight instructors expect to hear their students vocalize. So although I’d seen and considered most of the things he listed, I hadn’t vocalized them, leading him to believe I hadn’t even thought about them. Interesting, I think, that someone who talks and writes as much as I do would keep quiet when expected to talk.

We went back to Scottsdale, shut down, and climbed into my R22. Then we did most of the same things in my helicopter back at Deer Valley. I was absolutely horrible when it came to doing a steep approach with the governor off. It was really pissing me off that I couldn’t get it right, too. George said it was because the R22 was so much more sensitive than the R44. But I’ve put close to 1,000 hours on that R22 and should be able to get it to do anything I want. My autos weren’t pretty either. I think that had something to do with coming from an R44, which is easy to do an autorotation in, and going into an R22, which is not. We did some 180 autorotations, too, and I just wasn’t making my turns the way George wanted. But I know the reason for that. There was a big airplane parked on one end of the practice area we were using and I kept trying to go around its front end when George expected me to go around the back. When he made that clear, I did much better.

I did a fine demonstration of settling with power, which I really hate doing. To demonstrate this maneuver, you climb to about 1500 to 2000 feet above the ground, point the helicopter into the wind, and bring it into a hover. It’s the hover part I have trouble with. In flight, the helicopter sort of leans forward as it moves through the air. To bring it into a high hover, you have to pull the cyclic back, thus putting the nose up. Trouble is, when you get to the zero airspeed you’re looking for, it feels as if you’re leaning (and moving and falling) backward. I don’t like the sensation. So I got the maneuver over with as quickly as possible. The idea is to lower the collective and establish a descent rate in which you’re descending into your own rotorwash. The controls get mushy and pulling up the collective does not stop the descent. The only thing that will stop the descent is lowering the collective and moving in some direction — forward is always a nice idea. Because you need to get good 500-800 foot per minute straight down descent rate going, you always practice this maneuver well above the ground. After all, you don’t want to run out of space before you recover. And in case you’re wondering, the purpose of this exercise is not to learn how to enter settling with power. The idea is to learn how to get out of it if you stumble in. They also teach us how to avoid it and that’s what I normally do.

Anyway, when we finished playing around with the R22, we went back to Scottsdale where I ordered some fuel and settled my bill with Universal. Flying the R44 had been extremely expensive. I’m glad I’m buying one so I don’t have to pay to rent one ever again. By the time I fired Three-Niner-Lima back up for the return flight to Wickenburg, the sun was setting. It was technically night when I landed.

Three Fingers

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A bumper sticker teaches me a new hand signal.

If you’ve been reading these blogs faithfully (I’m impressed and somewhat flattered), you’ll know that I received two Fahrenheit 9/11 bumper stickers in the mail. Partially because I don’t mind stirring up trouble and partially because I thought the colors would look good with my car, I put the sticker on my Honda S2000. The darn thing seems to take up 1/3 of the rear window. (I wasn’t about to put a sticker on the paint.)

Yesterday, I was driving through Wickenburg toward Big O Tires, where Mike was getting an oil change. A white pickup truck pulled up next to me on that two-lane stretch of road and the young man — maybe 25 years old? — in the front held up three spread fingers. I saw him clearly, but had no idea what this meant. He must have thought that I didn’t see it, because he flashed them again. Still no recognition on my part. Then he kind of rolled his eyes and started rolling down his window. I rolled down mine. He yelled out to me, with a big grin on his face, “Bush!”

I laughed hard. I mean really hard. The light bulb had gone on. The three fingers was supposed to be a W. W is the not-so-secret code for George W Bush. I guess most people know this already. But I don’t watch television and I’m not a Republican. So it was completely new to me.

Why flash the W sign at me? Obviously, he’d seen the bumper sticker and wanted to show his support for the other side. I guess he didn’t want to mess up his truck with a Bush/Cheney bumper sticker, which would have been more to the point, and could have shown his support even while he was away from his vehicle, flashing W signs around Arizona on foot.

Whatever.

So now I’m trying to think of a hand signal for the millions of anti-Bush people out there. The people who have lost their jobs, health insurance, or sons over the past four years. The people who remember the days when the U.

S. was a respected world power, not the world’s bully. The people who think the billions of dollars spent in Iraq would do a lot more for us if spent here.

If I come up with one, you’ll learn about it here.

What I Do

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I discover that the majority of people in Wickenburg haven’t got a clue what I do.

On Monday, I put a piece of real estate I own on the market. I listed it with Jorja Beal. Jorja has lived in Wickenburg for many years and knows it better than I ever will.

Yesterday, Jorja had to stop by my office to get some keys. I met her in the parking lot. The first thing she said to me was, “I didn’t know you wrote books about Quicken!” She was surprised and impressed. “I didn’t realize we had someone in town who was famous.”

I’m not famous. Well, not exactly famous. There are a number of people who think I’m famous and I occasionally get asked for my autograph, but I don’t really think of myself as famous.

I told Jorja that that’s what I do for a living. Then I asked her what she thought I did. She told me she thought I was a Webmaster. I told her that although I do maintain a few Web sites, there’s no money in being a Webmaster in Wickenburg — unless, of course, you’re willing to grossly overcharge all your clients, which is something I’m not willing to do. I told her I write books for a living, then brought her up to my extremely disheveled office and showed her the “Langer Library”: three shelves of books, starting with titles first published in 1990, along with many of their translations. There are over a hundred books on those three shelves, but if you weed out the translations and the handful of books I contributed to but didn’t author on my own, the total title count is around 60.

I opened my closet full of author copies and pulled out a copy of the Quicken 2005 book and handed it to her. She said, “No, I already have one. Steve Cole gave me one.”

Steve Cole runs Cole Accounting here in town. Steve is a great guy, laid back, patient, and knowledgeable. He gave me a lot of help when I had to tackle the payroll taxes for my employees at the Airport. He also does my husband’s taxes and this year I’m going to ask him to do mine. (Consider this advance warning, Steve, if you’re reading this!) When I finished the Quicken 2005 book and was staring at a blank dedication page, I decided to dedicate the book to him, as a way of thanking him for his help. And when my 20 author copies arrived about a month later, I brought half of them to Steve so he could give them away to his clients who use Quicken. I guess Jorja is one of those clients.

I’m not sure if Steve knows that the books are where the money comes from. He’s never done my personal taxes so he might not.

People might find it hard to understand how a writer can make a good enough living to buy things like real estate and a helicopter. But when you average 4 to 6 books a year and you have one or two titles that become regular best-sellers, it is indeed possible.

Other people in town think I fly helicopters for a living. Wouldn’t that be nice! To be able to do the thing I love best and make enough money to support my lifestyle! The truth of the matter is, the demand for helicopter tours in Wickenburg is pitifully low, so Flying M Air will never become a big income-generator here. And that summer job I had at the Grand Canyon this past summer paid very poorly. It was an entry level position that worked all of its pilots hard, making us fly in very challenging conditions. I may have come away as a much better pilot, but my bank account sure didn’t show much for all that work.

A few people thought I ran the airport FBO for a living. They must have been pretty puzzled when I gave it up.

Other people may think that Mike makes a ton of money and supports both of our expensive habits. That isn’t true either. I support all of my own expensive habits and Mike supports his.

Indeed, I’m one of the people Art Pullis wrote about in one of his painfully elementary articles about the local economy in the Wickenburg Sun. The one where he discussed money coming into Wickenburg from outside the town. Less than 1% of my income comes from within Wickenburg, but far more than that is spent here. I’d spend even more here if I could find more of the goods and services I need here in town.

But I’m working on that. I’m sending Ed Taylor, one of Wickenburg’s two aircraft mechanics and owner of Wickenburg Aero Service, to the Robinson Helicopter Factory Maintenance School in November. When he gets back, he’ll be a helicopter mechanic. My helicopter mechanic. (No more trips to Prescott to get expensive maintenance items done. I’ll be keeping my maintenance dollars in town.) And I hope Ed picks up a few more helicopter customers as well. I’ll see what I can do to help that along.

One footnote here: there is someone in town who knows what I do. Yesterday, I went into the library to borrow a few books. I went to the counter with my battered library card and the librarian went to her computer to do whatever it is she does. (Probably check to see if I owe money for late fees, which I often do.) She was looking at the computer screen when she said aloud, “How are your books doing?”

I looked around. There was no one else she could be talking to. Stupidly, I said, “Who, me?”

She looked at me and smiled. “Yes.”

“Oh! Very well, thanks. I’m starting a new one tomorrow.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” she said.

“I don’t either,” I replied. Then I took the books she handed me and left.

Today I start work on “Microsoft Word 2004 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide.” Hey, it’s a living.

The Arrival of a Bumper Sticker

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Some thoughts on receiving a pair of political bumper stickers from an anonymous sender.

I got a long envelope in the mail yesterday from a company called FahrenheitStuff.com. When I opened it, I found two black, red, and white bumper stickers that said: “Fahrenheit 9/11, See the movie..then decide.”There was no indication of who had sent them.

Bumper StickerI went to the Web site and learned that FahrenheitStuff.com sells bumper stickers and tee shirts with all proceeds going to MoveOnPac.org. MoveOnPac.org, I learned, is dedicated to getting voters to vote George W. Bush out of office. To that end, they have a number of political advertisements that you can view via the Web. I watched all of them. One, “Stranded Republicans,” was very good. Another, “Everyone,” was very moving. The others were so-so. Since I don’t watch much TV, I don’t know if any of these ads have actually aired. FahrenheitStuff.com claims it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Michael Moore or MoveOnPac.org. The bumper stickers were of good quality and quite attractive. The colors went well with my red Honda. So, just to stir up some local emotions in this Arizona Republican stronghold town, I put one on my car. Yes, I put it on the glass back window; after all, I will eventually need to remove it. And if people start throwing eggs, I can always drive around town with the top down so no one sees it.

The shirts were nice, too. 100% cotton Hanes tee shirts with three different Fahrenheit 9/11 slogans on them. They were only $7.99. The bumper stickers were only $1 each. I’m thinking the shirts might make a good collector’s item in about 20 years. I might buy one and store it with my Mac OS 8 tee shirts. Someday, they’ll hit eBay.

Well, while I was surfing to find out about FahrenheitStuff.com and MoveOnPac.org, I visited Michael Moore’s Web site. I read a lot of interesting articles there. He didn’t write them. He just echoed them from other sources. It appears the Michigan Republicans are out to get him because he’s “bribing students to vote.” Frankly, I think it’s admirable that someone is making an effort to get young people involved in the political decision-making process. Of course, his efforts do have an ulterior motive. He obviously believes that the majority of these young people will vote against George W Bush. I think they will, too. And I hope they vote.

I realized, in reading Moore’s Web pages, that he and I have a lot in common. We have the same basic political opinion. Like me, he doesn’t think that Kerry is the best candidate for president. But he also doesn’t think we should give Bush another 4 years. Like me, he believes in exercising his First Amendment rights to speak his mind about the things he feels strongly about. But while he does it in movie theaters, in public speaking gigs (for which is often paid), in interviews, and on his Web site, I do it on my Web site and blogs and in letters to our sorry (and politically unbalanced) little local newspaper. While he’s tackling topics on the national and international level, with well-researched and presented commentary, I’m just presenting my opinion, based on my own intelligence and knowledge of the things going on around me. And like me, he has made a number of enemies due to his outspokenness, although he has millions of them and I only have a handful of people I wouldn’t want as friends anyway.

After surfing Moore’s site, I went to Amazon.com to look up information about his new book, “The Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader.” It sounds like a rehash of the movie, with a bunch of commentary in it. I don’t think it’s worth reading, at least not right now when I have so many other things I want to read. But I also learned that someone wrote a book called “Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man.” Wow. I might have to agree with that sentiment, but remove the word “Stupid.” He certainly isn’t that. But I do think it’s funny that an author (and publisher) would cash in on the fact that so many people hate Michael Moore. Who’s stupid now? It appears that the buyers of this book (and perhaps Moore’s book, to be fair) are being used to generate profits for authors and publishers who are selling to emotions. Perhaps these books look good on coffee tables in homes of Republicans or Democrats. A kind of label to let people know where you stand politically.

While surfing Amazon.com, I found a book that I think I’m going to buy (or at least look for in my local library). It’s called “Seven Floors High” and it appears to be a novel based on fact. (The description is too vague to make it clear whether it’s fact or fiction.) What really struck me is the reviews: every single reviewer gave it 5 stars. Most of them said they “couldn’t put it down.” I need to read something like that. Of course, I found the book through a link to “The Fahrenheit 9/11 Reader,” and it’s quite clear that it doesn’t make George W Bush look very good. I’m looking forward to checking it out.

I also found an enormous number of political books for sale. Some are “patriotic” titles that are obviously written to praise the current president. Others are titles by (or with information from) people in the know, such as John Dean and Paul O’Neill. The summaries of these books make them sound like interesting (but scary) reading. They seem to confirm what I already suspect: that there’s more going on in the White House than what meets the public’s eye.

Anyway, speaking of patriotic, I do have one more comment to make regarding Michael Moore. Moore-haters claim he’s unpatriotic. (By the way, that’s the same claim made by our president and his supporters when we question the removal of our rights to privacy, free speech, and due process.) I don’t think he’s unpatriotic at all. I think he sees the big picture and has formed an opinion about it. The opinion is not favorable to our current president and his party. I think he loves America very much — and that’s why he’s willing to speak out. I think it’s his way of getting other people to see the big picture and make an informed opinion about it. Informed using all of the facts, not the claims made by the republican party and its candidates.

Again, this is a lot like me. People think I hate Wickenburg because I speak out when I see something I think is bad or wrong. But I don’t hate Wickenburg. I don’t want to hate it, either. I want everyone to see what’s going on out there. I want them to make their own opinions and do something about it.

The sad thing about America these days is that the average person would rather watch the latest reality TV show than spend time and effort researching the issues that affect their lives and voting based on their own opinions about those issues.

And there is a postscript to this story: I found out who sent me the bumper stickers when I got a message from the sender in this morning’s e-mail.