Grand Canyon Airport Tower

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I make a visit to the FAA tower without any loss of life.

Grand Canyon Airport has two control towers. (Well, three, if you count the vacant one.)

One is at Papillon’s heliport. Attached to the building and accessible by its own staircase, it rises four stories above the heliport. It’s a small, simple room with enough space for two “controllers” and two or three visitors. New pilots are encouraged to visit the tower, to get a good idea of how traffic is controlled by Papillon’s tower staff. It’s amazing, really. Not only do the tower folks keep track of all us pilots as we’re flying in and out of the airport, but they manage aircraft loading, arrange flight (and break) schedules, and open and close flight plans with Prescott Flight Service Station. It’s safe to say that Papillon’s tower is the nerve center for the whole operation.

The other tower is the big, FAA tower. It’s an impressive structure, brand new and very tall. I’ve seen lot of control towers, both as a pilot and as a passenger on an airline, and this tower ranks high in the tower hierarchy. It’s at least as big as the one in Phoenix and possibly as tall, a slim white structure with a glassed-in octagon on top.

(The old, vacant tower is one of those four-story structures that were built on many Class Delta airports. Chandler has one just like it. I’ve been in Chandler’s tower and it wasn’t much more impressive than Papillon’s. Grand Canyon Tower’s staff moved out of that building to the new one a few years ago. Now they look at it across the runway and remember the roaches that infested it.)

I’d been wanting to visit the “big tower” — as I call it — for a while. Since starting at Papillon a month ago, I’ve spent at least three hours in Papillon’s tower. I go up there when I’m not schedule to fly so I can watch the wind readings and listen to the other pilots coming and going. But the big tower was different. It was the official air traffic control center for the airport, the final word, authorized by the FAA. And it was so impressive looking from the outside. What was it like inside?

Today, I finished flying early. Most of us did, in fact — the afternoon was pretty dead. Although Papillon doesn’t like to let pilots go home early, I figured I’d ask if I could visit the big tower. After all, I could be back in minutes; all it took was a call. Permission granted from Papillon’s powers-that-be, I called the big tower to see if I could visit.

After 9/11, tower security is generally very tight. In fact, I seriously doubt whether just anyone could get in. But I introduced myself by name and told them I was a Papillon pilot. I asked if I could visit, but only if they weren’t too busy. Gary, the guy on duty, put me on hold, then came back and said yes. “Drive up to the gate and we’ll buzz you in,” he advised me.

I was out in the Jeep in a flash, zipping out of Papillon’s parking lot and driving past the terminal building. I went straight where signs advised that “All Traffic Must Turn Left” and passed a sign that said “FAA Control Tower. Authorized Vehicles Only.” Gary had authorized me. The road turned to gravel and I continued along it. Then, through the trees, I could see the tower before me, looming up out of the forest. I noticed for the first time that a low building was attached to it. And the whole thing was surrounded by a very serious looking fence with a electric gate.

A sign on the fence said something like “FAA Control Tower. Accidents or loss of life can result from loss of operations.” Something like that. I can’t remember exactly, but I do remember the phrase “loss of life.” I started wondering if my visit could distract the controllers enough to result in loss of life. I hoped not.

There were three boxes on the driver’s side of the entryway before the gate. One was a mystery box; I have no clue what it was for. Another had a camera that looked right at me, kind of like the robot in Short Circuit. The other was a speaking box with a button on it. I pushed the button and waited. Nothing happened.

I started thinking about making radio calls to the tower that weren’t answered. You know, “Copter 28 would like a Southwest departure with Zulu” followed by a lot of silence. The tower just not noticing your call. You hesitating to repeat it, not wanting to piss off the controller, who had probably heard you but was chewing his lunch or swallowing a mouthful of coffee.

I hesitated, then began to wonder whether the button was more like a mike button. I pushed it again and said, “Hello?”

The gate began to open. I waited until it was open enough for my Jeep to squeeze through, then drove through. I waited on the other side. That’s something you’re supposed to do at those kinds of gates. So that other cars didn’t piggyback in with you. It didn’t matter that I’d just driven a half mile down a dirt road and there was no one behind me. The controller could be watching from up above. And then, the next time I needed a clearance, he’d make me wait, even if he wasn’t having lunch or coffee.

I moved on when the gate closed. I noticed that there was a similar arrangement of boxes at the exit gate and wondered whether that was so that they could lock people in. I reminded myself to be on my best behavior as I drove up the concrete drive to the base of the tower.

The parking lot was paved in concrete and had at least ten parking spots. There was one car there. I parked next to it and got out.

I passed a bicycle leaning up against the side of the building as I walked to the front door. I guess you don’t have to worry about getting your bike stolen when you have a security fence with barbed wire and cameras around your place of business.

At the door was another voice box. I tried the door and found it locked. Then I pushed the button on the voice box. Nothing happened. I wondered again whether the button was a mike button, but before I could try my greeting, the door opened from the inside. Danni, one of the controllers, was there to greet me.

I’d met Danni at breakfast one morning about three weeks before. I’d gotten to Tusayan a half hour early and decided to check out the local Internet café to see if they had a wireless network I could tap into. (They didn’t.) As I ordered my latte, I noticed Marty, who’d been one of my flight instructors in Long Beach, sitting at a table with a woman. Marty had taken a job with Papillon the previous year and had come back for the season. Danni was his friend from the tower.

Danni is a really nice person. The first time she hears your voice on the radio in the morning, she says, “Good morning!” and expects a suitable response. And the last flight of the day will always get a “Have a good night!” Not very FAAish, but very nice. Kind of reminds me that we’re all in it together. We’re tourist babysitters. She helps us with our tourists while dealing with the occasionally Sunday pilot’s adventure of landing at GCN.

Danni gave me a tour of the low building. Lot of office space, a full kitchen, and equipment rooms. Everything brand spanking new and totally underutilized. We rode the elevator up to a floor marked 6 (the elevator can stop at 1, 2, and 6; there are no other numbers), then took a flight of stairs to the top level.

Ever wonder why you can’t take an elevator to the top floor in a control tower? It’s because the elevator shaft would block the view. A control tower is a big open room with windows on all sides. And this one had the best view of the Grand Canyon airport area. You could see for miles in every direction.

The room was surrounded with counter space. There were at least ten chairs, but only one had an occupant. Gary sat in the corner, in front of a laptop. A telephone receiver lay on the counter beside him. It turns out that the telephone receiver was actually a microphone, with a push to talk button between the earpiece and mouthpiece. It was on a very long curly cord, and as we chatted, he carried it around with him, talking into it now and then with his ATC voice.

Danni showed me around. I saw the radar screen, which tends to pick up ghost echoes and isn’t certified for use, but showed several aircraft in the area. I saw the wind reporting screen, which showed different winds for each of the three wind measuring locations on the airport, along with an average wind. The average was necessary because all three readings were different. I saw all kinds of screens that we didn’t really talk much about. I saw a device that printed out strips of paper with NOTAM and flight plan information on them. Danni showed me one for an incoming pilot’s flight plan. We looked at the time the pilot was expected in and realized he was due soon. He called in, got clearance, and landed during my visit.

My technical visit turned into a social call before I could stop it. Gary grew up in Wickenburg and wanted to know if I knew the people he’d grown up with. I didn’t. I’ve only been in Wickenburg since 1997; he left town in the early 80s. But that didn’t stop him from naming everyone he knew and making me come up with names of people I knew. Before long, my planned 15-minute visit to the tower had turned into 30 minutes. I told them I had to go.

Danni escorted me downstairs and outside. She told me to visit again. I promised I would.

Call Me Captain, Please

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How I got my epaulets.

Back in March, I interviewed for a job as a helicopter pilot with Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters. And before I went home later that day, I had a job.

A job. What a weird thing for me. I’ve been working freelance since May 29, 1990. I haven’t seen a paycheck in almost fourteen years. But here I was with a job. And I had to report for duty in two weeks to begin my training.

But wait a minute. I think I’m moving too fast. Let me give you some of the background.

The really old background is this. When I was in my twenties, I decided that there were four things I wanted to learn to do in my lifetime: learn to ride a motorcycle, learn to fly a helicopter, learn to speak Spanish fluently, and learn to play the piano. I got the motorcycle thing done before I turned thirty. I also turned my significant other, Mike, and my brother, Norb, on to motorcycling. I had a false start with the piano and put that aside. But in 1998, when I was thirty-something, I started taking flying lessons. I got my private pilot helicopter rating in April 2000 and my commercial ticket in October 2001. To date, I have not progressed beyond high school Spanish. But I did add another desired skill: I want to learn how to juggle.

The thing about flying is that once I started doing it, I started really liking it. Liking it enough to buy my own helicopter. Enough to do tours locally. And enough to start considering it as my next career.

Some former friends of mine told me I was crazy. “At your age, you’ll never get enough work experience to make real money at it. Why bother?”

Why bother? Why bother doing something you love? If someone is willing to pay you to do it? Frankly, I can’t understand the way some people think. Money is not a motivator here. Money is why I do things I don’t like to do. There’s plenty of that.

Since October 2001, I’ve been in “time building mode.” You see, in order to get a job as a helicopter pilot for a reputable company, I needed at least 1000 hours of flight time. That’s a lot of time. So I started doing tours in Wickenburg and at events around the state. I made long cross-country trips (to Eagle, CO and Placerville, CA, among other places). I flew around town to pass the time, made numerous trips to Deer Valley and Prescott for breakfast or shopping, and explored canyons and mountains and valleys throughout the state. Fly, fly, fly. The clock’s ticking and I need logbook entries.

PhotoThis year I had enough time to apply for a job. I sent in a resume and got an interview. Three men interviewed me on March 26. I was nervous at first, but warmed up quickly. It was like the old days of job interviews, but now, nineteen years later, I had the answers. I wasn’t some green kid who didn’t know which way was up. I was an experienced and successful business woman who wanted to explore a new world. When they asked me what I could see myself doing in ten years, I laughed. I said I wasn’t sure about ten, but in fifteen, I’d like to be flying tours in a nice place, like Hawaii. Semi-retirement, you know. I’m a bit older than the kids they’d been hiring.

Chuck, the Chief Pilot grabbed a pair of headsets and we went outside. I slid into the seat my friend Rod, who’d urged me to apply, vacated after his check flight for a utility pilot job. The turbine engine on the Bell 206L-1 C30P Long Ranger was running. Chuck took off. A quarter mile away from the airport, he told me to take the controls. I wrapped my right hand around the huge cyclic and my left hand around the industrial-looking collective. I placed my feet on the pedals. And I flew.

We wiggled a bit in the air at first. The Long Ranger has hydraulics, which my little R22 doesn’t have. But I was accustomed to flying with hydraulics in the R44 Raven I’d been leasing from a friend. Within a minute, the wiggles were gone and we were flying pretty smoothly.

He had me do some maneuvers. Gentle turns. A traffic pattern at the old Grand Canyon Airport (just northwest of Red Butte). A landing. A set down. Some hovering and hovering turns — a bit of a challenge with the 15-knot winds that were blowing that day. A take off. Another approach and landing. Then back to the heliport. When he let me do a steep approach to one of Papillon’s eleven helipads, I knew I’d passed his test.

When he called me back into his office a while later, he said, “We’d be honored to have you work for us.” Wasn’t that nice! I told him it was the nicest job offer I’d ever had and how could I refuse?I signed a contract agreeing to work until October. I got a sheet of paper telling me what I’d have to wear to work. When asked if I could start training on April 12, I said I’d be there.

On Easter Sunday, I moved up to Howard Mesa, which is covered in some detail in another blog. And I reported for work the next day. My training class had only two students: me and a Texan named Riese. Riese was married and had a 4-year-old daughter. He’d left them home in Texas. He wanted the job to build turbine time, so he could get a better job in the fall. He was a nice guy, friendly and easy to get along with. We spent the first morning filling out paperwork, watching employment videos about sexual harassment and drugs, and getting drug tested. In the afternoon, Chuck started briefing us about company operations.

The training lasted all day, every day, for the week. On Wednesday, we were joined by another new hire named Ron. Ron had worked in the Gulf of Mexico, transporting people and equipment to oil rigs, for two years. He was a typical Brooklynite: sharp, full of attitude, and eager to poke fun. The kind of person I both missed and hated.

I learned all kinds of things from many of Papillon’s long-term pilots. I learned how the Long Ranger engine and other systems worked. I learned about the rules and regulations covering flight at the Grand Canyon. I learned about the requirements of Papillon’s Part 135 certificate. I learned about the TOPS safety program that Papillon’s founder developed for the entire scenic tour industry. I learned how the work schedule worked and how to read the computer monitor with schedule information that changed throughout the day.

By Friday, I had a bad case of the sniffles. By Saturday, it was a full-blown cold. I got the day off on Sunday and wound up taking an extra day at home to recover. When I returned the following week, Riese was more than halfway through the Part 135 class and Ron was right behind him. Because of a shortage of helicopters with dual controls, I had to wait to fly. I spent the time taking one tour after another, flying with other pilots to learn the routes.

By Thursday, Riese was fully signed off and flying tours. Then the incredible happened. He quit.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to speak to him about it. He told the Chief Pilot that it was a personal matter, something to do with things at home. But he’d been gung-ho that morning, excited about flying. And he was positively beaming in his uniform when I saw him at the morning meeting. He’d even gotten a nickname from the guys: Squadron Leader. But that day was very windy and pretty turbulent out in the Canyon. Most of us think he got caught up in one of the sinkholes on the Imperial Tour and got sucked down when he should have been climbing. One part of the tour requires you to climb at least 1100 feet (preferably 1500) in a very short distance. The trick is to fly alongside a particular butte, right along the North Rim of the canyon, where there are normally updrafts you can ride up on while climbing. He may have missed the updraft (we call it the Kibby Elevator) and found himself facing the rocky cliff he was supposed to be flying over. In any case, he called for a break pilot one flight later and was gone before lunch.

That left me and Ron.

They pushed Ron through the program. But he must have made at least one of the instructors unhappy, because they weren’t very enthusiastic about finishing his training. And his Part 135 check ride was conducted in two sessions (always a bad sign). Still, they needed pilots and he had 400 hours of experience in Jet Rangers. Soon his Part 135 check ride was behind him and he was doing route training. The next day, he was wearing his epaulets.

My turn.

My Part 135 instructor’s name was Tom. Tom is a great guy: friendly, witty, and sharp. He put me at ease when we went flying. But that didn’t prevent me from flying like shit.

I was terrible. Heck, I’d flown better at my interview. I couldn’t even do a good pick up or set down. I was having trouble hovering. But Tom stuck with me and over the course of the next 4.9 hours (in three days), we worked on all the maneuvers I’d be tested on: straight in autorotations, 180 autorotations, hovering autorotations, slope landings, pinnacle landings, confined space landings, steep approaches, shallow approaches, hydraulics failure emergency landings, maximum performance takeoffs. He signed me off for my check ride on Sunday, two full weeks after my arrival at Papillon.

Dave did my check ride. He was tough. He asked all kinds of questions about the helicopter’s systems.

I could only answer about half the questions he asked. But he encouraged me to figure things out for myself. And, for the most part, I did. Then we went flying. At least I did okay on that. But not perfect. He pointed out two problems — one of them too embarrassing to detail here — then passed me.

Captain MariaI’d earned my epaulets.

Now if you don’t know what epaulets are, take a good look at the guy flying your airplane next time you catch a Continental flight to Newark (or a Southwest flight to Burbank, for that matter). Epaulets are the striped things the Captain and First Officer are wearing on their shoulders. Now I’ve got a pair. And a bunch of shirts to attach them to. Training wasn’t over yet, though. I still had to do the route training and get check rides for those. There are three main routes: The North Canyon (Green 2) route goes through the Dragon Corridor on the west side of the rim drive. It’s about 25 minutes long and very simple. The Imperial (Green 1, Green 1A, Green 2) route is a much better tour that crosses over the east rim drive just west of Desert View in the Zuni Corridor, crosses out over the Canyon in its widest part, goes over the confluence of the Little Colorado River, climbs over the north rim, and returns down the Dragon Corridor. It’s a 50 minute tour and quite complex. It’s the one that may have scared Riese into driving back to Texas. The third tour is called a Green 1 and I’m not quite sure where it goes because I haven’t been on one yet. Evidently, they’re not sold very often. As of today, I’ve finished most of my route training and can conduct tours on two of the three routes.

And Ron, well, he went back to ground school training. I’m not quite sure why — perhaps because he missed the first two days with me and Riese — but I saw him in class with the newest two recruits. And yes, he still has his epaulets. Once you get them, it’s hard to lose them.

Life in the Middle of Nowhere

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How I make the adjustment to living in a place even further from the the comforts of “civilization.”

Since my “Life on the Edge of Nowhere” blog got such widespread attention, I thought I’d update the folks who look forward to my blog entries about living conditions in the southwest with an even more extreme report.

First, some background.

In March, I accepted a job as a pilot with Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters, the largest helicopter tour operator at the Grand Canyon’s South Rim. Papillon operates out of a very large heliport at the Grand Canyon Airport in Tusayan, AZ.

Tusayan (pronounced “Too-SAY-on”) is a true tourist town. It has a year-round population of about 400 people. Those people work for companies that cater to the millions of tourists who pass through the area annually. I’m talking about the IMAX theater, hotels/motels, fast food joints, a handful of gas stations, tour companies (like Papillon and the fixed wing operators), and gift shops. Some of the folks who live in Tusayan work in the park, but the lucky park workers have homes IN the park.

Tusayan doesn’t have much going for it as a place to live. There are a few restaurants, but none of the good ethnic food places you can find in a metropolitan area. (There are plenty of fast food joints, though: Wendy’s, McDonalds, Pizza Hut, etc.) There’s only one theater (IMAX) and it plays the same movie all the time. One of the hotels has a bowling alley in its basement (which I haven’t seen yet). There isn’t much night life, although one of the hotels (The Grand) seems to try hard with nightly specials in its bar. (Thursday is ladies night.) There’s no supermarket, but there is a grocery store where you can buy the necessities of life and not much else.

Housing is not a good thing. Most people live in trailers. Pull trailers, single-wide mobile homes, and, if they’re lucky, double-wide mobile homes. Now I don’t mean to knock mobile homes — I have a good friend who lives in a very nice double-wide — but THESE mobile homes bear little resemblance to modern ones. That’s because they’re old. Very old.

But the bigger problem with Tusayan is expense. Because tourists have money and don’t seem to mind spending it, everything in Tusayan is expensive. Expect to pay 20% to 100% more for items in Tusayan than you would in a place like Williams (60 miles south) or Phoenix (160 or so miles south). Fortunately, many of the businesses offer discounts to “locals,” realizing that the folks who work in town are paid so poorly that they can’t afford local prices.

A kind of nice thing about Tusayan is that the people who live and work there have a “we’re all in it together” attitude. When you whisper the secret password at checkout — “I’m a local” — the person at the register seems to soften a bit. Not only is she glad you speak English, but she now knows that you’re in the same boat she is: underpaid, living in questionable conditions, dealing with tourists all day long, and paying through the nose for the things you need to survive.

Now back to Papillon. Right before Papillon offered me the job, they handed me a three page summary of life in the Tusayan area. It pretty much says what I said above, but frankly, I was a lot kinder. Papillon wanted its job candidates to know in advance that living in the area would not be part of the fun. In fact, it probably wouldn’t be fun at all. They didn’t scare me off. I know how life on the edge of nowhere can be. How much worse could it be at the gateway to the Grand Canyon?Turns out, there isn’t enough housing in Tusayan for all of Papillon’s employees. With a fleet of more than a dozen helicopters, the company has well over a hundred full and part time employees — pilots, mechanics, customer service representatives, administrative staff, etc. — working at Tusayan. There just aren’t enough trailers to go around. So Papillon owns a bunch of double-wides in Valle, AZ, about 20 miles south. Employees are offered affordable housing in these units, with one person per bedroom. You have to hope you get good housemates.

Valle (pronounced “valley”) has even less going for it than Tusayan. It’s a crossroads, where the main roads from Williams (state route 64) and Flagstaff (state route 180) meet and continue together up to the Grand Canyon. There are two gas stations with outrageous fuel prices, a mini mart, a bunch of gift shops (why not?), a few motels, and two or three restaurants.

Valle does have two interesting features. The first is the Planes of Fame Museum, located on the airport. (Yes, Valle does have an airport.) This is an extremely impressive aviation museum with many aircraft and tons of aviation stuff on display. If you’re interested in aviation and are in the area, don’t miss this museum! It’s time and money well spent.

The second interesting feature is the Flintstones Bedrock City theme park and campground. Talk about weird. This holdover from the 60s or 70s features Fred’s Diner (where you can get a brontosaurus burger, which tastes remarkably like a hamburger), a gift shop (of course!), and the town of Bedrock. “Bring Your Camera!” a sign outside the place advises. If you’re into the kind of campy things you can find in tourist towns, stop in and check it out. I’ve flown over it a few times and what you can’t see from the road looks like something a Flintstones fanatic (if there is such a thing) wouldn’t want to miss.

When I came on board at Papillon, I was offered a room in a “gelco” in Tusayan. I’m not sure what a gelco is. I’m not even sure I’m spelling it right. I think it might be some kind of prefabricated housing that’s lower on the amenities scale than a 20-year-old single-wide. A friend of mine who works for Papillon lived in one for a while. He elected to live in a pull trailer in the forest beneath the helicopter flight path instead. That kind of gives me an idea of how a gelco might be.

Fortunately, I had another option. Several years ago, Mike and I had purchased 40 acres of land on top of Howard Mesa, nine miles south of Valle. Over the past few years, we’ve been improving the land. First a water tank (no wells here). Then a fence around the whole 40 acres (with thanks to Ty Grantham of Grantham Custom Fence in Wickenburg). Then a county-approved septic system. Each summer, we take our trailer up to the property, hook it up to what we’ve got, and use it as a weekend/vacation home. This year, we brought the trailer up early, in April, so I could live in it while I worked at Papillon.

Our TrailerLet me take a moment to describe this trailer. It’s a horse trailer with living quarters. For those of you who don’t know much about the kinds of things horsey people know, imagine a very long (about 35-feet), gooseneck trailer (the kind you have to pull with a pickup), with a travel area in back for horses and a living area up front for people. Our trailer is a pretty nice one, as these things go. It has space in back for three horses and a separate tack closet (where you store the saddles, bridles, etc.). Its tiny bathroom has a shower, toilet, sink, and closet. The fridge is remarkably large (for a trailer) and the freezer can get cold enough to make ice. There’s a two-burner stove, a tiny kitchen sink, some counter space, and a lot of cabinets. There’s also a sofa that converts to a 1-person-under-5’8″-tall bed and a big, queen sized bed over the gooseneck. There’s a microwave and an air conditioner, but a powerful (and noisy) generator (which we don’t have) is required to make them work. I use the microwave to store bread and crackers and the air conditioner as a place to bash my head once a week (on average) when I climb out of bed.

Our property is off the grid. That means there are no utilities at all and not much of a chance of getting any. Fortunately, the trailer has very low energy needs (unless you want to heat leftovers in the microwave). There are two batteries that power the lights, the stereo/CD player, the fan for the heater, and the water pump. A solar panel, which we added after purchasing the trailer, does an excellent job of keeping the batteries charged. (Arizona has lots of sunshine!) The fridge, hot water heater, and heater run on propane. There are two good-sized tanks for that. We have 2100 gallons of water storage on the property and the trailer is hooked up to that, along with a pump to get the water pressure we need. And the trailer is currently parked right over the septic system inlet, so all the waste water (black and gray) goes down the pipe to a tank that we’ll never be able to fill.

So here’s the big picture.

I’m living in a trailer with approximately 20 square feet of usable floor space, parked on 40 acres of high desert land. To get to my place, it’s a 5-mile ride up a dirt road that requires 4WD in wet weather. Although the closest house is only a quarter mile away, it is unoccupied; my closest full-time neighbor is about 4-1/2 miles back down that dirt road. At this point, I’ve been here for more than two weeks straight and I haven’t seen a single car drive by. Remote? I’d say so.

There’s no television, Internet, or telephone here. I have a stereo/CD player that is on during my waking hours to mask the incredible silence of where I am. I listen to a lot of NPR and know all the current events in Iraq. My cell phone gets an unreliable reception. I can make calls when I sit or stand in a certain place and switch to Analog Only mode before I make the call. I can’t get calls. To use my laptop, I need to plug it into an inverter that uses a cigarette lighter jack to connect to the trailer’s electrical system. The power outlets generously scattered throughout my living space are dead without a generator or a VERY long cord. There’s no garbage pickup. I take my trash to Papillon’s parking lot dumpster every few days.

My bed is very comfortable and the shower water is nice and hot. The stove works well, but an oven would be a nice addition. I can’t run the heater all night because of the noise it makes and my fear of carbon monoxide poisoning (yes, there is a detector, but I don’t trust it). A few nights, it got down to the low 40s inside. I was warm in bed but did need the heater to warm things up before my morning shower.

The camper has an awning with a screened-in room. When set up, it triples the floor space and doubles the living area. We had it set up when I first came. Unfortunately, high winds beat the crap out of it (sorry, but there’s no delicate way to describe the abuse it took), pulling out stakes and tearing it away from the camper regularly. The sound of the wind beating against it and the resulting shaking of the camper kept me up at night. Helicopter pilots need sleep, so I took it down. I still have a picnic table out there.

Howard MesaOutside, I have a 360° view of the area around me. To the east are the snow-capped San Francisco Peaks, the highest mountains in Arizona. To the south is Bill Williams Mountain, just south of Williams, AZ. To the west, my favorite view, is an unobstructed look at the high desert. On a clear day, when the wind hasn’t kicked up desert dust, I can see 100 miles or more, all the way out to Mount Trumbull on the Arizona-Utah border. To the north is Red Butte and, beyond it, the north rim of the Grand Canyon.

The terrain here is high desert, with long golden grass and short juniper and pinyon pine trees. It’s incredibly beautiful in the morning, when the golden early morning light first hits the gently waving grass and brings out the texture of the hills and mountains in the distance. There’s a lot of firewood — the rancher who previously owned this land thought he could grow more grass with less trees, so he bulldozed them here and there. We have a big fire pit and occasionally have campfires for cooking or camp ambiance. The wood smells terrific when burning. Unfortunately, I won’t light a fire when the winds are blowing and this spring they’re blowing almost all the time.

PhotoAlthough the property is fenced in, wildlife can still get in. There was a single deer, a doe, about 100 feet from my front door the other morning. Elk and antelope move through about once a week. Coyotes are always nearby, howling or barking or trotting past. There are some birds, but not as many as you’d expect. This is the first thing I saw when I woke up this morning. In case you’re wondering, its an elk yearling.

At night, it gets VERY dark. And I’m pretty sure that you can see more stars from here than anywhere else on the planet.

At Howard MesaThe camper is set up at the widest part of the property, which is also the highest point on the mesa. The area behind it is nice and flat and clear of trees. I have a windsock that we installed soon after buying the land. Last night, I flew my helicopter “home” from work at Papillon and landed it fifty yards from the trailer. No one complained. Who could? There’s no one here but me. Here’s Three-Niner-Lima in a typical parking spot. In the distance, you can see Mount Humphreys.

Oddly enough, I’m really enjoying the solitude up here. I spend the day flying tours over one of the seven wonders of the world, interacting with co-workers and tourists from all over. After five hours in the air and at least another two hours on the ground waiting for fuelers and loaders, I’m tired. I don’t want to interact with people anymore. I just want to relax someplace quiet. You can’t get much quieter than this.

The other day I came back to Wickenburg. Mike flew up to Grand Canyon airport in his Grumman Tiger and picked me up so I wouldn’t have to drive. We got into town and I looked around. And I realized that I really hadn’t missed it that much. After spending a hectic evening and early morning catching up on paperwork and other things, I flew my helicopter back to the Grand Canyon for a few more days of work.

And quiet solitude in the middle of nowhere.

A Job Interview

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I go on my first job interview in nearly 20 years.

I went on a job interview yesterday.

It was my first job interview since 1987. When I left the 9 to 5 world in 1990, I left the world of real employers and regular paychecks for the world of freelance work, odd hours, and irregular pay. I’m still firmly entrenched in that world, but I was ready for a new challenge. And I wanted to remember what it was like to be responsible to an employer.

So I applied for a job at Papillon Helicopters at the Grand Canyon. My interview was yesterday.
I was interviewed by a panel of three people, including the Chief Pilot, the Director of Operations, and a lead pilot. They asked me interview questions I hadn’t heard in nearly 20 years. “What do you see yourself doing in 10 years?” “What’s your idea of an ideal employer?” “How do you deal with a bothersome fellow employee?” The questions were kind of funny because although I didn’t expect them, I should have. After all, it was a job interview and that’s the kind of questions interviewers ask.

I did very well. I was nervous at first — heck, I was out of practice! — but soon relaxed. I must have told them what they wanted to hear. I know I made them smile.

I can be pretty funny when I try. And I use humor whenever possible. Life’s too short to go through it thinking everything is totally serious.

After the interview, the Chief Pilot took me flying. Yes, I got a chance to fly a Bell 206L (Long Ranger). I’d never flown one before. He took off from the helipad and headed south to a practice area near Red Butte*. He handed over the controls about a mile south of the airport. I was able to keep it in smooth flight and maintain speed, altitude, and heading. I could do turns without significant changes in altitude. I crossed over the old runway at Red Butte, read the wind sock, and entered a left traffic pattern for landing beside the sock. I made a good approach and landing. I set it down (a bit bumpy) and picked it up (smooth as silk). I did 90° pedal turns in a 10-15 knot wind. I did another pattern and landing. Then I took off for the return trip to the airport. The Chief Pilot made the radio calls. I landed at one of Papillon’s pads.

The only thing I had trouble with on the whole flight was trim. You really need hard to push on that right pedal! My set downs could use some work, too.

I obviously had very little understanding of any of the turbine engine gauges. A thousand hours in various piston helicopters doesn’t do much to prepare you for that. But I could FLY the helicopter — that is, I could make the connection between my hands and feet and the machine to control the helicopter. Enough to make a confined space landing over ponderosa pines into a relatively small heliport.

My friend Rod, who has worked for Papillon on and off for the past few years, was waiting for me when we returned. We waited in the pilot break room while the Chief Pilot went out with another candidate. The other pilots wore white shirts with epaulets on the shoulders. Like airline captains. They were eating lunch out of bags and watching a television show from Japan called Extreme Elimination (or something like that), where these people went through obstacle courses and, nine times out of ten, ended up falling painfully into water of questionable biological cleanliness. A few of the previous month’s hires were waiting with their headsets for a training flight. There was one woman (a new hire) who seemed to be a well of information about basketball. She had very small feet in white joggers. There were no other women.

A while later, the Chief Pilot returned and led me into his office. That’s where he told me they’d be honored to have me work for them. Honored. He actually said that. Wow. How could I say no?

Training starts on April 12. That gives me about two weeks to get my life in order before I’m gone for two weeks. After that, I’ll be on a 7 on 7 off schedule (at least that’s what I asked for when given the choice). This time next month, I’ll be qualified as a Grand Canyon Tour pilot.

Today, I’m canceling the rides I scheduled at Buckeye for this weekend. Time building mode is over. No need to sell myself as a pilot anymore. I’ve already got a buyer.

* For those of you unfamiliar with the Grand Canyon area, the airport is about 5-8 miles south of the Rim in a town named Tusayan. The airport has a tower, but Papillon (and probably the other operators) also have their own towers for controlling their own aircraft. The terrain there is covered with ponderosa (tall), juniper (short), and pinyon (short) pine trees. About 7 miles southeast of the airport is a volcanic rock formation called Red Butte because of its color. You can’t miss it on your way from the south to the canyon.

Truth vs. Fiction

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How I get another life experience proving that truth is stranger than fiction.

First, the background info.

My company, Flying M Air, is the Fuel Manager at Wickenburg Municipal Airport. This means that I’m required to provide warm bodies to pump fuel into aircraft, sell pilot supplies and refreshments, answer questions, and keep the terminal building presentable. They do other stuff, too, but that isn’t worth going into for the purpose of this tale.

I have a staff of three employees, all of whom are semi-retired with some kind of aviation experience. Gary is a pilot who has thousands of hours of experience in all kinds of airplanes. Jeff is a pilot who is now building his own airplane. Alta is one of only five women in the world qualified to sit in the engineer’s seat on a 747.

Unfortunately, when one or more of these people need time off, the others can’t always fill in. That means I have to work at the airport. Trouble is, when I’m working at the airport, I’m not writing books. When I’m not writing books, I’m not earning a living. So it’s my best interest to find additional warm bodies to keep on staff.

That’s half the background.

Now here’s where it starts getting weird.

Last January (that’s 2004), I get a phone call from the Wickenburg police at 1:30 AM. They tell my half-asleep brain that someone has just called them, reporting that he witnessed three men fueling and then loading C-4 explosives into a C170 (that’s a Cessna taildragger) at the airport. When asked, these three men told the witness that they were flying to Washington to blow up the White House.

I replied to the police that they really didn’t have much to worry about because it would take a Cessna a few days to reach Washington. (Yes, I really did say that. They probably have it on tape somewhere. Remember, I was half asleep.)

The officer started asking questions and I started waking up. The gravity of the situation started to sink in. After 9/11, reports like this at airports are taken very seriously. The police tell me what they’d been told. And I realize that the story didn’t match what I knew to be fact: Namely, that the plane couldn’t have fueled up at 6:30 when the witness claimed because I’d fueled the last plane at 5:30 PM and had locked up everything (including the pumps) at 6 PM when I left for the night. I suggest that perhaps the whole thing is a hoax.

Two more phone calls from the police that night before I’m finally able to get back to sleep.

A few days later, I’m at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, loitering outside the Peachpit Press booth. My cell phone vibrates. It’s the police in Wickenburg again. They tell me that the case has been resolved. That the witness has been charged with submitting a false terrorist report. They tell me the witness’s name, but it doesn’t ring a bell and doesn’t stick. They give me the report number in case I ever want to look at the report. All I hope is that I’m not called as a witness in some trial.

Time goes by. It’s now March. Two of my airport staff members are away at the same time and the third can’t work. I wind up working four days in a row at the airport while my editor anxiously awaits more chapters of my QuickBooks book. Enough is enough. Time to get more warm bodies.

I get a call from a guy named Bob Doe. (That isn’t his real name, but it’ll do.) He says he talked me to me several months ago about a job at the airport but I wasn’t hiring back then. Am I hiring now? Sure, I tell him. Go to the airport and fill out an application.

He comes by the airport while I’m working. He’s in his mid thirties. His resume shows all kinds of airport experience. But he’s working as a stocker in the supermarket. (Actually, he isn’t. But he does have an equally unrelated part-time job.) He’s very enthusiastic and I’m sucked in, desperate for more warm bodies so I can get back to work. I think I notice alcohol on his breath, but I could be imagining it. I tell him to come by the next day for training.

“So I got the job?” Bob says.

“Well, I want to see how you do at training,” I reply evasively, trying hard to convince myself that it isn’t alcohol at 11 AM.

Bob leaves and I think about it. I’m not sure about him. I voice my concerns to one of the medivac pilots stationed at the airport. He tells me to go with my gut feeling.

I call one of Bob’s references and learn that he worked there for two months. Human resources tells me they fired him for not showing up for work and not calling. I can’t track down the other recent reference because he didn’t include a phone number. I decide to put off training for another day when Mike, my significant other, will be around to help train him.

The next morning, I call him at 8 AM. I get his answering machine. I tell him not to come in until the next day. At 9 AM a taxi (yes, a taxi — the only one we have in town) rolls up and he gets out. I tell him about the message. He says he never got it. He says he must have been in the shower. I tell him I can’t train him that day. He gets a little nasty, pointing out that he’d taken a cab. I tell him I’ll pay the cab fare. He tries to get me to change my mind and let him stay. I tell him about the reference checks and tell him I need phone numbers for all of his references. I then pay the $14 round trip cab fare and send him on his way.

Bob calls later with phone numbers for two personal references. The other reference I’d tried to contact had gone out of business. (How convenient, I think.) He gives me the name of a supervisor at the other reference. After he hangs up, I leave a message on the supervisor’s voicemail.

The next day, Bob shows up in a cab again. He’s 10 minutes late. He sweeps in like he owns the place and immediately begins leaving the things he brought with him — backpack, coffee mug, etc. — around the terminal. I hand him over to Mike for training; I have a catering order to handle and two helicopter rides to give.

Later, when things calm down, I can see there’s a problem with this guy. He has a superior attitude that just doesn’t fit into our cosy little establishment. He doesn’t give a hoot for the little plane pilots and complains when the only jet we service that morning leaves without giving him a tip. (We don’t get tips in Wickenburg.) His possessions are scattered all over the terminal. And I can tell that even Mike — that deep well of patience — has had it with him.

When I leave to get lunch for Mike and me, I take Bob home (he was scheduled for training until 1 PM). On the way, he tells me how great it feels to be working at an airport again. He wants to know how many hours we’ll be giving him so he can quit one of his part time jobs. (I didn’t realize that he had two jobs.) I tell him I don’t know yet, that I’d have to let him know.

Back at the airport, Mike and I compare notes. We decide that Bob’s warm body just isn’t the right temperature for us. I get Mike to break the news to him on the phone. I write a check for $24 to cover the promised training pay and put it in the mail.

The next day, Mike is at the airport when Bob storms in, looking for me. He tells Mike that he spoke to me that morning and that I said I’d be at the airport at noon. (A blatant lie.) He tries to say that we’re not hiring him because of age discrimination. Mike points out that all of our employees are at least 20 years older than he is. Mike tells him we need someone more interested in the small plane pilots. He doesn’t get it. He keeps going on about how experienced he is dealing with jets. Mike tells him we get 50 small planes in for every jet that lands so that his experience isn’t worth much to us. Bob storms out, slamming the door behind him.

And yes, there was definitely alcohol on his breath.

Today, Mike and I are having lunch at a local restaurant. Bob comes up in conversation. Something triggers a switch in the back of my mind and I recall the January C-4 in a Cessna incident. Suddenly, Bob’s name seems more familiar than it should.

I stop at the police station on my way back to my office.

“Remember that case in January when the guy reported C-4 being loaded into a Cessna to blow up the White House?” I ask a woman behind a grill.

The woman nods with a strange smile on her face.

“Just tell me,” I say. “Was the person who reported it Bob Doe?”

She nods again.