First Annual Labor Day Heli Fly In and Pot Luck Picnic

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An event to kick off Arizona’s flying season.

If you’re a helicopter pilot, you are cordially invited to attend our first annual Labor Day Heli Fly In and Pot Luck picnic.

Some Background

As you may know, I’m part of a group of helicopter pilots who occasionally gathers for outings. I call our group the “Heli Group.” Not very creative, but simple.

In the summer, in central and southern Arizona, its simply too darn hot to fly during the day. Or get out of the helicopter at an off-airport destination. So we don’t have many trips in the summer.

But in the autumn, things start cooling down a bit. That’s when it’s time to ramp up for the flying season.

Our group has done a few trips in the past. Our first trip was to Red Creek, a dirt strip near the Verde River, north of Phoenix. We had a picnic lunch, then went our separate ways. The next trip was to The Francisco Grande hotel near Casa Grande. We landed near the driving range and went in for a nice lunch. Another more recent trip was to the Wayside Inn, a restaurant not far from Alamo Lake. We had a good turnout at that one and seeing all those helicopters parked outside the restaurant soon filled the restaurant with other customers. We followed up lunch with a trip to the Swansea ghost town.

This season, I’m trying to get us started for a bunch of flights by starting early with this event.

The Invitation Details

This invitation is open to helicopter pilots with access to a helicopter. You must RSVP to get the GPS coordinates for the landing zone.

My significant other and I own 40 acres of land north of Williams, AZ. The property sits at 6700 feet MSL. There is a large, flat area that could comfortably fit at least 10 helicopters. There is also a new, bright orange wind sock near the landing zone. The wind is normally from the west, making the usual approach over uninhabited state land. There are few houses in the area and no full-time residents nearby, so it is unlikely that the event will bother anyone with noise.

We’re planning a pot luck — in other words, bring something to eat! — picnic. The camper currently at the property has a small stove and small refrigerator, as well as a bathroom. There’s plenty of water but limited electricity; we’re running off a tiny solar system. We also have a gas grill and a firepit, so you can bring something that can be grilled on the premises. There’s no oven so don’t bring something that needs reheating in the oven.

We’ll provide the non-alcoholic beverages, plates, napkins, etc. You can bring whatever you want to drink for the members of your party. Keep in mind, however, that any pilot who has flown in who drinks alcohol will not be allowed to fly out. I don’t want our event to be in the newspapers.

I figure we’d start gathering around 10:00 AM and have lunch around 12:00 noon. You’re free to come early and stay as long as you like, but do keep in mind that the chance of isolated T-Storms increases at the day progresses. The property has 360 degree views of the area, so you can clearly see storms coming hours before they arrive.

If you’re interested in camping out, no problem. I’ll be arriving the day before (Sunday, September 5) and will be staying up there for the entire week. The camper has limited sleeping accommodations, however, so I do recommend you bring a tent and sleeping bag. We have a pop-up camper that can be used in a pinch, but it has some mouse damage and I’m not sure whether I’d recommend it.

More about the Landing Zone

The landing zone is covered with small rocks and some grass and small tumbleweed. There are small pinon and juniper pine trees in the area, but plenty of space to park between them. Care must be used when landing a helicopter with a low slung tail. Some dust might kick up on landing and take-off. The landing zone is level. Anyone landing at the landing zone does so at his own risk. Although I consider the landing zone to be easy — I do it in my R22 all the time — the pilot in command is ultimately responsible for making a landing decision.

In making a landing decision, you must consider high density altitude. The elevation is 6700 feet. Daytime temperatures that time of year are in the 75-85 degree range. Wind is usually light, but can be brisk, depending on weather conditions.

If you have never done an off-airport landing at high altitude, please do not make this trip your first time, especially if you are near max gross weight.

100LL fuel is available by self-serve in Williams, AZ, about 15 miles south, and Valle, AZ, about 9 miles north. JetA is available at Grand Canyon airport, which is about 30 NM north and Prescott, AZ, which is about 40 (?) miles south.

Questions? E-mail me. Don’t use the Comment link here to ask a question; I probably won’t see it in time to answer.

How to RSVP

If you’re seriously interested in attending and want to fly in, please click this link to RSVP. Tell me about your helicopter, your flying experience, and the number of people you plan to bring. Also, tell me whether you’d like to camp out before or after the event. If I think you’re up to the challenge of the landing (and sorry, but I do need to be careful about this), I’ll provide you with the GPS coordinates and a “map” of the landing zone. On the day of the party, I’ll be monitoring the Williams/Valle UNICOM frequencies to provide wind and conditions information to arriving pilots.

If you think you might want to drive up, just to join the fun and meet the members of our group, click this link to RSVP. Keep in mind that the location is 5 miles down a relatively rugged dirt road. If it has rained within the past 24 hours, you’ll need 4 wheel drive and some off-road driving skills. But if it is dry, you should be able to make it with a normal car or truck. Keep your sports car in the garage for this one.

Thoughts about My Summer Job

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A Mid-season review of my job at the Grand Canyon.

The other day, a fellow helicopter pilot called me to ask about my job at Papillon. His name is Dave and he’s an R22 owner/pilot like me. I’d met him last year (I think) at the airport in Wickenburg when he came through with his helicopter on a flatbed trailer. He calls himself a “scenery collector” and flies around the country taking photos of the scenery — especially interesting geologic formations — from the air. Now he works as the Chief Flight Instructor for a flight school/aerial photography outfit in Florida, but he’s always thinking ahead.

Dave had seen an ad for a job flying A-Stars in Hawaii. He thought that might be a nice job. (Oddly enough, I think so, too.) Trouble is, he has little or no turbine experience and he knows he can’t get a job like that until he gets some.

Dave was in St. George, UT recently and ran into one or two pilots I know. I don’t know if it was Rod, who flies a helicopter for fire contracts for Papillon or Dusty and Craig who work fire contracts with a SEAT. It might have even been Robin, who runs the helicopter flight school in St. George, or his brother Job, who runs the Millionaire FBO there. (I never realized I knew so many people in St. George. I’ve only been there twice.) Anyway whoever it was reminded him about me. He looked me up on my Web site and gave me a call. By some miracle, I was at my desk and answered the phone.

We had a nice chat. He said he called to find out about working for Papillon. He told me about the Hawaii job and brought me up to date on what he was doing. He said he was thinking of applying at Papillon to get some turbine time. What did I think of working there?

So I thought about it. I’d already been thinking about it, on and off, for the whole summer. But this time, I thought about it in a way that I could provide some kind of conclusion or recommendation.

And this is what I told him.

Working at Papillon can get exceeding tedious at times. I’m the low person on the experience ladder, so I haven’t been trained to do anything except the two basic tours we do: the 25-minute tour in the Dragon Corridor and the 50-minute tour in the Zuni and Dragon Corridors. So that’s what I do. All day long. On average, I make 10-14 trips into the canyon a day. Not much variety.

What can make the work interesting is the weather. Spring brings high winds, sometimes with gusts up to 50 knots before we shut down. That generates turbulence in the canyon when all that wind is rushing over all those weird formations and buttes. Summer brings isolated and scattered thunderstorms, mostly in the afternoon. The challenge is navigating around them without flying into a no-fly zone. Of course, when you get a bit close to one, it’s a bumpy ride. And if you fly under a storm in one of its early stages when you’re out in the canyon, you can expect severe updrafts or downdrafts. Good thing there’s that big ditch under you. And I believe I’ve already gotten a glimpse of what the autumn will bring: low clouds that float below us in the canyon or as ground fog on the north rim. Very pretty, but there will come a day when I have to fly around them, too.

The pay isn’t very good. I won’t get specific, but I will say that I could never survive on that pay. I’m not sure how the rest of the pilots do it. I’m very glad I have another job that I can do on my off weeks to make the money I need to maintain my lifestyle.

And living conditions in Tusayan or Valle are not very pleasant. Imagine sharing a double-wide trailer with three other pilots. Or sharing a fifth-wheel trailer with someone you’ll become very well acquainted with. The closest supermarket is 60 miles away. The closest movie theater (other than IMAX, which plays the same movie all the time) is about 100 miles away. Night life is limited. And everything in the area is extremely overpriced.

Doesn’t sound very good, does it? Well, I’m not finished. There are definite benefits to working at Papillon.

First of all, Papillon is willing to hire piston pilots with as little as 1,000 hours of PIC time. It will train those pilots to fly Bell 206 L-1 C30P Long Ranger helicopters, using a training program that’s very similar to the coveted Bell Transition Course. But rather than take the course in a classroom crammed full of other pilots, Papillon’s training classes are typically 2 to 6 people at a time. And if a pilot needs special attention (as I admit I did for a few things), he’ll get it. The Bell course costs about $6,000 plus living expenses while you’re in Texas for a week. Papillon’s course is free and they pay you while you take it. So there’s a definite benefit to getting transition training with Papillon.

But what’s better than just the training is the extremely challenging conditions you’re thrown into right after you finish. I’m talking about those winds plus flying at high density altitudes (Grand Canyon airport is at 6600 feet) near max gross weight. Only days after learning what torque was, I was battling to keep it under 100% when I took off. And by this time in the summer, it’s common to log 6 or more Hobbs hours a day. Every day. So building time is a definite part of the package.

And, of course, there is the end-of-season bonus that comes when Papillon cuts its pilots loose in October. That makes the pay a little more palatable.

I told all this to Dave. I told him that if he was willing to dedicate an entire summer to Papillon, he’d get the experience he wanted and needed to move on to a turbine helicopter position somewhere else. And, if he didn’t drop out in the middle of the season, he’d earn the respect of Papillon’s management, which could then be depended upon as positive job references.

I think he realized the benefits and the drawbacks. Like me, he doesn’t have to depend on a job like this to survive. He’s still thinking about it, but I have a feeling that unless something else comes along, he’ll be flying at the GC next year.

As for me, one season is enough. I know where I stand with the bosses. They consider me a “Sunday pilot” because I didn’t come to them with a strong background in commercial flying or flight instructing. It doesn’t matter that I have more cross country or solo time than any of their other piston pilot converters. It doesn’t matter that I made solo cross-country trips from Wickenburg to destinations in the Los Angeles area, the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and the western side of the Rockies in Colorado. It doesn’t matter that I’ve been doing tours and rides for the past three years when their other pilots were building time by teaching students how to hover. It doesn’t matter that I can perform as well as — or better than, in some cases — any of the other pilots, sitting in a cockpit for 6 hours straight sometimes, conducting tour after tour. No matter what I do or how I perform for the rest of the season, nothing will change that. So the chances of me getting more training and more varied assignments next year are pretty much nil. And I cannot bear the thought of cranking 50 to 80 passengers a day through the canyon every work day next summer.

So what will I do next summer? I’m thinking about barnstorming in my new R44…anyone want to come along for the ride?

Flying Isn’t Always Fun

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About flying in the afternoon in the Arizona desert.

If you’ve been reading these blog entries, you may recall that about a month ago, I was supposed to fly up to the Grand Canyon early one morning for work and was prevented from doing so by a nasty t-storm over Wickenburg. I was forced to drive that day and was an hour late for work because of it. I promised my boss that from that point on, I’d come up to the area the day before I was due to start work.

Flying in the summer in Arizona — especially central Arizona, where Wickenburg is located — is not much fun. It isn’t bad early in the morning, before the sun has a chance to heat the desert up to its daily high of 100°F+. (When I say early, I mean early: sometime between dawn and 7:00 AM.) During monsoon season, even the morning can be hot and rather sticky, though. But by 10:00 AM, things are starting to get pretty awful. The sun is beating down on everything, heating up the earth and the air. The thermals start, caused by all that hot air wanting to rise. And, with a little bit of moisture in the air, clouds start to form and climb. By afternoon, you have some nice towering cumulonimbus clouds, dropping virga, rain, hail, and lightning in isolated storms all over the place.

What does this have to do with promising to get to the Grand Canyon area the day before I start work? This: Instead of flying up the day I start work, in the cool, calm, predawn air, I fly up the afternoon before I start work, in the hot, turbulent, t-storm-infested air.

Two weeks ago, I had to pick up Three-Niner-Lima from its annual inspection in Prescott. Mike drove me up and we had lunch before I left Prescott. It was after 1 PM when I got out of there and I could clearly see all the t-storms that I had to fly around to reach Howard Mesa. The nastiest was right over Bill Williams mountain and I had to detour to the east to keep out of the virga on its fringes. I landed without incident, tied everything down, and drove the Toyota down to Williams for my groceries. There was some rain on the mesa that night and other rain during the week.

Three-Niner-Lima in SmokeI flew my helicopter to work four of the six days that week and enjoyed calm air in the morning. Unfortunately, a controlled burn in the forest east of the airport filled the airport area with smoke every morning; one morning I needed a special VFR clearance to land because the smoke was so thick. (Photo shows Three-Niner-Lima parked on a transient helipad for the day; the building in the background on the far right is Papillon’s tower. That’s not fog; it’s smoke.) The afternoon is another story. One afternoon was particularly nasty, with a t-storm east of Valle that I had to steer clear of. A sudden gust of wind slapped me sideways and shot my airspeed from 85 knots to 100 knots in a flash. (I hate when that happens.) But I did see my first circular rainbow that afternoon, so I really can’t complain.

Today was no fun at all. The temperature in Wickenburg at 11:30 AM was already about 100�F when I fueled up. I was so hot as I waited for the engine to warm up that I took my shirt off, content to fly in my shorts and sport bra. (Heck, it isn’t like anyone can see into the cockpit while I’m airborne.) I also took my Keds off, trying to get the sun on the tops of my feet. Every summer I get a Keds tan on my feet that I really hate. The best way to get rid of it is to fly with my shoes off. The thermal updrafts started on me before I even crossed route 93 (about 3 miles north of the airport) and Three-Niner-Lima felt sluggish with its full tanks of fuel. I climbed at a mere 70 knots and felt no relief from the heat until I was in the Prescott area. There was a t-storm southeast of Prescott, in the Bradshaw Mountains, and another one west of Chino Valley, out toward Bagdad. I flew between them. I got bounced around a bit, but not too badly. Unfortunately, with my temperature (30�C) / altitude (6500 ft) combination, the never exceed speed was only 82 knots. That speed wasn’t limited by power, either. I’m sure I could have gotten it up to a steady 90 knots if I wanted to. But Robinson claims that flying above never exceed speed, especially at high altitudes or when heavy, can cause damage to main rotor blades. And believe me, the last thing in the world I want to damage is my main rotor blades. So I flew slowly.

I also flew high. Well, higher than usual. You see, on my flights from Wickenburg to Howard Mesa, I basically have two mountain ranges to cross. The first is the Weavers. I leave the airport and immediately start to climb so by the time I reach the Weavers I’m at around 5500 feet so I can cross them. There’s a high desert valley beyond it (Peeples Valley, Kirkland Junction, Kirkland, Skull Valley, etc.) but I don’t usually descend because I’ll have to be at at least 6500 to go around the north end of the Bradshaws, just west of Granite Mountain. Then there’s Chino Valley and Paulden. But beyond them is another mountain range — so to speak. It’s the Mogollon Rim, just south of Billl Williams Mountain, I-40, and the town of Williams. I have to climb to 7500 or thereabouts to cross through that area. So almost the whole time I’m flying to Howard Mesa, I’m climbing.

Today I had a scare. I was about 1500 feet AGL (above ground level, for you non-pilots) when I caught sight of a small plane at my altitude. It crossed in front of me about two miles away and, as I watched, it banked to the right and headed straight for me.

I don’t know what radio frequency he was on. There is no frequency for that area. So talking to him was not an option. I put on my landing light in an effort to make myself more visible. He leveled out on a collision course, less than a mile away. I did what any other helicopter pilot would do: I dumped the collective and started a 1500 foot per minute descent.

I think it was this sudden movement that caught his attention. He suddenly veered to the left. But I wasn’t taking any chances. I kept descending until I was a comfortable 500 feet AGL. Right where I should be. And right where most planes won’t fly.

He passed behind me. I switched to Prescott’s frequency and, a moment later, heard a Cessna call from Chino Valley. Obviously the pilot who’d shaken me up.

A few minutes later, I saw a helicopter cross my path, west to east. It was pretty far off in the distance — a few miles, perhaps. It looked like it might be a LifeNet helicopter. But if it was, I didn’t know where he was going. He seemed to be headed toward Sedona.

The rest of the flight was pretty uneventful. There was a t-storm to the east of Howard Mesa, still pretty far off. And a forest fire on the south rim, far to the east of where we fly in the canyon. I landed, cooled it down a good long time (I never saw the oil temperature get that hot on a flight, but it was still in the green), and shut down.

Tomorrow morning, I’ll fly to the Grand Canyon airport and report for work. It’ll be a nice flight.

Election Year Blues

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I am amazed by what some people are saying about the presidential candidates.

I don’t make a habit of using my Web site as a forum for voicing my political views — especially political views on the presidential level — especially during an election year.

But the other day I got a phone call from my sister-in-law, Missy. Missy had heard on the radio that the democratic candidate, John Kerry, was coming to the Grand Canyon on a campaign stop. (I really did have to wonder about that. The vast majority of people at the GC are not registered to vote in the U.S., probably because they don’t live in the U.S. I suspect he just wanted to see the GC and figured he’d make the trip a write-off by doing it on his campaign tour.) I’m not quite sure why Missy brought this to my attention. Perhaps she thought I was at the GC. (She did call me on my cell phone.) But it got us talking about the candidates.

My brother and his wife live in New Jersey. Like many people who live in New Jersey, they’re in tune with reality (as opposed to the current fairy tale about truth, justice, and the American way spun by the republican party and its chief talking head, George Jr.). Like me, they believe that the current president sold the country a bill of goods when he claimed a war in Iraq was necessary to prevent Saddam Hussein from wiping us out with his weapons of mass destruction (WMD). I’m not sure why he really started that war, but I do recall his repeated claims at a press conference that we were going to “change the world.” Perhaps he wanted to go down in history books as the president who changed the world? Or maybe his motives were more basic: a desire to help out his Texas buddies and their friends with lucrative contracts for the rebuilding of Iraq.

Anyway, Missy told me she was really caught up in the election stuff this year. I told her I was looking forward to the debates. I said that Kerry would wipe the floor with George Jr. Although I believe George is an excellent speaker and can read a speech so well that even I can start believing and (heaven help me) agreeing with him, I don’t think he’ll be able to answer the questions in a debate without resorting to pre-rehearsed speeches. I’m just curious to see how much he can memorize in advance, how well he can match those canned responses with live questions, and how much the panel of questioners let him get away with.

Missy also brought up something that I’d noticed and had me concerned. It was the fact that the pro-Bush people were extremely pro-Bush to the extent that they wouldn’t even discuss Bush’s shortcomings or Kerry’s strengths. It was like these people were brainwashed. Very scary. Needless to say, it’s keeping me pretty quiet where I know I’m around Bush supporters.

It reminds me of something that happened when I was a freshman in college. Mind you, I was 17 years old at the time and this has stuck with me since it happened. It was in economics class. The professor had a discussion going and a guy named Mike from Pennsylvania stated “America is the greatest country in the world.” That’s a fine statement, but when the professor asked him why, he couldn’t explain why. He just kept repeating his original statement, as if it were an explanation. Another guy in the class whose name was also Mike, was all over that. Soon a mini war had erupted with PA Mike repeating his statement over and over while the other Mike (let’s call him Commie Mike) kept giving all kinds of examples of why America might not be the greatest country in the world. Poor PA Mike was terribly upset — kind of like a staunch republican having to listen to evidence that Bush may have known all along that Iraq didn’t have WMD. And Commie Mike was getting frustrated, trying to debate an issue with a person who just couldn’t argue his side. The professor just sat back in his chair with a smile on his face. We were getting a lesson — at least I was — and he wasn’t doing a thing.

Anyway, I don’t think much of Bush. I don’t think much of Kerry, either, but he’s got to be better than another four years of Bush. I don’t think we should be in Iraq. I don’t think we should have alienated ourselves from the rest of the western world. I think the U.S. should be a team player; not the bully with the best toys who starts trouble with less fortunate kids. I also think we should work on freeing ourselves from dependence on foreign oil — or any oil. Heck, the world will run out sooner or later. And I think the government should be more concerned with U.S. jobs going overseas and affordable health care than whether Iraq has good roads and sewer systems.

But heck, that’s just me. What do I know?

Work in Progress

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About the work I’ve started that I’ll probably never finish.

I started writing a novel when I was thirteen. It was an adventure/love story, based roughly on an image I’d had in a dream. I wrote it in a series of five college-ruled notebooks, single-spaced, in the crude printed handwriting of a teenager. I actually finished it, although I can’t remember how long it took. When it was finished, it was about five hundred pages long.

It sat in a locked drawer for years. When my family moved, I took it with me. By that time, I’d started another novel, this one about a successful business woman who was targeted for murder by a rival businessman. I was in my late teens when I started it and it was far more mature than the first book. It covered pages in two thick college-ruled notebooks. I never finished it.

In 1984, I bought my first computer, an Apple IIc. One of the first things I did with it was to type the work I’d done on the second novel into the word processor that came with the computer: AppleWorks. The pages filled several 5-1/4″ disks. You know — the old “floppy” kind. I added pages to the work as time went on. I also dug out that first novel and began rewriting it, now with the knowledge of a 23-year-old.

Time went on. In 1989, I bought my first Macintosh. I wasted no time coming up with a method that would transfer all those bytes of fiction from the old computer’s floppy disks to the hard disk on my new computer. It required a special serial cable and a telecommunications program. I basically downloaded the information from one computer to the other. The limited formatting I’d been able to apply in AppleWorks was lost, but at least I didn’t have to retype hundreds of pages of text.

The first novel nagged at me. I worked on it regularly, changing the story but never finishing it. Instead, I started a second book with some of the same characters two years later. Then went back and started a book with some of the same characters a year before the first book. They became named Book 2, Book 3, and Book 1. One of the characters that was supposed to die at the end of Book 3 managed to survive. (He was too good a guy to lose.) He came back in Book 4. And I even have some ideas about Book 5, although I haven’t actually started it yet.

I’ve also written short stories about some of the characters. The stories were written as a means of clearing my head about prior events in a character’s life. You see, all of my major characters had lives before I started writing about them. It’s important to know about those lives to accurately write about each character’s actions and motivations.

What does all this mean? At this point, I have the modern version of an unfinished book I started writing nearly 30 years ago, as well as hundreds of pages of fiction about the same characters. I carry the files around with me on my laptop and keep a backup copy on my desktop computer’s hard disk, as well as in a Backup folder on my .Mac account.

When I’m on the road and want something to read, I open up one of the book files. I enjoy the story very much. Sometimes I read what I’ve written and am proud of my work. Other times, I read passages that I know need to be fixed up. Some of the passages are especially awful; I’m not too vain to admit it. Sometimes I add new scenes. Other times I make minor corrections to existing text. I’ve put hundreds — if not thousands — of hours into this work. But it isn’t done.

At this point, I don’t think it’ll ever be done. It’s a personal work, something I think I write just for myself. It would be great to see it in print, but at the same time, I wonder what people would think of me after they’ve read it. Some parts are very violent, not unlike some of the action/adventure movies that Hollywood keeps churning out. I find it entertaining, an escape from reality. My escape.

I’ve got other novels in progress as well. A bunch of years ago, I started writing a mystery that I got about 5 chapters into before I stalled. Last year, I started another mystery with some of the same characters. These pieces, if I ever finish them, will be marketable and I’ll do everything I can to see them in print.

So when I complain about writers block, as I did in a previous blog entry, it’s my inability to work on these pieces of fiction that’s the problem. Sure, I can write computer how-to books when an editor is waiting for them. The big motivation there is the milestone advance payments that are dangled like a carrot in front of my face. No computer books, no money. No money, no life. Pretty simple. I can also write blog entries because they’re easy and they help clear my mind of the things that clutter it. But fiction? Adding to a work in progress is like squeezing water from a stone.

Anyone else out there in the same situation? I’d be interested in hearing what you do to overcome this problem.