Yeah, I know. In the old days, calling a phone number outside your area code would likely cost you a few bucks for a few minutes. “Long distance” phone calls were pricey, often 25¢ or more per minute. Cost conscious folks had no interest in following up on a vendor or service by calling in. Thus, toll-free (originally “800” numbers in the U.S.) were born. By the 1990s, they’d run out of area code 800 phone numbers and added 866 and 877.
Sometime before that, however, e-mail began its rise to popularity. Why call someone on the phone when you could e-mail them for free? The result: spammers and people who seem content to cast their queries to the Internet winds, hoping an intended recipient receives them and responds sometime before the end of the week.
As phone companies began competing for our business, phone rates dropped. When I ran my BBS back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I was thrilled to find a calling plan with unlimited long distance for only 10¢ a minute. Then 6¢. Then 5¢. This meant I could pick up my FidoNET message groups nightly for only a few dollars a month. The added benefit: I could call my mother or sister, in the next state, and talk to them for 20 minutes for only a buck.
Time marched on. Cell phones began their rise. Cell phone service providers started competing for our business, offering better and better rate plans. I pay a flat fee every month. I get free calls on weekends and non-peak times. I get free calls to any other cell number with the same carrier as mine. I get free calls to the five phone numbers I specify that aren’t with my cellular provider. I get 900 peak minutes a month. Yes, I realize that other providers have other plans that are equally good, if not better. The point is, if you have a cell phone with any decent calling plan, there’s no such thing as “long distance” anymore — at least not within the U.S.
So why the hell do people whine and complain when they can’t contact a person or organization via e-mail? Why don’t they just pick up the damn phone and dial the number that’s provided?
Here are three examples of where I’m seeing old-fashioned thinking about making a “long distance” phone call:
I recently designed a brochure for Flying M Air’s Moonlight Dinner Tour, which takes people to the excellent Anzio Landing restaurant at Falcon field. The brochures were designed to be distributed at Anzio to their existing customers. Fortunately, I sent a sample of the brochure to the owner/manager before having them printed. I included my company’s phone number, which is in the 928 (northern Arizona) area code. The manager asked, “Don’t you have a local number for people to call?” I had to grab a number in the 602 (Phoenix) area code from Google Voice, set it up to forward to my phone, and add it the brochure.
At least once a week, I get an e-mail message from a helicopter pilot looking for a job. They visit Flying M Air’s Web site and home in on the Contact Us page. The page includes the company phone number — seriously, how else would you make a reservation? — but they opt for the contact form, which sends me an e-mail message. So rather than taking 15 to 30 seconds of their time calling to ask if there are any jobs available, they waste 5 to 10 minutes of their time composing an e-mail message that’s supposed to impress me just to ask me to call them and request more information or an interview. Guess what? I’m not impressed. (I’ve since added a note right above that form telling them we’re not hiring. It’ll be interesting to see how many job seekers ignore that.)
A recent comment on wickenburg-az.com, a Web site I manage, complained that an organization seeking support and new members had not provided an e-mail address. It had, however, provided a phone number. I pointed this out in a reply to the comment, hoping he’d stop whining and contact the organization using the method they preferred.
Come on, folks! It’s 2010! Telephone communication is cheaper than ever. It also remains the fastest way to conduct a two-way conversation with someone else.
Need information? Stop wasting time with e-mail and pick up the damn phone!
One of the disadvantages of being on the controls of a helicopter is that you pretty much always have to have at least one hand on the controls. Most helicopters do not have autopilots and, in my experience, I’ve found that releasing the cyclic while in flight is a good way to begin undesired aerobatic maneuvers that are likely prohibited by the Pilot Operating Handbook (POH).
The more you fly a helicopter, the more accustomed you are to dealing with one-handed chores like dialing in radio frequencies, adjusting the altimeter, fiddling with the GPS, and even folding maps. But for new pilots and pilots flying to, from, or through busy airspace, navigating and dealing with other cockpit management chores can be a real challenge.
The key to dealing with this gracefully is preparation. Here are some of the things I’ve come up with.
Organize in Advance
I don’t think there’s any simpler or more important tip to share. By organizing your cockpit in advance, you’ll know exactly where everything is and be able to reach it when you need it. I’m talking mostly about things like checklists, charts, pens, flight plans, and notes. But this could also include navigational aids like a handheld GPS, performance charts, and water or snacks.
My seat pocket includes charts and checklists; my passenger’s seat pocket includes marketing material and souvenir postcards.
There’s nothing that bugs me more than when an aircraft mechanic or cleaner or some other pilot moves the things I keep in the pocket under my legs in my aircraft. That’s where I should find all the charts I use regularly, my preflight briefing card (for passenger briefings), my emergency checklist, and my startup/shutdown checklists with performance charts. These are things I sometimes need to reach for in flight — I want them exactly where I expect them to be — not under the seat or in the back or in the seat pocket of the front passenger seat.
By always having things like this in the same place, I can always find them where I expect them to be. This reduces workload in flight — I don’t have to hunt around to find them when I might also need to do something else.
Use an Airport Frequency Cheat Sheet
I’ve had one of these on board since I bought my first helicopter, an R22 Beta II, back in 2000. It’s a standard letter size sheet of paper with a four-column grid on it. The columns list Airport Names, Elevations, Tower/CTAF Frequencies, and ATIS/AWOS/ASOS Frequencies. Each row is for a different airport in the areas of Arizona where I fly. The type is purposely large, so I can read it from a distance. The entire sheet is laminated so it doesn’t get beat up.
In Robinson helicopters, the floor at the pilot’s seat is carpeted but covered with a sheet of clear plastic. I slip my cheat sheet under the plastic so it’s at my feet. When I fly, I can shift one or both feet aside to get a look at the sheet to find a frequency I need. This is a lot quicker and easier than consulting a chart or fiddling with a GPS to get the same information.
Of course, if you don’t want to go all out and create one of these for everyday use, you should consider creating one for the flight you’re going to take. It can be much smaller — perhaps index card size — so you can slip it in a pocket when not in use. My husband uses sticky notes that he affixes to the yoke of his airplane. Same idea. He doesn’t fly as often as I do or to as many places, so that meets his needs.
Configure Your Charts in Advance
My cheat sheet under the plastic carpet protector and my TripTik on the Robinson-designed GPS tray I use to mount cameras and display charts.
By “configure,” I mean fold open to the area of the chart you’ll need to consult enroute. For most helicopter cross-country flights, you’ll likely use only a few panels of a single chart. But if you’re going on a long cross-country flight, you’ll likely need to fold open more than one chart — or fold the chart you need in a way that it’s easy to get to all panels you’re likely to need. Large paperclips or binder clips can come in handy to keep the chart open the way you need it.
A very smart pilot navigating through a new area will likely use a highlighter — pink and orange work best — to highlight his intended route. This makes it very easy to find the line you’re supposed to be on and keep track of landmarks you fly over as you go.
I’ve actually gone a step farther with this idea. I’ve created a “TripTik” (think AAA) by cutting old charts into pieces that I laminated and put on binder rings. I can clip this loose binder full of map segments to a platform I recently had mounted in my helicopter. As I fly, I can flip through the pages to see the segment I need. It was time consuming and tedious to create and it isn’t quite perfect yet, but it sure does make it easier to manage my charts. (You can see a video about it below.) And yes, I still do have all the up-to-date charts I need on board for every flight.
What’s that you say? You have a whiz-bang moving map GPS so you don’t need charts? Try telling that to an FAA inspector. And then think about what might happen if you didn’t have charts handy, weren’t paying much attention to where you might be, and that GPS dropped dead. That was the topic of an AOPA video I saw a long time ago and it’s stuck with me ever since. Situational awareness is vital to flight. Don’t depend on a GPS to tell you where you are. When flying in an unfamiliar area, always keep track of where you are on a chart.
One more thing about charts: make sure the one you’re carrying is the current one. Airport information and frequencies change. Having the wrong information about an airport you’re landing at or flying near can get you in trouble, as this story relates.
Punch in a Flight Plan
If you do have a GPS, make the most of it by punching in a flight plan before lifting off. This is extremely useful when doing a cross-country flight through relatively busy airspace.
For example, when I fly from Phoenix, AZ to Torrance, CA in the Los Angeles area, I fly through about two hours of wide open, empty desert, stop for fuel, and then spend another two hours threading my way though the busy airspace of Riverside and Orange Counties. This can get really intense, especially when LA’s famous smog has settled in the valleys and visibility is right around minimums. Although I mostly follow roads, I use waypoints along the way to make sure I don’t take the wrong exit (so to speak). Punching these waypoints — airports and GPS waypoints on the LA terminal area chart — into my GPS not only helps keep me on course, but it displays the upcoming waypoint and my distance from it so I can make intelligent radio calls when passing through.
While lots of pilots learn how to use the Go To feature of their GPS and stop there, learning how to enter a full flight plan is far more beneficial on a long flight. Suppose I decided to use Go To to move from one waypoint to the next. That means that as I’m passing through Fullerton’s airspace, I might be trying to punch in Long Beach’s waypoint. While keeping an eye out for other helicopter traffic in the busy 91/5 intersection area. And keeping to a restricted altitude. And dialing Long Beach’s frequency into standby. I don’t know about you, but that’s more of a workload than I want when visibility is 3-1/2 miles in smog. Using the flight plan feature to have all waypoints entered in advance significantly reduces the workload in flight.
Get a Capable Companion Involved
If you’re not flying solo, you may be able to shift some of the work to the person sitting beside you — but only if that person is willing and able to perform the tasks you need done promptly, with the minimal amount of instruction.
I’m lucky. My husband is a pilot, too. He knows how to tune in radio frequencies and use the Go To feature on my helicopter’s GPS. He can read a chart and pull off radio frequencies. He knows how to look for traffic. When we fly together, we share the workload. Since he’s got his helicopter rating, too, I usually put the duals in and he does most of the flying while I handle the cockpit chores.
Not everyone is as lucky. Some companions just can’t figure things out — even the simple things, like tuning in a radio. Entering busy airspace is not the time to teach them. Do it yourself — it’ll be quicker and safer. If you’ll be flying often with a person, give him some training when you’re just out cruising around so he’ll be ready to help you when you’re in busy airspace and can really use a hand.
And even if your companion is capable of doing things, he might not want to. As I mentioned, my husband is a pilot and can read a chart. But is he willing to monitor our progress on a chart in flight? No. He’s not a map person and simply doesn’t like using any kind of map unless he needs to.
I’m exactly the opposite. If I’m not flying, I’ve got that chart open on my knees and can tell you exactly where we are — well, to the nearest finger-width, anyway. I recently had an excursion passenger who was the same way. At the start of each leg of our trip, I’d configure a map for her and show her roughly where we were going. Although she had some trouble tracking our progress on the unfamiliar aeronautical chart format, she put in a good effort and did pretty darn well.
Plan Thoroughly
Of course, to punch in a flight plan and configure your charts, you must have a clear idea of where you’re going. That’s what flight planning is all about. Don’t just wing it (no pun intended) — plan it out completely so you know where you’re going and how you’ll get there.
I can’t stress how important this is for a long cross-country flight. You’ll need to examine the entire route on a current chart to make sure it doesn’t pass through hot MOAs or restricted areas. You’ll need to know where you can find fuel or lunch or maybe even a hotel along the way. You’ll need to learn about weather and NOTAMs and TFRs on your flight path. And you’ll need to get familiar with the layouts of the airports you’ll be landing at.
This is really part of flight planning the stuff you’re supposed to do before you crank up the engine — not cockpit management. But without a solid flight plan, you won’t be able to properly prepare as outlined above to make your cockpit management tasks easier.
Got Your Own Tips to Share?
If you’re an experienced pilot — helicopter or airplane — and have some other tips to share, please do. Use the Comments link for this post to get a discussion going.
I’ve received messages and comments that were barely literate, but this one takes the cake.
I just received the following e-mail message from someone who had likely read one or more of my posts about flying helicopters or the helicopter job market:
Bare in mind that I have never flown a acraft of any type before…… I want to get into flying a turbine helicopter (of my owne) and I live in Mississippi. Everything I find online about schools is very, for lack of a better term eather full of crap and or confusing as all hell. and there are more schools than you can shake a stick at, but all have a list of requierments a mile long just to take a class. I ask you because you are already a pilot, and might atlaest be able to give me a guide line and rough idea with out all the bullcrap to confuse it. I need to know what I have to do to get a helicopter pilot licence, both for comercial and privet flying. where I can go to do so. and a high ball estimit of what it will cost me. could you please help me on this matter?
I did not edit the above. This is exactly how I received it, copied and pasted into my blog editing software.
Those of you who don’t see a problem with the above…I have one question: what the hell are you doing here? My writing must seem like Greek to you, since I tend to write at a Grade 8 level or higher.
While I don’t know anything about the age and background of the author of the above (other than the tell-tale Mississippi comment), I like to think that he’s in at least eighth grade. (And, for the record, although I live in Arizona, I didn’t go to school here.)
I had to read it three times to understand what he was getting at. I can see why he finds online information “confusing as hell” — his understanding of properly spelled words in the English language is likely minimal.
This is the kind of e-mail I get sometimes.
You know, I want to help people achieve their dreams. I really do. That’s one of the reasons I blog about the things I do. I can do these things, so it follows that other people can, too.
But I can’t tell people how to perform miracles.
This guy is doomed before he starts. I know that if I were hiring and someone sent me an e-mail or cover letter or (heaven forbid) resume with as many errors as the above message, I wouldn’t even bother to answer it. This guy’s failure to put together a single error-free sentence makes me wonder how he’ll fare when it’s time to study the POH (that’s Pilot Operating Handbook) for the turbine helicopter he wants to fly.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you cannot get anywhere in life without basic communication skills — including writing skills. These days, with spelling and grammar checkers built into half the writing software out there, there’s no reason to send out a communication like the one above.
You want a career as a pilot — or anything else? Learn how to communicate first.
And, for the record, it is not my intention to ridicule the author of the above. If I wanted to, I would have included his name and e-mail. (Even I’m not mean enough to do that.) I’m just using his communication as an example. I’m hoping that my e-mailed response to him — that it’ll cost $40K to $80K to get the ratings he needs to fly helicopters for a living — scares him into more reasonable aspirations.
Got this from my friend, Tom, a while back and forgot to share it. Give it a try — it can’t make things any worse.
Apparently, once protected cell phone numbers have been released to telemarketing companies. Their calls are not only annoying, but depending on your call plan, you can be charged for their intrusion.
To help prevent this, call the National Do Not Call list, from your cell phone, at:
888-382-1222
It’s very easy, and blocks your number for five (5) years. You must call from the cell phone number you want to have blocked.
This morning, I reviewed an interesting comment left in this blog’s Guest Book. It had been held for moderation, which means I have to review and approve it before it appears online.
Nasty for No Reason
The comment was one of the nastiest I’ve ever read. The person who decided to try to ruin my day told me that this site was like a garage that needed clearing out — or something like that; I didn’t preserve his words for posterity. He told me I should delete anything over six months old. He said he’d come to find information about my books but that he wasn’t willing to use the “convoluted” (his word) methods needed to find content here. He finished up by saying he was an editor — imagine that! — and that he now has no interest in any of my books.
Whew!
He evidently forgot to mention the problem with his eyesight that prevented him from seeing links clearly marked “Books” and “Articles” in the NavBar at the top of the page. He also appeared to miss the note in the description of this site — which appears “above the fold” on the Home page — that clearly said support for my books had been moved to Maria’s Guides. And that Search feature at the top of the site navigation column — I suppose the label “Search This Site” isn’t clear enough. And I guess I couldn’t expect him to scroll down on any page of the site to see the list of books supported with the links to content related to those books.
Convoluted? The only way I could make this site easier to navigate is to take control of his computer while he’s online here and guide his mouse to the link he needs.
He probably spent more time wording and editing his comment than he did looking around the site for the content he evidently wasn’t so interested in in the first place.
I deleted his comment, as I do with any other nasty comment that serves no purpose other than to rudely criticize me or someone else. I think that if he had presented his opinions more courteously, I would have given them some real consideration. But since his comment was obviously posted as a personal attack on me, I threw it away with the rest of the crap I encounter online.
On Bottom Dwellers
But it reminded me that there’s a lot of bottom-dwellers out there, looking to bring other people down to their level. The Internet is full of them and the worst thing you can give any of them is a keyboard and a form to fill in with their rude and destructive comments. I know bloggers who have turned off the commenting feature on their blogs because of the amount of crap like this that they get. Other bloggers let it run rampant in their comments, letting it feed the other bottom dwellers lurking out there until there’s nothing mature or civil about their blogs. As we’ve seen in the past, that can quickly get out of hand.
What these bottom-dwellers clearly do not understand is that my blog is mine. I decide on the design, I decide on the content, I decide on how long to keep blog posts, I even decide whether a comment is appropriate on a post. If he doesn’t like my site, he can go somewhere else — there’s enough content out there for everyone. As my mother would say, “Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.”
Yeah, I know. In the old days, calling a phone number outside your area code would likely cost you a few bucks for a few minutes. “Long distance” phone calls were pricey, often 25¢ or more per minute. Cost conscious folks had no interest in following up on a vendor or service by calling in. Thus, toll-free (originally “800” numbers in the U.S.) were born. By the 1990s, they’d run out of area code 800 phone numbers and added 866 and 877.
I’ve had one of these on board since I bought my first helicopter, an R22 Beta II, back in 2000. It’s a standard letter size sheet of paper with a four-column grid on it. The columns list Airport Names, Elevations, Tower/CTAF Frequencies, and ATIS/AWOS/ASOS Frequencies. Each row is for a different airport in the areas of Arizona where I fly. The type is purposely large, so I can read it from a distance. The entire sheet is laminated so it doesn’t get beat up.