Tag Archives: aviation

SPOT Messenger: A First Look

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Initial thoughts about my new flight following solution.

My friend, Jim, is an Idaho-based R44 pilot with a company very similar to mine. He’s a single pilot Part 135 tour and charter operator who sometimes operates over very remote terrain.

Of Flight Plans and Flight Following

One of the challenges we face as charter operators is last-minute route changes requested by paying passengers. For example, suppose the passenger books a flight from Scottsdale to Sedona. I’m required by the FAA to file a flight plan that indicates my route so that if we don’t turn up in Sedona, they’ll know which way we went and can [hopefully] find us. But at times — sometimes after the flight is already under way — the passenger might say something like, “Can you follow the course of the Verde River to Camp Verde?” This is not the most direct route and it’s not likely to be the one I planned. But what do I do? Say no?

[The right answer is yes, say no. That’s the answer the FAA wants to hear. But the FAA is not paying by the hour to conduct the flight. The FAA is not going to refer its friends to a friendly, accommodating pilot.]

The problem is, if I deviate from a route and something goes wrong, the search teams may not be looking for us anywhere near where we are. So they might not find us. And sure, I have an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) in my aircraft — even though it is not required by the FAA. But how well do those really work? It certainly didn’t help them find a pilot and his co-worker when they literally disappeared on a flight between Deer Valley in North Phoenix and Sedona nearly two years ago. They’re still missing.

And then there’s Steve Fossett. Or maybe I should have said, where’s Steve Fossett. They must have spent millions by now to find him and he’s still among the missing.

Airplane pilots and pilots flying in the flatlands of the midwest can request something called flight following from the flight service station (FSS). Flight following keeps you on radar so they pretty much always know where you are. The problem with helicopters is that we fly so darn low. Even if I flew up in nose bleed territory at, say, 1500 feet above ground level (AGL), the terrain in the area I fly is too mountainous to keep me on radar. I’d have to fly much higher to stay on radar. And if I’m going to be that high, I may as well fly a plane. So flight following is not a practical solution.

The True Geek’s Solution

Jim also flies in remote and often mountainous areas. And, like me, he’s a true gadget lover — someone who likes to fiddle with electronic toys. (I think he’s lusting for a POV.1 after seeing mine.) He was based in Chelan for cherry drying season and happened to see the SPOT Messenger displayed at the local Radio Shack. He went in and checked it out. Then he did more homework. Then he bought one and told me about it.

SPOT MessengerThe SPOT Satellite Messenger is a personal location device. It’s about the size of my Palm Treo and, as you can see here, bright orange so it’s easy to…well, spot.

My understanding of the unit is that it combines GPS receiver technology with satellite transmitter technology. So you turn it on and it acquires its position via GPS. You can then use one of four different features, depending on the subscription plan you choose:

  • The SPOT standard service plan, which costs $99/year, includes the following three features:
    • OK sends a text message or e-mail message to the phone numbers or e-mail addresses you specify. The message, which is customizable, tells the people on the list that you’re checking in OK and provides the GPS coordinates for your position. Those coordinates include a link that, when clicked, displays your position on Google Maps.
    • Help, is similar, but it sends a customizable help message to the people you specify. The idea here is that you need help and have no other way to contact someone who can help you.
    • 911 sends your GPS coordinates to the folks at the GEOS International Emergency Response Center, who, in turn, notify the appropriate emergency authorities. This is for real, life-threatening emergencies. The Response Center folks also contact, by phone, the two people you specify to notify them of the signal.
  • The tracking upgrade option, which costs another $49/year, includes live tracking, which, when activated, sends you GPS position every 10 minutes or so to the SPOT folks. This information is visible to anyone who has been given access to a Share page you configure with or without a password.

Jim went with both plans. When I bought mine on Monday, I did the same.

First Thoughts

I’ve been playing with SPOT on and off since Tuesday morning. In general, I like it and I think it’ll do the job I intend to use it for — flight following on those long cross-country flights.

After configuring message recipients, I started out by sending a few OK messages. Although the marketing material makes it seem as if those messages are instantaneous, they’re not. After pushing the OK button, the unit will try for up to 20 minutes to send your OK location via satellite uplink. It’ll send the message 3 times, but only one message is forwarded to the people on your list. For experimental purposes, I made myself one of those people. I had to wait longer than 20 minutes to receive one or two of the messages. To be fair, part of the reason for that could be my location at the time — flying between Wenatchee and Seattle in mountainous terrain. (I don’t think my cell phone was receiving very well.) The delay is satisfactory, once you realize that it’s not an instant communication.

For obvious reasons, I have not used Help or 911 yet. Let’s hope I never have to.

I did set up tracking. It took several tries to turn it on properly. The unit does not have a screen, so you have to rely on understanding the blinking lights to know what it’s doing — if anything. Twice I thought I was enabling tracking, but discovered that all I did was send OK messages. Once, tracking was on and in trying to turn it on, I really turned it off. In all cases, it was operator error. Evidently, you cannot turn on tracking during the 20-minute period in which an OK message is being sent. Since both features use the same button, it’s pretty easy to do one thing instead of the other if you don’t pay attention to how long you hold down the darn button.

My husband complained that the messages he received did not include the date and time. We later realized that it was because he was not viewing the message on his phone; he was viewing its summary. (My husband is text message challenged.)

Snowqualmie PassPad 6The e-mail version of the OK message is handy because of the link it includes. Click it and go right to Google Maps with the position clearly marked. Here are two examples. In the first one, we’re flying just to the east of Snowqualmie Pass over I-90. In the second one, we’re sitting on Pad 6 at Boeing Field in Seattle. These images are at two different magnifications. All GoogleMaps features work — it’s just the location put into GoogleMaps. My personal Messages page on the FindMeSpot.com Web site displays all points with the option of displaying any combination of them on Google Maps. It also enables me to download these points to a GPX or KML format file for use with a GPS receiver or GoogleEarth.

The Share page feature, which is still in beta, was not working when I first tried it. But it’s working now — and quite well! I set up a page that does not require a password so anyone could check in and see where I was when I was traveling with SPOT tracking turned on. Apparently, it only shows the past 24 hours of activity, so it you’re checking it now and there’s nothing going on, it’s because I’m not traveling with SPOT. But here’s what it looks like right now; as you can see, I spent a lot of time exploring Walla Walla, WA today:

SPOT Shared Page

A few things about this feature:

  • The lines between the points (which, for some reason, are not showing up in the screenshot) do not represent tracks. I was in a truck today and did stay on roads.
  • If the unit did not have a clear shot of the sky, the point that should have been recorded wasn’t. This wasn’t a problem today, since I had the unit sitting on the dashboard in the broiling sun — partially to see if heat would affect it. (It didn’t.)
  • Clicking a point in the list on the left side “flashes” that point in the display. You can also click other controls to get more information.
  • If you leave this page open, it will automatically update. So you can watch new points appear if you’re tracking someone. Way cool.

The URL for this feature is long and impossible to remember, so I created a custom URL using TinyURL: http://www.tinyurl.com/FindMaria. I invite you to try it for yourself.

Overall

My overall opinion is very positive. It will certainly give me peace of mind while flying in some of the remote desert locations I fly in. I think it’s worth the $150 unit cost plus annual subscriptions.

Even if something goes terribly wrong out there, I want to be found.

My next challenge: getting it to send OK messages to my Twitter account. Anyone have any ideas?

Almost Scud-Running

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Flying through a mountain pass in marginal conditions.

Louis and I flew from Wenatchee (EAT) to Seattle’s Boeing Field (BFI) yesterday afternoon. The flight required us to cross the Cascade Mountains. There are two passes to choose from: Snoqualmie, which I-90 goes through and Stevens, which State Route 2 goes through. I’d wanted to take Stevens — I’d already traveled Snoqualmie once and wanted a change — but the decision would not be mine.

It was a weather issue, of course. After weeks of picture-perfect weather here on the east side of the Cascades, a cold front had moved in. Rain clouds were coming over the Cascades. It even drizzled in Quincy.

As I flew out of Quincy Airport for the last time this season, I took a good look at the ridge between Ellensburg and the Columbia River, where all those windmills are lined up. The sky was dark out that way, with thick gray clouds. Although the windmills were clearly visible, I could also see the vertical streaks of falling rain. It looked as if a flight up I-90 was out of the question.

But the picture was worse when I reached the Wenatchee area and could see out toward Stevens pass. The sharp, rocky mountains are closer there and the clouds clung to them like cotton balls rubbed across coarse sandpaper: lots of wisps in an 8 to 10 knot breeze. The clouds were definitely lower; the pass was definitely higher.

It looked as if scud-running would be in my near future.

If you’re not a pilot, or you’re a very new pilot, you might not know the term scud-running as it pertains to aviation (or anything else, for that matter). I define scud-running as flying in variable visibility conditions, when you have steer around low clouds or fog enroute to get to your destination. Scud-running is never a good idea. In fact, it’s usually a bad idea. More than a few pilot have met their end hitting a “granite cloud” while attempting to run the scud.

Helicopters, however, are uniquely suited for scud-running. We normally fly low, so the clouds have to be really low to affect our flight. We can travel at a wide range of speeds, from 0 to (in my case) 115 knots, so we can take our time and really look at what’s around us before committing to a path. And if that path turns bad, we can make a 180° turn to get out of it in a very narrow space. Best of all, if things get really out of hand, we can always land in a field or parking lot and wait out the problem.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not recommending scud running to any pilot. It’s dangerous. I’m just saying that if you’re flying a helicopter and the clouds start to close in, you’re more likely to live to tell about it — if you handle it right — than someone flying a plane.

In Wenatchee, I checked the weather. I used Duats to get conditions in Stampede Pass, which is just south of Snowqualmie pass, and every other place along the way on both routes. There was no information handy for Stevens Pass, but my eyes had told me enough. Stampede pass had ceilings of 6000 feet. That was more than enough for me. Then I checked the radar in motion to see which way the rain I’d spotted near the windmills was going. It was driving northeast. We were north of the rain; it would pass to the south of us if we flew direct to Ellensburg or Cle Elum. It was cloudy and raining on the other side of the cascades, with 4,000 foot ceilings. Wind was light everywhere, so turbulence wouldn’t be an issue.

I decided to take Snowqualmie Pass.

We started up and I took off on a steep, 1,000 foot per minute climb from Wenatchee Airport. We had to cross the river and then cross the high ridge on the other side. To our left, the rainclouds were moving east. To our right, the low clouds were stuck on mountain peaks. The ridge was clear; the clouds were at least 1,000 feet above it. I aimed slightly to the south of the GPS’s direct-to Ellensburg, pointing the helicopter at the friendliest piece of sky.

I gave Louis the controls when we reached the ridge. He continued the climb, but adjusted our route to intercept with Ellensburg. We climbed closer to the clouds. I thought for a while about how I use a GPS for en route navigation — as a sort of general guide. Louis was putting us on the GPS track. Whatever.

We topped the ridge and the land dropped down toward Ellensburg on the other side. We stayed pretty high. Didn’t seem any reason to descend to a 500-foot cruise altitude when we’d just have to climb again. I set Cle Elum as the next go to waypoint in the GPS. Louis adjusted course to head west.

Ahead of us, the mountains closed in. I-90 threaded its way through them in one narrow valley after another. Although we still had at least 2,000 feet of cloudless sky right above us, the clouds dropped up ahead. The entrance to the mountainous area looked shrouded in a white haze. It didn’t look good.

I dialed in the Stampede Pass ASOS. It assured us that the ceilings were 1700 feet. Plenty of space for us. But we weren’t going through Stampede Pass. We were going through Snowqualmie Pass. They were very close, but would they have the same conditions?

We continued on. I paid close attention to the high-tension power lines that ran along the side of the road. If we had to descend and turn, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly where those wires were.

The road climbed into the mountains. We stayed at pretty much the same altitude until we were about 500 feet above the road. Then we climbed with it. We slipped into the white haze, which turned out to be a light mist. Tiny raindrops covered the helicopter’s cockpit bubble. Visibility was still okay, but there wasn’t enough moisture to bead up and run off the window, so we had to look through all those little droplets. Still, so far, so good.

We passed the two little airports at Cle Elum and I punched the next airport into the GPS: Easton State. If I have to make a precautionary landing, I like to do it at an airport, so I like to keep an airport dialed into the GPS. Sure, we could land in a big parking lot or field, but that’s a good way to get unwanted attention in these little towns.

Meanwhile, the clouds continued to come down. My internal alarm systems came to life when we started flying between low-hanging wisps of clouds. The last time I’d done that, I’d flown into one I hadn’t seen. That produced about 2 seconds of terror before I made a descending 180° turn to get out. I didn’t want to be there again. I told Louis, who was still flying, about my experience.

We passed Easton State. The next airport was Bandera, on the other side of the pass. I punched it in. We were now flying in a deep canyon, about 400 feet over a lake and I-90. The wires were not an issue anymore. At the west end of the lake, the highway made a sharp turn to the left into what looked like a cloud bank.

Crossing the Mountains

I listened to the Stampede Pass ASOS again. Now the ceilings were 1400 feet — still not bad. We weren’t far from there. We continued to the end of the lake, where we could see into the next canyon. Visibility was still okay, so we went in. This was the narrowest part of the canyon with very little room to maneuver. The clouds stayed high enough. The misty rainfall continued. We were okay, but I knew it could turn bad at any time.

Then we were through the pass and the road started to descend. The clouds went down with it. So did we. We’d made it through the pass but I still wasn’t sure whether we’d have a clear enough shot out of the mountains. We could never see more than a few miles ahead of us because of the mist and the twisty turns of the canyon.

But by the time we passed Bandera, it was obvious that we wouldn’t have to turn back or land. As the road continued to descend, the clouds stayed put. I tuned in the ATIS for Boeing Field and heard 10 miles visibility with 4000 foot ceilings. We landed there about 20 minutes later.

Here’s our entire route, laid out on a sectional chart;

EAT to BFI via Snowqualmie Pass

I wouldn’t call this experience scud running, but it was about as close as you could get. I don’t think too many airplanes would have made this flight successfully without getting into the clouds — granite or otherwise. Although something small and slow like a Piper Cub could have handled the altitude and airspeed, the uncertainty of what lay ahead, coupled with the extremely narrow spaces that would make it impossible for an airplane to turn around, would make this a very dangerous flight for any plane.

I’ve been in worse weather situations than this one, but I don’t think I entered into this one lightly. The entire time we were in the mountains with low clouds, I kept thinking about escape routes, landing zones, obstacles to turning, and what could happen if we let it. In Arizona, I don’t get much practice flying weather. While I think that what we experienced yesterday was marginal VFR at best, other pilots more accustomed to weather flying might think I was taking the whole thing too seriously.

But it’s when you let your guard down that Mother Nature sometimes steps forward to slap you in the face.

The End is Near

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The end of my cherry drying contracts, that is.

I came to Washington State in the beginning of June to start a pair of cherry drying contracts. I was fortunate enough to get a third contract wedged in between the first two, giving me almost seven solid weeks of work.

Well, “work” is not quite an accurate term. I was on standby for all three contracts, but only flew 5.2 hours on two days during one contract.

Thank heaven I was getting standby pay. Without it, I would have taken a heavy loss this summer. But with it, and thanks to the availability of a pilot willing to share ferry costs on both 10+ hour flights between Washington and Arizona, I’ll stay in the black.

My third contract officially ends on Monday, July 28 at nightfall. Unless the weather looks threatening, they’ll likely cut me loose a few hours earlier. It doesn’t matter. I’m not leaving until Tuesday.

But in the meantime, I figured it might be a good idea to drive my orchards, just to see if there was still fruit on the trees. I was in Wenatchee today, so I drove past the one near Wenatchee Airport. There are two cherry orchards across the street from each other. I’m not sure which one is mine. (Heck, it’s hard to tell from the ground when all the photos I have are from the air!) One of them still had plenty of cherries, the other had none. I continued on to Quincy and visited two of my three orchards there. Both were heavy with cherries. One of them is likely to be picked soon — fruit boxes had been laid out neatly in the rows between the trees.

As long as there’s fruit on the trees, there’s a slight chance they’ll ask me to stay on. Although I don’t mind staying an extra day or two, I really don’t want to stay longer than that. I feel done with this place, if you know what I mean.

My trip home will be completed in multiple steps:

  • Tuesday: Fly the helicopter from Quincy to Seattle. Then take Horizon back to Wenatchee and drive back to Quincy. I hope to get all that done on Tuesday, but might have to take an early morning flight on Wednesday to get back to Quincy.
  • Wednesday: Drive the trailer to Walla Walla. That Washington town consistently comes up as a top choice when I go through the quiz on the Find Your Spot Web site. I was there in 2006 during my Midlife Crisis Road Trip and I liked what I saw. But I was only there long enough to do my laundry and visit a downtown independent bookstore. This time, I’ll stay two nights and check it out.
  • Friday: Drive the trailer from Walla Walla to Salt Lake City. I’ll be staying with the family of one of my editors, Megg. She’s going to take me hiking on Saturday.
  • Saturday: Drive the trailer from Salt Lake City to Page, AZ. If I get a late start from SLC, I’ll spend the night on the road and get in sometime on Sunday.
  • Monday: Fly in Mike’s plane from Page, AZ to Wickenburg. I need to get Alex the Bird home.
  • Friday: Fly with Mike on US Air from Phoenix to Seattle.
  • Saturday-Sunday: Fly with Mike and another pilot from Seattle to Page, AZ. I’m hoping to spend the night in the Reading area, where a buddy of mine is on a fire contract. I think we’d all get a lot out of seeing how a fire operation works.

I still have four chapters of a book revision to finish. I goofed off in Wenatchee most of today, but I expect to finish up over the weekend. There’s another book right after it, but I’ll get that started when I get back to Wickenburg and finish it when I settle down in Page.

Airport Codes: A Meme for Pilot Bloggers

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What can you say about the airports you’ve landed at?

This afternoon, while slowly steaming in my camper with the air conditioner on full-blast, I took a moment to connect to the Internet, check my e-mail, and check up on my Twitter friends. One of them, Highway 89 Project photographer Ann Torrence, had linked to a blog post she’d just updated, “Collection of Airport Codes.” In it, she wrote about her dislike of flying and provided a table of codes for the airports she’s been to.

It’s interesting to me because the average person doesn’t pay much attention to the three- or four-character airport codes that are part of a pilot’s life. For each airport listed — and she listed airports all around the world — she included a very brief comment about her experience there.

While I’m not nearly as well-travelled as Ann, I’m pretty sure that I’ve been to more airports. In many cases, however, I was the pilot in command when I landed at the airport. I have my own story for each of the airports I’ve landed at. So I decided that it might make a good theme for future blog posts about flying.

Quincy, WAThis, in turn, triggered an idea for a meme — something that other pilots who blog could write about, too. What are the airports that you’ve landed at? Pick one and write about it. You can write about why you went there, what you were flying, or what it was like. You can write about the perfect weather or nasty crosswind or unreasonably hot temperatures. You can write about the coffee in the FBO, the courtesy car, or the line guy — or lack thereof. You can write about the people you were with and what they thought when you made that perfect landing — or two, or three. (Just teasing my airplane friends.)

If you pick up this meme and spread it, please do use the Comment link or form to post a comment with the URL for the blog post you created. Be sure to say a little bit about the post when commenting to prevent my spam protection software from thinking it’s just spam and deleting it. (It tends to delete comments that contain only links, especially if there’s more than one link.) As long as the link points to a post in this meme as described here, it’ll stay. You can copy any part of this post to spread a description of the meme, as long as you link back to this post so others who follow it will add their links to the comments here.

In the meantime, I’ll start writing my own posts about some of the airports I’ve landed at. I’ll try to keep it interesting.

I hope those of you who have blogs will join the fun. Because, as we all know, an airport is far more than the three- or four-character code that represents it on charts, publications, and GPSes. I want to read your stories.

Strobe Trouble

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Troubleshooting and fixing a pesky strobe light.

My helicopter — like all helicopters, I assume — has an anti-collision or “strobe” light on the tailcone. This light serves two purposes:

  • On the ground, the strobe light helps alert bystanders that the helicopter’s engine is running or that its blades are turning. This is an important function, especially when you consider what would likely happen if a person walked into a spinning tail rotor. The strobe light is positioned atop the tailcone, just forward of the tail rotor, so it’s a pretty good in-your-face reminder.
  • In the air, the strobe light helps make the helicopter more visible to other aircraft. This is especially true at night, when the bright flashing light seems to scream out, “Here I am!” That’s probably why they call it an anti-collision light.

The Non-Strobing Strobe

I’d just returned from my last cherry drying flight on July 4 when Mike commented, “You know, your strobe light isn’t working.”

I didn’t know.

We went through the motions of checking it. Powering it up and down, resetting the circuit breaker, etc. It wouldn’t work and there was no obvious reason for it.

Helicopter Parked at PaterosI wasn’t too bothered. The helicopter was parked on the lawn beside the Lake Pateros Inn. The tail rotor was hanging over the river bank. Although there were a few people around, there wasn’t much of a chance of someone walking into it while I was starting up or shutting down.

I called my mechanic. He said it was probably just the bulb. He said he’d ship me one. Since I would be back in Quincy by the time it arrived, I told him to send it there.

Three days later, I flew the helicopter back to Quincy. I put it away in the hangar I was renting. The weather was perfect and the forecast called for more of the same. It didn’t seem likely that I’d dry cherries anytime soon. But I needed the strobe light working in case I did any passenger work. Although it isn’t technically required for Part 91 tours, it’s definitely required for Part 135 work. In fact, every single piece of equipment on the helicopter has to be properly functioning for Part 135, since I don’t have a minimum equipment list (MEL). In any case, I considered it an important safety item, especially if I operated anywhere where there might be people on the ground.

The Bulb and the Canadians

I picked up the bulb at the post office on Thursday as I headed out of town in my truck for a day in Wenatchee, about 30 miles away. I got back too late to put the bulb in. On Friday morning, I worked on a book. Around four, I headed out to the airport to put the new bulb in.

There was a twin Cessna on the ramp when I arrived. Six people stood around it. As I slid open my hangar door, a taxi drove in. A few minutes later, it drove out. I was organizing my tools and dragging a chair to stand on over to the tailcone when two men appeared in the doorway.

“You have a helicopter in here,” one of them said. I could hear the surprise in his voice.

They were two Canadian pilots. They’d just flown a rich guy, the girl he was trying to impress, and another couple from Toronto to Quincy for the Police concert at the Gorge Amphitheater. Now they had to wait around until their passengers returned for the flight back. They figured that would be around 10:30 or 11:00 PM. That meant they’d be waiting about six hours.

At Quincy Municipal Airport.

Let me tell you a little more about Quincy Airport. It’s a 3000 or so foot paved runway and I think it has lights. The taxiway parallels it for about half its length. At one end is the ramp area with an ancient hangar building that contains exactly six T-hangars. There’s a plastic port-o-potty structure that’s so old and dirty that I’d prefer squatting in poison ivy. There’s also a small storage container where the local Elks or VFW or some other community organization has stored stuff. There’s no FBO so there’s no FBO office. All around is farmland, growing potatoes, feed corn, wheat, and alfalfa. Town is 2-1/2 miles away.

I felt bad for these guys.

Helicopter in HangarMeanwhile, I’d pulled out my MAC ratchet screwdriver — the tool I usually use to prove to men that I don’t believe in buying junk tools — and was attempting to remove the red lens from the strobe light’s bulb. The lens was held in place with a plastic ring, held closed tight with a small philips screw and a tiny nut. I wasn’t getting far. When I turned the screw, the nut turned. I was just realizing my problem when one of the guys took notice.

“Got a pair of needle-nose pliers?”

Of course I did. I didn’t think there was enough room to use them to hold the nut steady. But there was. And before I could stop him, he went to work on the screw, holding the nut in place with the pliers.

In another mood, I would have been annoyed. After all, I could eventually do it. But I was hot and these guys would soon be bored out of their minds. I figured I’d let them do their male thing: helping the female in distress. Frankly, I don’t get as much of that as I did when I was younger and thinner so it’s actually kind of nice to experience it again.

He got the lens off. The bulb was still inside it. I carefully unplugged its three-pronged plug from the hole now in my tailcone. Then I pried the bulb’s base from the lens bottom with a fingernail. I laid the bulb aside and carefully inserted the new one, being sure to keep my fingers off the bulb surface. Skin oils on the glass could overheat when the bulb was turned on and damage the bulb. I took the assembly, plugged it back in firmly. My “assistant,” whose name was Howie, verified that it was plugged in. We then set it back into place.

“I’d better try it,” I said.

I went into the cockpit, turned on the Master switch, and flicked the strobe switch. “Blinking?” I called out. I knew the answer. Even though I couldn’t see the strobe from the cockpit, I would have been able to see its flash on the hangar’s inside walls.

“No,” he called back.

I recycled the switch and the circuit breakers. No joy. Then I went back and we both confirmed that the plug was in all the way and it could only go in one way. So unless the new bulb was bad — which was doubtful — it wasn’t the bulb.

“Well, I can’t leave this hanging,” I said. We put the plastic ring around the base of the lens and Howie tightened it down.

Mexican with Canadians

I called my mechanic and left a message on his voicemail. Then I drove the Canadians into town. I really did feel sorry for them. And frankly, the only thing I had to do was go for a bike ride. This would be a good excuse not to do that.

I only knew one restaurant in town that would be a good place to hang out: Tijuana. It’s a Mexican place near downtown Quincy. I went in with them. They bought me dinner. I’d been planning to skip dinner, so I ordered a quesadilla appetizer. It was huge. One of my companions said he’d never heard of half the things on the menu. I guess they don’t have as many Mexicans up there in the Great White North as we do here.

We talked pilot talk. Howie was retired from the airlines. He worked with the other guy’s company (can’t remember his name!) as the second in command on some flights. He wasn’t doing it for the money. He was just doing it to get out and fly once in a while.

My mechanic, Rich, called back. He listed a bunch of other things it could be: loose plug under the cowl, bad charger box, bad switch, bad circuit breaker, bad bulb. I’d have to check what I could.

We went back to the airport. It was about 8 PM and still daylight. (The sun sets here around 8:45 PM these days and my hangar faces west.) They went into the hangar with me and we started checking connections. I used a flashlight to really get a good look under the rear cowl. Rich had told me to check the gray wire that was fastened to the frame inside the helicopter. That’s the wire for the strobe. I looked at a bundle of wires fastened with wire ties to the frame. None of them appeared to be gray, but one was black. I figured that was it. In any case, they were all securely fastened and plugged into their plugs. Snug as a bug in a rug.

I thanked my new friends for their help and dinner, closed up my hangar, and drove back to my trailer. When I left the Canadians, they were walking the runway.

Troubleshooting with a Pro

After considering and then discarding the notion of flying the helicopter to Seattle for Rich to troubleshoot and fix it, I called Rich back the next day and reported my findings. He said it might be the strobe’s power supply then. He’d send me a used one to swap out.

It arrived in Wednesday’s mail. I was on my way out for a late afternoon/evening in Leavenworth. The next morning, I headed out to the airport. I planned to swap out the part before the sun started beating on the roof of the hangar.

This particular part goes behind the right passenger seat back. It required me to remove about a dozen small black philips screws. I got all of them except one. But I was able to pivot the seat back and see the part.

And that’s when I turned chicken. You see, I am absolutely terrified of electricity. Three people had warned me that the strobe’s power unit packed a lot of voltage. The damn thing even had a warning on it. Rich had told me about losing the feeling in a few fingers for two weeks after getting zapped by one of these things. So even though the master switch was off, the strobe switch was off, and the strobe circuit breaker was pulled, I was afraid to even touch the damn thing.

I got on the phone and called my friend, Jim. He was in Chelan, also waiting for it to rain. But rather than being stuck in a pretty dull farm town, he was stuck in a resort town on a mountain lake. Rather than get his Internet connection through a cell phone’s dial-up connection that frequently dropped, he walked to the local Starbucks and logged on while sipping a latte. (Do I sound jealous? What do you think?)

Anyway, Jim is an electronics wiz. I asked him what he was doing that day and he said he had nothing planned. I told him I needed help with my strobe problem, which he knew about. I said I could be there by 10 AM. He said to give him a call before I headed out.

I was running late. You see, while I was fiddling around with my screwdriver, a Cirrus had landed and discharged two passengers. The pilot was hanging around. We got talking and it turned out that he was weathered out of Renton, which had 600-foot ceilings. He had to wait until the marine layer moved out.

I felt sorry for the guy, so I took him into town and dropped him off at McDonald’s. Then I went back to the trailer, changed my clothes, grabbed my laptops, and locked up. I drove back into town, stopped at the post office, and picked up the pilot at McDonalds. All that burned about 40 minutes.

Chelan Airport RampIt was a 30-minute flight to Chelan Airport. I went the most direct route, over the plateau. (You can see a slightly-edited, narrated video of the route here.) I parked in the field where Jim and Mark had their R44s parked. (Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the three of us all lined up, but here’s a shot of the rock hill at the end of the ramp; the airport’s rotating beacon is on top, which I think is weird.) Then I called Jim. He arrived a few minutes later.

He removed the stubborn screw and pulled aside the seat back. Then he plugged my old bulb directly into the strobe power unit that was installed. When I pushed the breaker back in and powered it up, it flashed. So that meant it wasn’t the power unit. It also meant there was nothing wrong with bulb.

Next, we looked under the hood again. He confirmed that the plugs I’d checked were tight. But when he checked the color of the wire from the power unit, he realized we were checking the wrong wires. We removed part of the cowling to get a better look. And that’s when I could have slapped myself on the head.

There was another wire with a plug fastened to another part of the frame that wasn’t visible with the cowling on. And it was unplugged.

We plugged it in and powered it up. It worked.

Do you know how embarrassed I would have been if I’d flown all the way to Seattle to get this plug plugged in?

In my defense, I want to mention that I did have the Robinson Maintenance Manual with me. I’d brought it along just to troubleshoot any problems I had during the trip. And although it did have a wiring diagram that included the strobe, it did not identify where the wires ran on the aircraft. We had to trace the wires to see the right color and where they ran.

But yes, I admit it: I’m an idiot.

I put the cowling back on and refastened the seat back while Jim insisted on waxing the grease off the helicopter’s back end. Then he cleaned the area around the cowling panel I replaced. I think that if I’d really taken my time about it, he might have cleaned the whole helicopter while he was waiting.

Then I grabbed my laptops, locked up my ship, and spent the day in his neck of the woods. Not only did I get lunch, but I used the restaurant’s Internet connection to download two episodes of the Daily Show for later viewing. Then Starbucks for a new beverage. Then dinner at a winery (sans wine). I flew out of Chelan after 7 PM and was back in my camper before sunset.

So I guess you can say that the strobe light experience had a very happy ending.