Tag Archives: helicopters

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.

Flashback: February 6, 2002

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I take Mike’s cousin Ricky to a real ghost town.

Swansea is a ghost town about 60 miles west of Wickenburg. Located on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere (or as close to there as you can get), it takes about 3 hours to reach the place by car. But it takes only 40 minutes by helicopter.

Mike’s cousin Ricky was in town on one of his annual visits. (He doesn’t come annually anymore and I’m not sure why.) Mike had to work and I needed to play. So I took Ricky to Swansea in Three-Niner-Lima.

We landed on the site of what had been the mine manager’s house. The area was flat, covered with the same fine gravel that seems to cover about 90% of Arizona’s desert. The town was deserted — at least I don’t remember anyone being around.

Swansea
Ricky stands near Three-Niner-Lima, on the site of the mine manager’s house.

We explored the town for about an hour. I’d been there before and although I found it interesting, Ricky really seemed to enjoy it. The town has quite a few buildings, many of which have enough left of them to explore. BLM, which owns the townsite, has a walking tour, with numbered stops, and a brochure that explains a lot. It really is worth seeing, but whether it’s worth a total of 6 hours spent in a car, most of which is on dirt roads, is debatable. Having the helicopter for transportation really makes places like this much more accessible.

Ricky at the Wheel
I don’t know why, but I like this photo of Ricky behind the wheel of a desert wreck.

This year, if Ricky shows up, I’ll take him someplace new. I have a few ideas for places to explore.

Flashback: October 11, 2000

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I fly my new helicopter solo for the first time.

I was going through some old files on my computer today when I discovered a folder full of photos of me flying my helicopter, N7139L. While I have lots of photos of me in flight, these are special: they were taken on October 11, 2000, the day of my first solo flight in my own ship.

I’d picked up Three-Niner-Lima in Chandler the previous Friday. Masahiro Nakamura, my flight instructor, took me for a flight around Phoenix’s Class B airspace, pointing out the landmarks I could use to avoid this airspace while flying between my home in Wickenburg and Chandler. I’d been flying on and off at Guidance Helicopters in Prescott, so flying with an instructor wasn’t a big deal. (I don’t think I’d comprehended yet that the helicopter was mine.) What was a bigger deal was the flight back to Wickenburg a while later with Mike. That was only the second time I’d flown without an instructor since getting my private certificate in April 2000.

That flight went well. It must have, because I don’t remember much about it. I don’t remember much about any flights I took during the weekend, either.

But I do remember my return trip to Chandler the following Monday morning.

Flying an R22 solo is quite different than flying it with a warm body beside you. The problem is weight — the weight and balance is completely different. With full fuel, which I probably had that day, weight shifts to the back. But without that warm body, weight also shifts to the right. So the helicopter lifts off front-left first and back right last. It scared the hell out of me on my first solo and since it had been more than a year since I’d soloed at all, the thought weighed heavily on my mind as I prepared to depart.

N7139L
Here I am, lifting off near the fuel island at Wickenburg. Even in this shot, you can see that the skids aren’t level.

I did fine lifting off. But I did make one mistake. For some reason, I thought I could take off directly to the south, past the light posts and over the hangars. What was I thinking? Although the ship had plenty of power, it was a silly, dangerous thing to do. And I remember thinking just that as I came closer than I wanted to to a light pole.

N7139L
Mike took this excellent photo of me in flight — from the ground!

I was a nervous wreck all the way to Chandler, although I don’t remember any details or even why. It must have been the knowledge in my mind that I was a 90-hour pilot in solo control of a new helicopter. A pilot that had flown less than 10 hours in the previous 6 months. A pilot who had never navigated around the Class B and Class D airspaces in the Phoenix area alone. A pilot who was very short on confidence.

N7139L
Isn’t this a cool shot? Mike took this one, too, as I flew overhead.

Things change. Time at the stick changes them. I have 700+ hours now and have trouble remembering the fears I had when I was a new pilot. I have confidence, but I don’t think I have too much. There’s always more to learn.

Exposing a Chop Shop

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I take a customer with a camera for a ride to gather evidence for the police.

The call came on Tuesday from a friend.”Are you available to do some aerial photography work? There’s a guy burying garbage in the river bed and we want to get him busted.”

I scheduled the flight for Friday morning, when I was assured that the culprits would still be asleep. The passenger arrived with her camera 30 minutes early. She went with me while I pulled the helicopter out of its hangar and onto the ramp. I did a good preflight, gave her the safety speech, and convinced her to put all loose items (including plastic film canisters) under her seat. A few moments later, the blades were spinning up and we were ready to go.

Photo
My helicopter in its hangar. The stagecoach is a long story.

It was a beautiful autumn morning. For Arizona, that means temperatures in the 70s and perfectly clear skies. The air was smooth as we took off and headed east, toward the Hassayampa River. At first, my passenger was extremely quiet. She used hand signals to ask whether her voice would be heard over the radio if she spoke. I assured her that it wouldn’t and she began giving me flying directions and the background information about the culprits.

It seems that there were a few bad guys in town who made a living stealing equipment and vehicles, salvaging parts, and selling off what they could. They buried the evidence of their misdeeds in the riverbed, which was sandy and mostly dry for the entire year. My passenger was interested in shooting photographs of the suspects’ properties, with the idea that the police could blow up the photos and get license plates and other information from the vehicles, as well as spot stolen equipment. She was also interested in tracking down a large front-end loader that had been stolen and was probably being used to dig very big holes in the sand.

She warned me that if the suspects were out and about and didn’t like me circling, they might shoot. She told me she’d keep an eye out for anyone and let me know if I should make a quick departure.

Photo
An aerial view of the Hassayampa River Bridge in Wickenburg, from the South.

We circled two residences along the riverbed while she snapped photos. Both places looked like junkyards from the air — vehicles, equipment, building parts, and all kinds of stuff was scattered all over. Then we headed farther upriver to a third residence that looked quite respectable from the air. We didn’t find the big tire tracks she was looking for, but she seemed satisfied.

A roll and a half of film and 30 minutes later, we touched down at the airport. She paid what I asked and went away happy — probably to the local one-hour photo place.

Home to Airport by Helicopter 2021

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Another video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

The most popular video of all time on this channel is called Home to Airport by Helicopter (https://youtu.be/xIWQuAja2x4) and has more than 10 11 million views. I decided to remake it with a departure from my side yard, skipping all the boring startup stuff. The departure is from where the helicopter is parked in the photo on the title screen.

Note: This is the 1080 FHD version of this video. An ad-free 4K UHD version is available to channel Members at the Access Premium Content level. It’s my way of thanking them for their financial support to this channel.