Tag Archives: helicopters

Searching for a Stolen Truck

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We don’t find the truck, but we do find two cars and a motorcycle.

I was hard at work on my Excel Visual QuickProject Guide (really, Nancy!) when my office phone rang. It was my friend Tammy. She told me that a white dualie pickup truck had been stolen from in front of a house in Wickenburg. It had some unusual cargo, which I prefer not to discuss, in the back that made its recovery rather urgent. If I was out and about in the helicopter, could I look for it?

I did better than that. I offered to take her and one of our local police officers on a flight to find it.

(If you’re from the east coast or a metro area and don’t know what a dualie is, it’s a pickup truck with four back wheels. It’s better for towing but also sucks more gas. I suspect that many dualie owners buy them because they think dualies are cool. Until they have to replace the first set of six tires.)

We met at the airport. The officer, decked out in his dark uniform and looking bulky with his flack vest on, climbed in. His gun hung right over my collective. He later told me that his utility belt weighted about 27 lbs. Tammy rode in the back. I had our three doors off.

If this was a typical stolen vehicle, it would be stripped of anything easily strippable and ditched somewhere out in the desert. There were a number of usual places to look. So that’s where we started.

We flew around the outskirts of town, up and down washes and dirt roads. We didn’t see the truck, but we did see some cows, a tent pitched right off Constellation Road, lots of shiny windmills, and more dumped junk than you could imagine. We headed south toward Wittman, passing over the concentric circles of Circle City.

We crossed the Hassayampa River way down south and flew over Whispering Ranch, a rather notorious collection of off-the-grid ranches south of Vulture Peak. It was there that we saw a two cars and a motorcycle hidden under trees in a wash. I used my GPS to set a waypoint so I could give the police the GPS coordinates to investigate later. (There are no street signs down there.)

Then Vulture Mine to Vulture Mine Road to Vulture Peak Road. Then around Constellation Road and across to Moreton Airpark. Then south to Route 60 west of the airport, skirting around the hills out there.

The dualie was not in sight.

If this was not a typical stolen vehicle, it could be in a Phoenix chop shop. Or down on the Mexican border, getting ready to pick up Mexicans crossing over into the remote parts of the southern Arizona desert.

Or if someone stole it for its cargo, it could be anywhere.

We came back to the airport. It wasn’t a total loss. The police officer now had a whole different perspective of Wickenburg, along with GPS coordinates for three potentially stolen vehicles that he could hand off to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office. Tammy had gotten a second chance to see Wickenburg — and a whole lot more — from a helicopter. I’d gotten a chance to fly about an hour and a half and provide a service for Wickenburg.

It’s true: I didn’t get paid. But the Town of Wickenburg did pick up my fuel tab.

Update, October 1: I tried to keep the cargo a secret, but KTAR didn’t.

Helicopter Calendar

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I order my office calendar far in advance.

Last year, I waited too long to order the helicopter calendar that always hangs in my office. It was sold out and the publisher ran out of stock. I got stuck with a frog calendar that I bought in mid-January. (At least it didn’t cost very much.)

This year, I ordered early — last week in fact — to round out an order at Amazon.com for a pair of DustBuster batteries. The batteries and calendar arrived today.

I’m disappointed. Brown Trout, the calendar publisher, usually has much better photos than these. Most of them were taken from the ground of a helicopter landing, taking off, or just sitting there. Three of them are of Grand Canyon tour operator helicopters (a Papillon Bell 206L, a Papillon Bell 407, and a Grand Canyon Helicopters Eurocopter EC130) and I’m willing to bet all three photos were taken on the same day at the companies’ respective landing zones. Papillon Copter 9 (which I flew several times; it’s a utility ship and rather underpowered when compared to the others) is obviously doing its takeoff run, the 407 is sitting on the pad, and the Ecostar is probably landing. Four photos were taken from the ground or some high place looking up at the helicopter, so you can see its underside. And, if I’m not mistaken, all of the photos were taken in Arizona.

You can see twelve better photos of helicopters in a single issue of Vertical magazine.

But since Brown Trout seems to be the only helicopter calendar publisher, I’m pretty much stuck with this calendar.

And it is much better than the frogs.

Summer is Ending

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At least in some parts of Arizona.

Mike and I took the helicopter up to our vacation place at Howard Mesa yesterday. I’d bought some blinds for the windows on the shed there, mostly to keep the sun and prying eyes out. We also had to caulk the windows — one of them leaks terribly when the rain is coming hard from the northwest and the floor and wall there are starting to show water damage. We wanted to bring the dog, but we had so much junk — blinds, tools, etc. — packed into the back of the helicopter that there wasn’t room for him.

We left Wickenburg in t-shirts and shorts. I was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt. It had been cooling off in Wickenburg over the past few days, but it was still in the high 90s every day. And the humidity — which was probably hovering around 30% — was glazing me. We loaded up the helicopter in Jim’s hangar. (Wickenburg airport is temporarily closed so I moved my helicopter to a friend’s home hangar so I could continue flying during the closure). Even with two helicopters in the hangar, there was enough space for Mike to back in his car, enabling us to load in the shade.

It was a nice flight from Wickenburg to Williams, AZ. We stopped there for fuel. It was “only” $3.79/gallon. That may seem high for fuel, but it’s probably one of the lowest prices for avgas in the entire state. They’re currently getting over $5/gallon in Scottsdale and Phoenix Sky Harbor for the same stuff. Sheesh.

The wind was blowing hard at Williams. At least 20 knots out of the south. And when I stepped out to fuel the helicopter, it felt very cool. Almost cold. This at 11 AM on an August morning. I started wondering if I’d need the warmer clothes I had stored in the shed.

We overflew our friends’ house on our way to our property. On the way, we also overflew Howard Lake and a bunch of cattle tanks. The tanks were all full of brown water. That means it had rained rather recently. Everything was green.

On our “helipad” (an area covered with gravel that I try to keep free of weeds), the helicopter cooled down quickly. The wind was still blowing hard and it was still cool. The elevation at our place is 6,700 feet and it’s always 10 to 20°F cooler than it is down in Wickenburg. That day was definitely at least 20° cooler.

We’d brought lunch from Wickenburg and ate it at our picnic table. The sky was full of white, puffy clouds, speeding northeast. The trees around our future homesite at the top of our property seemed to shield us from most of the wind. We weren’t quite cold — the sun is very strong in Arizona — but we certainly weren’t hot.

And that’s when it hit me: summer was over at Howard Mesa. Sure, there would be a few more hot days and, hopefully, plenty more rain. But the seasons were changing as the sun moved south, shortening the days and changing the angle of the sun at the hottest time of the day. The amount of daylight simply wasn’t enough to bake the high desert landscape. Things were cooling down because they weren’t getting enough sunlight to heat up. In another month or two, temperatures would dip below freezing at night.

I think the realization was triggered by an overall feeling I had, though. Like when I was a kid, growing up in New Jersey. School starts in early September there, on the Wednesday after Labor Day. I clearly remember the coolness of the mornings as I dressed for school. And the smell of the air. I had the same feeling at Howard Mesa yesterday as we ate our lunch.

This year, I hope to get up to Howard Mesa during the autumn and winter months. I hope to be there when there’s a snowfall. The snow falls hard and deep up there — I’ve been there twice when there was at least a foot of snow on the ground — and it’s beautiful to see. Best of all, it melts quickly with that hot sun beating down on it during the day, so it never has a chance to get dirty and ugly.

As I write this at home in Wickenburg, it’s a startling 67°F outside at 5:45 AM. That’s wonderful. Normally, in August, the nights just don’t cool down like they do the rest of the year. There’s too much humidity and often some cloud cover to keep the day’s heat close to the earth. But lately it has been cooling down. Is this just a front passing through? Or is the end of monsoon season near?

Time will tell. Summer has to end sooner or later, even in Arizona.

After the Rain

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We go for a helicopter flight after a storm cleans out the air.

We had a storm last night in Wickenburg. It came upon us suddenly, from the west (I think), just as we were going to sleep. Soon the rain was pounding against our newly refinished roof and the bright flashes of lightning were illuminating our bedroom.

It’s monsoon season here in Arizona and storms in the late afternoon and early evening are to be expected. But we haven’t had quite as much rain here in Wickenburg as I’d like to see. The wash that runs past our house has been dry for over a year. And the unpaved roads in town have been just as dusty as they are the rest of the year.

Last night changed all that. It rained like hell. And when I woke up this morning and took a look down into the wash, it was clear that it had become a river during the night. The loose sandy surface was packed hard and wet and the debris that had been left there from the last flow was gone, replaced with fresh debris.

There wasn’t any damage this time around. Just some sand deposited on our driveway. Our neighbor, Danny, was out there with a Bobcat bright and early, working on the steep dirt road we use to get to our homes. He bought it used from a local landscaping contractor and I think he was tickled pink to have a chance to fire it up and use it.

Meanwhile, everything looked really fresh and clean. One of the odd things about living in the desert is that it’s so dry most of the time that dust really gets all over everything — including the trees and rocks. The natural colors of the desert seem washed out when, in fact, they’re just dust-covered. A good hard rain takes all that dust out of the air and off of everything. The desert looks green and alive.

And it feels cool. This morning, the temperature outside was probably in the mid 70s. That’s downright arctic in central Arizona in the summertime. The air was fresh and smelled of the rain and flowers and life.

It was the perfect morning for a helicopter ride.

Mike and I drove over to my friend Jim’s house. Jim lives about three miles due north of Wickenburg Airport. He flies a Hughes 500c helicopter. Years ago, he won a bid to build hangars at the Airport, which was in dire need of more hangars. Jim wanted a hangar so he could park his Hughes 500 in it. He figured he could lease the rest of them and make some money. He spent six months with the Airport Manager and other town powers-that-be to come up with a plan that was satisfactory to all parties. He presented the finalized plan at a Town Council Meeting. The Council members said, “Hey, wait a minute. There was only one bidder on that contract. You couldn’t win it. It has to go back out to bid.”

Jim's HouseJim is like me. He doesn’t take a lot of bullshit. He told them what they could do with their hangars and applied for a permit with Maricopa County to build a hangar and helipad at his house. In less than a year, he had a huge hangar on his 48-acre spread with a nicely marked and perfectly legal helipad out front.

The airport didn’t get new hangars for another three years.

Anyway, the airport is getting ready to close for a month due to construction. Although I’m perfectly confident that I can safely fly in and out of there while construction is going on, they’re closing down the place to helicopters, too. They seem to think that there won’t ever be a safe landing zone anywhere on all that land at any time of the day or night for a whole month. It’s bullshit, but not worth arguing about it. Jim said I could camp out at his place. So it’s not like I’m being inconvenienced.

So after topping off my fuel tanks in Glendale the other day (0.7 hours round trip from Wickenburg), I brought Zero-Mike-Lima over to Jim’s place and touched down right on the helipad.

Jim’s out of town. He and his wife are in the process of moving to San Diego. His house and the 40+ acres still left (he sold off a piece) are for sale. Two houses, a pool, horse setup, shop, garages. And, of course, the hangar and helipad. I’d buy it if I had that kind of money and wanted to invest it in Wickenburg. I don’t and I don’t. If I had that kind of money, I’d be in San Diego. I guess that’s why Jim’s there and other people are living in his house.

Airport ConstructionWe took off to the south, toward the airport. I’d brought along my video camera and Mike was using it to shoot images of the things we flew over. I’ve been wanting to get some good video footage from the helicopter for Flying M Air’s Web site and the wickenburg-az.com Web site I run. But I don’t seem able to get it together. I can’t take video while I fly. Heck, I can barely snap a few photos while I fly.

So today, Mike was in charge of the cameras. Although the video footage was too shaky for use — even online use — he got some great photos of the airport construction and downtown Wickenburg, as well as Jim’s house.

Wickenburg from the AirWe used to do aerial photography together with a Pentax 67 medium format camera. It was a pain in the butt. The camera could only hold 20 shots (I think), it weighed a ton, and although it did have an exposure meter, it didn’t have automatic exposure. That means the photographer had to adjust the shutter speed or aperture for every shot based on the meter reading. Mike didn’t like to do that. He’d set the exposure once or twice during the whole shoot. So half the pictures would be under or over exposed. Of course, the film couldn’t be processed in WIckenburg — we had to send it out. And we had to send out for enlargements, too. It was idiotic.

So now we use a 7 megapixel Canon PowerShot that I carry around with me in my purse. We can take up to 70 images on the card I have in it and even if 80% of them are bad, the remaining 20% are still enough to choose from. So just point and shoot, shoot, shoot.

We were only out for about a half hour. It was still cool when we got back to Jim’s house and put the helicopter away.

Now, later in the afternoon, I see the clouds building to the north. Maybe we’ll have a replay of all that wonderful rain again tonight.

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

The Grand Canyon

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Duh.

I’ve spent more time at the Grand Canyon than most people I know. Not only did I work there, flying helicopters over for an entire summer, but it’s less than 40 miles from my place at Howard Mesa. We occasionally go up there — sometimes just for lunch.

The Grand CanyonPhotos of the Grand Canyon do not do it justice. The place is magnificent. The view from every lookout point, from every spot along the trail, is different. Best of all, it can be enjoyed by everyone in whatever dose you’d like to take. Drive up to a spot on the rim for a look. Take a hike all the way to the bottom. Fly over in a helicopter or airplane. Take a raft down the Colorado River.

Reminds me of a story I heard at the grocery store in Tusayan when I worked at the canyon. It was after work and I was picking up a few things to take home. They had some calendars of the Canyon at the checkout counter, a kind of of impulse buy item. The cashier told me that a tourist from Europe was paging through the calendar and suddenly exclaimed, “There’s a river in there?”

Uh, yeah.

If you’ve never been to the Grand Canyon, go. Plan your trip to arrive before sunset and watch the sun set from one of the lookout points. Get a room at a hotel along the rim. Have dinner at El Tovar. Then, when it gets dark, walk on the path along the rim. (Don’t worry; there’s a wall there so you won’t fall in.) If there’s no moon, you’ll experience the odd feeling of walking beside a dark abyss. If there’s a full moon, you’ll see a monochromatic version of what you can see during the day. In the morning, wake before sunrise and watch the sun rise from a different view point. Or the same one. Be sure to take in the art exhibit at the Kolb Gallery and either hike along the rim trail or take a shuttle bus (or your car, in the winter) to Hermit’s Rest.

Grand Canyon, Arizona, photo