Tag Archives: Cascade Mountains

Cross-Country Helicopter Flight from Malaga to McMinnville, Part 3

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Another cockpit POV video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

Join me for the third part of my cross-country flight from my summer base in Malaga, WA to McMinnville, OR. In this video, I cruise from near White Pass in the Cascade Mountains southwest past Mt. St. Helens toward the Columbia River, dodging low clouds that force me to wander off my desired course and even getting into a tiny bit of scud running. Along the way, you’ll see remote forest with lots of logging activity, mountain lakes and rivers, rocky cliffs, snow-covered ridges, and even Mt. St. Helens. Along the way, I tell you about other flights, flying at the Grand Canyon, and what’s going through my mind as I try to get through the weather in front of me. I also bitch about my radar altimeter. Eventually, weather conditions get so bad in the direction I want to fly that I make a precautionary landing at a tiny airport I almost couldn’t find. I had three cameras rigged up for this video and I switch from cockpit cam to nose cam with occasional inset views of me looking at the camera. Audio is from direct connection to the intercom so you can hear me narrate the flight and make radio calls, plus dialed down volume of the helicopter’s engine/rotor noise.

You can see all of the videos for this flight here:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/pgKDciGP4eA
Part 2: https://youtu.be/CmupuFDXa4Q
Part 3: https://youtu.be/vyveMEm_MhQ (this video)
Pups in a Helicopter: https://youtu.be/eEVq9sRlJK8
Part 4: https://youtu.be/3KXR_D3SliA
Part 5: https://youtu.be/eghRyzhPigg

I should mention here that “cross-country” in the world of aviation is any long flight. For airplanes, it’s 50 miles or more; for helicopters, it’s 25 miles or more. This is only part of a 178 nautical mile trip.

Cross-Country Helicopter Flight from Malaga to McMinnville, Part 2

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Another cockpit POV video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

Join me for the second 20 or so minutes of my cross-country flight from my summer base in Malaga, WA to McMinnville, OR. In this flight, I cruise from Ellensburg, WA over the Cascade Mountains near White Pass, dodging low clouds that force me to wander off my desired course. Along the way, you’ll see remote forest and grasslands, rocky cliffs, snow-covered ridges, and even Mount Rainier, off in the distance. I had three cameras rigged up for this video and I switch from cockpit cam to nose cam with occasional inset views of me looking at the camera. Audio is from direct connection to the intercom so you can hear me talk — no radio calls in this video — plus dialed down volume of the helicopter’s engine/rotor noise.

Important Note: This video is being released as a Premiere on Sunday, August 9, 2020 at 7:30 AM Pacific time. That means you can’t see it until after that time. If you tune in for the Premiere, you’ll be able to join a live chat with other viewers (and me) to comment on the video and ask/answer questions. It’s actually a lot of fun. If you view anytime after that, you’ll just see the video, although I believe the premiere chat comments might be visible on the Web.

You can see all of the videos for this flight here:
Part 1: https://youtu.be/pgKDciGP4eA
Part 2: https://youtu.be/CmupuFDXa4Q (this video)
Part 3: https://youtu.be/vyveMEm_MhQ
Pups in a Helicopter: https://youtu.be/eEVq9sRlJK8
Part 4: https://youtu.be/3KXR_D3SliA
Part 5: https://youtu.be/eghRyzhPigg

I should mention here that “cross-country” in the world of aviation is any long flight. For airplanes, it’s 50 miles or more; for helicopters, it’s 25 miles or more. This is only part of a 178 nautical mile trip.

Helicopter Flight: Fog in the Cascade Mountains

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A cockpit POV video from the FlyingMAir YouTube channel.

Sit on the nose of my old helicopter as I fly over the Cascade Mountains and its fog-filled valleys. There’s some narration in the beginning; you can apply your own music.

This “Flashback Friday” video is an 11-minute clip from about 90 minutes of footage shot from takeoff in Wenatchee Heights (WA) to landing at Hillsboro (OR) Airport in July 2012. The flight was done on one of those very rare occasions when I could fly a direct, straight line route – normally, there are low clouds in the Cascades that force me to go around them to the south. You can find a montage of clips from the entire flight in a video I released back then, “Helicopter Flight from Wenatchee to Hillsboro” at https://youtu.be/hnIbY2y69Ug.

I remember this flight like it was yesterday. I had to take the helicopter to Hillsboro for a 100-hour inspection and needed to rush back to Wenatchee to finish cherry season. In this segment, I’m flying over the Cascade Mountains and the valleys below me are full of fog. I had taken off just after dawn and the mountain ridges cast long shadows ahead of me. It was absolutely gorgeous.

Back in July 2012, my divorce had just begun and it wasn’t in its crazy ugly stage yet. At this point in the flight, I recall thinking how much my future wasband would have enjoyed the flight and I was sad about that. (Now I can’t help thinking what an idiot he is and how much better off I am without him. Oh, well. Time does heal all wounds.)

I was also a little uneasy on this part of the flight. Flying VFR on top – which means flying in visual flight rules conditions over clouds – is not something I do very often. Helicopters normally fly quite low and I’m seldom above the clouds. I remember being surprised to see the fog and then nervous with the realization that if I had to make an emergency landing I wouldn’t be able to see my landing zone as I descended. But isn’t all that fog just wonderful to behold?

This was also memorable because it was Penny the Tiny Dog’s first helicopter flight. She was about 5 months old at the time and I had no idea how she would react. I put her in the front seat on a leash that would prevent her from getting into my controls. But after I started up, she just curled up in her bed on the seat and went to sleep. She slept until I began my descent at Hillsboro.

About Me and the Helicopter

  • I have been flying for about 20 years. My nearly 4,000 hours of flight time is in Robinson R44, Robinson R22, and Bell 206L (Long Ranger) helicopters.
  • The helicopter is a 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II — the same one that appears in the photo at the beginning of the video. This was my first R44, which was lost in a crash back in 2018. You can learn more about R44s here: https://robinsonheli.com/r44-specifications/ I owned this helicopter and now own another one very much like it, but blue. I’ve owned a helicopter since 2000.

About the Video

  • This video was recorded in 2012 with a GoPro Hero 3 camera mounted on the nose of the helicopter. Audio comes from the camera’s built-in speaker and has been incorporated into this video at 20% normal volume.
  • The video was stabilized prior to editing in iMovie software. Although I don’t like to edit in iMovie, it does have decent stabilization. If you compare this video to more recent nosecam video (for example, “Helicopter Nosecam Flight: Dawn on the East Side of the Cascades #2” at https://youtu.be/HXBznbtc54U), however, you’ll see that a GoPro Hero 7 Black shoots much more stable video than a Hero3.
  • Narration was done using a Røde Podcaster microphone (https://amzn.to/2IFnbNr) connected to a Macintosh. I recorded the brief narration while I was watching the video in the editing software.
  • The video was edited on a Macintosh using Screenflow software. Learn more about it here: https://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
  • The intro music is by Bob Levitus, famed “Dr. Mac.” You can find him here: http://www.boblevitus.com/

I try to drop cockpit POV videos every Sunday morning and “extras” with more info about owning and operating a helicopter midweek. (Some channel members get early access to some of these videos.) I also host occasional livestreams with Q&A chats. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything new! And tell your friends. The more subscribers I have, the more motivated I am to keep producing videos.

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