The Presidential Debates

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My take on this year’s debates and other semi-related matters.

I don’t want to get too political in these blogs. After all, I know that some people have very strong feelings for or against a specific candidate and I don’t want to completely alienate myself from these people.

I’ve been watching bits and pieces of the debates. I say bits and pieces because, frankly, I don’t like debates in general and these debates are among the worst I’ve ever seen.

Here’s the way I see it. A debate should consist of two people with different opinions and views logically presenting their views in a way to convince the audience that their views are right. It should not consist of two people pointing out the shortcomings of each other, offering false evidence as support of claims, or defending themselves against the other’s comments.

From the bits and pieces I’ve seen, both candidates are spending the majority of their time accusing their opponents of various bad decisions and bad results or defending themselves against these claims. George W Bush is, by far, the worst of the bunch in this respect. Last night’s debate — of which I heard 30 minutes from another room and watched 15 minutes on television — showed him in defensive mode almost the entire time. For example, when John Kerry tried hard to present his plan for balancing the budget. Rather than present his plan, Bush blasted Kerry, saying that he wouldn’t keep his word. I still don’t know what Bush plans to do about the budget and how his plan might differ from Kerry’s. Bush came across as a crybaby and, at one point, I actually felt sorry for him.

I watched a tiny bit of the Cheney vs. Edwards debate the other night. I don’t like Cheney. I think he’s evil. The kind of guy James Bond might go after. But I was extremely impressed at the way Edwards held up against him. In fact, Edwards looked pretty good. And Cheney did make a huge blunder when he referred people to FactCheck.com rather than FactCheck.org. The folks at FactCheck.com, which was bombarded with hits that overwhelmed their server, set up a refresh to GeorgeSoros.com. George Soros is about as anti-Bush/Cheney as they get. So Cheney indirectly referred people to a site that blasted him. And, to make matters worse, FactCheck.org, the correct site, wrote an article saying that their site did not say what Cheney claimed it did. It then presented an objective review of the debate that didn’t make Mr. Cheney look very good at all.

Personally, I wish the debates had more substance. I wish the candidates would stick to the topics and not waste so much time blasting each other or defending themselves. This has got to be the dirtiest campaign I’ve ever witnessed. So much mud-slinging about things that aren’t important.

One more thing, although it really doesn’t have to do with the debates. I heard a story on NPR yesterday about how the Bush campaign is using the Secret Service and local police (which are both paid for with our tax dollars) to keep possible Kerry supporters out of Bush presidential campaign rallies. This is to ensure that when Bush speaks, everyone laughs at his jokes or chants “flip-flop” at the appropriate time or boos the competition when prompted.

I think this is wrong on many levels. First of all, America is supposed to be a free country and our Constitution gives us the right to attend public gatherings, including public appearances of the president. Second, why is the president so afraid of a few possible Kerry supporters in the audience? It is because he can’t handle the possibility of a little heckling? If so, how is he able to handle more difficult matters, including the War he’s dragged us into (under what are not proven to be false pretenses), the huge deficit, the sagging economy, and the health care crisis we face? (My health insurance premiums just went up $200 per quarter!) Third, why should the security services taxpayers fund — the Secret Service and local police — be used to keep taxpayers out of a public gathering when they pose no security threat?

John Kerry doesn’t do anything to keep out Bush supporters. John Kerry can handle the heckling he gets at rallys. Who looks like the better man now?

On Close Calls

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Why a control tower clearance is something to be taken with a grain of salt.

When you fly in airspace controlled by a control tower, you’d think that a controller clearance would be a green light to do what you were cleared to do. Unfortunately, controllers can give a green light to other traffic that might just conflict with you. I’ve had this happen four times in the past six months.

The first three times were at Grand Canyon airport (GCN) while I worked for Papillon. Papillon has a heliport with eleven helipads. The area behind the pads, which is known as “the meadow,” is our departure and landing point. To depart, we back off a pad, maneuver to the meadow, contact the tower, get a clearance, and depart using either north or south traffic, whichever is on the ATIS. On average, Papillon operates about nine helicopters during the busy summer season.

There are two other helicopter operators at the canyon. Both have considerably smaller heliports south of Papillon’s. Grand Canyon Helicopters operates three helicopters from its location. AirStar operates four helicopters at its location. So you have about 16 helicopters operating on an average busy day, all out of the same general area of the airport: the northeast corner.

Close CallNow look at the picture here. In the first two close call incidents, I was the red line, which got clearance to depart to the southeast. In one incident, the blue line (Grand Canyon Helicopters) got a clearance right after me to depart to the west. In another incident, the green line (AirStar) got a clearance right after me to depart to the west. In both cases, I had to alert the departing pilots — on the tower frequency — that I was in their departure path. In one case, I actually began evasive maneuvers when the pilot didn’t appear to hear me. Mind you, the tower had given all of us clearance so we were all “cleared” to depart. Scary, no?

Close CallLet’s look at another close call. In the picture to the right, I was the red line with a clearance to depart to the northeast. The blue line had just gotten a clearance to depart to the northwest. Because he took off before me, we were on a collision course. But I’d been listening and I heard him get the clearance. So when I took off, I kept an eye out for him and made sure I passed behind him.

I’m not trying to get anyone in trouble here. Believe me, in the first two incidents I made quite a bit of noise on the radio to the tower for handing out two conflicting clearances. Unfortunately, they did it to a few other pilots before one of them got on the phone and made some noise. Near the end of the season, the tower was very good about alerting us to possible conflicting helicopter traffic, even when the possibility of a conflict was minor.

Close Call 2 IllustrationMy most recent controlled close call incident was two days ago. I’d gone down to Chandler to meet a friend for lunch. I landed at the Quantum ramp at Chandler Airport (CHD). We had lunch and returned at close to 1 PM — just when Quantum’s training ships were returning. I asked for and got clearance to hover-taxi to the heliport’s landing pad. I then asked for and got an Alpha departure clearance. This requires me to take off from the helipad and follow a canal that runs beside the airport (and helipad) to the north (the red line). When I got my clearance, the tower alerted me to an inbound helicopter that was crossing over the field. I did not hear that helicopter get a landing clearance, but he may have gotten it from Chandler’s south frequency, which I was not monitoring (because I could not). I took off along the canal just as the other helicopter (the purple line) turned left to follow the canal in. We were definitely on a head-on collision course. I saw this unfolding and diverted to the west, just as the tower said something silly like, “Use caution for landing helicopter.” Duh. I told the tower I was moving out of the way to the west. There was no problem. But I wonder what that student pilot thought. Or what Neil, owner of the company, thought as he hovered near the landing pads in an R44, watching us converge.

The point of all this is, when you get a tower clearance, that doesn’t mean you can stop scanning for traffic. That should never stop. Controllers are human and they can make mistakes. And frankly, I believe that they are so concerned with airplane traffic that they tend to get a bit complacent when it comes to dealing with helicopters.

Consider Grand Canyon tower. With 16 helicopters operating in and out of the airport all day long, all on predefined arrival and departure routes, things get pretty routine. The pilots all know what they’re doing. The tower knows the pilots will do the same thing each time they get a clearance. There’s no chance of misunderstanding an instruction because the instructions are part of pilot training and an average pilot will fly ten or more flights per day when working. It’s like a well-oiled machine. The problem arises when the controller gives clearances for departure paths that will cross in flight. Although the controller should not do this (my opinion), it happens. It’s then up to the pilot to listen for all clearances and spot other aircraft that might conflict.

Chandler tower deals with helicopter traffic from Quantum and Rotorway. Again, these pilots know the arrival and departure paths. And, in most cases, there’s a CFI on board, someone who has been flying out of Chandler for at least a year. The tower probably hands out clearances without thinking too much about them. After all, the helicopters will remain clear of the fixed wing traffic, and that’s their primary concern.

As a helicopter pilot, I’ve come to understand all this. And although I wish controllers would be a little more cautious when issuing clearances, I’m not too concerned about me hitting someone else. I use my eyes and my ears to monitor my surroundings. I can slow down — or even stop in midair! — to avoid a collision. I can also descend very rapidly and, if I’m not too heavy, climb pretty rapidly, too. I can also make very sharp turns. In short, my ability to avoid a collision is much better than the average fixed wing pilot’s.

What does worry me, however, is the possibility of a less experienced or less familiar pilot acting on a clearance that puts him on a collision course with me in a position where I can’t see him. Suppose I’d taken off on an Alpha departure at Chandler and had gained some altitude. Suppose the other helicopter was not in front of me, but coming up on my right side, slightly behind me with a solo student pilot at the controls. That pilot could have still been tuned into the south tower frequency. So even if the north controller had issued his “use caution” warning, the student pilot would not have heard him. I wouldn’t have seen him. He could have hit me. Scary thought.

Of course, you can play what if all day long. If you come up with enough scary scenarios, you’ll park your aircraft in the hangar and leave it there. That’s not me. I’ll keep flying.

And keep looking.

My Summer Job is Over

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I fulfill my contractual obligation and ask to be taken off the schedule.

The main reason I bailed out was because of my other work. You know. The work that pays enough to live well and afford things like a helicopter. The books.

In September, I flew one week, took the next week off for vacation (covered elsewhere in these blogs), and flew the next week. Somewhere around the middle of that third week, I got a desperate e-mail from my editor. I’d gotten 2/3 of my Excel QuickProject Guide done before I started my three weeks away from home. She had the frightening news that if the book wasn’t printed by November, Barnes and Noble would cancel their order for it. Talk about a wake-up call. Or wake-up e-mail.

So although I really LIKE flying at the canyon, I had to remember where the money was coming from and stop neglecting it. The truth of the matter is, I made more money writing any ONE of the books I finished this summer than I did for the whole summer as a pilot.

What’s odd about THAT (to me, anyway) is that flying a helicopter is a highly skilled task. Sure, anyone can be TAUGHT to do it, but it takes thousands of dollars worth of training to earn the necessary ratings and then at least 1,000 hours of flight time to get a real job doing it. That’s quite an investment in time and money. Contrast that to writing the computer books I write. Yeah, I spend time learning the software and sure, I have to buy hardware and software to outfit my office, but it doesn’t nearly approach the commitment I made when I decided to fly professionally. So I get more bang for the buck (or perhaps I should say buck for the bang?) when I write than when I fly.

But flying is a lot more fun.

The other reason I bailed out is the Jeckle & Hyde personality swap of one of Papillon’s middle managers. I used to think he was a good guy. But we had a little run-in when I thought he was being extremely unfair to me and he reported me to the big boss. The big boss and I had a chat. I explained my position and stuck to it. The big boss didn’t seem to think I was being outrageous. He probably didn’t think the middle boss was being outrageous either, though. Frankly, it was a case of two wrongs not making a right.

But what’s weird about it is the way the middle boss began treating me afterwards. It came to a head on my last day when he tried to pick a fight with me on the flight line. Wow. I don’t need any of THAT. Not for what I was being paid.

I had an exit interview with the big boss. That’s not what he’d call it, I’m sure. That’s a term from my corporate days, when a person had a final meeting with a boss or HR person to discuss things about the job. I told him what I thought about the job and the middle boss and all kinds of things. He listened. That’s all I wanted. He even took a few notes, which is more than I expected. I told him he could call me if he needed me and I thanked him for the opportunity of flying at the canyon. It had been a privilege, one I’ll miss. And then he thanked me, which made me feel really good.

So now I’m back in the real world of deadlines and phone calls and sitting on my butt in front of a computer all day long. I finished the delayed book yesterday, after only two more days of work. My editor is breathing a sigh of relief. I’ll write two articles I owe to InFormIT for their Web site. I’ll take care of all the bills I’ve neglected over the past month. I’ll do my taxes. (Hey, no comments. I do know it’s almost October.) I’ll sell my R22 and apply for a loan for the R44. I’ll start the next book on my schedule and knock it off in record time.

And next year, I’ll have a different summer job you can read about here.

The Frightened Passenger

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A passenger overcomes her fear while over the Grand Canyon.

She was from England, in her mid to late fifties, thin and tall. She had some difficulty with her headset and I helped her out. She didn’t tell me she was nervous. She didn’t have to. I could tell by the way she grasped her seat bottom as we took off.

We were on north traffic in and out of the airport. North traffic, for a North Canyon tour puts me on a zig-zag course over the forest northwest of the airport. The first two turns are sharp turns to the left. I’m allowed to bank up to 30° with passengers on board, and the first turn, at the Moki, needs it. As we turned and the helicopter leaned to the left, my passenger leaned to the right. I was a bit more gradual with the second left, but she leaned all the same.

The passenger clung to her seat bottom, staring straight ahead. I was just starting to wonder if she’d ever let go when she became interested in the view of the canyon, which was coming up on our right. She released her seat and began fiddling with her camera. She snapped off a picture or two and then I was making a turn to the right and she was holding onto her seat for dear life again.

This happened throughout the flight. She’d release the seat to take a few photos, then grab on again as I made a turn or some mild turbulence bumped us around. I’d seen people like her before and I knew she was okay about the flight. I tried to ignore her, since she was a bit distracting. She really broadcasted the helicopter’s minor movements to me — movements I usually had no real control over.

At the end of the 25-minute flight, I came into the airport with one last sharp left turn. I set down at my helipad, throttled down to idle, and turned to thank the passengers.

My frightened passenger was all smiles. “I was so scared!” she shouted to me. “Thank you! Thank you!” And then she hugged me tightly — a difficult task, given that I was strapped into my seat, wearing my headset, and not expecting it. She thanked me a few more times for good measure, saying how wonderful the flight had been. She shook my hand, too. I told her she made my day.

And then she was gone, rejoined with her friends outside the helicopter, telling them how great she thought the flight was.

So if anyone asks why I’ve taken on a job that pays a fraction of what I make in my other job, I can tell them about the frightened passenger and the big hug she gave me when we landed.

On Being a Professional Writer

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Some thoughts on writing for a living.

I make my living as a writer. And I make a very good living.

When people ask me what I do, I tell them I’m a writer. The next question is usually, “Oh, have you had anything published?”

Hello? How can you make a living as a writer if you haven’t had anything published? After all, the money comes from the publishers. It doesn’t come out of thin air just because you spent time putting words on paper or in a word processor. Or in a blog, for that matter.

I’ve written 58 books since 1990. True, most of those books were revisions. Like my Mac OS books, which have been bestsellers since the very first edition. That was about Mac OS 8 back in 1998. I revised it for 8.5, 8.6, 9.0, 9.1, X, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3. I’m going to start work on the 10.4 edition soon.

I learned very early on in this field that if I wanted to make a living as a writer, I had to write a lot and get it all published. So I learned to write my computer books extremely quickly, giving my publishers just what they wanted pretty darn close to the day they wanted it by. Publishers like that. They don’t want to work with prima donas who won’t do things their way. They don’t want to work with writers who can’t deliver on time. Because I met the needs of my publishers, they gave me a lot of assignments. I always had work to do. And since these books only last 12 to 18 months (on average), I needed to keep working. Even a bestseller doesn’t pay a dime when it’s out of date.

I had two bestsellers: the aforementioned Mac OS books and my Quicken books. The Mac OS books continue to do well. I’m extremely proud of the latest edition, which is over 600 pages long and full of great information. The next edition will be even better. The Quicken books aren’t doing as well these days. I think the market is saturated. I have other thoughts on this, but I’ve been advised to keep them to myself and I agree it’s probably a good idea.

Bestsellers are nice. They generate big checks. I wish I could have 10 bestsellers, all at the same time. Then maybe I’d have a little house on top of Howard Mesa instead of a camper with a pair of bad batteries.

If you’ve been reading these blogs, you know that I have a summer job as a pilot. It isn’t quite over yet, but it will be soon enough. Some people think I got the job because I needed the extra money. In all honesty, the job is a money sucker. The pay is terrible and I probably spend as much money commuting to work by helicopter as I earn each day. (But heck, it sure beats the 40-minute drive in the Jeep.) And every day I’m away from my office is a day I can’t work on a book. So I’m losing money when I’m flying. Good thing I enjoy doing it.

This summer, I worked a 7 days on/7 days off schedule. But I fiddled with that a bit and got it set up as 5 days on/9 days off for much of the summer. As a result, I was able to go home and work on books. I revised my Quicken book in June. I worked on my new Word Visual QuickProject Guide in July and August. And this month, I started my new Excel Visual QuickProject Guide. I have another Word book (a revision) and my Mac OS X book (a revision) lined up after these. So there’s plenty of work to do.

I also got some work writing articles for a Web site. I can write those when I’m away at my summer job. I use my laptop. They don’t pay as well as a book, but I can knock one off in a few hours. And it’s kind of nice to write about a bunch of different things rather than just one main thing.

There are lots of people out there who want to be writers. I’ve met many of them. I was even pretty good friends with one or two. But they just didn’t get it. They didn’t understand that if you want to write for a living, you must write what the publishers want so they’ll buy it. If the publishers don’t buy it, you won’t make any money on it.

And don’t talk to me about self publishing. I have a friend who went that route and still has a garage full of books. Five different titles! Self publishing is risky. There’s a huge cash outlay involved and if you don’t know how to market (or sell) your book, you’ll never make any of that money back.

Yes, the key word here is sell. Sell your writing, sell yourself.

If you do it well enough, you can have a very nice lifestyle. After all, it’s nice to be able to make your own hours, work in your pajamas, take vacation anytime you want. Those are the perks of being self-employed. But you have to work to earn those perks. Pay dues, so to speak.

What a disjointed blog entry this is! But sometimes it’s nice to write something that you don’t have to sell. I guess that’s what these blogs are all about.