Tag Archives: flight training

Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training

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A surprisingly good training aid.

I just want to take a moment to heap some praise on a computer book I’ve found very helpful with my recent Instrument flight training studies: Microsoft Flight Simulator X For Pilots: Real World Training by Jeff Van West and Kevin Lane-Cummings.

The book is, on the surface, a user’s guide for Microsoft Flight Simulator X (FSX), a Windows PC program that supposedly simulates flight in different aircraft. (I have issues on the realism of its simulation, as I reported here.) It takes you through the pilot ratings, one at a time: Sport Pilot, Private Pilot, Instrument Rating, Commercial Pilot. But instead of flying a real plane, you’re flying a simulated plane in the software.

What’s amazing about this book is its ability to communicate valuable and real information about flight training and knowledge required by pilots. I’m concentrating on the Instrument Rating chapters in the second half of the book. I read the first two chapters of that part yesterday and learned more about making departures and planning en route flights using real FAA charts than I did in three days trying to decipher the same charts with other study material.

The book’s text is clearly written and easy to understand. Best of all, it doesn’t put me to sleep — which is always a challenge, since I do most of my reading in bed at night.

While I can’t comment specifically on the exercises to be followed with FSX since I’ve been skipping them, if they’re half as good as the background information, the book is an excellent source for anyone interested in learning to fly using FSX as a training aid. I look forward to finishing the Instrument Rating chapters. And, with luck, I’ll be able to try a few of the exercises myself using the FSX software.

From one computer book author to others: Good job, guys!

On Customer (and Peer) Relations

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Or why I changed my flight school.

Yesterday, I dropped out of one flight school and signed up with another one.

For those of you who don’t know me from this blog or elsewhere, I’m a commercial helicopter pilot with close to 2,000 hours of flight time. The vast majority of that time is in Robinson R22 and R44 helicopters — in fact, I have more time in Robinson helicopters than most flight instructors doing training in them. I owned a 1999 Robinson R22 Beta II from 2000 through 2004 and have owned a 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II since January 2005. My other helicopter time is in Bell 206L LongRangers at the Grand Canyon during a summer job.

On Robinson Helicopters

I like Robinson helicopters. I think Frank Robinson has done a fine job designing, building, and selling helicopters that are comfortable, have good performance, and are easy to own and operate. They also give you the most “bang for the buck.” The Robinson is probably the least expensive helicopter to operate when calculated on a per seat basis.

N630MLAlthough my passengers have occasionally commented on the small size of my R44, they’ve never been disappointed with its comfort or the smoothness of the ride. In fact, I’ve had plenty of comments from people who say that the ride was a lot smoother than they expected. (I’d like to think that at least some of that comes from pilot skill.)

No doubt about it: the R22 is a squirrelly little aircraft. It’s a challenge to learn to fly. Other than the electronic governor, there’s no mechanical assistance to make flying easier. The controls are sensitive and unforgiving. Some people think that’s bad. Other people point out that if you can fly an R22, you can fly any helicopter. I can confirm that I had no trouble transitioning from an R22 (max gross weight 1470 lbs, if I recall) to a turbine-powered, hydraulically controlled LongRanger (max gross weight 4200 lbs). In fact, I used to transition from one to the other on a daily basis.

I’m not willing to say that Robinsons are the best helicopters out there for two main reasons: (1) I’ve only had time in one other make/model so how can I know? (2) No helicopter is “best” at all missions. I’m also not willing to say my Robinsons have been perfect for me in every way — no aircraft (or car or fill-in-the-blank mode of transportation) is perfect. But I am certainly proud to say that I’m extremely pleased with my R44 and confident that I made the right purchase decision.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s important in the story that follows.

Finding a Flight School

I decided in the spring that I wanted to get an instrument rating.

If you’re not a pilot, let me explain. An instrument rating is a pilot certificate that authorizes you to fly by instrument flight rules (IFR) in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). It requires you to learn how to fly the aircraft — in my case, a helicopter — without visual references outside the cockpit. Training covers attitude flying (so you don’t get disoriented and crash) and navigation using a variety of radio and satellite based navigation tools: VOR, DME, GPS.

An instrument rating makes a pilot more valuable, especially if they plan to fly in an area where weather could be an issue. I want to get a summer job in Alaska. I’ve been there and I saw that weather is indeed an issue. So I want the rating to make myself more valuable to potential employers and to help prepare me in the event that I do inadvertently lose visibility and need to rely on instruments for part of a flight.

My aircraft is only partially set up for IFR operations. That’s unfortunate because it means that I can’t use it for training. So I have to find a flight instructor who is a CFII (certified flight instructor for instruments) who has access to an IFR trainer aircraft. That means a flight school.

The trouble with helicopter flight schools these days is that they all want to take students through “the program.” This is a soup to nuts approach to learning to fly and it assumes that you want to learn to fly as part of a career.

When I learned, career flying wasn’t on the horizon for me; it was going to be a hobby. Things change. While I do fly for hire now, flying isn’t my full-time career. (I’d starve.) I got my training — private and then commercial ratings — piecemeal or “a la carte” when it was still widely available that way.

It’s tougher now to find flight school that will take a pilot for just one phase of training. Still, I located four candidates: three in Arizona and one in Florida. After deciding that I didn’t want to be away from home for an intensive two weeks of training in Florida, I was left with three choices in Arizona. Let’s call them A, B, and C.

A was really expensive. Although I talked to a flight instructor about the program, I never got the call back I was promised. A fellow pilot had some mildly negative things to say about A, so I decided not to pursue them.

B, which specializes in “the program” was willing to make an exception for me, primarily because of other business we do together. I’d been in a dialog with B for at least six months and we’d come up with a price structure for my lessons. They were very affordable, since they had a simulator I could use for up to 20 hours of my “flight” time, thus saving a whopping $340/hour over their aircraft flight time. I was sold.

Unfortunately, just when I was ready to start, there was an ownership change that caused a reorganization. Things went into flux. I was called down to the flight school to “get on the schedule” and, once there, told that we’d have to have a meeting the next day with the General Manager to review everything. They’d call to let me know when.

I was deeply POed. The flight school is an hour drive — each way — from where I live. They’d lured me down there on false pretenses — doing paperwork, getting on the schedule — and, instead, had wasted my time with a 5-minute meeting that accomplished nothing. And now it wasn’t even certain that I could get my training there.

If there’s one thing I value, it’s time. Wasting my time is a good way to get on my shit list. The new chief flight instructor at B was at the top of that list.

To make matters worse, I never got a call for the meeting he said we needed. Three weeks passed without getting that call.

In the meantime, I found C. C was at the same location as B. They were a much smaller organization that did a lot of charter work with LongRanger helicopters. They also fly Enstroms — two or three place piston helicopters. That’s what they used for their modest training operation.

I’d never flown an Enstrom, but I’m always interested in getting experience in different aircraft. Although they didn’t have a simulator, the Enstrom IFR trainer would be much cheaper per hour than the R44 IFR trainer at B. So I wouldn’t be paying that much more and would get all 30+ hours of flight time that I needed in a real aircraft.

Still angry at B and uncertain of the future due to the reorganization there, I signed up with C.

At the Flight School

I went for my first lesson at C last Friday. The company is based in a big hangar that houses all of its aircraft — turbine helicopters and airplanes — and provides space for its flight training operations. The layout for flight training wasn’t very practical, but I think there was only one other student there while I was there. I have no problem with small flight schools — I think they offer better personalized instruction. So that was not a problem.

My flight instructor was a great guy. Very nice, very understanding. Best of all, he had more flight time than I did, and had even spent a season at the Grand Canyon flying LongRangers. We’ll call him Joe.

Joe and I took care of paperwork and I handed over a check for my first 11 hours of flight time: $2,300 (which didn’t include the instructor time). We covered a plan of action for my self study — I was hoping to save money on ground school by learning as much as I could with home study aids — then discussed what we’d do in our flights together. He patiently explained how a VOR works — which is something I was supposed to learn as a private pilot but never did (and never needed to, as each of my aircraft was equipped with a GPS). Then we went outside, where the Enstrom was waiting, to fly.

Joe and I went through the startup checklist together and he made me start the helicopter. Starting was similar to the R44 Raven II because the Enstrom had fuel injection. I got it started on the second try. But there were significant differences in the rest of the procedure. Clutch activation is done with a weird handle that requires more strength than I have in my right arm — I had to use two hands to pull the darn thing up. And all the time we were on the ground, the whole helicopter was shaking and rattling and Joe was adjusting the mixture to lean it out properly. The whole idea of leaning was stressing me out, since Robinsons generally aren’t leaned at all. (If you lean an aircraft too much in flight, the engine may quit. Helicopters are damn near impossible to restart in flight.) The aircraft’s cyclic also needed to be trimmed using a little “hat” button on top.

Joe and I picked it up into a hover. He tried to trim it out but was not successful; the trim button wasn’t working. It was also running hotter than it should have been. He decided he wanted a mechanic to look at it. I hovered us back into our parking spot — we’d drifted forward — and set it down as gently as I could. It thumped and rattled and I immediately thought of ground resonance, which is something a helicopter with a fully articulated rotor system like the Enstrom is more likely to get than anything I’d ever flown. But we were okay. We cooled down the engine and shut down.

By now, I was having second thoughts about my decision to go with the Enstrom. It was so different from what I’d flown in the past that I was worried the differences would distract me. Perhaps I’d need more than 30 hours of dual to get the instrument skills I needed.

But 30 hours was a long time. Surely I’d get used to the Enstrom quickly — probably within my first 5 hours. And getting stick time in something so different would be good for my development as a pilot.

So before I could talk myself out of it, I’d talked myself back into it.

Things Take a Wrong Turn

Joe talked to the mechanic on the way in. We went to the schedule book and set up two dates for training the following week — the first week in January. Joe promised the helicopter would be ready. We chatted for a short while. I really liked Joe and looked forward to working with him.

On the way out, he introduced me to C’s new operations guy. Turned out, I already knew him from another company in the Phoenix area. He’d moved to C but wouldn’t get specific on why he’d left his former employer. We’ll call him John.

As Joe left us, John began an animated, one-sided discussion about his big plans for C. And that’s when he said two things that really got under my skin.

The first thing he said, numerous times, was that Robinson helicopters were “a joke.” Apparently, that wasn’t just his opinion. He said the owner of C felt the same way.

Now I’ve already reported my feelings about Robinson helicopters. I don’t think they’re a joke. I do think that his criticism of Robinsons — when he knew damn well that I own one — was incredibly rude, insensitive, and just plain stupid.

I didn’t counter with what I was thinking about Enstroms: that they’re rattletraps and that I’d be embarrassed to put paying passengers into one.

The second thing he said was that he planned to “take over” the Phoenix area tour business by offering flights in C’s Enstroms. “We put people into them and fly low and fast over the trees and they love it!” he exclaimed.

Apparently, FAA safety regulations don’t come into the equation. I know that my minimum altitude for Part 135 flights is 300 feet and I know that there aren’t any 250-trees anywhere in the Phoenix area. I also know what the height-velocity diagram looks like for most helicopters. But heck, who cares about safety when there’s money to be made, right?

That was his attitude. And it was also insensitive since he knows damn well that I’ve been working hard to build a helicopter tour business in the Phoenix area. I don’t have a big operation with multiple helicopters and pilots and an unlimited marketing budget. I don’t treat my passengers like cargo, either. But he could easily attract far more business than I could by simply undercutting my prices. It’s cheaper to fly a 3-place Enstrom than a 4-place Robinson, and that’s all people care about. And that’s what he was bragging to me about.

I started to get seriously POed. I started wondering why I’d just handed over a check for $2,300 to an organization which obviously thought so little of me and my aircraft and my business. I started wondering why I was helping to fund this guy’s efforts to put me out of business.

I held my temper. I managed to escape out into the sunshine without trying to wring his neck.

What Happened Next

On the long drive to my next destination across Phoenix, I managed to talk myself into ignoring John. He was a jackass, an idiot. I wouldn’t be dealing with him. I’d be working with Joe. Joe was a good guy. I was lucky to have such an experienced and knowledgeable flight instructor.

But when Wednesday morning came along, Joe called. The helicopter still wasn’t fixed. We’d have to postpone our lesson until the next day.

And he called to say the same thing on Thursday.

And I started thinking that maybe the stars and planets were moving together to give me a second chance, a way out of my arrangement with C.

You see, I was still deeply offended by John’s comments and couldn’t get them off my mind.

I called my main contact at B. After a bit of telephone tag, we had things settled. The pricing we’d discussed was fine. He didn’t care how I paid or when I started. He was extremely supportive. And he got the Chief CFI at his location to call me back. I could get training at B after all. I’d start on Monday.

I called Joe. “Did you folks cash that check yet?”

“No,” he told me.

“I have to ask you not to,” I said. I told him I’d changed my mind about training there. I assured him, in no uncertain terms, that it had nothing to do with him. I told him it was a combination of two things. First, I thought flying a ship as different as the Enstrom might distract me from my instrument training. Second, that I’d been seriously annoyed by comments made by John during our discussion. I got specific. I told him how these comments made me feel and how it was difficult for me to support an organization that thought so little of me, my aircraft, and my business.

Joe understood. He told me that his boss, the chief flight instructor there, might give me a call. I told him that was fine. I also told him that I had no trouble paying for the time we’d spent together the previous Friday. Just send me a bill. But please don’t cash that check.

A New Beginning

So that’s where I stand today. After a false start, I’m ready to begin training at the flight school I’d originally chosen.

But I feel better about this flight school than the one I’d tried. Why? Because my main contact understands good customer relations. Even if hr doesn’t really give a damn about me or need my business, at least he’s pretending that he does.

And when I get ready to hand over close to $10K of my hard-earned money, I want to feel good about who I hand it to.

Fuel Purchase Rebates for Pilots

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AOPA changes its program, I go to BP.

For years, I’ve been using my AOPA MasterCard to purchase fuel at FBOs. At first, the program offered 3% rebate on all purchases at participating FBOs. Then that percentage jumped to 5%. Since it cost nothing for an FBO to participate, just about all of them did.

Among the participating FBOs were flight schools. I earned rebate dollars on all of my helicopter flight training. Since most flight schools also do maintenance, I also earned rebates on most of my helicopter maintenance and repairs. Now we’re talking big bucks. With an annual inspection costing $2,000 or more, 5% is a truly welcome discount.

The AOPA rebate program had two problems, as far as I was concerned:

  • Rebates were not automatic. You had to go to the MBNA Web site (later the BofA Web site) to indicate which transactions were eligible. Although they probably assumed you’d look up all the FBOs in their list, I never did. I just checked off all the transactions — after all, I only used the card to buy aviation-related things — and let them figure out what was eligible or not. It was a pain in the butt because it required a trip to the Web site each month. If you forgot, that was okay — you could always do it later. But it was an extra step just to get the money.
  • Rebates were limited to $250 per year. If you do the math, that means only $5,000 of purchases could earn the rebate. I’d easily reach the limit by September or October each year. A helicopter flight student could reach it in a month or two, depending on his schedule. It would have been nicer if there were no limit.

On the plus side, the rebates, once requested and verified, showed up on the following credit card statement as a reduction of the account balance. I liked to think about it as a fuel discount and that’s how I accounted for it in my accounting records — a reduction of fuel expenses.

Well, the AOPA MasterCard moved to BofA when BofA bought MBNA. (Sounds like alphabet soup.) And they — either AOPA or BofA — decided to change the program. They now have some kind of point system that you can use to buy merchandise. Or something like that. Frankly, I didn’t look into the details. I don’t want points. I want dollars. I want to reduce my operating expenses.

Meanwhile, when I switched my maintenance to Silver State in Mesa (at Williams Gateway airport), I discovered that BP, which the FBO there represents, had a 5% rebate credit card with no limit that applied a sliding scale rate to purchases: 5% of BP purchases (at airports or auto gas stations), 2% of travel and dining, and 1% of other expenditures. Since BP is relatively common around airports, I signed up for the card and got it. Now I use that for most of my aviation-related expenses.

Well, it turns out that this Rebate program isn’t quite as convenient as it could be, either. (I think that’s how they get you — make it such a pain in the butt that you don’t bother claiming the rebate.) In order to get the rebate I have to:

  1. Create an account on the Chase.com Web site. (A one-time deal.)
  2. Log into my account periodically.
  3. Navigate to the Claim My Rewards area, which isn’t exactly easy to find.
  4. Use a shopping cart to “buy” rewards using my earned points. The options are a $25 BP Card (costing 25 points) that can only be used at BP gas stations (like I want one of those), a $25 check (costing 25 points), or a donation to charity (costing 25 points). Of course, since you can only buy in increments of 25 points, you’ll always have a balance leftover.
  5. Wait for the check(s) to arrive.
  6. Take the check(s) to the bank and deposit them.

Obviously, this isn’t the best solution either. But it does reduce my operating costs, so I do get the desired end result.

What I should do is look for a good rebate card that works everywhere and doesn’t make you work to get the rebate dollars. I’m sure they’re out there, but since I really hate applying for and having credit cards, I haven’t looked for them. I guess that should go on my To Do list for this year, right after clean off my desk.

Any suggestions? Use the Comments feature to let us know.

How Helicopters Fly

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Maria Speaks Episode 12: How Helicopters Fly.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to episode 12 of Maria Speaks, How Helicopters Fly.

I thought I’d take a break from my usual computer related topics to talk about something I really enjoy doing: flying helicopters.

For most of my life, I thought it would be pretty cool to know how to fly a helicopter. In October of 1998 I had some extra money and a flexible schedule so I took the plunge and began taking flying lessons.

A lot of people think you need to learn how to fly an airplane before you can learn to fly a helicopter. That just isn’t so. I don’t know how to fly a plane, and frankly, I have no interest in learning. Helicopters have fascinated me since my first helicopter ride at age 8. Airplanes just aren’t as interesting to me. So I skipped the airplane stuff and went right to helicopters.

It took me a year and a half to get my pilot certificate. This wasn’t because I was a slow learner — at least I hope not. It was because I took lessons part time, only an hour or two a week. When summer came, I took the summer off. No one wants to practice doing hovering autorotations when it’s a 115°?F outside. I finally got my pilot certificate in April 2000.

I soon realized that I had a problem. I had a pilot certificate but nothing to fly. The closest place to lease a helicopter was Scottsdale, about 70 miles away. I’d drive down there, fly for an hour, and drive back. It wasn’t fun.

Fortunately, I had a good year and some extra money and was able to solve the problem. I bought a used Robinson R22 helicopter. And what I found is that the more I flew, the more I wanted to fly. As I’ve said elsewhere in my blogs, flying is addictive and I’m hooked.

Years went by. I got my commercial helicopter rating and starting taking passengers up in my two place helicopter. I got a summer job at the Grand Canyon flying LongRangers with up to six passengers on board. Then I decided to step up and buy a larger helicopter, and to expand my helicopter tour business. Today, I have 160 hours on my new Robinson R44 four place helicopter. And I still can’t fly enough to satisfy me.

If you like reading flying stories, check my blog. It has lots of stories about flying.

Anyway, what I really wanted to talk about was how helicopters fly. Most people are familiar with the way airplanes fly but few know anything about helicopters. I find myself explaining the controls to passengers all the time. Now I’ll explain them to you.

First of all, a helicopter does indeed have wings. But rather than having big, bolted-on wings like an airplane, a helicopter’s wings are its narrow rotor blades. My helicopter has just two of these blades, but they’re very long — about 16 and a half feet each. Other helicopters have three, four, five, or even more blades, depending on the design and size of the helicopter. Generally speaking, the more blades a helicopter has, the shorter they can be. Of course, if the helicopter is very big, the blades need to be big, too.

To understand how a helicopter’s main rotor blades work to produce lift, start by thinking about an airplane. Everyone has seen an airplane taking off — or has been in one when it took off. It rolls down the runway, gathering speed. This moves air — referred to as relative wind — over the airplane’s wings. The wing is shaped like an airfoil, so higher pressure builds up below the wing than above it, producing lift. Before the pilot reaches the end of the runway, he pulls the airplane’s nose up, which, in turn, changes the angle of attack — the way the wings cut through all the air rushing past. This increases the lift and the airplane takes off.

A helicopter’s rotor blades are also shaped like airfoils and they work pretty much the same way as an airplane’s wings. But instead of speeding forward to increase relative wind, the helicopter rotates the blades while parked. The faster the blades spin, the higher the relative wind. Once the blades are spinning at 100% RPM, the pilot lifts the collective, which changes the pitch or angle of attack on all of the main rotor blades. The result: the helicopter lifts off the ground.

Now I just mentioned one helicopter control: the collective. The collective changes the pitch of all of the main rotor blades the same amount — or collectively. This up-and-down lever is what a helicopter pilot holds in his left hand while flying.

There are three other controls.

The throttle, which is a motorcycle-style twist grip on the end of the collective, is what the pilot uses to add or reduce power. You see, the higher the pitch, the higher the drag. To overcome this drag without losing rotor RPM, the pilot must increase the throttle. Fortunately, most modern helicopters have a correlator or governor or some other kind of device that adjusts the throttle automatically as needed. This greatly reduces the pilot’s workload.

The cyclic is the control the pilot holds in his right hand while flying. The cyclic changes the pitch of each rotor blade individually as it moves to change the direction of the rotor disk. Think of it this way: the rotating blades are like a disk when they’re spinning. The cyclic tilts this disk in the direction you want to fly. Push forward, the disk tilts forward and the helicopter moves forward. Pull back and the disk tilts back and the helicopter slows down or backs up. Left and right do the same thing to the left or right. The cyclic is an extremely sensitive control and doesn’t need to be moved very much to get results. In fact, the hardest part of flying a helicopter is getting a feel for the cyclic.

The last controls are the anti-torque pedals. Remember Newton’s Laws? One of them says that every action has an equal but opposite reaction. Think about the main rotor blades spinning. If the blades spin to the left, the fuselage wants to spin to the right. So a helicopter has a tail rotor (or something equivalent). The blades on the tail rotor are mounted sideways so the “lift” pushes the helicopter’s tail to the right, thus pushing the nose to the left. The anti-torque pedals, which the pilot works with his feet, change the pitch on the tail rotor blades to increase or decrease this lateral “lift.” This keeps the helicopter from spinning out of control.

Sounds pretty simple, no? Well, it isn’t — at least not when you first start practicing it. You see, every time you make a control input with one of the controls, you have to adjust one or more of the other controls. For example, when you raise the collective, you increase drag on the blades, so you (or the governor) have to increase the throttle. But when you increase power with the throttle, the helicopter tries harder to spin to the right, so you need to add left pedal. Since you’re using up some of your power to generate more lift on the tail rotor, you might need more throttle. Get the idea?

One of the most difficult things to do in a helicopter is hover. Hard to believe but its true. It takes the average pilot 5 to 10 hours of practice time just to be able to do it. It took me about 7 hours. I thought I’d never be able to do it and then, one day, I just could.

Hovering requires that you make multiple minute control inputs all the time. There’s no “neutral” position you can put the controls into. It takes constant effort. Add some wind — especially from one of the sides or the back — and you’re working hard. After all, the helicopter is like a big weather vane and the wind just wants to push it around so the nose faces into the wind.

That’s the basics of flying a helicopter. There’s lots more to it, of course. But it isn’t that hard to learn. I like to tell people that if I can do it, just about anyone can.

One more thing. Lots of people think that if a helicopter has an engine failure, it’ll drop out of the sky like a brick. If the pilot does what he should be doing, however, that just isn’t so.

Here’s how it works. Suppose I’m flying along and my engine quits. My main rotor blades were spinning when the engine quit and they have lots of energy stored in them. There’s also energy stored in my altitude, airspeed, and weight. The first thing I do is lower the collective to reduce the drag on the blades. This helps keep them spinning. The helicopter starts a steep descent. I look for a possible landing area — a field, a parking lot, a dry river bed (we have lots of those in Arizona) — and steer towards it as I glide down. About 30 feet off the ground, I pull the cyclic back to bring the nose up and flare. This reduces my airspeed and transfers some of that energy to the main rotor blades. I level out and pull the collective up just before hitting the ground. Remember, pulling the collective up increases lift, so if I do it just right, I’ll cushion the landing. This whole procedure is called an autorotation and I’m required to demonstrate it annually as part of my FAA Part 135 check ride. I also had to do it to get my private and then commercial ratings. In other words, I have to prove that I can do it.

Of course, if I screwed up and didn’t lower the collective right away, drag on the unpowered blades would slow them to the point where they wouldn’t produce lift. Then I’d be in big trouble. Like a falling brick.

Have you ever gone for a helicopter ride? If you haven’t, you should. It’s quite an experience. If you do go soon, remember what I’ve told you and watch what the pilot does. If you’re sitting up front with him, don’t be afraid to ask questions once you’re under way. Most pilots like to talk to passengers about what they’re doing.

I remember a helicopter ride Mike and I took back in 1995 (or thereabouts) while driving cross-country. It was in Florida in the panhandle. There was a Bell 47 parked on the side of the road with a sign that said “Helicopter Rides, $25.” Mike and I climbed aboard and I sat in the middle. I told the pilot that I wanted to learn to fly a helicopter and when we were in cruise flight, he let me put my hand over his on the cyclic. He wanted me to see how little it needed to move to change direction. It was nice of him to do that for me.

Well, I could keep talking about helicopters all day, but I won’t. I’ll save some other stuff for another day.

I hope you enjoyed this topic. It was nice to take a break from talking about computers. I’d love to hear what you think about this episode and my podcasts in general. Write to me at mariaspeaks@mac.com.

Thanks again for listening!

The Big, White Tire

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How I conquered the big, white tire.

In my essay, “When I Became a Pilot” (which has since been lost in various Web site changes), I discuss the various flights I’ve made that have led up to me finally feeling as if I really am a pilot. One of these flights was my private pilot check ride. And in one of those paragraphs, I mention the big, white tire.

The tire is a truck tire, painted white, that sits out in the desert in a practice area my old Scottsdale-based flight school sometimes uses. The area is about four miles northeast of Deer Valley airport (DVT). I’d tried on several occasions to find it, but was never successful. Until today, that is.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First you need to know the back story.

During my check ride, the examiner asked me to hover up to that big, white tire, face it, and hover all the way around it, facing it the entire time. This is an exercise in hover control and frankly, when I attempted it on my check ride, I did quite poorly. In fact, I thought I’d botched the check ride, mostly because of my failure to do this one maneuver anywhere near satisfactorily. I passed the check ride, but I vowed to return to the tire and try again.

Today, after a late lunch at Deer Valley’s airport restaurant, I decided to try to find the tire again. And this time, I found it.

It’s not very hard to find, if you know where to look. There are actually two big, white tires there. But more obvious from the air is the landing square, marked out with small, white tires and the orange windsock, which must have been recently replaced. Today, it hardly moved, with a two- or three-knot wind from the northwest.

I landed in the square, then hovered up to the big, white tire. I faced it with the tip of my cockpit only a foot from its closest edge and my skids only two feet off the ground. It seemed to mock me — after all, it was just a big, white tire in the desert, but it had been in my thoughts for years. It was as if I were making a pilgrimage to pay homage to its greatness.

And then I began my circle, to the left. It amazed me, at first, how easy it was to perform this simple task. Slight movement to the left with the cyclic, slight pressure on the right pedal, miniscule adjustment of the collective. Within half a minute, I’d circled it, returning to my starting point. Then, just for good measure, I circled to the right.

Ha! I could do it after all!

(Of course, I’ve logged over 600 hours since my first check ride. If I couldn’t do it by now, I should go back to flight school.)

I left the practice area, proud of myself. I flew low around the mountains of New River, over Anthem and the outlet mall, over Lake Pleasant and the golf course, into the Wickenburg Mountains. I flew low, a hundred feet above a car on Castle Hot Springs Road, past a man parked out in the desert with a camera, over some ATVers in the Santo Domingo Wash. I passed the shooting range and the rodeo grounds, then climbed to a respectable altitude to overfly Wickenburg. I came in to the airport on Runway 23, and set it down at the pumps, feeling more like a pilot than I have in a very long time.