The Mohave County Fair

We give Kingman residents and visitors helicopter rides.

I started planning for the Mohave County Fair at least a year ago. I exchanged phone calls and e-mails with the folks who handle the concessions for the fair, including Betty Watters and her son Phil Richardson. I flew up to Kingman in June to check out possible landing zones. That’s when I paid the fee for my “booth” in the north parking area. The dates September 15-18 went from pencil to ink on my calendar.

Mike and I went up to Kingman early Thursday morning. I flew, Mike drove. Mike brought our camper up there. It’s a 3-horse slant trailer with living quarters. I left about an hour after Mike and arrived at the fairgrounds the same time he did. I did a lap around Kingman, planning my route for rides, while Mike parked and secured my landing zone. Then I landed in a huge cloud of dust, cooled down the engine and shut down. We spent the next two hours setting up boundaries for the landing zone, putting up banners and signs, and doing housekeeping chores in the camper. The nice folks at the fairgrounds allowed us to park the camper at one end of the landing zone. On the other side of the fence were a few portable toilets (which we wouldn’t need) and the trailers and living quarters for the carnival folks. Beyond that were the carnival rides and attractions. And beyond that was the rest of the fair.

Photo

Mike made a trip to the local True Value hardware store to pick up a sprinkler and another hose. Phil had run his own hoses to the landing zone and we decided to use a sprinkler, which we’d move periodically throughout the day, to keep the landing zone damp. That would keep dust down. Mike also had to take a trip to town to fill the camper’s two gas bottles so we’d have refrigerator, hot water, and stove use. The camper also has a full bathroom with two holding tanks, so we could use our own clean toilet and shower daily.

We also had Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird with us. Jack had to stay on a leash. Alex stayed under the trailer’s awning in his cage. Neither of them were bothered by a helicopter taking off and landing about 150 feet away from them.

Betty had asked her neighbor, Tony, to give us a hand. Tony is on permanent disability after being hit by a truck years ago, but he was fully capable of helping us with the things we needed to do. He wound up working with us on Thursday and Friday and lending moral support on Saturday.

By 2 PM, we were ready to do rides. The only thing we needed were passengers. That was the problem. It was 2 PM on a weekday. Kids were in school, parents were at work. No one was interested in the carnival or our rides.

The ride took off from the north parking area. I had to make a crosswind departure, since heading into the wind would have taken me right over the carnival rides. From there, we flew up the east side of Centennial Park, north of Wal-Mart, just north of the I-40 pass through the mountains, down to the Beale Street exit on I-40, along the south side of Andy Devine Boulevard, across Hualapai Mountain Road, and up the east side of the fairgrounds. I made a 1807deg; turn at a cell tower north of I-40, then came straight in to the landing zone, landing right into the wind. Total time was about 6-8 minutes.

I’d priced the rides at $25 per person including tax. This was before fuel prices went up, so it was a real bargain. My usual ride prices are $30 to $35 per person for an 8-10 minute flight, but the fair folks practically begged me to keep the price down. So I did, depending on the cheaper price to attract more passengers and shorter ride length to make it profitable.

We managed to give 11 rides on Thursday. Very disappointing. We went to the Dambar restaurant for a good dinner, though.

On Friday, things weren’t much different. I walked over to the nearby junior high school around 10 AM, suggesting that a few of the teachers might want to walk students over to see the helicopter and get one of my presentations on aerodynamics or how helicopters fly. The school was very interested, but Fridays are half days so classes are shorter. There wouldn’t be enough time for any of the classes to walk over and back and get the presentation.

Things picked up late Friday afternoon. We did 10 rides, most of which were after sunset. The moon was big and full and beautiful and the carnival rides looked great from the sky.

By that time, our two helpers, Alex and his college buddy Ryan, had come to help out. There wasn’t much for them to do. They pitched their tent behind our camper, uncomfortably close to those portable toilets on the other side of the fence. We ate carnival food for dinner and walked around the fair.

We were pretty disappointed at the turnout so far.

Saturday changed everything. Although I wasn’t supposed to start flying until 10 AM, my first passenger arrived at 9, before the fair even opened. Heck, I didn’t care. I gave him a ride. For the next two hours, I did a few rides. Then the dam burst (so to speak) and I had a nonstop flow of passengers. Mike, Alex, and Ryan loaded 2 or 3 people on board for each flight. The only time I shut down was to get fuel at the local airport 5 miles away (three times!) and to take a 20-minute lunch/bathroom break. I put 5.5 hours on the helicopter’s hobbs meter that day — quite a bit when you consider that the hobbs only ticks when I’m in flight so my time spinning on the ground didn’t count. I figure I took about 100 passengers for rides that day. Most of them were in a helicopter for their very first time. I gave all the kids who flew with me helicopter toys (while they lasted). One guy liked it so much he went up twice.

We celebrated with four steak dinners at the Dambar.

Sunday looked as if it might be a repeat of Saturday, but the flow of passengers was starting later. The wind was stronger than the previous few days and it was warmer, so taking off with a crosswind (rather than a headwind) when I was heavy was tough. I did about 20 rides before we decided to call it quits. It was 1:30 PM. We packed up, said goodbye, and got ready to go.

I stopped off at the carnival office to leave a card for the carnival owner. I’d had a good event and was interested in working with carnivals to do it more often.

Mike left with the camper and I took off with Alex and Ryan. We took the scenic route home: to Bullhead City and down the Colorado River to Parker, where we refueled (at $4.54 per gallon!). From there, we hooked up with the Bill Williams River, overflew Swansea and the Alamo Dam, and returned to Wickenburg.

We’ll go back to the Mohave County Fair next year. But we’ll just spend all day Saturday and Sunday. I’m already looking forward to it.

My thanks to Betty and Phil for all their help.

We Conquer Buckeye

We fly down to Buckeye for an airport event and do better than we expected — or hoped.

After our disappoint trip to Lake Havasu City (boy, is that an understatement), I didn’t have high hopes of doing well at any of our helicopter gigs. And then we went to Buckeye.

Buckeye had its second annual Air Fair on Saturday. I was supposed to appear at its first event, which was last April, but two things conspired to make that impossible: first, Tristan took back his helicopter, which I was leasing from him and second, I got a job at the Grand Canyon.

This year, Buckeye’s Airport Manager, Jason Hardison, called me about participating. That should have tipped me off that it would be a good event. When helicopter rides are requested, the event goes well. I went down to Buckeye, chatted with Jason, and checked out the proposed landing zone. Jason told me that the previous year’s event had gone far better than they expected. They’d figured on a few hundred people attending when, in fact, over 1500 had shown up. They thought helicopter rides would be a good activity for attendees. I agreed. As readers of these blogs probably realize by now, I think a helicopter ride is a good activity for anyone. (Unless, of course, they’re in a persistent vegetative state.)

Jason told me to come down to Buckeye by 9:45 AM, which I thought was a little late. Mike would come with me and, for a while, I had trouble finding a second ground crew member. But then I remembered Tom Rubin, who’d recently moved to Wickenburg. Tom runs AeroPhoenix, a pilot supply wholesaler down in Deer Valley. He’s been so busy building his business that he’d drifted away from actually being involved in aviation. I e-mailed him about the event and he agreed to come. He’d never been in a helicopter before, so that alone was a good reason to join us.

It was a good thing that he did come, since Mike would have been overwhelmed by the turnout if he’d been alone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

We left Wickenburg at 8:30 AM for the half-hour flight to Buckeye. The winds at Wickenburg were dead calm, but as we flew by the summit of Vulture Peak, the wind suddenly picked up, tossing us around a bit as it sometimes does when I fly through a wind shear area. From that point on, we had a crosswind from the east. I didn’t realize how strong it was until we were landing. I’d lined up on the taxiway parallel to runway 17 while an airplane was landing on the runway. The three of us watched the plane struggle to stay lined up with the runway as it descended. First, the left wing dipped dangerously low. Then the plane touched down on the right side of the runway, its nose pointed toward the right. For a moment, we all thought he’d go off the runway. But just as it seemed his right wheel was about to leave pavement, he managed to pull it to the left and recover. Whew! Glad I wasn’t flying a plane.

Our landing was much safer, I came into a hover over the taxiway, then hover taxied to our landing zone in the southwest corner of the ramp, pointed right into the wind (tail toward the runway, of course) and set down. Easy.

The wind was blowing pretty good — at least about 15 knots. And it was blowing straight across the runway. It didn’t look good for the event as a fly in.

But, as we discovered, the event wasn’t a fly in. It was a town event held at the airport. There was a DJ, jumping hut for the kids, fire trucks with demonstrations, and lots of food vendors. Of course, all this was still being set up when we arrived. Jason had provided us with a table and a few chairs and lots of orange cones to clearly mark the boundaries of our landing zone. Tom and I wandered over to the entrance area to put up my two “Helicopter Rides Today” signs.

On the way back to the helicopter, I stopped at a gyroplane on display and chatted with the pilot, who was also the chief flight instructor. Gyros are a cross between an airplane and a helicopter. They can’t hover, but they can take off and land in a remarkably short space. Lift is provided by rotor blades, but there’s no transmission to turn them in flight. Instead, the aircraft is in a constant state of autorotation, with a pusher propeller behind the cockpit and engine to keep a constant forward motion. I’d flown one at Airventure Oshkosh a few years ago and have been toying with the idea of getting my rating. I took the instructor’s card. I’ll probably call him in October when the temperatures start cooling down.

I also talked to the skydiving guys. They were hoping to do some jumps later in the day, when the wind calmed down. They’re based in Buckeye and I’ve often heard them on the radio. “Jumpers away! Do not overfly Buckeye fifteen thousand feet or below.” I told them I wanted to go for a tandem jump to try it, but I didn’t want to get hooked on it. They laughed. I told him I was already hooked on one costly activity; I couldn’t afford another one.

Then we went back to the helicopter to wait.

People started arriving at the event a while later. I took two people for a flight. There was no one waiting after that, so I shut down. Then some more folks came and I took them up. My flights departed from the airport and flew southeast to the town of Buckeye. I’d circle the town and return to the airport. The total flight time was 8 to 10 minutes, but probably closer to 10. The third group of passengers asked for a special flight up into the White Tank Mountains. Since I still wasn’t busy, I took them and Mike charged my usual hourly rate: $395 (which he rounded up to an even $400). We were gone for .4 hours. When I returned, I had a line of people waiting.

The line persisted for the rest of the day. I had to stop for fuel and a bathroom break and lunch around 1 PM. Fuel was a nuisance. Buckeye does not have a fuel truck and they didn’t want me hover-taxing to the fuel island, which was right in the midst of the activities. So we used 5-gallon fuel cans, which I’d brought with me from home. I only had two of them and it took 3 trips to put about 35 gallons of fuel into the helicopter. Then I climbed back on board and continued flying.

The event was scheduled to end at 3 PM, but by 2 PM, the crowd was thinning. But not in my landing zone. I just kept flying, taking three people at a time. For some folks, I altered the flight to take them over their house or a relative’s house. I always made the trip in 10 minutes or less. More than half of my passengers were kids, and Mike gave them all helicopter toys when they got off. He sold a few t-shirts, too. Tom helped him load and unload the passengers and keep folks away from the landing zone when I was there.

It 3 PM, the rest of the vendors and activities had cleared out. I still had a line of people. I finally finished them all at about 4 PM. I was exhausted and low on fuel. Mike and Tom loaded our stuff back into the helicopter and I hover-taxied over to the fuel island, which was now clear. I shut down and let the guys top off the tanks.

I’d put 4.1 hours on the hobbs meter. When we got home and counted the proceeds, I discovered that I’d flown 65 passengers. That was 18 more than my previous big day (47 at Robson’s). The trip had not only been worthwhile, but it had been downright profitable.

I flew home up the Hassayampa River, circling Tom’s house once so he could get pictures of it from the air. Then we landed, shut down, and put the helicopter away. Tom hurried home. Mike and I were too tired to go out for dinner, so it was a hot shower and leftovers for us. Neither of us minded.

I want to thank Jason Hardiman for inviting us to Buckeye for their event. I also want to congratulate him and the town of Buckeye for putting on a great family event. It was a pleasure to participate, and not just because I made some money. I always like taking people for helicopter rides and since more than half of the people I flew had never been in a helicopter before, it was even more fulfilling for me.

A Good Attitude

I’m happy to be appreciated.

Yarnell Daze is coming up in May. It’s an event that’s been happening just about every spring in Yarnell for the past 30+ years. It includes a parade, art fair, car show, and all kinds of other activities for people of all ages. A lot of fun up in Yarnell, high above the low desert just as the low desert is starting to really heat up.

Years ago, I noticed someone giving helicopter rides as part of the Yarnell Daze festivities. He was flying out of a lot beside the Mountainaire convenience store (Woody’s) in Peeples Valley. I only saw him one year and that’s because I was just driving through on my way home from Prescott.

So I figured I’d call the Yarnell Chamber of Commerce and ask if I could do helicopter rides for them. There was a machine when I called. (There’s always a machine when you call. I don’t think Yarnell’s Chamber of Commerce is very busy.) So I left a message. And so began our game of telephone tag.

Someone from the Chamber called back and said they were thrilled that I’d called. Thrilled. Wow. Can’t help liking that attitude. Her message said their first Yarnell Daze planning meeting was coming up on a Monday in February and could I attend? I checked my calendar and called back. I told the machine I’d be out of town that day (I was going to be at the Grand Canyon doing a mule trip I’d planned eight months in advance). Then I didn’t hear anything for a while.

I called back early this month to see where things stood. I left another message. Someone named Linda called back and left a message for me with a different phone number. I called back and actually spoke to Linda. Their second meeting was March 28. Could I come? I put it on my calendar.

The meeting was at the Buzzard’s Roost, an interesting little cafe on the north end of town. The Buzzard’s Roost was always a funky, kind of junky-looking place that specialized in smoked food — ribs, pulled pork, etc. It was tiny inside — maybe six tables? — and had a few tables outside. Then someone came along and fixed the place up. They enclosed the outside with clean, neat-looking siding, removing the outdoor seating and making the place look….well, normal. Around that time, the bikers stopped coming in and the place looked empty all the time. It had been stripped of character. Then someone must have woken up to the fact that the place’s old funky look was part of its formula for success. They somehow managed to make it look weird and funky again, added more outdoor seating, and parked an old Harley out front. Now it’s the same old place it was but bigger and people stop in for meals again.

I stepped inside, wearing my freshly pressed Flying M Air oxford shirt and feeling a bit out of place. There were people there having breakfast, but no big groups. A woman at the counter looked at me and said, “Yes, this is the meeting.” Her name was Wendy and with her was a man who turned out to be the cook. When he went into the kitchen to get to work, I noticed that he wore a western style holster under his apron with two revolvers tucked inside it. I don’t think they were fake.

Wendy owned the Buzzard’s Roost and was evidently part of the Yarnell Chamber. She was excited that I’d come and excited that I’d be doing helicopter rides. In fact, she told everyone who walked in or called on the phone while I was there that they’d be having helicopter rides at Yarnell Daze. I know she was more excited than I was. We talked about pricing, hours of operation, etc.

Then she asked me if I could be in the parade. She wanted me to hover down the street. Wow. I’ve always wanted to do that. I know I have the skills required. But the downwash would create hurricane-like winds as I passed. It could blow up dust and tiny pebbles. It could get in people’s faces or eyes or damage property on the parade route. I had to say no. But I promised to do a low fly-by during the parade.

Wendy suggested advance ticket sales. A great idea, especially after the farce at Lake Havasu City. I’d know in advance how many people I could expect at a minimum. We’d do advance ticket sales at a slightly lower price, to encourage people to buy before the event. The tickets would have time slots on them, so not everyone would show up at once. She could sell them at the Buzzard’s Roost, which would help her draw people in. All I had to do was create the tickets and a bunch of flyers.

Linda came by and we talked about landing zones. That’s the only thing that bothered me about the gig: the proposed landing zone was all the way out in Peeples Valley, about three miles further up route 89. Not exactly the in-your-face LZ I like to have. The presale tickets would help get people out there, but didn’t they have a better location?

A man having breakfast, who’d already chatted with me about doing aerial photography from the helicopter, suggested a field near “Choo-Choo,” the train museum at the edge of Yarnell. Linda and I scoped it out when we went to check the Peeples Valley LZ. We both agreed it was better. Linda had the job of finding out who owned it and getting their permission to operate there.

That in itself was weird. Most hosts require that I find and get permission for landing zones. Yarnell was doing everything for me.

Want to know something else that was weird? Linda told me they have insurance and I didn’t have to worry about it. Wow. Normally, the big stumbling block for these events is insurance — hosts normally want to make sure I have it and add their names as additional named insureds. It’s become part of my planning ritual for events. So I told Linda that I have insurance, too. I produced the certificate and made her take a copy. I told her that I pay a ton of money for my insurance and I wanted everyone to know I had it. She took it — probably just to be polite.

Yesterday, I had all the tickets and flyers ready to bring to Yarnell. But I don’t get up there too often so I wanted to mail them up. This way, they’d get them right away. So I called Wendy at the Buzzard’s Roost to get her address. They don’t have mail to their physical address in Yarnell. It’s all Post Office boxes. She told me that she appreciated me doing this. As if I were doing her a favor. I told her that it was my pleasure, that Yarnell was a pleasure to work with, and that I hoped I met their expectations.

And I meant it.

It’s nice to see a Chamber of Commerce that actually works hard to ensure the success of its events, one that invites local businesses to participate and makes it easy for them to do their part. A Chamber of Commerce with a positive “can-do” attitude rather than the “why should we do something for you?” attitude I’ve seen all too many times around here. I think I’ll be joining the Yarnell Chamber of Commerce. It’ll be a real pleasure to support such a good organization.

Now if only all of my helicopter ride hosts were as pleasant and accommodating as Yarnell.