Tag Archives: helicopters

In-Flight “Emergency”…

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…on a check ride.

There’s no better way to test a pilot on his or her knowledge of emergency procedures than to simulate an in-flight unusual situation. I hesitate to use the word emergency here, because what most check pilots simulate is not really a full emergency. It’s more of a situation that requires the pilot’s attention, knowledge of procedures, judgement, and action.

Real Throttle Chops are a Thing of the Past

Gone (or almost gone) are the days when helicopter flight instructors or examiners did “throttle chops.” A throttle chop is a simulated engine failure in which the instructor or examiner twists the throttle to idle suddenly during flight. The engine and rotor RPM needles split and the rotor RPM needle immediately starts to drop. The student or pilot in command is required to immediately enter an autorotation. The experts estimate that the pilot has about two seconds to react properly. Failure to react could lead to unrecoverable low rotor RPM, which is a very bad thing.

Flight instructors and examiners pretty much stopped doing real throttle chops — the kind with absolutely no warning to the student — when helicopters started crashing. It seemed that in some cases, the student pilot or pilot in command wouldn’t react fast enough and the instructor or examiner didn’t either. Or, in some rare cases, the sudden reduction in power caused the engine to hiccup and really fail. Now most instructors usually warn the student in advance. Some slowly reduce the throttle, which leads to an audible change in engine sound that warns the student — not to mention that he or she can usually feel the adjustment in his or her collective hand. Others do a throttle chop and enter the autorotation at the same time, not even giving the student a chance to react.

Robinson Helicopter issued several safety notices recommending against throttle chops (see SN-27 and SN-38). The company even amended its Pilot Operating Handbook so practice autorotations would be done with just a tiny needle split rather than a full throttle-to-idle setting. (Not a very good simulation of an engine failure, if you ask me.)

So What’s an Instructor/Examiner to Do?

One of the instructor/examiners I’ve worked with in the past was extremely fond of failing instruments or illuminating warning lights. This particular instructor, who works for Robinson Helicopter, has a whole collection of circuit breaker tricks that he uses on unsuspecting students. He’ll pull an engine tach circuit breaker so the engine tachometer drops to 0 during flight. No lights, just that dead gauge. He does it to see how long before the pilot notices and whether the pilot knows what do do about it. He’ll do the same for other gauges that are important but not vital to safe flight.

I took my commercial check ride with this particular instructor/examiner and he made me do a run-on landing with “failed” engine tachometer, rotor tachometer, and governor (switch the governor off to simulate). The trick was to make very small collective inputs and hope the mechanical correlator would keep the RPM within range; listening to the sound of the engine helped a tiny bit. But I still managed to make that low rotor RPM horn go off as we approached the runway surface. Evidently, I exercised enough finesse, because although he was disappointed that the horn had come on, he didn’t fail me for it. Personally, I like to see him do it perfectly.

(A side note here. What real-life situation would require you to land with all that stuff inoperable? The only thing I can think of is a complete electrical failure. But even then, I think there’s some trick in the Robinson wiring scheme that keeps the tachs alive. Just can’t remember what it might be right now. Guess I need to look it up.)

My Recent Mechanical Failure

I’ve taken 6 check rides since I started flying about 8 years ago: 1 private, 1 commercial, and 4 Part 135s. There’s usually some kind of simulated failure during a flight. So when the Aux Fuel light came on during my most recent check ride on Thursday, my first inclination was to ask the examiner, “Did you do that?”

“What?”

We were doing an instrument approach at Williams Gateway Airport and I think he was paying more attention to my altimeter (I was supposed to be at 1880 feet) than anything else.

“That light,” I replied.

He saw the light. “No,” he said.

I didn’t believe him and asked him again. He repeated that he wasn’t responsible.

“Is the circuit breaker out?” I asked.

He looked down at the bank of circuit breakers at the base of his seat. “Yes.”

“Okay, it’s not a big deal,” I said. “It’s the auxiliary fuel pump. It’s a redundant system and we don’t need it for flight. The book says land as soon as practical. Do you want to push the circuit breaker back in?”

“No.”

(For the record, I would have.)

“Well, how about if we land here and have Kelly look at it?” I suggested. Kelly is my helicopter mechanic. By some unbelievable stroke of luck, we were landing at the airport where he was based and it wasn’t 5 PM yet.

He agreed that would be a good idea and talked to the tower for me. He then directed me to parking. I set it down in one of the helicopter parking spaces that Silver State uses. He pushed the circuit breaker back in. It popped back out. He got out to track down Kelly while I cooled down the engine and shut down.

Long story short: Kelly pulled off the side panel and found that one of the bolts on top of the fuel pump was loose. He removed the pump, bench tested it, tightened up the bolts, wrote up a logbook entry on a sticker for me, and sent us on our way. The whole process took a little more than an hour. The pump sounded much better when I primed the engine for startup and the light didn’t come on again as we did some more maneuvers at Williams Gateway and flew back to Scottsdale.

I passed the check ride. I like to think that the failed fuel pump helped me. It showed that I knew enough about the procedure to stay calm and make the right decision about it. In a way, it was a real-life “emergency” during the flight. Again, I don’t like to use the word emergency because there was never really any danger — unless, of course, the engine-driven fuel pump went bad, too. Then we’d have a problem.

Postscript

I flew back from Scottsdale with no further fuel pump problems.

The next day, I did a 50-minute scenic flight with two passengers on board. We were about 45 minutes into the flight — less than 5 miles from the airport — when the darn light came back on. I finished the tour — which was basically on the way to the airport anyway — and landed. When I pushed in the circuit breaker, it popped right out again.

When my passengers were on their way, I visited Ed, my local mechanic. I asked him to take a look at the pump when he had a chance, then put the helicopter away in my hangar, which is just down the row from his. He called with the bad news a while later. The pump was seized. I’d have to get a new one. I called the factory at 2:30 PM (their time) and managed to get it on a UPS truck for overnight (Saturday) delivery to Wickenburg. With luck, it’ll arrive as planned (Saturday deliver is a very iffy thing in Wickenburg) and Ed will put it in. I’ll be flying again on Sunday.

Unfortunately, it’ll take the flights I have scheduled on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday just to pay for the new pump.

Blogging the FARs: ATC Light Signals

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For the first time, it might be something I need to know.

One of the nice things about my helicopter is that it has two com radios: a standard Bendix King KY196A and the radio that’s part of my Garmin 420 GPS.

My Radio Setup

Bendix King KY196AThe Bendix King is my primary radio and it’s wired into some controls on the cyclic stick. This is a neat feature that’s standard on Robinson helicopters. I can program 9 frequencies into the radio and cycle through them all without reaching down for the radio knobs or buttons. Once I get the frequency I want on standby, I simply push a second button on the cyclic to make that frequency active. I’ve got it programmed for all the CTAF (common traffic advisory frequencies), towers, and ATIS (automatic terminal information service) recordings of the airports I visit most: Wickenburg, Prescott, Deer Valley, etc.

Garmin 420The Garmin is primarily a GPS and I very seldom use the radio. It has the ability to automatically transfer the radio frequency for the current waypoint or selected airport to the standby slot, but when I’m flying, I don’t usually mess around too much with the GPS controls beyond simple Go To and Nearest functions. I prefer having a list of frequencies I need for a flight handy and manually tuning them in. A few times, I used the GPS to look up or check a frequency, but that was usually a practice exercise to make me more proficient with the GPS’s airport directory feature. I subscribe to the data card updates and usually have current (or at least recent) data in there, so it’s pretty reliable. It’s also a lot easier than fumbling with a chart while I’m flying. (One of the drawbacks of flying a helicopter is that you only have one hand to work with while you’re flying; your right hand is pretty much glued to the cyclic.) Another cool thing about the Garmin is that when paired with a Garmin GTX 330 transponder and flying within range of Class B airspace, it can graphically display traffic, as I wrote about here.

A nice thing about having two radios is that I can monitor two frequencies at once. This is especially handy if I want to fly between, say Deer Valley and Scottsdale — a distance of about 9 miles — and want to listen to the Scottsdale ATIS while monitoring the Deer Valley tower for instructions or traffic information. In fact, I’m starting to get into the habit of using the GPS’s radio to monitor ATIS and the Bendix King for two-way communications.

Two Radios are Better than One

Of course, the best thing about having two radios is that if one of them fails, there’s another one there to use. And just recently, having two radios became a very good thing.

On a recent flight, while talking to an airport tower’s controller, I heard static in my headset about halfway through my transmission. Turns out, when the transmission turned to static, it also became garbled on the controller’s end. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. But I could hear him and everyone else just fine.

I immediately tuned in the proper frequency on the Garmin, flicked the right switches to talk on that radio, and retransmitted. No problem. So it wasn’t my push-to-talk switch. It was something in the radio.

I had the radio looked at the same day. Of course, the mechanic could not duplicate the problem. And neither could I on my way home.

Don’t you hate when that happens?

Well, the problem has reared its ugly head several times since then. I’ve had another mechanic and an avionics shop look at it. The mechanic couldn’t duplicate the problem. The avionics shop pulled the radio out for a bench test and could find nothing wrong with it. But they did find a mysterious nut (as in hardware) in the mounting bracket. Once removed, the radio appeared to seat better in the console. We thought the problem would go away. But it didn’t.

So I’m left with a radio that receives perfectly and transmits perfectly about 75% of the time along with a second radio that works fine. I’ve taken to talking on the Garmin and listening to ATIS on the Bendix King.

Unfortunately, no one seems to have a spare KY196A for me to swap temporarily with mine. Putting another radio in there and flying with it for a bit would help me confirm that the problem is the radio and not some kind of helicopter wiring problem. You see, if I put in a different radio and the problem goes away, the problem is definitely my radio. But if the problem persists with a different radio in there, the problem is in the helicopter’s wiring or something related. I tracked down a refurbished KY196A, which I can get for a whopping $2,100. The folks there have promised to take it back if the problem turns out to be in the helicopter rather than the radio. So I’ll be ordering it on Monday.

What All This Has to Do with Light Signals

As usual, I’ve turned a short topic into a long story. But it does explain why light signals are on my mind.

If my second radio also decides to stop transmitting reliably, I may be unable to communicate with a tower. That would not be a good thing if I wanted to land at a towered airport.

The AIM (Aeronautical Information Manual) has a procedure for this. (You can find it in Chapter 6, Section 4-2.) The first thing a pilot who has lost communication capabilities should do is turn his/her transponder to 7600. That sends out a signal that says, “Hey, I’m over here and my radio isn’t working.” If you’re lucky, the tower you’re trying to land out has radar capabilities and can “see” you and this signal. The tower will attempt communication and will react according the results.

In my case, I can hear the tower perfectly fine. I can even transmit a little. So the controller would probably work with that and communications would continue, although rather one-sidedly, with me getting instructions and either clicking my push to talk button or speaking briefly to acknowledge.

But if I couldn’t hear a thing — or couldn’t get the controller to understand that I could hear — the controller would take out the light signal gun and point it at me. And that’s when I’d need to know what the signals meant.

I saw one of these light signal guns close up once, on a visit to Chandler tower. It’s a handheld device that they had attached to the ceiling inside the tower. It can display/flash three different colors of light: red, green, and white. The controller points it at an aircraft having communications problems and either shines a steady light or flashes a light. The pilot is supposed to understand what the signals mean.

So what do they mean?

FAR 91.125: ATC light signals includes this useful table:

Color and type of signalMeaning with respect to aircraft on the surfaceMeaning with respect to aircraft in flight
Steady greenCleared for takeoffCleared to land.
Flashing greenCleared to taxiReturn for landing (to be followed by steady green at proper time).
Steady redStopGive way to other aircraft and continue circling.
Flashing redTaxi clear of runway in useAirport unsafe—do not land.
Flashing whiteReturn to starting point on airportNot applicable.
Alternating red and greenExercise extreme cautionExercise extreme caution.

How This Might Appear on a Check Ride

Testing you on your knowledge of this is pretty straightforward for an FAA Examiner. He’ll simply say something like “You discover that your radio doesn’t work as you approach Class Delta airspace. What do you do?”

You reply that you tune your transponder to 7600 and circle outside the airspace until you see a light signal from the tower.

The examiner then says, “Okay, so you see the tower flashing a green light at you. What do you do?”

You explain that the signal means you should “return for landing” or enter the normal traffic pattern.

“You’re cleared to land?” the sly FAA examiner asks innocently.

“No. You need to wait for a steady green before you can land,” you reply, indicating full understanding of FAR 91.125.

To really prepare for this question on a test — and for it happening in real life — it’s a good idea to review the AIM Chapter 4, Section 3-13: Traffic Control Light Signals. Chapter 4, sections 2 and 3 provide additional information for working with Air Traffic Control at an airport. And, if you’re flying IFR (which I don’t), check out Chapter 6, Section 4: Two Way Radio Communications Failure.

Of course, all this might be led up with you explaining what’s required to enter Class D airspace in the first place. But that’s another FAR to explore.

One More Thing

I just remembered that I had a “voluntary radio failure” a while back when returning to non-Towered Wickenburg Airport (E25) from an off-airport location three years ago. If you’re interested, you can read about it here.

Blogging the FARs: Pilot in Command

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A definition from FAR Part 1.1.

According the FAR Part 1.1: General Definitions:

Pilot in command means the person who:

(1) Has final authority and responsibility for the operation and safety of the flight;

(2) Has been designated as pilot in command before or during the flight; and

(3) Holds the appropriate category, class, and type rating, if appropriate, for the conduct of the flight.

How this Might Appear on Your Oral Exam

This seems like pretty simple stuff, but it always appears in an oral exam in one way or another. The examiner won’t ask for the definition. Instead, he’ll ask a question that refers to the definition, something like: “Who has final authority over the aircraft?” or, more slyly, “If the tower tells you, the pilot in command, something to do and you think it’s dangerous, should you do it?” The answers to those questions are the pilot in command (that’s you, if you’re taking the check ride) and no, respectively.

FAA examiners are very sly people. If they sense any doubt in your mind, they’ll push harder to get you to give them the wrong answer. The next question might be, “Are you sure? The tower is telling you to do it. Don’t they have authority?”

Don’t fall for this! Remember that when you’re pilot in command, you are the boss of the aircraft. But you also need to remember that if you don’t follow an ATC instruction, you better have a damn good reason why you didn’t and that reason better be somehow related to safety.

This is also covered in Part 91.3: Responsibility and authority of the pilot in command:

(a) The pilot in command of an aircraft is directly responsible for, and is the final authority as to, the operation of that aircraft.

(b) In an in-flight emergency requiring immediate action, the pilot in command may deviate from any rule of this part to the extent required to meet that emergency.

(c) Each pilot in command who deviates from a rule under paragraph (b) of this section shall, upon the request of the Administrator, send a written report of that deviation to the Administrator.

Stating the Obvious

The Part 1 definition also suggests that you can’t be a pilot-in-command until you qualify for it. For example, an airplane pilot can’t be a pilot in command of a helicopter until he/she gets a helicopter rating. And, oddly enough, a 5000-hour helicopter pilot who has been flying all kinds of helicopters but has never had any training in a Robinson R44 could not be a pilot in command of that helicopter. Why? Because there are additional regulations (specifically, SFAR 73) covering that make and model of helicopter.

The best thing to do before flying a different aircraft is to make sure you you have the rating(s) you need to fly it. When in doubt, ask a flight instructor, the company you may be renting from, or the FAA. My advice is to always fly with a flight instructor for at least 30 minutes in any different kind aircraft you’re flying for the first time. And make sure he/she signs off in your logbook before you go solo, just in case there is a problem. You (or your next of kin) want to be able to prove that you had some training in this lawsuit-happy country we live in.

Other Stuff to Check and Remember

And don’t forget the other Part 61 rules which also apply here, including qualifications, currency, etc. And the Part 67 medical requirements.

(To me, that’s the biggest problem with the FARs; they require you to look in a half dozen places just to get the answer to a question.)

By the way, the responsibilities of the pilot in command are also covered in the AIM Chapter 5, Section 5-5-1b.

Blogging the FARs: An Introduction

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The FARs for mere mortals.

As a Single Pilot Part 135 operator — in other words, a commercial pilot allowed to do on demand air taxi and charter flights; more later — I’m required to take an annual check ride with an FAA examiner. The check ride isn’t just a flight to prove I can perform the required maneuvers. It’s also an oral exam that lasts 1 to 2 hours and is designed to confirm that I know my aircraft, my operating rules, and the FARs.

About the FARs

FAR stands for Federal Aviation Regulations. Technically, the regulations are really Titles 14 and 49 of the Code of Federal Regulations, so some very few people might refer to them as 14 CFR or CFR Title 14 or some other combination of that information. Most people don’t. Most people just call them the FARs.

If you’re reading this in another country, you likely have rules and regulations like this. I don’t know what they’re called or what they contain. And if you are reading this as a pilot flying in another country, don’t depend on what you read here to correspond to your country’s rules. It might be interesting, however, to get comments that explain how something differs in your country, so don’t be shy about sharing what you know.

Blogging the FARs

Like most pilots’ I don’t know the FARs by heart. I don’t even know the ones I’m supposed to know by heart. I simply know that regulations exist and where I can look them up in the big, fat book that’s revised annually. And, of course, I do know the gist and meaning of the regulations that affect my operations on a regular basis.

In an effort to

  1. refresh my memory about the regulations I’m supposed to know,
  2. translate those regulations, which are written in FAA-dialect legalese, into a language I’m more familiar with, like plain English,
  3. provide myself with reference material for future study,
  4. provide site visitors interested in aviation with some information they might find useful, and
  5. generate a comments-based discussion about some of the FARs and why they’re important, stupid, good, bad, or whatever,

I’ve decided to write a series of blog entries that explore the various FARs.

If you’re not a pilot, you may not find this too interesting. I understand. Many pilots don’t find this too interesting, either. But they are the rules and we do need to be familiar with them. If you have any interest in aviation and how the system works to remain safe, you might find some of these posts very interesting. If so, enjoy. And ask questions in the Comments if you need clarification.

If you are a pilot, please remember that I’m not an expert. I read FAA-dialect legalese no better than the next guy and there is a chance that I might misinterpret something. If you think I got it wrong, speak up in the Comments area for the article in which the error appears. But please do back it up with some other reference so I can confirm the correction. If you have more to add about a topic — especially stories about how that topic affected you — please share your experience. We can all learn together. Personally, I learn better from stories than from boring 1000-page books written in legalese.

All of these articles will appear in the Flying category of this site. If you just care about flying and not about the other things I write about, I recommend that you subscribe to the category with an RSS reader, the live bookmarks feature of Firefox, or some other subscription method. (You can also subscribe to get new content automatically by e-mail.) That’ll filtering out my geeky computer stuff and my occasional political rants.

The FARs I’ll Cover

I’m not going to cover all of the FARs here. I’m only going to cover the ones that directly affect my operations, the ones I’m likely to be asked on my check ride. These are the same one you might be asked on a private, commercial, or Part 135 check ride. And of course, being a helicopter pilot, I won’t be dealing with any airplane-only regulations. In fact, if you’re a pilot and you read these, you’re likely to get a good picture of how airplane and helicopter operations differ. Don’t worry; I’ll make a special note if anything I write about is helicopter-specific.

Generally speaking, I’ll be covering material from FAR Parts:

  • 1 – Definitions and Abbreviations
  • 61 – Certification: Pilots, Flight Instructors, and Ground Instructors (I’ll concentrate on Pilots)
  • 67 – Medical Standards and Certification
  • 71 – Designation of Class Airspace Areas; Service Routes; and Reporting Points
  • 73 – Special Use Airspace
  • 91 – General Operating and Flight Rules
  • 119 – Certification: Air Carriers and Commercial Operators
  • 135 – Operating Requirements: Commuter and On Demand Operators
  • SFAR 73 – a Special regulation for Robinson helicopter operators

I won’t be covering them in this order. I’ll be covering them in the order I study them in. And the articles I write are likely to appear here weekly over an extended period of time, so don’t expect to read it all next week.

Some Additional References

If you’re interested in FARs, you’ll likely find some of the following reference material quite useful:

  • FARs online. You can read the current version of the FARs on the Web on the FAA’s Web site. This should be the most up-to-date version of the FARs available for free.
  • FAR/AIM 2007: Federal Aviation Regulations/Aeronautical Information Manual (FAR/AIM series)AIM or Aeronautical Information Manual. This is the plain English text that actually explains the rules and provides additional how-to information for pilots. Every U.S. certificated pilot should have and read this book. Normally, when you buy a book containing the FARs, the AIM is appended to it. So what you’re really buying is a FAR/AIM. My understanding of this document is that the text is prepared by the government and is in the public domain. A variety of publishers print books of the information and some add illustrations and supplemental text to the AIM part of the book. So you’ll find several versions of the book. I buy the ASA version shown here for financial reasons; I’m required to buy it every year and usually get an offer to get it sent to me for under $15 as soon as it’s printed (normally late in the previous year). But there are other versions out there and you can even buy the AIM as a separate book, without the FARs.
  • FARs in Plain English by Phil Croucher. This book attempts to do what I’m doing here, but for most of the FARs. I have this book and don’t really care for it, primarily because some of the rules I need are omitted and the book isn’t updated regularly. (The FARs are updated every year.) The book is also quite expensive for us poor pilots, retailing for $44.95.

Comments?

Please do share your comments about this little project. The Comment link is below. I’d also be interested in learning about other online resources, as well as opinions of the ones listed here.

A Search…

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…but no rescue required.

I was sitting down at my desk, getting ready to start working on Chapter 6 of my Excel 2007 book (for the third time), when my phone rang. It was someone I knew from here in Wickenburg. He was wondering if I was available for a helicopter flight that day. It seemed that his son and his wife and young child had gone hiking and hadn’t come back.

Jeez!

Yes, I was available. I asked a bunch of questions, like whether the authorities were involved. He told me the police knew but hadn’t started looking yet. But he wanted to start looking right away. He thought they might be in the Granite Mountain area. That’s near Prescott, about 40 NM away.

I warned him that it could be expensive to search by helicopter. He said he didn’t care. I told him I could have the helicopter ready to fly in 30 minutes. I told him to give me a call if he wanted to go out. And we hung up.

He called back ten minutes later, just when I was warming up my Dell PC. He would meet me at the airport.

I dropped everything, threw on some jeans and practical shoes, grabbed my handheld GPS to track our search area, hopped in my Jeep, and drove off to the airport.

His mom, who I already knew, arrived at the airport as I was pulling the helicopter to the fuel island. I talked with her after I fueled up. Weather was closing in — an unusual thing here in Arizona — and the ceilings were dropping. Rain was a certainty. And to the north, where I needed to fly, the tops of the mountains were obscured by clouds. I’d checked the weather by computer before leaving home and things in Prescott looked okay for at least the next two hours. But I wanted to get up there as soon as possible.

Doug and his wife arrived a short while later. I gave them a preflight briefing, loaded them on board, and attempted to start the helicopter. For the first time ever, it took five tries to start. I’d flooded the engine while priming it.

We crossed the Weaver Mountains north of Wickenburg to the east northwest of Yarnell. We were flying right below cloud level up there. But ahead, at Granite Mountain, the sky was only partly cloudy.

We reached the mountain 20 minutes after leaving Wickenburg. It’s a one-hour drive. We circled around the west side to the north, had some trouble getting permission from Prescott tower to skirt their airspace as we flew around the mountain, and then started looking for the missing people’s truck.

Of course, there are a few things that made this a less-than-perfect search. First and foremost is that they weren’t sure that the missing people had come to Granite Mountain. They might have gone to some trail that ran from I-17 to the Verde River — which was at least 40 miles away. Second, the wind was howling up at Prescott, with gust spreads of 10 miles per hour or more. As the wind came over the arms of Granite Mountain, it bounced us around something fierce. Doug was getting airsick. My barf bags were under his seat.

We did a good amount of searching, but with thoughts of puke on my leather seats, I suggested we land at the airport and check in with other people who were monitoring the phones. I don’t think Doug was happy, but he didn’t argue. Five minutes later, we were on the ramp at Prescott airport, near the terminal and restaurant, and Doug was heading toward the buildings while I shut down.

In the restaurant, while Doug drank Sprite and his wife and I enjoyed other beverages, Doug checked in. The missing people’s truck had been found. At the Cave Creek trailhead, wherever that was. He didn’t get the coordinates. We hurried back to the helicopter, started up, and headed south.

The weather to the south wasn’t good. We hit rain right away. I joked about how the rain took the bugs off the main rotor blades. I didn’t mention that it also took the paint off.

It was a good 20-minute flight down the east side of the Bradshaw Mountains, which were completely socked in. It was really beautiful, seeing those clouds mingling with the mountains. You have to understand — clouds are not a usual feature here in Arizona. And when there are so many and they’re layered among the mountains, it’s really a sight to see.

Past Black Canyon City, I headed southeast, hoping to hook up with the road that runs from Cave Creek/Carefree to the lakes on the Verde River. That’s where Doug thought the trailhead might be. The wind was blowing, the rain was falling. And then I caught sight of a DPS (Department of Public Services) helicopter flying northbound. I tuned into the helicopter air-to-air frequency (123.025) and made a call.

“Police Helicopter north of Cave Creek, are you on one-two-three-point-two?”

“This is Ranger 42, north of Cave Creek.”

I told him who I was and who I had on board. I asked if he was searching for the missing people. He said he was and that he was heading toward the trailhead where their car had been found. He offered to give me the coordinates. I told him we’d just follow him.

Now keep in mind that I was flying a Robinson R44 helicopter. He was flying something else, something turbine with lots of rotor blades. I don’t know what it was. But I took off after him and tried like hell to keep up. We lost sight of him three times among the mountains we were crossing, but we finally caught sight of him in a low orbit around a parking area. The missing people’s truck was parked down there.

Ranger 42 told us he’d search to the west and suggested we take the east. Okay with us. So we followed a few roads in the area for about 15 minutes. Then we heard the media helicopters coming in. Channel 3 with Scott at the controls. Channel 10. Channel 15? I don’t know. All I know is that they were coming. And no matter how big the sky was, it would be a lot smaller with three more helicopters.

Doug suggested that I land in the parking area, let him off, and let his nephew, who had found the truck, on board. Then he proceeded to puke repeatedly into the barf bags I’d had the foresight to remove from under his seat before we left Prescott. In the back, his wife was fine.

We landed. Doug got out. His nephew climbed in. I gave him a safety briefing, made sure he fastened his seat belt, told him not to get sick because we were out of barf bags, and took off.

We spent the next 30 minutes searching to the northeast of the parking area. Ranger 42 and two other helicopters that had shown up had landed to coordinate the search efforts. They graciously offered to leave room down in the parking area for me, but I preferred to stay out of their way. So we followed trails and roads up and down mountains and canyons.

After searching to the east, we crossed over and went west. I watched my fuel levels. I had about 1/4 tanks when we got back to the landing zone and found one of the police helicopters spinning up. I reported in.

“Ranger 42 is departing the area,” the pilot told me. “The missing people have been found.”

The missing guy’s mom, who was sitting behind me, was thrilled. We listened to the media helicopters talking to the police helicopters. It seems they’d gotten lost the evening before just as it was getting dark and had simply pitched a tent and spent the night in it. In the morning, they’d stumbled upon someone’s home and the woman who had lived there had driven them back to the parking area. Found.

Approaching the landing zone from the north, I watched the three helicopters there take off. I lined up for landing and settled down in the space they’d just vacated. My two passengers got out. I caught sight of a restroom in the parking area and decided to make use of it. Two minutes later, the engine was shut down and the blades were stopped and I was making a beeline for the toilet.

There were cops all over the place down there. One of them had approached me as I was shutting down and I said, “Please don’t give me a ticket.” After all, I’d landed in a parking lot for a trailhead. He laughed.

Everything was okay. Happy ending. Doug decided to drive back with someone else. I think he had enough of the helicopter. But his wife stuck with me. We climbed back on board, started the engine, and took off. The media helicopters were circling above us like vultures. I just followed the canyon south, climbing up out of their way while they jockeyed for position to land and interview the found people.

I headed southwest toward Deer Valley. I needed fuel to make it back to Wickenburg. But I hit a wall of rain that was just falling too hard for me to fly through with a passenger on board. I turned around and headed east. Things were clearer over the Verde River. When I cleared the canyon, I was able to turn back to the southwest.

The media helicopters weren’t far behind me. I heard them debate whether or not I had the found people on board with me. Apparently, the vehicles in the landing zone had driven off just as the first helicopter landed there. Doug’s wife and I had a good laugh.

We landed at Deer Valley and I arranged for fuel. Once fueled up, we took off to the northwest to return to Wickenburg. It was raining most of the way and we skirted below the clouds almost all the way to Wickenburg.

I showed my passenger her house from the air before we landed.

Time logged, 2.9 hours. And yes, I was paid for my time.