On Accidents That Aren’t Accidents

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How I’m spared from being the victim of the government’s bureaucracy.

If you read my jumper story (in an earlier entry of this blog) and you know anything about the FAA and NTSB and the rules and regulations they operate under, you might be wondering why they hadn’t classified the event as an “accident.”

Unfortunately, they did.

If you search the NTSB’s Web site for accident reports, using the word “suicide” as a search word, you’ll find one case very similar to mine. In that case, the jumper went up with a CFI and dove out during a steep turn that he’d requested. Although the CFI was not at fault — heck, the passenger committed suicide! — the case was classified as an accident.

And my case was going the same way.

Papillon fought back. Not just for me, but for them, too. They didn’t want an accident on their record any more than I did. Although the event met the definition of an accident (which really needs to be revised, in my opinion), common sense says that the word “accident” does not apply to a suicide. There was nothing accidental about it. (The guy purposely undid his seatbelt, pushed his door open against a 100-knot wind, and jumped.) The trick was to get the NTSB to disregard their definition and classify this as something less damaging to the pilot’s or operator’s flight records.

It went all the way to Washington, involving people from the FAA, NTSB, Department of the Interior, and HAI. I even tried to get AOPA involved, but they lamely claimed that you couldn’t fight NTSB on its accident definition. (Good thing I didn’t pay for their legal services plan.) Someone must have talked sense to the bureaucrats, because the other night I got a voicemail message with the good news: they’d changed the classification from accident to something else. What that something else is is still a question. I’ll find out tomorrow.

If there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s this: don’t let a passenger jump out of your helicopter. Not only is it a traumatic experience, but it results in a ton of paperwork.

Happy Birthday to Me

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I get another year older and think about my added experiences.

Tomorrow is my birthday.

I’d rather not say here how old I am. I will admit that I’m one of the oldest pilots at Papillon (although not one of the most experienced). And I’ll admit that among my circle of friends, I haven’t been the youngest in quite a while. And I’ll also admit that the signs of age are beginning to show in the way I look and feel.

But I’m not over the hill yet. And I certainly haven’t even reached the top of that hill. I don’t expect to do that until I’m in my 60s.

What has happened in the past year? Let’s review.

On this date last year, I was at Bar 10 Ranch on the north rim of the Grand Canyon, hanging around with the pilots and the folks who were preparing to take a trip down the Colorado River. I’d spent the morning at the bottom of the canyon, chatting with the river runners. I played pool in the afternoon, with pool cues so bad that I bought two new ones when I got home and immediately shipped them to Bar 10 as replacements.

PhotoI wrote a bunch of books, mostly revisions. Quicken 2004: The Official Guide, which I finished earlier in June, was published. That was followed by Microsoft Word 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide (expanded to 600+ pages!), Microsoft Excel 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, QuickBooks Pro 6 for Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide. As I write this, I’m finishing up Quicken 2005: The Official Guide and have two new titles and a revision under contract for the rest of the summer. Oh, yeah. I revised the Spreadsheet chapter for the latest edition (I’ve lost count) of The Macintosh Bible. The Panther book sold like crazy and continues to sell well, although returns from the Jaguar book are eating into royalties now.

I also wrote two 10 QuickStep Guides for David Lawrence. One is about writing a book proposal and the other is about the new features in Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

I don’t think I wrote a single magazine article. I did, however, write a white paper for FileMaker, Inc. about using Excel with FileMaker Pro. They paid me a nice sum of money for the work. And I got to revise it for FileMaker Pro 7, too. (I really ought to finish that up.)

PhotoI bought a new car. It’s my midlife crisis car, a Honda S2000. Very fast. Very difficult to keep clean on the dusty roads where I live. In 10 months, I put only 4500 miles on it. Heck, this car has to last the rest of my life. I’ll drive the Jeep into the ground first. I sold my RC Helicopter, which I wasn’t flying. Heck, it’s easier to fly the real thing.

I flew my R22 all the way to Placerville, CA. I discovered, on arrival, that I’d forgotten to pay my insurance bill. I got that settled and flew home via the Owens Valley. I’ll never do THAT again.

I leased Tristan Charney’s R44 for the winter, using it to give short rides all over the desert. That convinced me to buy my own R44.

I got a job with Papillon Grand Canyon Airways, doing helicopter tours over the Grand Canyon. I learned a lot and I’m still learning a lot.

I gave up my contract as the Fuel Manager at Wickenburg Airport. Or at least tried to. I’m still on the hook until August. Am I going to party THAT DAY!

And now, as I sit in my sweltering office (the air conditioner must have turned off a little while ago), I’m trying to decide what to do for my birthday. I’m not coming up with too many ideas. On July 1, I have to report for duty at Papillon again, so I only have one day and I’d better not blow it.

Tonight, I think we’ll do a night flight to Falcon Field so Mike can buy me dinner.

Writer’s Block Sucks

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For the first time in my life, I suffer from a serious case of writer’s block.

Prolific. That’s the word that has often been applied to me. And so it should. After all, I’ve produced more than 55 books in 12 years. In one very busy year alone, I did 10 revisions.

But things just aren’t the same these days. Writing the books that pay the bills — computer how-to books about software like Quicken, Microsoft Word, and Mac OS X — has become real work for me. The kind of work I try to avoid doing because I simply don’t want to.

Writing Blog entries has become tough, too. I think of topics while I’m driving or showering — my two best times for thinking — and when I get in front of a computer, the words just won’t come. So I waste time surfing the ‘Net (a form of procrastination) or, worse yet, watching television.

But what’s really bothering me is my complete inability to write fiction. I’m working on a number of projects. Some of them have been in progress for years and I don’t expect to ever finish them. But one of them is something I want to finish, something I want to try to have published. I’m about four chapters into it and I’m at a complete standstill.

I’m not happy about that.

I try to force myself to write, to make personal deadlines for pages or words or chapters. But when the word processing screen is before me and the insertion point is blinking away at the start of a fresh line, I just can’t make the words come.

So I write blog entries (as I’m doing now) as a kind of consolation prize. I’m writing, aren’t I? That’s better than surfing or watching television.

I feel lost and frustrated. I have a number of other book ideas that I want to work on. They’re not fiction and I’m pretty sure I can sell them. They’ll have longer shelf lives than the computer books I usually write. But I can’t seem to get started on them.

And then there’s the 10 Quick Step Guides that I promised David Lawrence. He’s all ready to publish them. He has a willing audience. But I can’t seem to write them.

Writer’s block. That’s what it is. Like insomnia: you want to sleep but you can’t. You need to sleep but you can’t. I want to write. I need to write. But I can’t.

Let’s hope I get over this soon. I don’t know how long I can handle this lack of productivity.

What I’m Learning About Flying Helicopters

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My first real job as a pilot is actually the next step in my learning experience.

Before I started working at Papillon, my only flying experiences had been in Robinson R22 and R44 helicopters, with an hour here and there in a Bell 47, Rotorway Exec, and Hughes 500c. I was a piston pilot. I knew Robinson helicopters extremely well. And I knew the basics of flying any other helicopter.

The work I do at Papillon is taking me to the next level. Actually, it may be helping me skip a few levels to get to a much higher level.

A New (to Me) Ship

The first big difference is the ship I’m flying. No, it’s not a state of the art Eurocopter or fancy NOTAR ship. It’s a plain old (emphasis on old) Bell 206L1 Long Ranger with the Allison C30P conversion. The engine conversion gives it more power than a standard 206L1. And that’s a good thing, because at the Canyon, we need all the power we can get.

Ground school covered all the details of how the ship’s systems work. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t fully understand everything I was taught. But I understood enough to pass a check ride and to intelligently preflight every morning.

Starting is a challenge. The problem is hot starts — getting the turbine outlet temperature (TOT) too high during start. It’s evidently easier to hot start when you start off the helicopter’s battery. So when you’re new at Papillon, they encourage you to start with an APU (auxiliary power unit). I’m not taking any chances. I’ve been flying for about two months and I still always start with an APU.

Learning about Torque

Another challenge is flying without overtorquing the engine. There’s a torque meter that displays the current power setting. I equate it with the manifold pressure gauge on an R22/R44. But they’re very different. If you redline an R22, the worst that can happen is that you get a rotor RPM droop. If you overtorque a turbine engine, all kinds of inspections have to be done. And if you really overtorque it, it’ll cost $100,000 to fix things back up the way they should be. Although Papillon won’t take that out of my paycheck, I still don’t want to be the one who does it.

Of course, there isn’t much of a chance of overtorquing in cruise flight. It’s when you’re hovering, taking off, or landing that it’s more likely to happen. And that’s where my re-education began.

Trouble is, the Robinson taught me that when I’m landing, I can reduce power on the way down and pull it all back in relatively quickly at the bottom, to come to a landing. Doing that in a 206 could easily result in an overtorque or a hard landing. So I learned to reduce power well before I begin my descent. Then, as I’m coming down, I increase power. The result is a smooth, controlled landing to a hover.

And let’s not even talk about what the Robinson taught me about pulling power at take-off! If I did that in the 206, I’d be overtorquing at least once a day.

Another interesting thing about torque is that pressing the left pedal increases torque. This can really get you into trouble in a crosswind. If you let it start getting away from you, rotating to the right, you can quickly get beyond the point where left pedal can stop you. This happened to me once and it almost got ugly. The trick, I found, is to lower the collective if you have to add a lot of left pedal. That reduces the amount of pedal you need to press and reduces power so pressing the darn pedal doesn’t overtorque the ship.

(If you’re an experienced turbine helicopter pilot reading this, you may be thinking, “Duh-uh.” Have patience. All this is new to me and I’m learning as I go along. If you find this too boring to read, move on to something else. Or go watch TV.)

Wind: Friend or Enemy?

I’ve also learned a lot about flying in strong winds. Someone once told me he had a flight instructor who said, “The wind is your friend.” I think that can be true. But I also think the wind can be your enemy.

Why a friend? Well, suppose you’re flying at max gross weight on a hot day and you need to take off from a helipad in a relatively confined area at 6600 feet MSL. You point your nose into that 20 knot wind, push the cyclic forward a bit, and voila! You’re at ETL (effective translational lift) and climbing. Same goes for landing. You can stay in ETL as you descend and maybe even as you hover to your helipad if there’s enough of a headwind.

Why an enemy? Well, what if that 20 knot wind at the helipad isn’t a headwind? What if it’s a crosswind? Or, worse yet, as you’re trying to set down on the pad, what if it’s a tailwind? Or what if it’s 24 gusting to 36? Or gusting to 50? (Yes, it does get that windy.)

I’ve flown in very strong winds and I’ve learned that taking off and landing isn’t always the biggest problem. At the Canyon, the problem is sometimes in the Canyon itself. Those nasty winds make nasty turbulence as they whip over the enormous rock formations. 3,000 foot-per-minute updrafts aren’t unheard of. Neither are their counterparts: 3,000 foot-per-minute downdrafts. Turbulence that smacks you from one side as you come past a butte. Or makes your helicopter seem like the car on a roller coaster.

Oddly enough, sometimes the worst turbulence are over the forest south of the rim. When you’re flying about 200 feet over the treetops, you’re really in it. It can seem pretty bad and you can feel bad for your passengers. But then you break over the rim and enter the Canyon and everything calms down. Go figure.

There’s no pattern to it. All the pilots have their own theories of how things should be when the wind is blowing from one direction or another. But it’s not science and it isn’t reliable. You never know how it’s going to be until you’re in it. And then it’s too late to do anything about it.

Power Settings

I’ve also learned a lot about power settings for different ships at different weights in different conditions. Papillon’s rule of thumb is to set the ship’s power to 70% torque and leave it there for the whole tour. While this might work in most situations, it doesn’t work in all of them.

For example, a relatively fast ship can do a North Canyon tour in the allotted time at 70% torque, but the same ship will come in too early on an Imperial Tour at that setting. So I set the power based on speed. I’d like to do 95-105 knots for a North Canyon Tour and 90-100 knots for an Imperial Tour. The difference in torque settings is usually about 5%.

Then there’s the descent on the east side of the Dragon. Both tours require a relatively quick descent in 2 to 3 miles. On a North Canyon tour, I descend from 8200 feet to 7500 feet. On an Imperial Tour, I descend from about 8800 feet to 7500 feet. If I follow the rules, I should be at 70% during the descent, pushing the cyclic forward to nose down. But that also increases my speed. Never exceed speed (Vne) at that altitude is around 115 knots. If I’m already doing 105 knots in straight and level flight, a 500-1000 foot per minute descent is going to make me exceed Vne. So I need to reduce power — sometimes to as low as 50%.

Turbulence has a lot to do with power settings, too. If there’s a lot of turbulence, you have to reduce power. And if there are a lot of updrafts and downdrafts, power must be adjusted to keep you within the allowable altitude range.

Fortunately, I haven’t had much of a need to increase power during the tour yet. At least not beyond 75% or so.

I’m Here to Learn

Every day is a new learning experience and I’m glad. After all, that’s why I’m here. Living in my own semi-controlled, R22 dominated world isn’t much of a challenge. But flying in all kinds of conditions in a ship that’s far more sophisticated, is like going away to school. I’ll learn more about flying helicopters this summer than I have in the past four years.

And the paycheck is kind of nice, too.

Not Especially a Good Day

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I have a day.

Well, I shouldn’t complain. It certainly could have been worse.

Trouble began early, when I got an e-mail message from the person I thought wanted to buy the assets of my FBO at Wickenburg. He was trying to get out of the deal. He said he didn’t need me. He said my asking price was outrageous. This coming from a man who practically begged me to sell to him and didn’t even attempt to negotiate the price.

Let’s not go there.

I contacted two people at Robinson Helicopter via e-mail. The first was to try to get my local mechanic in on the September maintenance course. Fully booked, I was told. But there was no one on the waiting list for October. The second was to see if the Robinson Helipad that comes with the purchase of a new R44 would work on my property. It was designed for rooftops, I was told. It wasn’t big enough to eliminate the dust problem I had. I should consider laying down concrete.

Not what I wanted to hear.

I was so worked up over the FBO deal problems that I couldn’t think well enough to write. So instead of knocking off two chapters to my Quicken book revision, I did only one. And that was a no-brainer chapter with very few changes to the text.

That means I’ll have to work on my birthday to get the damn book done on time.

Someone kept e-mailing me all morning at the pilotcharts.com e-mail address, asking me questions about a specific product, shipping, etc. We must have exchanged a dozen messages. I warned him that if he wanted the item shipped today, he’d have to order before 2 PM. The last message from him requested a phone number. The last message from me gave him a fax number. By 2 PM, there was no fax and no order.

What a waste of my time.

My sunglasses, which I’d ordered two months ago, finally arrived. That’s a good thing. My old ones were about to fall apart.

In fact, that’s about the best thing that happened to me all day.

Mike decided to take a trip to NJ the same week I have to be up at the Grand Canyon. He fully expected me to take the dog, bird, and horses with me. The poor dog would be locked up in the trailer for 13 hours every day, six days straight. (The bird would, too, but heck, he’s used to being locked up.) For some reason, I went along with this. Until I started thinking about it. A good thing: I found a place to board the horses for only $100 for the week. A bad thing: I couldn’t find anyone to take the dog. I didn’t even try to find someone for the bird.

So I have company with me this week at Howard Mesa.

I had to drive to Howard Mesa. If you’ve been reading these blogs, you should know how spoiled I am. I usually fly up here. It’s about 1-1/2 hours by helicopter but 3 hours by car. But I couldn’t very well fit the dog, the bird, and all my gear in the helicopter. So I took Mike’s truck. Now I have three vehicles up here. (Sheesh. It’s almost embarrassing.) The good thing: Mike filled the tank with diesel. Another good thing: because I didn’t drag the horse trailer up here, I didn’t even use up a half tank of fuel. The money I saved on fuel probably paid to board the horses. Yet another good thing: if I get ambitious, I can use the truck to take my bicycle to the airport and get some exercise during lunch breaks this week.

Nah.

It was cloudy up here when I arrived. Cloudy like it might rain. Imagine that. I haven’t seen rain in Arizona in so long, I forgot what it looks like. (It was a good thing it rained in New Jersey when I was there earlier this month. Otherwise, it would have been at least three months since I’d seen rain at all.) But the moon’s out now and I think the clouds are breaking up. I don’t think it’s going to rain.

The darn bird is doing laps in his cage, climbing all over the inside. He’ll do that until I shut off the light. Sounds like a good excuse to call it a day and put this one behind me.