A Weekend of Flying

Posted on June 23, 2018 by Maria Langer

15+ hours of cherry drying, hop rides, and horse roundup in three days.

My new old helicopter, Mr Bleu, had a lot of time to rest after our flight up from Arizona to Washington in April. Too much time, if you ask me. I did a 2-hour photo flight one day not long after I brought it home and then a handful of hour-long tours of the area for locals and tourists. I took it down to Cave B Winery for lunch with some friends and to pick up my wine club shipment. And I ran it over to the airport once for a bit of maintenance. But other than that, it’s been parked, mostly waiting for cherry season and my big June event.

Cherry Season

The work that pays my bills every year is cherry drying. I started doing this way back in 2008, making this my eleventh season.

I’ve blogged about this extensively since I started, so if you want details or more information about cherry drying, use the search box to search for “cherry drying.” Then read what comes up. Or watch this surprisingly popular video or this more informative video I made.

The short version is that cherry growers hire helicopters to stand by during the last 3-5 weeks the cherries are on the trees. When it rains, we fly low and slow over the treetops to blow the water off so the cherries don’t split. It’s slow, tedious, and often dangerous work and very few pilots do it more than one or two seasons before they find more interesting things to do. But I’ve stuck with it and built up a bit of a reputation based on consistent customer service.

My business has grown over the years. About seven years ago, I started getting more contracts than I could handle alone and began hiring pilots with helicopters to work with me as a team. Every year, I have a few core guys I can turn to and a number of slots that are filled with different guys every year. Last year was tough — although I had a lot of acreage to cover and six pilots with helicopters to join me, it didn’t really rain. That turned off a lot of guys who thought they’d make big bucks. The previous year was the opposite; it never seemed to stop raining and we flew more than I thought possible.

That’s how it is, though. As I tell my crew, the only thing you can count on is the standby pay; if you can’t make it work financially with just that, you shouldn’t come.

This year, I have a small team: there are just four of us. I started on June 1 with the other guys joining me as my acreage load picked up. One guy started June 15, two more will start tomorrow. Then, as cherries are picked and the acreage load drops, the pilots will leave and I’ll finish up alone. As of now, I should be done by August 11.

I work mostly with R44s, but this year we have a Bell 206L with us, too. (Last year we had an S-55.) They’ve been pulling out a lot of acreage in my area due to small cherry virus so I lost a few contracts for that. And since last year was so dry, a handful of growers and orchard managers decided to skip helicopter coverage and toss the dice with Mother Nature. There’s always crop insurance to prevent a total loss.

Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think about the entire state of Washington, it isn’t all as rainy as Seattle. I live on the east side of the Cascade Mountains which is desert-like. In fact, I’d say our climate is almost identical to Flagstaff or Prescott, AZ. So we have a lot of sun and, without irrigation from the Columbia River, which flows right through the area, we wouldn’t have orchards or farming.

I did some flying the first week I was on contract. On Friday afternoon, I took two pilots out to see the orchards that were going on contract within the next few days. Then, on Friday evening, with one pilot just settling in after his flight up from Mesa, AZ, and another already on board and prepped to do a handful of local orchards, it rained again. I launched at 8:15 PM. I only had 20 acres of bings to dry, so I was able to get the job done before sunset, which is at about 9 PM this time of year.

That turned out to be the first of many cherry drying flights that weekend.

Here’s Mr Bleu at its temporary home after Friday’s last flight.

The Big June Event

On the Saturday before Father’s Day every year, Pangborn Memorial Airport in East Wenatchee holds its big Aviation Day event. There are static displays of airplanes and helicopters, informational booths manned by Alaska Air and other aviation-related companies, a fire helicopter rappelling demonstration, and, of course, helicopter rides. I’ve been doing the rides with my cherry drying crew for the past six or seven years.

One of the planes on display was this beautiful DC-3, which I got a chance to photograph both inside and out on Thursday and Friday. (Blog post to come.)

This is a huge rides event for us. After all, how often can a helicopter company fly non-stop all day long with three helicopters giving rides? Honestly, I think that if we had a fourth helicopter on the team, we’d still be flying all day.

We had a good ground crew this year. With three people on that crew — one to sell tickets and two to handle safety briefings and escort passengers to and from the helicopters for hot loading — the pilots never had to wait more than a few seconds after touching down for the passengers to be swapped out. The quick turn time is vital for maximizing the number of rides you can do and keeping passenger wait times short.

Part of the equation is also making sure the pilots space themselves properly so there’s only one helicopter on the ground at a time. The rides we 8 to 10 minutes long so even with three helicopters, there were a few minutes between each landing. Any time one of us looked like we might land before the one ahead of us departed the landing zone, we slowed up to improve spacing. It worked like a charm.

And it should. The three pilots doing the ride had a lot of aviation experience. I’ve got about 3700 hours in helicopters and have been flying for about 20 years. At this point, I must have done close to 100 rides events. Woody, who retired from American Airlines in March of this year, has over 30,000 hours as a pilot and is a partner in a flight school that also does rides at events. And Gary, who owns and operates a fleet of helicopters at a flight school near Salt Lake City with his wife Lorri, has probably done even more rides events than me. Lorri is, by far, the best ground crew manager I’ve ever worked with.

Our three R44s, parked on the ramp later in the day, after the event. Oddly, all three are blue.

More Cherry Drying

The forecast for Saturday called for rain. Some forecasts said 50% chance, others said 80%. The rain came in the form of fast-moving storms that seemed to come up out of nowhere and blow through the area. I really thought it would impact our passenger count, but there were always people waiting to fly. We just adjusted our tour routes to avoid flight in the areas where the rain was pouring down and the wind was howling. I was actually surprised at how easy it was to work around the weather.

ForeFlight kept track of some (but not all) of one of my afternoon cherry drying flight. Fun stuff, eh?

Of course with rain came calls to dry cherry trees. They were evenly spaced. I took the first one since I was prepped for it: 34 acres of mostly bings and Rainiers up a canyon about 7 miles from the airport. While I flew over the trees, Woody and Gary kept doing rides. I heard them on the radio making their position calls as I flew back and forth blowing water off the trees.

I was just finishing up when the second call came. Since Gary was prepped for that orchard, I put him on it and I went back to doing rides with Woody. By then, the wind had shifted and we reversed our tour direction. With more rain over downtown Wenatchee, we flew mostly over Malaga. That was kind of neat because we passed close enough to where Gary was working for my passengers to see him. On one tour, I even circled the orchard to make sure he knew where the Rainiers he was supposed to dry ended and the bings they didn’t want dried began.

He finished up, refueled, and joined us for rides. That’s when another grower called. This time, Woody was prepped for the orchard so I sent him while Gary and I kept doing rides. By then, the event was winding down and, as usual, the only crowd of people around was the crowd at our landing zone. Lorri stopped selling tickets and, by just after 4 PM, we took the last group. Gary and I set down near the landing zone. Our ground crew loaders left, we packed up our gear, and we went into a hangar where Century Aviation was displaying two antique aircraft it was restoring for clients. Woody joined us a short while later.

My friends at Century Aviation have restored the sole remaining Curtiss Flying Boat in existence. I’ll be the photo ship for its first test flight next month at Moses Lake.

Between the three of us, we’d flown 12.4 hours of rides flights and another 5.2 hours of cherry drying flights. Needless to say, it was a good day.

More Storms, More Wet Cherries

We all refueled and headed back to our parking areas. I’m based at a neighbor’s landing strip, Gary’s based at an orchard nearby, and Woody is based at a client orchard. We met up back at my home where Garry and Lorri are staying in their RV and Woody is staying in mine.

We were just talking about dinner when my phone rang again. This time, a client in Quincy was on the line. Although his contract didn’t start until the following Friday, a big storm had come through Quincy and he was wondering if he could have his cherries dried off contract. Since Gary was the guy who’d be drying his orchard when the contract started, I put it to him. Sure, he said. And he drove off to return to his helicopter. Fifteen minutes later, he did a flyby on his way to Quincy, which was 15 air minutes away.

I snapped this shot of Gary as he flew by enroute to Quincy. I suspect there will be a lot of helicopters flying by my home this summer.

Woody was getting ready to put a rib eye steak on my grill when we both noticed the storm clouds to the east, right where Gary had gone. A few minutes later, he called to say that he’d hit weather and had made a precautionary landing in a field. I checked radar and saw a huge cell right over the orchard he was headed for. Putting radar in motion showed me it was heading our way.

When the storm hit, it hit with a vengeance. Honestly: I have never experienced such wind and rain at my home. Because it was coming from the east, it even blew water under the door to my deck at the front of the house. Poor Woody had to go out and turn his steak on the grill with a towel draped over his head.

The power went out, came back, went out, came back with some flickering, and then went out again. It stayed out.

I knew the calls would be coming, so I headed down to Mr Bleu, leaving Woody to gobble down a beautiful steak and some salad. I parked in my truck near the helicopter and turned off the engine, leaving the radio on. It poured on me. My neighbor drove up and parked beside me. We rolled down our windows and chatted. He told me he needed to spray his apples and was hoping to do it that evening, but with all the rain, he’d have to wait. We chatted about a few other things, including my asshole neighbor who no one in town seems to like. The rain stopped. My phone rang. Five minutes later, I was in the air, heading toward one of the orchards on my list.

Meanwhile, Gary had made it to Quincy and was drying 50 acres of very wet cherry trees.

A call came in for Woody’s orchard and I told the owner that Woody was on his way.

I dried an 18-acre orchard, then zipped across the river and dried another five-acre orchard. The owner of the orchard Woody was drying asked if Woody would do one block again when he finished. I passed on the request via radio and Woody immediately reminded me that it would be dark soon and there were wires in the block the orchardist wanted dried. I told him to do whatever he felt comfortable with. (We didn’t know then, but another pilot had crashed after hitting wires farther upriver. She’s okay, but the helicopter is out, at least for the season.)

Another call came in for five more acres close to my home. By that time, it was getting dark and the wind was kicking up. I started to dry those last five acres but soon had trouble maintaining control in a gusty wind. Another storm was coming through. I decided to break off for safety’s sake. Maybe Mother Nature would do my job with the wind.

It was a good thing I stopped when I did. The wind was howling all the way back to my landing zone and, although it was light enough to see, it was darker than I like it to be when I’m working low-level. I managed to set Mr Bleu down in its parking spot. I cooled down the engine and shut down just as it started to rain again.

The power was still out at home. Woody had landed safely and was on his way back in my Jeep. Gary texted to let me know he was done but he had run low on fuel. Lorri was on her way over with their truck and fuel tank. It would be a 40-minute drive each way for her. Meanwhile, Malaga was still dark from the blackout, although Wenatchee and East Wenatchee seemed unaffected. I later learned that lightning had struck a transformer in the area during the first big storm of the evening. When Gary flew past on his way to his landing zone, I got back in my truck to go pick him up since I knew it would be at least 30 minutes before Lorri returned.

I shot this photo from my deck at about 9:30 Friday night. The power was still out in Malaga.

It was 10 PM by the time the helicopters were all tied up for the night and the pilots were back at base.

But I’d already begun getting calls for the next morning. We all knew we’d be up by 4 AM.

Drying at Dawn on Sunday

I was up at 3 AM. At exactly 3:56, I got a text from one of my clients asking me to dry his five acres in East Wenatchee again. I already had 48 acres lined up for Gary and 28 acres lined up for me.

I dropped Gary off at his helicopter on the way to mine. He launched at 4:40; I was five minutes behind him. I finished the first five acres before dawn and was nearly done with the second five acres when the sun broke over the horizon.

It was a beautiful day and I said as much over the radio. A guy in the ground crew at Pangborn Airport, checking the runway for FOD before Horizon’s 5:30 AM flight would depart, replied “Why wouldn’t it be?” Gary’s voice came through next: “It sure is.” I shared another piece of wisdom over the radio on my way to the 23-acre orchard waiting for me: “Any morning you get paid to fly is a beautiful morning.” Someone double-clicked a mic button in agreement.

I’d forgotten my sunglasses and cap, so I had to deal with the low sun shining in my face while I dried the parts of the orchard that were already in sunlight. No big deal; I’m used to it. The trees weren’t that wet and I was able to finish the job quicker than usual, saving the owner some money.

I was done and back at my base before 7 AM.

Here’s Mr Bleu parked in its landing zone after Sunday morning’s cherry drying flights.

Herding Horses

I wasn’t done flying for the day, though. I still had a big job ahead of me: herding horses on the Yakama Reservation south of Yakima, WA.

I went home, took a shower, had a second cup of coffee, and made breakfast. At 8:30 AM, I was back in my helicopter, climbing out past my home to get some fuel at the airport.

While the fueler did his job, I rigged up one of my GoPros, hoping to capture some footage of my flight down to Yakima, the work I did there, and my flight back. Although I used to mount the camera on the outside of the helicopter, the local FSDO wasn’t happy with my setup so I had to mount it inside the cockpit bubble. I had a solution with a suction cup mount and it worked good enough, although it wasn’t ideal. I was able to get it plugged into the intercom system so I’d have audio in.

Why move wild horses?

If you’re wondering why they bother to move the horses, the answer is pretty simple: with no predators and decent grazing in the spring, the wild horse population booms. (I think I saw at least 300 horses in this one area of maybe 20 square miles that day and I know there are a lot more in the hills to the south.) Soon, the horses have devastated the grazing area, leaving nothing for them or any other animal — including the cattle that the Yakama nation depends on for its own food — to eat. As winter comes, these herds begin to starve to death.

While we all love the romantic idea of the Wild West filled with herds of wild horses, the overpopulation in some areas is a serious problem for both the horses and the people who are trying to live on the land.

When I asked what they do with the horses, I was told that they put them up for auction. I think it’s a hard sell; it’s unlikely that the adult horses can be trained to work on ranches or do horseback riding. The colts and fillies, however, have a chance at being trained to serve a useful purpose and would likely be bought by someone who would keep them alive.

I didn’t dwell on this aspect of the work I was doing. I recognize the problem and want to be part of the solution. I believe, however, that the best solution would be to try to limit reproduction. I believe that a better solution would be to somehow introduce birth control into the herd. Ideally, if possible, it could be done by darting from a helicopter. I’m assuming there’s some reason — technology? availability of drugs? cost? — that they don’t use an approach like this.

It would be sad if the problem got as bad as the wild pig problem in Texas — they shoot those from helicopters and leave their carcasses for scavengers.

I started back up and pointed the helicopter south, climbing steadily to clear the cliffs behind my house along the way. I had a nice little tailwind and did the 52 NM flight in less than 30 minutes. On the ground, I had the fueler top off both tanks and went inside the FBO to wait for a passenger. He was a no-show, but my client had texted me GPS coordinates to meet him. So when it became certain that my passenger was not going to show up, I climbed back into Mr Bleu and flew another 12 miles southwest over a ridge to a flat area in the middle of nowhere.

On the way, I saw a herd of about 20 horses on the south side of that ridge.

I was over the coordinates wondering where my client was when I suddenly saw him and two other people standing on a two-track road. The truck they’d come in was hidden out of sight behind a small rise. I landed on the road, cooled the engine, and shut down.

I met Troy, his nine-year-old son, and his cousin or nephew — I can’t remember which. We talked about what had to be done — get the horses that were up on the ridge down into the flat area and up against the fence and drive them up into the trap. I asked where the trap was and Troy just pointed up the road beyond the truck.

Meanwhile, they were looking out to the west where other wild horses were being driven into other traps by other members of their party: Troy’s father, brother, cousins, and nephews. I could barely see the activity — it was quite a ways off. We’d start off working separately and then maybe help them.

I gave Troy and his son a safety briefing and loaded them into the left side of the helicopter where they’d be able to see the same thing. I didn’t discover until later that it was Troy’s son’s first time ever airborne. (Please, parents, don’t introduce your kids to aviation on an animal roundup flight.)

We took off to the east, heading slightly north to the ridge I’d come over. I assumed he wanted to start with the herd I’d seen, but he wanted to go farther east than that. I’d estimate we went at least three to five miles from our starting point. He instructed me to go up a sort of canyon in the hillside with the idea that we’d get beyond whatever was up there and start moving them west.

It didn’t take long before we started seeing horses. A lot of horses. Maybe 15 or 20? Mares, colts, fillies, and always at least one stallion. I descended and moved in close from one side and, as I expected, they began running. I stayed behind them, just far enough off to keep them running without scaring them to death.

I could try to give you a play-by-play of the movement — after all, the video camera was running for most of the time and both Troy and I were talking — but do you really want to read it? I wouldn’t. Although it was sometimes a bit of a rush to fly, it wouldn’t make good reading. I basically had to keep the horses moving southwest down the ridge and into the flats. I did this by flying low behind them, moving right or left to “encourage” them to go the right direction.

Troy captured this image of me at work with a herd of horses up near the top of the ridge.

When Troy was confident they were going the right way, he’d instruct me to go back up and find another herd. It seemed that he wanted to gather all of the horses together into one big herd and get them all moving southwest toward the trap. So we went up and found another herd and started driving them down. And then another. And then another. And then we’d come up for a look to see where they all were and go back down to get the ones who were wandering back in track.

ForeFlight kept track of part of my first horse herding flight. Can you understand why a kid on his first ever fight might get pukey?

This went on for at least an hour. In the back seat, Troy’s son got sick — how could he not, considering our motion? — and I was very glad that Mr Bleu’s previous owner had left a barf bag in the front passenger pocket.

At one point, we had about 100 horses all in one big group following their established horse trails west in the foothills of that big ridge. It was a beautiful sight.

Little by little we got close to the trap, which I still hadn’t seen. A lead group of horses peeled off and started going back up the ridge. Troy told me to move the back down. I was working on it when he said, “Too late. They’re past the trap.”

What trap?

Here’s the second herd we tried to herd into Troy’s trap. This is a screen grab from my GoPro; it gives you an idea of the kinds of attitudes required for this work.

We went after another herd and had better success. I kept them south of an imaginary line only Troy could see and then moved them west to the fence line. That required me to jump a small power line and pick them back up on the other side. Once against the fence, Troy had me move them north without letting them move east. I drove them as he instructed, going only close enough to keep them moving. They followed a road and I suddenly began seeing red ribbons tied to the sagebrush. And then old wooden beams. A corral.

They got right up to the entrance of the corral, saw what was up ahead — a dead end — and stopped. For a moment, I hovered about 20 feet away from them and they all looked at me. It was a sort of standoff. Then I inched forward. They turned around, ran into the corral, and Troy’s cousin/nephew pulled a tarp across the entrance to trap them inside.

My camera didn’t capture this — Troy had accidentally disconnected its power about 20 minutes earlier — but Troy’s cell phone camera did.

Here’s the moment when the horses finally ran into the trap.

We went back down the road and I landed. I wanted Troy’s son out before he puked again and messed up my nearly new carpeting. (Mr Bleu might need an overhaul in 200 hours, but its carpet was obviously replaced just a short while ago and is in excellent condition.) I also wanted a closer look at the trap which, in my mind, wasn’t very big or sturdy. So we got out and walked up to where Troy’s cousin/nephew was attempting to get the horses to move from the “big” capture area to a much smaller holding pen.

We’d caught four mares, who of which might be pregnant, a colt, and a stallion. While the two guys worked the horses, the stallion got excited and jumped the fence. That left a total of five horses.I didn’t think that was very good — especially when you consider the 100+ horses we’d been moving all over the area — but Troy seemed happy enough.

Here’s a shot of the five horses we ended up with in the smaller holding pen.

I was ready to go get some more — I wanted them to get their money’s worth — when Troy got a call from someone working the other horses west of us. They needed help. So he and I got back on board, leaving his son with his cousin/nephew, and headed west.

There were more horses there and a lot more guys working them. Two guys on horseback, one guy on a dirt bike, and a woman in an SUV. There was a herd of about eight near the mouth of one of the traps and they wanted us to help them get it in. I got into position and started moving them with the vague idea of the trap being in a patch of woods. The horses got close, saw the trap, and broke into two groups. I went left and moved that group back toward the others. Then Troy told me they’d missed the trap and we’d get them in the next one.

The next one was at least a half mile away. I moved the horses along the top of the ridge and then down a hillside to another patch of woods. The dirt bike came into view and herded from the left as I moved them from the right. Together, we funneled them down to where a two-track road went into the woods. The dirt bike pulled up quickly — I couldn’t get close because of the tall trees. A moment later, the rider was off the bike closing the trap. I caught a glimpse of a bunch of horses in the woods there and Troy told me they’d already caught some. They now had 15 in that trap.

He guided me around to the west to find a few more herds. We spent another 30 minutes driving them down one ridge to the flats and then to the east where we had to drive them up another canyon. At one point, we were driving a herd of about 30 horses toward the trap. He got a call and we broke off to help them move another bunch of horses that they were working near the trap.

Of course, although I’d topped off both tanks in Yakima I’d also been flying almost nonstop for hours. My helicopter’s endurance is roughly three hours and we we’d been flying for about two and a half. I told Troy we had about 20 minutes until I needed to refuel. He understood and he told me that he’d only been cleared for a total of four to five hours of flight time. With the 90-minutes estimated round trip to get to him, our three hours in the air was all he could do.

We worked the large herd of horses near the second trap for another 20 minutes and couldn’t get them any closer. The trouble was, the woman in the SUV had revealed the vehicle to the horses too soon and the horses wouldn’t go past it. We had no way to contact her — she wasn’t picking up her cell phone. To make matters worse, every time we got the horses closer, she’d move the vehicle and spook them. Troy was really pissed off; I was just frustrated. Back and forth, back and forth. We had those poor horses running in circles while we flew around them, trying to keep them together moving in the right direction.

Here’s the last group of horses I worked with. The goal was to get them into the trap, which is in the woods at the end of the road in this photo. You can see the SUV that kept spooking them. I had these horses running around in this 40 to 50 acre area for about 20 minutes before I had to give up and go for fuel. This is a screen grab from a GoPro video.

And then it was bingo time. If I didn’t go get fuel then, I might not make it back to the airport to get fuel.

I told Troy, fully expecting him to tell me to bring him back to his truck at the far trap where I’d picked him up. But instead, he told me to drop him off anywhere.

So I flew us to a nearby hilltop where it looked flat enough to land, set down, and let him off. He thanked me, shook my hand, and closed the door. I checked the door, made sure he was clear, and headed back to Yakima Airport, 15 miles away.

I was on the ground before the low fuel light illuminated, which is always my goal, but especially my goal in a helicopter that’s new to me. With fuel expensive at Yakima, I told the fueler to just top off one tank. I went inside, got change for a vending machine, and ate the only thing I’d consider food that was for sale: a package of Knott’s Berry Farm cookies. I chatted briefly with two airplane pilots snacking on popcorn after a cross-country flight up from Bend, OR. Then I settled my fuel bill and went out to start my trip home.

The Flight Home

I flew pretty much direct from Yakima to Wenatchee Airport. The tailwind I’d had on my trip south was now a headwind. There was some turbulence, but not much. I popped over Jumpoff Ridge just south of my home and started a long spiraling descent to the airport, swinging past my home on the way down. I saw Gary, Lorri, and Woody hanging out in my driveway.

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At the airport, I asked the fueler to top off both tanks. (Although I have cheaper fuel in a DOT-approved transfer tank at my landing zone, I’m saving that for when I need fuel when the airport is closed.) During cherry season, my helicopter’s tanks are always topped off so I’m ready to fly for a full three hours when client calls start coming in. When the tanks were full, I fired it back up and made the three-minute flight back to my landing zone, flying past my home as I made my descent.

I landed, cooled down, and shut down. I took a snapshot of my hobbs meters so I could enter the time in my logbooks. A short while later I was backing my truck into the garage, glad to be home.

I later calculated that I’d flown more than 15 hours in 48 hours, nearly all of it revenue time. A good weekend for business.

Sunset on Sunday night, after a good dinner with friends and a two-hour nap.

A Story about Questioning Authority

Posted on May 20, 2018 by Maria Langer

If something doesn’t sound right, it might not be.

Those of you who follow the aviation-related posts in this blog — and there are a lot of you — might recall how I balked last year when the FAA told me I was required to buy a radar altimeter to continue Part 135 charter operations in my VFR-only aircraft. I argued that a radar altimeter’s sole purpose was to tell a pilot how far the aircraft was from the ground and that VFR operations, by definition, meant that the pilot could see the ground. If I wanted to know how far I was from the ground, all I had to do was look out the window. I didn’t need to spend $8K to $20K for an instrument inside the cockpit to tell me how far from the ground I was.

The argument apparently had some merit because a handful of Part 135 operations like mine, who apparently have more reasonable FAA oversight, got a waiver of the requirement. To this day, they still have that waiver.

I fought long and hard on this issue and, in the end, lost. Through the efforts of someone at Helicopter Association International (HAI), I got a temporary waiver that gave me until this coming October to comply. I wound up having one installed on Mr. Bleu (my new old helicopter) because the kind folks I bought it from offered to do the labor for free. It still cost me $10K. (Unfortunately, I have to pass that cost on to my charter clients with a $25/landing fee for all Part 135 flights.)

A lot of people might think that my experience with this would convince me that it isn’t worth fighting when you think something is wrong. That’s simply not true. I will always fight for what I think is right — if it’s important to me. Yes, I pick my battles.

And that brings me to the topic of today’s blog post: two FAA findings in yesterday’s aircraft inspection.

A Tiny Bit of Backstory

When Zero-Mike-Lima was totaled, I had no helicopter. One of the requirements of a Part 135 certificate — the FAA certification that enables me to legally do air-taxi work — is that I have at least one helicopter on my certificate. When I informed my local FAA Flight Standards District Office (FSDO) that Zero-Mike-Lima was gone, they waited a week or two before kindly informing me that if I didn’t replace it soon, they’d cancel my certificate.

This is a huge deal. It took just four months for me to get my certificate in the beginning of 2005 and that was considered lightning fast. These days, it’s rare to get the process done in less than two years.

Admittedly, I don’t use my Part 135 certificate much anymore. Most of my work centers around cherry drying, with a dose of aerial photo/survey work, scenic tours within 25 miles of the starting point, and hop rides at outdoor events. For a while I was doing a lot of wine tasting tours, but I’ve dialed that down to hour-long trips that are a bit pricey for the average wine lover. Still, I want to keep my Part 135 certificate because it enables me to say yes to the odd charter flight that comes my way. When you have a small business with limited activity, being able to say yes can make a big difference in your bottom line.

So I was motivated to get a replacement. I blogged about my shopping experience here and about picking up Mr. Bleu and flying it home with a friend here. Once it was here and I had all the paperwork I needed the FAA to review, I contacted my guys at the FSDO to arrange for an inspection.

You see, it isn’t enough for me to get a helicopter. The FAA has to inspect it. There’s a laundry list of requirements for Part 135 work, as well as the general airworthiness of the aircraft itself. That’s why I was so picky about what I bought and why I wound up buying the helicopter I did. I knew it would comply with all requirements so it would be easy for me and for the FAA to get it on my certificate.

The Inspection

The FAA scheduled the inspection for May 3. I was expecting my Primary Operations Inspector (POI) and Primary Maintenance Inspector (PMI). That’s two guys. So imagine my surprise when a small car rolled into my driveway that morning and four guys got out of it.

Apparently, my inspection was part of a training exercise. Lucky me.

They all came upstairs and I handed over all of the helicopter’s paperwork to them. I pulled out my big dining room table — I normally keep it stowed against a wall — and the three maintenance related guys sat around it. I sat at the breakfast bar with my POI to talk about operations stuff. It seemed that they were combining the aircraft inspection with a base inspection and a post-crash interview. That was fine. I had nothing to hide and I was confident that the aircraft would meet their requirements.

I have to say that I did the right thing when I bought a helicopter with just one previous owner from a place with a well-managed maintenance shop. Every single document that they were looking for was in the packet I had for them. The only two things they brought to my attention is my need to register my ELT (Emergency Locator Transmitter; a piece of emergency equipment) and the possibility that I might need to update my Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) with a manual for the radar altimeter. That second finding actually came later, when they looked at the helicopter.

And that’s where we went next: to the helicopter. After I asked my PMI to take off his FAA hat and help me get my new printer up onto my loft and a chair down from my loft — a matter of handing a box up to me and taking a lightweight chair I handed down — we went back downstairs. They all climbed into their car — which, by that point, I had begun thinking of as a clown car, mostly because of so many big guys being in such a relatively small car — and I pulled my Jeep out of my garage. I led the way back down my road and around to my neighbor’s airstrip, where the helicopter was parked. (Long story there; it’ll eventually get blogged about.) We parked next to the helicopter and got out. I pulled off the cover and opened the doors. The four guys moved in.

At one point, I almost got a photo of them all poking their heads into various parts of the helicopter, but as soon as I took my phone out, one of them moved away and I skipped the shot.

I answered questions. We talked about the fire extinguisher (the Spokane FSDO seems obsessed with it — in 9 years the Scottsdale FSDO never even looked at it) and I was told that it needed to be inspected monthly by a mechanic who would put an entry in the aircraft logbook. We talked about the POH and my possible need to add a manual to the Supplements section for my radio altimeter — although no one seemed to know for sure if such a supplement existed or was actually required. We talked about the level of the main rotor gearbox fluid. We talked about how clean the helicopter was.

And we talked about safety wire.

The Safety Wire

Safety wire, in case you don’t know, is thin wire that’s used to secure nuts and other removable items. It prevents them from loosening and potentially spinning off. Look at any aircraft long enough and you’ll find these thin wires here and there, twisted tight.

The maintenance guys pointed out that there was no safety wire on the tail rotor gearbox or oil filter. This was a “finding” — that’s a word that auditors use when they find something wrong. I don’t know what FAA guys call it. Exception? Non-Compliance?

I was embarrassed. I should have caught that on preflight but didn’t. It looked fine to me. But what really surprised me was that the maintenance shop had let it go like that. I decided to rib them about it later.

I told the FAA guys that I’d fly it to the airport to have the mechanic there add the wire. They told me I needed a ferry permit. Apparently the aircraft was not airworthy without it. I said I’d get a ferry permit, imagining some form I’d fill out online. They asked if I’d ever gotten one before. I said no. They said that I’d have to fill out a form and then get a mechanic out to look at the aircraft and sign off on it.

“Since the mechanic has to come out here anyway, can’t he just add the wire while he’s here?” I asked.

“Bingo,” one of them replied.

I made a mental note to get in touch with the local airplane mechanic when the FAA left.

The Doors

At that point, we seemed to be done. But then my PMI said, “And we need to talk about the doors.”

They had sent me a document a week or two before (InFO 18002) that talked about helicopters on fire contracts, removing and installing doors in remote areas, and cargo doors (which I don’t have). It didn’t seem to apply to my operation.

Robinson helicopters have simple door attachments: two hinge pins with round cotter pins to prevent them from slipping out, combined with little hydraulic do-dads that keep the door open when you open it. Of course, there’s a latch to hold the door closed in flight or when parked. Pretty simple stuff. As a student pilot in Arizona 20 years ago, one of the first things I learned was how to remove and install the doors on the R22s I trained in. With daytime shade temperatures in triple digits six months out of the year, I think we flew more often with doors off than doors on. That was certainly the case when I bought my first helicopter in 2000.

After reading the document, I’d emailed my PMI to tell him I didn’t think it applied to my operation. He said we’d talk about it at the inspection. This was the talk.

It wasn’t good news. According to the Spokane Gang of Four, I was not permitted to remove or install the doors on my helicopter since it was used for Part 135 operations. In the judgement of someone in Washington (who really needs a hobby), removing and installing doors is a “maintenance item.” Because it’s a maintenance item, it needs to be done by a mechanic and an aircraft logbook entry must be made. In large Part 135 organizations, the Maintenance Training Program can include instructions for training a pilot to do this job while operating in a remote area when a mechanic isn’t available. But since I was a single Pilot Part 135 operator and I didn’t have a Maintenance Training Program because I (1) didn’t have a maintenance department and (2) didn’t need one, I could not be trained to do this job so I could not do it.

So yes, they were telling me that I was no longer allowed to do a simple task that I had been doing for about 20 years.

Doors off Mr. Bleu
Here’s Mr. Bleu on a photography client’s front lawn not long after my FAA inspection. The front seat photographer did still photos while the guy behind him did video. (By Chelan County’s definition, this is a heliport. Go figure.)

Now you might wonder why this mattered to me. First, understand why I might need to take one or more doors off. It’s mostly for aerial photo work — no serious photographer is interested in shooting images through a curved, possibly dusty Plexiglas window. I have worked with photographers who have chosen me because other operators refused to remove a door for them. Doors off is required and, coincidentally, I had booked a photo flight for the following Monday.

Second, if the doors could only be removed and installed by a mechanic, that meant I’d have to schedule a flight to the airport when a mechanic was present (9-5, M-F), wait while he removed the doors and made the logbook entry, do my doors-off flight, return to the airport when the mechanic was present (9-5, M-F) to have the mechanic install the doors and make another logbook entry, pay the mechanic for his time, and fly back to my off-airport landing zone.

The level of inconvenience this interpretation of some obscure rule was causing me was astounding. Consider my Monday flight, when I was scheduled to meet my client in Leavenworth — the opposite direction of the airport — at 7 AM — two hours before my mechanic gets to work. That meant I’d have to fly to the airport the day before — well, no because that was Sunday so I really needed to be there three days before, on Friday — to have the doors removed, then return to my landing zone, leave the doors off while parked for several days, fly to meet my client on Monday, and then return to the airport before returning to base. I figure 4/10 hour on the hobbs meter just to add in all the flight time for the mechanic.

And in a helicopter, time is real money.

And what happens if I pick up a tour flight after the doors have been taken off? Do I just apologize to the folks paying me nearly $600/hour for the drafty in-flight conditions? Or just say no to them, thus taking a pass on an hour’s worth of revenue, and hope the photographer doesn’t cancel, leaving me with a net loss for the doors off adventure?

According to the Spokane Gang of Four, there was no way around this for me. Not at all. No waivers or anything else.

And that’s when I got seriously pissed off.

“Breathe”

After covering the helicopter back up and watching the FAA guys drive away in their little car — and wondering how comfortable they could possibly be crammed in there for the 3-hour ride back to Spokane — I got back into my Jeep and headed into town to run some errands. On the way, I called another Part 135 operator friend and vented to him about the doors, knowing that he was in the same boat as me.

“Breathe,” he told me. And then he told me a few other things that I won’t repeat here, including how he planned to deal with it.

I relaxed a little, but I knew his solution would not work for me. I’m too fucking honest.

And that’s really what it all comes down to: honesty. The FAA makes these rules that are nearly impossible to comply with, knowing damn well that some operators just won’t follow the rules because they can’t. It’s like they’re setting a trap. And one day, when they decide they just don’t want to deal with you anymore, they spring that trap and pull your ticket.

I have to say that I never thought this way about the FAA until I moved my operation to the management of the Spokane FSDO. I’m not sure if its a timing thing — maybe the whole FAA has changed? — or it’s just a higher level of unreasonableness. I thought the goal was to ensure safety. These days, it seems as if the goal is to see how many hoops an operator will jump through — how much money they’ll throw away on useless equipment and “maintenance” — before they throw in the towel and quit flying.

Another Part 135 operator friend of mine had enough when they zapped him for doing a photo flight at a train yard — long story there — and decided to punish him by suspending his license during cherry season, which is when he made 90% of his flying income. His “you can’t fire me I quit” response was to sell his helicopter and get out of the business entirely. I suspect that’s exactly what they wanted. I’ve also come to suspect that this FSDO sees small operators as nuisances. That would surely explain the failure to give waivers for a useless piece of equipment in a VFR-only aircraft — the radar altimeter — and this new rule about removing and installing doors.

The Safety Wire, Revisited

Of course, I also had to deal with the safety wire to satisfy the FAA guys. That meant getting my mechanic out to the helicopter to do the job, taking photos of the finished work, and scanning the logbook entry. I’d send all that evidence to them as soon as possible, knowing how long it takes them to process requests. All this had to be done before my photo flight on Monday. (Oddly, I wouldn’t need to have the mechanic remove the doors then because the helicopter was not yet on my Part 135 certificate so it was still legal for me to do it, as long as I made a logbook entry. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that convoluted piece of logic.)

But I wanted to rib the maintenance shop about missing the safety wires so I shot off a text to Paul, the Director of Maintenance where I bought the helicopter:

Spokane sent FOUR inspectors today. Just a few minor problems to resolve, the most embarrassing of which is the fact that there was no safety wire on the tail rotor gearbox and oil filter. (Oops!) I’m hoping to get a mechanic out to my LZ to fix that tomorrow. There was also some question on whether I need a radio altimeter supplement in my POH on board. Do you know?
Then they told me that I’m not allowed to remove or reinstall my doors because I’m not a mechanic.

His response came moments later:

Safety wire is not required.

There was more, mostly from me, but I’d prefer not to repeat it here. A while later, when I got home, I got his brief email:

Safety wire SL-45 link.
https://robinsonheli.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/r44_sl45.pdf

Sure enough, Robinson Helicopter Company had issued a Safety Letter dated July 3, 2013 titled “Deleted Safety Wire.” The Background section stated:

Safety wire and safety wire provisions have been deleted from various installations and parts. Deleting safety wire reduces maintenance cost and decreases the potential for safety wire-related FOD. This letter provides guidance for installing parts with or without safety wire provisions.

You can bet I wasted no time forwarding that document to my PMI. I’m sure it got to his office in Spokane before he did. Of course, he never said a word about it. I had to email him the following week to ask if he’d gotten it and whether it was still an issue. His response was brief:

I got it thank you. It takes care of the question raised about the safety wire.

There are three lessons to learn here:

The FAA is not all-knowing. In their defense, how could they be? There are hundreds of makes and models of aircraft. How could they be expected to know about every maintenance procedure or service letter for every one. While it bugs me that they automatically assumed there was a problem, it felt really good to educate them.
An experienced mechanic knows stuff the FAA doesn’t. I had already suspected this — which is why I prefer taking my aircraft for repairs and maintenance to a shop that sees Robinson Helicopters all the time — but my safety wire experience proved it.
Questioning authority can save you money. In this case, I saved at least $100 — the cost of getting a mechanic out to my LZ, which is a good 40-minute drive from the airport, for a 15 minute job that actually would have had me in non-compliance with Robinson’s Safety Notice.

But this got me thinking about the doors-off issue. If Robinson said safety wire wasn’t necessary in a place where the FAA thought it was, perhaps Robinson could weigh in on the door removal issue?

But haven’t you read enough here? (I’m surprised you made it this far.) I think I’ll save the door issue for another blog post. As you’ll see, it’s not a simple matter.

Arizona to Washington by Helicopter, Again

Posted on April 22, 2018 by Maria Langer

About 950 nautical miles in one day.

I flew commercial down to Arizona on April 11 to pick up my new old helicopter, N7534D. If you missed my blog post about my purchase process and what went into the decision to buy this helicopter, you can find it here. This blog post pretty much picks up where that one left off.

Flying South

I treated myself to a first class ticket, which I sometimes do when I’ve got a job ahead of me that might or might not be difficult. And instead of departing Wenatchee on the 5:55 AM flight, which, via a connection through Seattle, gets into Phoenix at 10:43 AM, I took the 11:35 AM flight with a connection at 1:42 to arrive in Phoenix at 4:30. Unfortunately, weather moved into Seattle that morning and they delayed our flight from leaving Wenatchee. For a short time, it looked like I’d miss my connection. But Alaska Air had my back (at least this time). Not only did they automatically add a booking on the next flight to Phoenix, but they made sure they gave me a first class seat there, too. So even if I missed my flight, I’d travel in the comfort I paid for.

I had the salad. It was good. And have I ever mentioned how much I enjoy flying First Class? (Another perk of the single lifestyle; only one plane ticket to buy means airline travel is more affordable.)

But I didn’t miss the connection. I was the third to last person on board. I felt bad for Penny since I didn’t let her out of her bag — as I usually do — when hurrying across the airport to make the connection. She settled under the seat in front of me, still in her bag, on the Seattle to Phoenix flight while I settled in to a spacious and comfy seat and accepted the lunch menu the flight attendant handed me.

I enjoy flying First Class on Alaska Air. (Not so much with other airlines.) The food is always good and they have an excellent Bloody Mary mix. The seats are very comfortable. And I’ve discovered that the best way to make a long flight shorter — no matter where you’re sitting — is to watch a movie on a tablet. This time, I watched Coco, which I highly recommend.

Some Lurking Stress

Watching the movie also got my mind off the stress of my upcoming meeting with a new helicopter. There were a few things feeding it.

First, I hadn’t flown since my accident back on February 24. That was about six weeks. I’ve gone a lot longer between flights — heck, I went from December 4, 2017 to February 15, 2018 (ten weeks) and October 30, 2016 to February 22, 2017 (nearly four months) — but this was different. It was the elephant in the room — my crash — and the uneasiness was growing on me every day.

Logically, this didn’t make sense. I knew what caused the crash and I could easily prevent it from happening again. I had no uncertainty about my skills or the aircraft. But I think the people who were encouraging me to “get back in the saddle” were starting to make me wonder why they thought I wouldn’t. Maybe I was missing something?

This nagging concern got to a head about a week before I was supposed to pick up the helicopter. I actually asked Paul, the Director of Maintenance at Quantum who was handling the sale, to schedule a flight instructor to fly with me for about an hour before I left with the ship. Why not get a little refresher?

The other stress had to do with my route home and the weather. I’d been thinking a lot about my route for the flight and even blogged about the pros and cons of each option. I was very motivated to minimize flight time, but I was not interested in crossing the vast emptiness of central Nevada, which was the shortest route. And then there was a perceived need to go through California to pick up my old cockpit cover and floor mats, which were still in the custody of the aircraft salvage guy.

The trouble was, the forecast was calling for crazy high winds on Thursday and Friday. A front was coming through on the night of my arrival and the forecast was showing winds as high as 40 miles per hour. Although I tried to change my schedule to come in early on Wednesday for departure the same day, hoping to beat the winds out of the area, it was pretty clear that I would hit those high winds somewhere on my route . Besides, the helicopter wouldn’t be ready. The earliest I could pick it up would be Thursday, right when those high winds were scheduled to really ramp up.

Normally, a day or two delay wouldn’t matter. After all, I was staying with some friends in Gilbert, AZ and it was always nice to hang out with them. But on this trip, I’d be accompanied by my good friend Janet, who would then stay a day or two with me in Washington before flying back to Phoenix on Alaska Air. Her 5:55 AM Tuesday ticket could not be changed and I was really hoping to have her as a guest for more than just a day. In addition to that, I had some freshly hatched chicks in the brooder of my chicken coop and didn’t like the idea of leaving them for longer than absolutely necessary. Leaving Phoenix on Saturday would probably mean getting home by Sunday. And there was unsettled weather forecasted for northern Oregon and Washington on Sunday that could delay us further.

So the long flight home and weather-related delays were stressing me out, too.

And then there was the added stress of flying a helicopter that wasn’t mine. How would it fly? What would it sound like? I knew every quirk in the late, great Zero-Mike-Lima but didn’t know this one at all. (And yes, every aircraft has quirks.) That was made a little worse by a friend suggesting that there might be issues with the “rigging” (WTF?) and that I should fly it around locally before leaving the area in case anything needed to be fixed. More delays?

I kept telling myself that with Paul in charge of maintenance and the aircraft always being owned by Quantum, there wouldn’t be any mechanical issues. There was no way Paul would let an aircraft go that wasn’t perfectly safe and functional. That’s why I’d bought this helicopter instead of one of the other options — it came with peace of mind. Quirks were quirks and I’d figure them out over time.

Still, all these little things were accumulating in my brain, giving me more stress than I really should have had. Fortunately, I was able to switch off that stress on the flight to Phoenix and for the rest of the evening, which I spent with my friends.

The Pickup

The forecast was right. The wind kicked in on Thursday morning. I still had hopes of picking up the helicopter and getting it to Wickenburg — which is where I’d be meeting Janet — before things got too rough, but Paul texted to say that they’d found a small problem with the radios and the avionics guys still had to do their inspections. So I waited at Falcon Field, the Mesa airport where my friends have a flight school, watching the flag I could see through the window. The wind got rougher. They started cancelling their flights.

We went out for Thai food for lunch. Then back to Falcon Field. The helicopter was ready, but I probably couldn’t fly away. Still, I had paperwork to do and there were a few things I could do to prep the helicopter for its departure. My friends gave me their car keys. I loaded Penny up and we drove to Chandler.

The wind was very bad there. And because Chandler is close to the edge of the desert, the blowing wind had kicked up a lot of dust. Visibility was down to about a mile: IMC (Instrument Meteorological Conditions). No one was flying. Quantum’s door was locked with a sign to knock. When the girl at the desk came to open it for me, she explained that the wind and air pressure made the door swing open if it wasn’t latched.

I saw Paul and Doug and Neil, all of whom I’ve known since my primary flight training days in the late 1990s. We did the socializing thing. Then Paul brought me out to see the helicopter I’d come to buy. It was optimistically hooked up to the tow cart, parked right in the middle of the hangar.

N7534D was waiting for me when I arrived. And I don’t know why, but almost every photo I take with my iPhone makes the helicopter look black. It isn’t. It’s actually a dark blue with a flat black stripe. Also parked in the hangar: at least three R22s that I’d flown during my flight training in 1998 through 2000; two of them have over 20,000 hours!

I went over for a good look. When I opened the pilot door and looked at the interior all worries about it not being my helicopter were washed away. It was virtually identical to Zero-Mike-Lima, from the tan carpeting and leather seats to the layout of the instrument panel. The only difference I saw — and didn’t even notice until I was nearly home — is that the Hobbs meter and clock are switched on the instrument panel. Paul had even installed the bar across the footwell on the pilot’s seat where I’d use RAM mounts to install my phone and iPad.

There were differences, of course. The gyros, which switched on automatically when Paul turned on the master switch, were louder. The glass on a few of the instruments looked a little hazy. There were tiny bits of damage on the pilot seat, almost like cigarette burns. Just enough to remind me that it wasn’t Zero-Mike-Lima. But it was close enough that any worries I’d had about flying again immediately went away. Of course I could fly this.

Penny wanted to sit in the helicopter so I put her in there. Note that I’ve already got my hat hung on the cyclic. Home sweet home?

I put Penny in the front passenger seat, where she really wanted to sit, and did a walk-around with Paul. He answered any questions I had. Then I took the canvas bag I’d brought with two headsets and my RAM mounts and began setting up the cockpit for my flight. It was a real relief to see that the helicopter had been hardwired for Bose headsets, since the ones I use in the front two seats are Bose without battery packs.

Meanwhile, Paul gathered up the paperwork and other things that came with the helicopter. This included a brand new, still in its original packaging, full cockpit cover, blade tie-towns, and ground handling wheels. (All of a sudden, I had no pressing need to fly though California on my way home.) I stowed all of it under the rear seats so I’d have plenty of room for luggage on top of the seats.

Sometime while all this was happening, I handed over the big certified check I’d picked up from the bank the day before. The purchase price did not include the cost of the USB ports Paul had put on that bar to keep my iPad and phone charged in flight and a few other things, so I fully expected to pay a bit more. But I did have money on account with Quantum for Zero-Mike-Lima’s core returns during overhaul the year before. So they cut me a new check for $700+, which I actually forgot about until I found it just yesterday.

Back in the office, I filled out forms and signed papers. I chatted with Paul and Doug and Neil. I looked out the door and saw the thick blowing dust. I knew damn well I wouldn’t be flying to Wickenburg that afternoon. I told them I’d be back in the morning, probably around 7:30 AM. Although the wind was supposed to pick up again, I was hoping I could get it out of the Phoenix area before that happened.

Then I hopped back into my friend’s car and went back to Falcon Field, stopping for a DQ hot fudge sundae along the way.

Chandler to Wickenburg

I spent a second night with my friends in Gilbert. We went to the Monastery, a local pilot hangout, for drinks after work, when back to their house for leftover Chinese food. It was nice to relax. I felt good about my upcoming trip, although I still didn’t know when I’d be able to head out beyond Wickenburg and which route I’d take. Heck, I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to leave Chandler.

But in the morning, the wind was relatively calm and the sky was clear. I had coffee with my friends, turned down their offer for a ride to Chandler Municipal because I didn’t want to wait or have them drive so far out of their way on the way to work, and caught a ride with Lyft instead. I was at Quantum’s unlocked door at 8 AM.

Doug came in just as I was heading to the hangar with my wheelie bag with Penny in trail. But the helicopter was gone. One of the guys in the hangar told me they’d put it outside for me. The big hangar door was closed. I went through a man door to the ramp. N7534D was parked right there on one of the pads.

It almost looks blue in this photo. I should mention here that the N-number is painted on in the same black as the stripe. Can you see the stripe? Well, the painted N-number is just as visible. Because the FAA would definitely balk at that, Paul used decals cover them with the same numbers in white.

To my surprise, Penny ran right over to it. Well, why shouldn’t she? It was ours, after all.

I was pleasantly surprised to find a small pile of Quantum swag on the front passenger seat, including a slick-looking jacket, two tee shirts (one long sleeve and the other short sleeve), and two baseball caps. I put on the jacket — it was cold that morning! — and stowed the other things in my suitcase.

I put Penny inside on the front seat on the small dog bed I’d brought along for her. (She doesn’t like sitting on leather.) Then I loaded up the luggage and did a preflight. The oil dipstick, which is shorter than the one in Zero-Mike-Lima was, showed just under 7 quarts of very clean oil. Robinson are funny about oil. The manual says 9 quarts, but if you put in more than 7, it usually just blows it out when the engine is running. I kept Zero-Mike-Lima’s right at 7. I figured I’d check this one again when I got to Wickenburg to see if it got lower. But I did go back into the hangar and ask Doug if I could buy some oil. He gave me two quarts of W100Plus; according to the log book I had on board, that’s what Paul’s team had put in it. (It’s also what I’ve always used.)

By this time, the wind was about 12-15 miles per hour out of the northwest — just the direction I had to go. Out on the edges of the ramp, two or three R22s were practicing hovering right into the wind. It was blowing right up my helicopter’s tail. That meant my first pickup in this ship would be with a nice little tailwind. Nothing like getting back into the saddle — on an unbroke horse.

I got my iPad EFB all set up with my flight plan filed. Then I started it up. It caught on the second try; I knew it would be a while before I learned exactly how much priming I’d need in different conditions. The engine sounded different. The blades spun up silently — no squealing drive belts! The idle was low. When the needles matched, I had to add throttle to keep it at 55% RPM until the clutch light went out.

My mind noted all of these things automatically. It was different from Zero-Mike-Lima, but not wildly different. I listened to Chandler’s ATIS on the GPS radio while the engine warmed up. Although I felt as if I should be in a hurry, I reminded myself repeatedly that I was not. I dialed in both of Chandler’s tower frequencies on the main radio in case I needed to switch when I crossed the runway. I listened to the tower frequency; there was just one plane on the radio and he landed before I was ready to take off.

I brought the RPM up to 100% and carefully lifted the collective, mindful of that strong tailwind. My feet were firm on the pedals, prepared for the dance I might have to do. But if there was any dancing, it was instinctive. I picked it up off the ground smoothly with virtually no yaw or wiggle. I gave it some right pedal and turned around smoothly, pointing it into the wind.

Just like riding a bike.

I called the tower and asked for departure to the north. He asked if I wanted departure from present position or from the helipad. I told him I preferred present position; I really saw no reason to waste time or fuel hover taxing over to the pad. He gave me the usual “departure is at your own risk” disclaimer and cleared me northbound over both runways. Somewhere during our exchange, I used the wrong N-number and quickly corrected myself, adding “new helicopter.” Then I was airborne above and between the two light posts on the north edge of the helicopter parking area, climbing away from Quantum.

I took one of my “usual” routes to Wickenburg — north just outside of the Phoenix surface airspace, then west along Camelback Road, then northwest direct to Wickenburg. I hit some moderate turbulence between Camelback Mountain and North Mountain that were likely caused by wind over the mountains north of me, but that cleared up by the time I passed Piestewa (formerly Squaw) Peak. There was a little more turbulence along the way. Otherwise, it was a pretty uneventful flight. I skirted around the special Luke Air Force base surface training area southeast of Wickenburg so I wouldn’t have to talk to Luke Approach. The flight path was familiar — I’d flown it at least a hundred times when I lived and flew regularly in Arizona.

My route from Chandler (CHD) to Wickenburg (E25) on Friday morning.

When I got within radio range of Wickenburg, I flipped on the AWOS on my second radio. Winds were 15 gusting to 23. Whatever. I flew over my old house — which I have to say looks a hell of a lot better than when I lived there with my wasband — but didn’t see any sign of Jeff or Mary, who now live there. I came in over the golf course and made a short right base to the taxiway parallel to Runway 23.

I set down temporarily near the taxiway as my friend (and insurance agent) Dave towed his helicopter past on a cart for departure from the helipads on the far west end of the ramp. Then I hover-taxied over to one of the two fuel trucks parked near the big fuel tanks adjacent to the parking area and shut down. I caught Dave on the radio just as he was taking off. “I thought the new helicopter was red,” he said as he made his departure toward Scottsdale.

I’d hear that a lot over the next few days, and likely in weeks to come.

Overnight at Wickenburg

I got fuel and although I’m tempted to tell you the saga of the Town of Wickenburg’s stupidity at installing a costly fuel system that won’t work property, I won’t waste your time or mine. Short version is, fuel came from a truck that can’t move and when fueling was done, I was told I couldn’t keep the helicopter parked there overnight, despite the fact that I’d purposely parked it out of the way. Okay. I wasn’t sure if I’d be spending the night anyway. I was told I could park there until noon; if I needed to stay longer, I’d have to move it. Fair enough.

The good news is, the fuel was only $3.95/gallon. They’re trying to empty the tanks so they can get them fixed in June. The bad news is, it was a short flight so I didn’t need much fuel to top off both tanks.

I called my friend Janet to come get me, then locked up the helicopter. That’s when I discovered that the front passenger door wasn’t seated quite right. I suspect that whoever put the swag into the helicopter that morning had let the door get caught by that tailwind. It would need some work with a screwdriver and pair of pliers to fix it. I also discovered that that door lock was kind of funky; normally you turn the key 1/4 turn to lock it but this one has to turn 1/2 way around.

Remember what I said about quirks? I was learning them.

I went to a late breakfast with Janet in town. While there, I checked the weather. No matter which way we went, we’d hit high winds that day. So after breakfast and a few errands, we stopped at the airport so I could reposition the helicopter on a far east ramp that hadn’t existed when I was based at Wickenburg. We used the brand new blade tie-downs and the tailgate of her truck to secure the blades against the wind. Then we headed out to the off-the-grid ranch she and her spouse, Steve, and their animals were living at.

The wind howled all day, making it very unpleasant outside. We chatted in the living room of the fifth wheel they now live in full time. I made a piece of jewelry. She read. We met with Steve when he returned from riding drag on a horseback ride for four city slickers. Janet cooked the pizza we’d picked up at the supermarket.

Meanwhile, I kept checking the weather — I had a barely acceptable connection on my iPad that switched from 3G to LTE — and thinking about routes. We planned to depart by 8 AM the following morning. I was starting to lean toward the one route I hadn’t completely done before: the western Nevada route. The weather looked doable, but I didn’t like the forecast nearer to home for Sunday. I’d want to get as far north as possible before stopping for the night.

I left them to spend the night in the little travel trailer they’d bought for small trips Janet often needs to make throughout the year. I had the whole place to myself and slept like the dead.

The Long Flight

I was already awake when the generator went on just before 6 AM. I immediately plugged in my iPad, then went out in search of coffee.

By this time, I had pretty much decided on the western Nevada route, which would save at least 2 hours over the California route. Time is money, especially when flying a helicopter.

Both Janet and I were ready to go at 6:30, so rather than sit around and waste time, we loaded up the truck and let Steve take us to the airport.

Using the truck tailgate again — I really do need to get my collapsible stool on board — we pulled off the blade tie-downs. I did a preflight and added a quart of oil, kind of surprised to see that there was absolutely no sign of dripping under the ship. (Most Robinsons let a few drops of oil go from the drain port when parked; this was a quirk I could certainly live with.) Then we loaded up all the luggage, moved Penny’s bed to the back passenger side seat, and prepped to go. Steve watched us start up and take off.

I flew over my friend Jim’s house but saw no sign of life.

Then we were on course northwest bound, heading 301° toward our first fuel stop in Pahrump, 209nm away. We were originally supposed to stop at Jean for fuel — that’s just southwest of Las Vegas on I-15 — but unlike too many other pilots, I did read the NOTAMs, which informed me that there was no fuel at Jean until June. (I didn’t believe the NOTAM, so I called the phone number and got connected with someone at Henderson Executive Airport who confirmed there was no fuel.) Seriously, pilots: read the NOTAMs. (There’s also this old blog post about an idiot pilot who didn’t read the NOTAMs and unsuspectingly flew into a busy airport hosting an EAA Young Eagles event.)

Our route from Wickenburg (E25) to Pahrump (74P) cut through miles of empty Arizona and Nevada desert, crossing the Colorado River at the south end of Lake Mohave.

Our flight path put us just east of Route 93 to the west of Alamo Lake. And that’s the only place we hit turbulence — a pretty good roller coaster ride as we passed near some hills about 10 minutes out of Wickenburg. My first thought was: this better not be an all-day thing. Janet later told me that it bothered her a lot more than she let on. I suspect that’s because after many years of flying with passengers in all kind of conditions, I’m very careful to never look annoyed or scared in turbulence or other weather-related conditions. Passengers take their cue from the pilot; if the pilot doesn’t look bothered, there’s obviously nothing to worry about.

There were pilots landing at the dirt strip out at the Wayside Inn south of Lake Alamo. I didn’t see them, but I heard them on the radio. Weekend pilots, meeting up for breakfast. I wished, in a way, that we could stop and join them.

We passed the old grid of lots in the big, broad valley east of Crossman Peak (east of Lake Havasu). It’s flat and sparsely populated and I can bet it was full of blowing dust the day before. I’d been over the area before and was always amazed that people would buy land all the way out there. It had to be 10 to 20 miles or more on graded dirt roads to get to any pavement in any direction. And even then, where was the closest town with a supermarket and other services? Needles, NV? Kingman, AZ? People think I’m crazy living 10 miles from the nearest supermarket but that’s only because they haven’t seen these middle of nowhere homes. It’s all relative.

I talked briefly to Bullhead City’s tower, telling them I wanted to transition on the east edge of their space northwest bound. Then we crossed the Colorado River just upstream from the Davis Dam, at the south end of Lake Mohave. We had entered Nevada.

We crossed a few more mountains and I climbed to avoid the possibility of mechanical turbulence. It also gave me a chance to play with my radio altimeter (which I never wanted). As I consulted it periodically through the trip, I soon learned that it lagged in its readout of altitude changes and would be, as I suspected, completely useless in my operation. I’m sure the manufacturer of the device is still patting itself on the back for successfully lobbying the FAA to require them. How much additional revenue have they managed to squeeze out of VFR pilots who don’t need such a device for safe operation?

We passed to the east of Searchlight, NV; I saw it’s huge American flag fluttering in the breeze.

Janet pointed out the big solar farms in California near Primm. I remembered driving past those on I-15 just a few weeks before. They use mirrors to focus sunlight on a tower that heats oil (I think) to run a turbine and generate electricity. As the VFR sectional chart for the area warns, there’s the possibility of “ocular glare” from the tower which glows brightly in the desert.

We passed over the top of Jean and kept going. We could see Las Vegas off in the distance. Then we were flying up the valley west of the Spring Mountains and Mount Charleston, over Pahrump for landing at Calvada Meadows (74P).

Of course, just before landing, there was a guy on the radio who reported in at about the same position we were. I tried to get him to provide his altitude or other information that would help me spot him, but he had a heavy accent and I think he was having trouble understanding me. I kept slowing down and flying lower and lower; helicopter pilots know that airplanes generally don’t fly below 500 feet AGL. Finally, I was abeam the airport and needed to fly across the runway. I looked both ways and darted across. It wasn’t until we’d taxied up to the weird little fuel ramp that Janet pointed out a powered hang-glider — is that what you call those things? — about a mile from the airport. I don’t know where he landed, but it wasn’t near us.

Here’s Janet, sitting in the front passenger seat at Pahrump. Okay, so it looks blue here. Kind of.

I let Penny out and fueled up while Janet used the restroom, which was an ancient looking port-a-potty. She said it was pretty gross. I had to go so I wound up using it. I’d been in a lot worse ones than that.

A small twin came in and pulled up behind me on the one-lane ramp. A car came out to meet him. By the time I’d checked the oil — which seemed low but was hard to read because it was so darn clean — and was ready to go, he was parked on the dirt beside the ramp. There are tie-downs there and I hadn’t even seen them.

We took off and continued northwest, now heading 307°. Our next planned fuel stop was Hawthorne, NV, only 186nm away. I had originally been worried about making this leg from Jean, but when we switched to Pahrump, the distance got shorter. We probably could have stretched the leg out to Silver Springs. But I had already told my friend Jim to let our mutual friend Betty at Hawthorne know that we were coming. So with Betty expecting us, I had to stop there.

Our route from Pahrump (74P) to Hawthorne (HTH), NV took us over some pretty barren desert.

The stretch between Pahrump and Hawthorne was pretty remote and kind of dull, especially when you’ve already spent hundreds of flight hours low-level over southwestern desert. The only highlight I can think of was near Beatty, NV, when I drifted off course and Janet caught sight of the old ghost town of Rhyolite. I’d been there on the ground twice and this time I dropped down to fly over it so Janet could have a look. Then we climbed out of the dead end valley, over some hills, and into the area known as the Sarcobatus Flat, just west of route 95.

The terrain was typical desert with a mixture of rocky outcroppings, eroded hillsides, dry lake beds, and sand dunes. There were few roads and even fewer paved roads. We caught sight of another Solar Farm off in the distance to the east. We skirted around mountains rather than going over the tops of them. My GPS showed a tailwind that ranged from 5 to 20 knots. There was no turbulence.

It wasn’t long before we were descending over the hills and old munitions storage areas to the town of Hawthorne, with Walker Lake beyond it. Although I’d driven through Hawthorne at least twice — most recently in late 2016 — I’d never flown in and had trouble finding the airport. But then I saw it and with almost no wind came in for landing on the ramp near the very large and impressive fuel island. Betty, who had heard my radio calls, was waiting in a golf cart to greet us. It was about 11:30 AM.

If you’ve never stopped at Hawthorne, it’s worth it just to meet Betty. I don’t know how old she is, but she’s probably got at least 15 years on me. She’s tiny and she knows everything about the airport and most of the aircraft that come and go. My friend Jim, who used to fly for Continental (and then United) met her on a cross-country trip in a general aviation aircraft with a friend and became friends with her. He used to talk to her from 30,000 feet when he overflew the area in a jet. (Ever wonder how pilots kill time in the cockpit on those commercial flights?) She’s not an airport employee — she’s a volunteer — but she’s worth her weight in gold and is more enthusiastic and helpful than just about any airport employee I’ve ever met.

After helping me figure out the quirks in the fuel system and chatting with us as I fueled, she drove us over to the FBO building and handed over the keys to the courtesy car. We drove over to McDonalds to grab a quick lunch from the drive up window and brought it back to the airport to eat. Betty kept us company, telling us about her new Doberman puppy. Then, after an hour had gone by, I reminded everyone that we had more distance to cover before nightfall.

Betty drove us back to the helicopter. I checked the oil and it looked the same. We loaded up and took off. Betty took pictures of our departure, which I fully expect to see in the newsletter she publishes every week.

Here’s N7534D, still not looking very blue, at Hawthorne. It was a gorgeous day there.

The next leg was from Hawthorne to someplace called Lakeview, on Goose Lake, just over the Oregon border on a heading of 326° for 231nm. We didn’t fly it exactly as planned. Instead, we went up the east side of Walker Lake and the west side of Pyramid Lake. (I really don’t like flying long distances over open water.) By the time we got near the Oregon border, we’d drifted so far west of our plotted course that we wound up west of Eagle Peak and the South Warner Wilderness area, which turned out to be a good thing.

Here’s our plotted course from Hawthorne (HTH) to Lakeview (LKV). We wound up flying mostly a little west of this course.

Of all the legs of this journey, I think this was the most interesting — at least to me. I really enjoyed flying up the two lakeshores, especially up Pyramid Lake, which I’d never flown or driven by before. (My only Pyramid Lake experience was on my so-called “midlife crisis road trip” back in 2005, but I’d drive up the valley to the east of there, up the longest dry lake bed I’d ever driven along.) Looking down at the folks camping and fishing along the shore — especially near the town of Sutcliffe — I really wished I could just drive up with my truck camper and boat and join them.

After Pyramid Lake, the scenery got kind of dull and then interesting and then dull again. It’s the monotony of the desert terrain. Just when it starts to get boring, all of a sudden you notice a change and then it’s interesting again. In this area, it was most mostly weird colors and erosion patterns in the desert that caught our eyes.

And then, in the northeastern corner of California, just west of the South Warner Wilderness area, I caught sight of the first herd of wild horses. I pointed them out to Janet, who didn’t see them right away, and then lowered the collective, pulled back on the cyclic, and started a descending left turn to go back to them, putting them on Janet’s side. Thinking back on that moment now, the entire maneuver — which was far beyond the straight and level flying I’d mostly been doing all day — was done without a moment of thought. Heck, why not? How many times had I done the same thing in Zero-Mike-Lima? This helicopter responded exactly the same way and I didn’t give anything a second thought. I wanted to slow down, swing around, and descend for a closer look and my hands and feet did what needed to be done to make that happen.

Janet saw the horses and then another bunch and another. Soon we realized that the entire desert was covered with small herds of horses. Janet figures at least 50 horses, but I think there had to be over a hundred in the multiple groups I spotted from the air. I got back on course, feeling happy about it. After all, who doesn’t like seeing wild horses in the middle of nowhere from the air?

We passed to the east of Alturas, CA, and flew up the east shore of Goose Lake. The wind had picked up a bit but it was still a tailwind. We were making good time. I approached the airport, making all my radio calls, and came in from the west, landing into the wind in front of the fuel island.

The place was nearly deserted. There was a big hangar with its door open and a guy working inside on the shell of an old Huey helicopter. A partially disassembled R44 was parked beside it. Later, when I went in for a chat, I’d see that the R44 had bright red leather seats in perfect condition.

I fueled while Janet and Penny stretched their legs. Janet had been having some back pain and really needed to move around. I added that second quart of oil. I went to chat with the guy in the hangar — I really can’t remember why. I might have been looking for Penny. Then, with nothing much else to do, we loaded up and headed out.

The next leg was also short and it was supposed to be the last for the day: Lakeview to Madras, OR. I had already called ahead and discovered they had a courtesy car we could use overnight. I figured we’d fuel up, park, and drive into town for dinner and a motel room.

But it was still early in the day and sunset at home wasn’t expected until 7:50 PM. I wasn’t sure how long the leg from Madras to Malaga was, but it couldn’t be longer than 2 hours. If we got to Madras before 5 PM and I still felt fresh enough to fly, maybe we’d continue the trip and get home the same day we left. Was that even possible?

We still had to get to Madras, though. That was just 154nm away heading 337°. I took off into the wind and got right on course.

Our plotted course from Lakeview (LKV) to Madras (S33), OR. We pretty much followed this route exactly.

More boring desert mountains and valleys. Honestly, I was really done with it. It was only the lava fields that perked us up. They started when we were abeam the half-full Summer Lake and reappeared sporadically all the way to Redmond.

By the time we got near Redmond, we were back in civilization. We flew over a bunch of really nice homes along the river just east of Redmond that looked impractically large for anyone with fewer than a dozen kids but also beautiful. I talked to Redmond tower to tell them I wanted to transition along the east side of their airspace to Madras and got permission to do so. The only other pilots flying were flight school students with heavy Asian accents.

By this time, I was back over familiar ground. I’d flown Zero-Mike-Lima between the Wenatchee area and Bend, just south of Redmond, at least a dozen times. Although I had never landed at Redmond or Madras, I’d visited both on my midlife crisis road trip. (I really need to repost all the blog posts I wrote way back then and explain again why I made that trip.) Even though I was still quite a distance from home, I felt like I was close.

We touched down at Madras at about 4:30 PM.

Other than a backache from sitting in the same position for so long, I felt fine. I fueled up and worked Foreflight to plan the last leg of the trip. It told me the total flight time would be about 90 minutes. Shit. That was a no-brainer. I could certainly do another hour and a half of flying. We’d get home long before sunset, save the cost of a night in a motel, and be able to have a nice relaxing dinner at home. Best of all, I’d be able to sleep in my own bed and we could get an early start at fun things the next morning.

Janet agreed. Seriously, I think Janet is the best travel companion I’ve ever had. She’s realistic, adventurous, and has good ideas. And unlike one person I’ve traveled with extensively in the past — and he knows who he is — she doesn’t start an argument over every change of plans by saying, “But I thought we were going to….” [Insert eye roll emoji here.]

So after stopping in the very nice FBO to tell the woman there that I wouldn’t need the courtesy car after all, we climbed back on board and headed the rest of the way home. That meant steering 359° and flying just 166nm.

He’s the last leg of our trip, plotted on Foreflight.

This was mostly very familiar terrain. Although I’d flown this way before, I’d never started from Madras, so my flight path was a little farther west than it normally would be. We got great views of the Deshutes River that I normally don’t get. We still passed right over the top of Biggs, OR before crossing the Columbia River. That’s when Janet got her first glimpse of our extensive wind farms; there are literally hundreds of wind turbines between northern Oregon and the Wenatchee area.

I think it was on this leg that we started talking about a name for the helicopter. Janet names all her vehicles; I seldom name mine. But although Three-Four-Delta is pretty easy coming off the tongue, it just doesn’t seem quite right. We talked about naming it Blue or Blew or Bleu. Or one of those with “Mr.” in front of it. That got me thinking of the old ELO song, Mr. Blue Sky. Now that might seem like a deep cut to you, but I was an ELO fan and really loved this song — back in the 1980s. The chorus seems right:

Hey there mister blue
We’re so pleased to be with you
Look around see what you do
Everybody smiles at you

(Weren’t the 1980s grand in a funny sort of way? We were so innocent back then.)

Anyway, that’s what I was thinking of. I don’t think I mentioned it to Janet. I didn’t think she’d know the song. As I write this, I think Mr. Bleu might be a good name. Not Mr. Blue because the damn thing doesn’t look blue in most of the photos I take.

Meanwhile, the weather was deteriorating. The sun had been behind clouds for much of the previous leg of the trip and came out for a short time in northern Oregon. Then it slipped behind the clouds again. We caught a few glimpses of the top of Mount Hood but didn’t see any sign of Mount Adams or Mount Rainier, both of which would be in-your-face visible on a clear day. The only wind was a tailwind and there was no turbulence. But the farther north we got, the closer the clouds were to the ground. There was mountain obscuration west of Goldendale (hiding Mount Adams) and I started wondering whether we’d have to make any detours on our planned route.

Meanwhile, we saw wild horses on the Yakama Indian Reservation, which is no surprise to me. I always see wild horses there. There are actually stretches where you can see them from the road (route 97) when you’re driving though.

South of Yakima, I called the tower and told them I wanted to transition on the east side of their space. The controller cleared me and I continued north. I showed Janet where a big pieces of a mountainside has been sliding and will likely come down within the next few years, blocking the freeway and possibly the Yakima River there. (It’s been on the news.) The drop was pretty easy to see from the air.

Then we were flying up the Yakima River toward Ellensburg. When we flew over the last mountain ridge before the valley at Ellensburg, I could see the back side of Mission Ridge. The clouds were touching the ground there. I’d be crossing the ridge not far from there, but so far, it looked clear enough to keep going. So I did.

We climbed with the terrain, always staying east of where the clouds were touching the ground. I had hoped to come over Jumpoff Ridge just behind my home, but miscalculated and came over west of there, not far from Stemilt Hill. So I descended as I steered northeast, flying past my neighbors homes on the west end of the road to announce my arrival. The few that heard me told me later that they were happy to see me back with a replacement helicopter. (There are only a few Seattle-spoiled NIMBY assholes here who give me grief.) I showed Janet my home from the air and then came in for a landing at a neighbor’s home nearby. We’d already established a landing zone for me so I came right in and set down where I was supposed to.

Mr. Bleu in its temporary parking space. I shot this the other day when I went back to put in its cockpit cover.

It was 6:30 PM.

We’d been traveling for just under 11-1/2 hours and, if you figure the time spent on fuel stops, the total flight time was about 9-1/2 hours. I was tired, but not exhausted. It was glad to be home, glad not to have to deal with finding a decent hotel room at a decent price at a place that wouldn’t give me grief about staying with a dog. And I was especially glad to not have to fly again in the morning. I had had enough.

We unloaded the helicopter and loaded up my truck. I used the tailgate to put on the blade tie-downs. I locked the doors. I’d put the cockpit cover on another day.

Ten minutes later, we were home and I was opening a bottle of sparkling wine to celebrate the new arrival of Zero-Mike-Lima’s replacement.

Buying N7534D

Posted on April 19, 2018 by Maria Langer

The saga of my recent aircraft purchase.

By now, regular readers know that I crashed the helicopter I bought brand new in 2005 and have owned for the past 13 years, N630ML. I started looking for a replacement almost immediately. After all, cherry drying season was just a few months away and I needed to make sure I had something to fly.

To Buy or Not to Buy

As I mentioned in another blog post about the aftermath of the crash, I did have a brief period when I considered not replacing the helicopter at all. It would have been nice to just stick that big, fat insurance check into the bank and ease out of my flying career. I could still manage my cherry contracts and, without the cost of a helicopter, would probably net nearly as much money as I would if I flew. To this day, I wonder whether I should have done just that.

But the truth of the matter is, I’m not ready to stop flying. I enjoy exploring the world around me from the air. I enjoy giving passengers an opportunity to see the area from a new perspective. I enjoy giving kids their very first helicopter rides at events. I enjoy landing Santa Claus next to Pybus Public Market in downtown Wenatchee with hundreds of kids and parents looking on. And yes, sometimes I even enjoy cherry drying.

So although I’ve been thinking about retirement for the past few years, I didn’t expect to do so until 2025 at the very earliest. After a lot of thought about it, I still think that’s a good idea. I’ll keep flying until it isn’t fun anymore — or my body tells me to give it up.

Of course, that didn’t mean I needed to buy a helicopter. I could lease one. I did talk to one leasing agent about that with the idea of leasing only half a year. I discovered that leasing companies don’t like short term leases and that if I did lease, I wouldn’t make any money at all. Lease rates and minimums are just too high for organizations that don’t fly at least 25 hours a month. I fly a lot less than that.

The Search Begins

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. I actually started shopping before I started thinking — which is never a good idea.

A few days after the accident, my insurance agent recommended a helicopter broker based in Florida to start my search. If you’ve ever owned a Robinson helicopter I guarantee you’ve gotten at least one postcard mailing from this guy. I’d actually met him once when I was researching operations to do the overhaul on Zero-Mike-Lima; his company had an authorized Robinson service center. I started working with him right away to find a replacement.

I figured that I should replace the helicopter with something just like it. Zero-Mike-Lima was a 2005 R44 Raven II model just a year out of overhaul. I’d insured it for what I thought it was worth: $350K. I had a loan on it to pay for part of that overhaul. I figured that the insurance would pay off the loan and give me enough for a good downpayment on another helicopter in about the same condition. I could get another loan for about the same amount and continue operating as if nothing had happened.

I soon realized that I’d erred in estimating the value of Zero-Mike-Lima — by about $50K. That became apparent when I started looking at what was available via the broker’s listings. Still, I found one in Canada that I really liked, mostly because it was just like Zero-Mike-Lima on the inside. I think it was a year newer. Tan leather with a standard VFR panel, just out of overhaul. They were asking $389K.

I spoke to a bunch of people who know about helicopters. (I was, after all, still at Heli-Expo.) Several said that the Canadian version of the FAA — I think it’s the CAA? — had higher standards than the FAA so the ships were usually in better shape. Others said the Canadian helicopter market was soft and that I should offer 10% less than the asking price. 10% was nearly $40K and I didn’t want to insult anyone. So I offered $360K, keeping in mind that I’d be spending $10K to $20K to get it into the country and registered with the FAA.

I was turned down with no counteroffer.

I exchanged numerous emails and a few phone calls with the broker. What was the best price I could get? Would the seller help me get the ship into the US? Would they pay for import taxes or fees?

The seller remained firm on the price and wouldn’t even transport the helicopter to the border less than 50 miles away.

Now keep in mind that I’ve bought and sold more than a few large ticket item assets in my life: helicopters, condos, apartment buildings, homes, cars. I’ve never bought or sold at the asking price. So when these Canadians stayed firm, I was surprised and more than a little pissed off. Fuck them, I thought in typical native New Yorker style, and I kept looking.

By this time, I was on my way home from Vegas in my truck with my camper and boat behind me. I stopped in Mcminnville, OR, to look at another ship just out of overhaul. It seemed to be in good enough condition and the seller was definitely motivated. But there was something about the ship that I just didn’t like. The inside looked tired. And I definitely did not like the panel, which was set up for instrument training and had an unfamiliar audio setup. The seller was asking $390K and I got hints that he’d accept less. I told him I’d think about it and continued my trip, part of me thinking I should make an offer while the other part had a problem paying that kind of money for something I didn’t really like.

Online Shopping

With no other options coming from the broker, it was time to get serious. I went online to start my search in earnest about two days after I got home from California with my truck and camper. That was about ten days after the accident.

I was still pretty sore and not feeling 100%. I’d been pushing myself hard since the accident, traveling to Las Vegas the very same day, attending Heli-Expo every day the following week, and then driving from Las Vegas to my Washington State home over a period of five days. (I just counted them and can’t believe it took me that long. I would normally do it in two days.)

So on Thursday morning, I sat at my breakfast bar with a cup of coffee and my laptop and started searching for options on the three sites most likely to have listings for what I was looking for:

Trade-A-Plane is where I sold my first helicopter.
Controller was recommended by a few friends.
Barnstormers.com was recommended by the mechanic who had done the overhaul on Zero-Mike-Lima.

I found the most listings on Controller. I started making notes and sending email messages. I started thinking and re-thinking my options. Maybe I should get a ship that was a little farther out of overhaul? One that would cost less so I could take out a smaller loan? I started making and getting calls to and from sellers. I was having trouble keeping the options straight in my head.

And that’s when the headaches started.

You see, although I wasn’t knocked unconscious in the accident and I didn’t have any obvious head injuries and I wasn’t diagnosed with a concussion or anything like that, my brain wasn’t quite ready to go back to work. When I described the accident and the bouncing the cockpit had done on the way to its final resting place with me inside it to the local doctor who looked at my leg injuries, she suggested that I may have been concussed. She recommended that I “rest my brain” for a few days.

That was on Thursday afternoon. I took her advice for the rest of that day.

I tried working on the listings again the next day and was fatigued with a headache before 10 AM. Crap. I spent the rest of the day taking it easy.

In fact, I didn’t pick up the search until the following Monday.

Analyzing My Options

By the time I resumed my search, I was feeling a sense of urgency — even though I still had two months to get a helicopter for cherry season. I got back to the listings and started really thinking about what my options were. Fortunately, my brain was ready for the task and the headaches did not return.

Here’s what I came up with:

Buy a new one. Well, the prices of R44s have really gone up since I bought mine in 2005 for $346K loaded. A similar ship would cost $550K or more and I’d have to wait months for it. This option was really no option in my situation.
Buy a newish one. I figured that if I bought one that was 2012 or later model with low enough hours I could get 6 or more years out of it before having to overhaul it. But I simply couldn’t find any in this category.
Buy a recently overhauled one. This is the option I’d been working with: replace my recently overhauled ship with one just like it. The prices ranged from around $390K to $450K. It was doable if I was willing to walk into a big, fat loan. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to.
Buy a partially overhauled one. This is where it gets weird and where you really need to know what you’re buying. Robinson helicopters have a required 12-year or 2200 hour (whichever comes first) overhaul to maintain airworthiness. This cost me about $220K at the end of 2016; my ship was almost 12 years old and had about 2050 hours on it. But there’s a loophole for folks who want to save money. If the ship is 12 years old and has a lot less than 2200 hours on it, you can replace the calendar-limited parts in a partial overhaul and leave the hours-limited parts for later replacement. I cannot believe how many ships I found that fell into this category.
Buy one that would need overhaul within the next 4 years. There were a handful of ships like this out there and they were cheap. So cheap that I wouldn’t need a loan at all. The benefit of that is that the $30K I paid annually on a loan could go into a savings account for the overhaul.

The partial overhauls looked promising — at first. One of the ones I found was a particularly sharp looking, fully loaded 2006 ship that was selling for only $300K. Is it possible that I could get it and fly it commercially? The short answer is no. I did my research and discovered that the Lycoming engine also has a 12-year overhaul requirement. It would cost about $50K and take at least 2 months to have the engine pulled and overhauled. Although I wouldn’t mind spending the money, I didn’t have the time.

Also in this category were ships with various life-limited parts that are normally replaced in overhaul that had been replaced for various reasons during the life of the ship, leaving it very unclear what still needed to be done and when. My head spun just thinking about these ships.

And then there was the guy who argued with me that the bladder tanks really weren’t required and offered to let me talk to his mechanic for an explanation of why they were actually bad. Needless to say, he didn’t get any traction with a person whose life may have been saved by those tanks.

I found two ships that had been overhauled once and had about 400 hours left until the next overhaul. They were selling for $200K and $220K respectively — I wouldn’t need a loan for either one. One was an instrument training ship, the other wasn’t. One had a hook — another thing I didn’t want or need. I was leaning toward the one in Tennessee and started looking for a good mechanic to go out there with me for a pre-purchase inspection. I was looking at the cost of two round-trip plane tickets to Knoxville, an overnight stay, and an inspection fee: at least $6K total and two full days of my life. And that’s before buying it.

I wasn’t a happy camper.

Enter N7534D

All this time, I’d been texting on and off with Paul, the Director of Maintenance at Quantum.

Quantum did Zero-Mike-Lima’s overhaul in late 2016. I chose them because I think Paul is the best Robinson mechanic on the planet and the price they quoted was fair. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Paul and I know he’d never steer me wrong.

He mentioned offhand that Quantum had a 2005 R44 Raven II for sale. I eventually asked him for details. It sounded just like what I needed; it had (or would have) everything required for Part 135 operations without things I wouldn’t need (like an instrument training panel or hook). I asked for pictures. I swear my heart must have skipped a beat when I saw the interior: it was almost identical to Zero-Mike-Lima.

Okay, so it’s a terrible picture. But it’s the only one I have from the day I picked up N630ML at the Robinson factory in Torrance, CA in January 2005.

And here’s where I need to take a step back and be honest with myself and my readers. Understand that after ordering a helicopter to my specifications, flying it brand new from the factory, putting more than 2100 hours of time on it, using it to earn a living, having so many adventures with it, and seeing it through overhaul after 12 years of ownership, I really loved Zero-Mike-Lima. Yes, I had developed a possibly unhealthy bond with a machine. The biggest problem I was having with choosing its replacement was the possibility of ending up with one that was so different it wouldn’t feel like mine.

So when I saw the inside of N7534D, I felt as if I was looking at Zero-Mike-Lima. It would be an easy transition for me.

Of course, the outside was a different story. It was “Ford Deep Impact Blue” — an unfortunate color name given the circumstances of my need to purchase. (It also reminded me of the BMW motorcycle my wasband had crashed in Arizona years before.) But when I fly a helicopter, I don’t see the outside.

The ship had one problem: it had only 216 hours until it needed an overhaul. I’d need to stretch that through two flying seasons to save up for a good downpayment on an overhaul I’d likely need to start in November 2019.

But it also had a lot going for it. It was the first R44 with air conditioning, which was kind of cool (no pun intended) but also meant I could dry cherries without taking off a door for ventilation. It had been owned and operated by Quantum for its entire life. That meant it was always hangared and well maintained by a crew managed by my favorite mechanic. It had been used for training, but apparently not much. It had been on a Part 135 certificate so it had (or would have) all the instruments needed to get it on my certificate. It already had ADS-B Out installed, which would save me at least $3K before the deadline for installation at the end of 2019. And knowing that I needed a radio altimeter by October, Paul offered to pick up the cost of labor on the installation of one, saving me about another $5K.

So for about the same price as the other two ships I was looking at, I could get one that would satisfy the FAA without getting a loan or dealing with a pre-purchase inspection. There would be no worries or doubts or concerns about what I’d bought. It would be a pretty much stress-free purchase. I could just fly down to Arizona with a check and fly home with it.

And that’s pretty much what I did. I didn’t even go down to look at it before committing to purchase it. I just texted and talked with Paul to make sure it had everything I needed/expected. I sent my friend Woody to take a look at it; he reported back that the black stripe made it look “bitchin.” I sent a check for the radio altimeter hardware purchase. I waited for my insurance check and sent it to the bank to pay off the loan, then got the net directly deposited to my savings account. I got a small bridge loan from Bank of Laura Langer, then got a certified check for the purchase price, stuck it in my wallet, and flew First Class down to Phoenix on Alaska Air. That was on Wednesday.

Here I am with Penny, sitting in the pilot seat of N7534D in Hawthorne, NV, on our way home this past Saturday. (Photo by my friend Janet, who came along for that long ride.)

On Thursday, I saw it for the first time, got the warm and fuzzy feeling I was expecting, handed over the check, signed a bunch of papers, and immediately started installing the mounts I’d need for my iPhone and iPad and stowing various other equipment on board. Penny got to sit in the front seat while I worked.

On Friday, I was on my way home. But that’s another story.

Planning the Long Flight Home

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Maria Langer

I begin flight planning for the trip from Phoenix, AZ to Malaga, WA with my new helicopter.

I haven’t been blogging much about flying lately, but that’s because I haven’t been doing any lately. It took me about a month to find a good replacement for my old helicopter and, truth be told, I haven’t even gone to see it in person so I don’t have any good stories or photos to share. I’m thinking of discussing the purchase in a separate blog post and if life doesn’t stop hurling distractions at me, I might just get that done. But it’ll be a complete piece — from the start of the search to the pickup of the replacement helicopter — and since that process isn’t complete yet, I can’t very well write about it.

So instead I’ll give you an idea of what’s going through my mind this weekend and week as I plan to fly the replacement helicopter home from the Phoenix area.

Planning a Flight in the American West

The one thing that city folks — and people from areas areas that are normally or densely populated — don’t get is that out west there can be very long distances between points. And since there aren’t as many people here outside the big cities, there can be a whole lot of nothing on a long cross-country flight. Or even on a relatively short one. Heck, when I was first building time in my R22, I once flew solo in a straight line 85 miles east to west just north of the Grand Canyon’s airspace and didn’t cross over a single paved road for the entire distance. Can you do that in New York?

I used to fly between Arizona and Central Washington twice a year. From 2008 to 2013, I lived in Wickenburg, Arizona and spent 7 to 16 weeks every summer in the Wenatchee area of Washington for cherry drying. In May, I’d pack up the helicopter and fly north and in July or August, I’d pack it up again and fly south. I often had a pilot interested in building time in an R44 at the stick to help cover flying costs; once (I think) it was my future wasband, who got the flight time for free on a flight that included a good part of the Oregon coast.

There are basically four good routes — five if you count the California/Oregon coastal route — to get from the Phoenix area of Arizona to Central Washington State. Those routes are determined primarily by terrain, fuel availability, and airspace restrictions.

The Shortest Route

By far, the shortest route is through the middle of Nevada. Going north from Wickenburg (E25), it’s Mesquite, NV (67L), Elko, NV (EKO), Burns, OR (BNO), to Wenatchee, WA (EAT). Note that those legs are pretty long — 2-1/2 or more hours each. But it’s only 891 miles total and I’ve done the whole flight in a single day twice with another pilot on board.

Here’s Foreflight with the shortest route plotted in. I added a waypoint to route me around the Grand Canyon’s airspace, which I can’t fly through. There’s a whole lot of nothing on this route.

Pros:

Short route; it can be done in less than 10 hours without headwinds.
The shortest route is also the cheapest route.
Only three fuel stops also speeds up the trip; stopping for fuel takes at least 30 minutes.
Between Elko and Burns, there are many herds of wild horses.

Cons:

Not many options for fuel if headwinds slow you down. Rerouting along the way could make the trip a lot longer.
Flight crosses miles of empty desert with absolutely no sign of civilization. For example, there’s a stretch between Elko and Burns where there are no roads, buildings, or even fence lines for more than 90 minutes of flight time. So if you need to land because of a problem, you’re pretty much screwed.

The Salt Lake City Route

My GoPro nosecam captured this amazing image of Salt Lake on my last flight southbound through the area in October 2016.

When I flew the late, great Zero-Mike-Lima south to get its overhaul back in 2016, I took what I call the Salt Lake City route. This route follows roads pretty much all the way. Zero-Mike-Lima’s engine was nearly 12 years old and an oil change had uncovered more than the normal amount of metal fragments in the filter. If the engine was going to give me trouble, I wanted to be able to land somewhere close to where I could get help and that meant near a road. An example of this route goes from Wickenburg (E25) to Page, AZ (PGA), Salt Lake City (Skypark), UT (BTF), Burley, ID (BUR), Pendleton, OR (PDT), and Wenatchee (EAT). This comes out to a minimum of 985 miles.

This is what I call the Salt Lake City Route, IFR edition. I’ve added waypoints beyond the fuel stops listed here, to guide me around the Grand Canyon’s airspace and keep me over roads for most of the way.

Pros:

I can be an IFR (I Follow Roads) pilot. There are very few stretches along this route that can be considered remote.
There are corner-cutting opportunities to save time and fuel. For example, if I don’t mind flying over Salt Lake, I can go direct from Salt Lake City to Burley. (I really don’t like flying over water so I’ve only done that once.)
There are many potential fuel stops along the way. And many options for short detours to get to them.
The first 2 hours of this flight takes me over my old stomping grounds in northeastern Arizona, including the Navajo Reservation and Lake Powell.
My friend Megg lives in Salt Lake City and has, more than once, provided overnight accommodations.

Cons:

It’s not the shortest route. I don’t think it can be done safely by one pilot in a day.
It crosses over a lot of high elevation terrain. In April, that means there’s a real possibility of snow or icing conditions that I can’t fly in. Getting grounded because of weather wastes time and gets expensive.

The Western Nevada Route

Another way to go that successfully avoids the restricted airspace in Nevada is up the east side of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and up into Oregon. In looking at this route, I realized that I’d never done the whole thing. Once I traced the Tonopah (southeast of Hawthorne) to Wickenburg part of this route with my wasband on board when we had to abandon the coastal route, stopped for the night at a friend’s house in Georgetown, CA, and came over Echo Pass near Lake Tahoe. We might have cut through Death Valley along the way. The route I’m looking at now is at least 942 miles: Wickenburg (E25), Jean, NV (0L7), Hawthorne, NV (HTH), Lakeview, OR (LKV), Yakima, WA (YKM), and Wenatchee (EAT).

The western Nevada route is one I’ve never done before, but it looks like it might work out.

Pros:

Relatively short route.
Not completely familiar so I’d get to see new sights.
A stop at Hawthorne would mean getting to see Betty, the unofficial airport greeter there.

Cons:

Not completely familiar so I’d have to be even more prepared for the unexpected than usual.

Fuel stops are limited so monitoring fuel consumption and planning well in advance is vital, especially with headwinds.

There’s some remote terrain. Help might not be close in the event of a problem.

There’s some high elevation terrain. Winter weather could be an issue in April.

With restricted airspace and high mountains on either side of the Nevada portion of the route, there aren’t many opportunities to divert for fuel or overnight accommodations.

The Central California Route

The longest two routes take me through California. The shorter version goes up the Central Valley of California. I basically head west through the Arizona and California deserts, then pop over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Tehachapi and fly up the Central Valley. Then I continue North through Oregon on the East side of the Cascade Mountains. A flight plan might be Wickenburg (E25), Apple Valley, CA (APV), Porterville, CA (PTV), Woodland, CA (O41), Redding, CA (RDD), The Dalles, WA (DLS), and Wenatchee (EAT). That’s a minimum of 1100 miles.

The Central California route is long but very familiar. The stops shown here are just an example; there are plenty of options for fuel and overnight stay in the Central Valley.

Pros:

I know this route really well. I can’t tell you (without looking in my log book) how many times I’ve flown either the entire thing or parts of it.
There are lots of places in California’s Central Valley for fuel and overnight stops.
More than half the route is through heavily populated areas. Plenty of places to get help if needed.
There is very little high terrain so winter weather is not likely to be an issue.
Weather is nearly always perfect — although it could be windy — in the desert areas.
I can stop along the way to pick up the cockpit cover for my old helicopter, which is somewhere in the Sacramento area of California.

Cons:

The route is long. Enough said.
There’s a chance that you won’t be able to cross into the Central Valley at Tehachapi because of low clouds on the Central Valley side. The wind seems to funnel the weather south and when the clouds hit the mountains there, they just stop and accumulate. I’ve had this happen to me twice. The options are to wait it out or detour farther west to Grapevine.
Just under half the route is through sparsely populated areas.
There are limited fuel stops in the desert areas and in Oregon.
Did I mention that the route was long?

The Coastal Route

When I fly back from the coast, I usually fly along the Columbia River. Here’s a nosecam shot of the Bonneville Dam. I can’t get my hands on any of my coast photos right now.

If you’ve never flown in a small aircraft, low and slow up the coast of California and Oregon, you have no idea what you’re missing. When the weather is good, the flight is absolutely amazing. I’m talking about tiny seaside communities, waterfalls plunging off cliffs into the Pacific Ocean, and odd rock formations just off the coast with waves crashing picturesquely against them. If time and money is no object, this is the way to go. A typical route might be Wickenburg (E25), Apple Valley, CA (APV), San Luis Obispo (SBP), Half Moon Bay, CA (HAF), Eureka, CA (EKA), North Bend, OR (OTH), Tillamook, OR (TMK), The Dalles, WA (DLS), and Wenatchee (EAT). Those aren’t all fuel stops; they’re just points along the way where fuel is available. This flight is over 1300 miles long if you follow the coast as closely as possible. It’s a lot longer if you join the coast at a point south of San Luis Obispo — for example, Santa Barbara (SBA) or Long Beach (LGB).

Got money to spend and time to kill and you don’t mind gambling with Mother Nature? Then do the coastal route. The extra waypoints I plotted in here are just to keep you on the coast as much as possible. You’d have to calculate and pick your fuel stops.

Pros:

The scenery! There’s none better.
Lots of fuel stops — if you plan properly.
Did I mention the amazing scenery?

Cons:

Weather. The chances of being able to stay on the coast for the entire distance from San Luis Obispo to Tillamook are about as close to zero as you can get without hitting zero. The marine layer is real and it will definitely force you inland for at least part of this route. That means you need to have an infinite number of Plan Bs. And there’s nothing worse than flying out of your way to get to the coast and then having to backtrack because it’s socked in with fog.
Possibly flying over water. I hate flying over water.
Some of the coastal areas are quite remote. So even if you’re flying over land, if you have a problem and need to land you might not be anywhere near help.
You can’t stick to the coast in certain wildlife refuge areas unless you want to climb to 2000 feet. I get nosebleeds up there.
The airspace gets a little crazy around San Francisco, especially if you have to come inland.
And seriously: 1300 miles for a trip you can do in less than 1000 miles on at least two other routes? A bit extravagant, no?

Picking a Route

Those are pretty much the options I’m looking at. I was leaning toward the Central California route until I started looking at the Western Nevada route in more detail. It definitely has possibilities and I shouldn’t write it off just because I haven’t done it before. If it saves me 2 hours of flight time, that’s hundreds of dollars in ferry flight costs. While I don’t think I can do it in a day, it’s definitely feasible.

In the end, there are just two things that will help me make the decision: the weather forecast and whether I can stop in California to fetch that cockpit cover. And although my flight is scheduled to begin on Friday, April 13 — yeah, I know — it’s still to early to get a reliable forecast. I’ll likely decide by Wednesday or Thursday — and be prepared to change my mind.

That’s how flight planning goes.

An Eclectic Mind

Web site and blog for Maria Langer, writer, video producer, jewelry artist, boat captain, and helicopter pilot. Blogging since 2004.

Tag Archives: helicopters

A Weekend of Flying

Cherry Season

The Big June Event

More Cherry Drying

More Storms, More Wet Cherries

Drying at Dawn on Sunday

Herding Horses

The Flight Home

A Story about Questioning Authority

A Tiny Bit of Backstory

The Inspection

The Safety Wire

The Doors

“Breathe”

The Safety Wire, Revisited

Arizona to Washington by Helicopter, Again

Flying South

Some Lurking Stress

The Pickup

Chandler to Wickenburg

Overnight at Wickenburg

The Long Flight

Buying N7534D

To Buy or Not to Buy

The Search Begins

Online Shopping

Analyzing My Options

Enter N7534D

Planning the Long Flight Home

Planning a Flight in the American West

The Shortest Route

The Salt Lake City Route

The Western Nevada Route

The Central California Route

The Coastal Route

Picking a Route