Tag Archives: photography

Racing [with] Boats

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What a rush!

My Lake Havasu job on Friday turned out to be two jobs.

I’d been hired by a man based in Oregon who had designed and built a totally custom, stainless steel speedboat. His company, Liquid Technologies, had brought the boat down to Havasu to participate in a big boating event there. It was the second time the boat was in the water and he wanted to get video of the boat out on the lake. He’d hired Todd from Joker’s Wild Promotions to do the camera work.

Todd met me at the airport at 8 AM on Friday. He decided to sit behind me in the helicopter, so we’d both have pretty much the same view. We took just that door off. It was still cool and the last thing I needed was to catch a cold. Then we put on our life jackets and climbed on board.

Todd told me the game plan as I warmed the engine. The boat would be at the cove at the Nautical Inn, just southwest of London Bridge. We’d go there and circle it as it backed out, then follow it slowly through the no wake zone to the open lake. Then the boat would cruise at about 50 knots and we’d fly with it.

He asked how low I could fly. I told him I didn’t know — I hadn’t flown with a boat before. He told me to stick with my comfort level. No problem there — I’d never do anything I wasn’t comfortable with.

We took off and got to the cove within minutes. The boat was about 45 feet long and silver, looking very sleek. It was surrounded by literally dozens of similar boats, most of which had bright paint jobs, just parked along the cove. We circled the cove three times as it backed out, getting lower with each pass. Then we followed it.

The day was perfect for flying. Little or no wind, still cool and comfortable. The lake water was almost mirror smooth. Zero-Mike-Lima seemed to have all the power in the world with just two of us on board, even with close to full tanks of fuel.

The boat had four men in it, each wearing life jackets and headsets. They did their absolute best not to look at us. That turned out to be a pain in the neck later on, when Todd wanted them to speed up and they never saw his hand signals. We followed them down the lake at a good clip and I got closer and lower in gradual steps. After a while, I was about 15 to 20 feet off the top of the lake, 30 feet from the boat, cruising along beside it at 50 to 60 knots.

Todd gave me instructions to position us in relation to the boat. In front, looking back. Behind, looking forward. Above, looking down. Low, looking straight on. I followed his instructions, keeping an eye on the boat and on the lake in front of me. There were only a few boats out there and I didn’t want to overfly any of them at low level, so once or twice I had to shift position to dodge around another boat.

What’s interesting to me about all this is that I didn’t have to give the flying much thought. Both hands and feet just did what they needed to do to get the helicopter where I wanted it to be. I’d expected the work to be challenging and to require a lot of concentration to do. But it wasn’t that difficult at all. I think it’s because of the flying conditions — which were so darn easy — and the power available to me. There’s no way I could have done the job as easily in an R22 with its limited power and two good-sized people on board.

We got down to the pumping station for one of the two reservoirs near the Parker Dam and I saw an unpleasant sight: high tension power line towers. “I think there are wires ahead,” I said to Todd.

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot to tell you about them.”

Great. “Well, I want to stop before we get to them,” I said.

He assured me that that’s as far as they’d go. I stopped over the water, climbed up a bit, and went into a slow circle about a half mile upriver from the wires. The boat kept going, then turned around and came back to us. Then we started up again, now going upriver. We started getting fancy, coming up behind the boat, passing it, and flying around its front end as it sped by us. A maneuver very similar to one I’d done at a carmaker’s test track for a film crew months before. Todd was very pleased.

We got back to town and they boat turned around again. Todd switched to still photos. He had a professional Canon camera capable of 6 shots per second at 8 megapixels. We followed the boat about 1/4 back down the lake. It turned and came back. More still photos, more video.

Then we were done. We headed back to the airport. The 1.2 hours of Hobbs time had gone quickly.

I asked Todd how I’d done. He said that I was now his current favorite pilot. Unfortunately, he doesn’t want to pay my ferry costs from Wickenburg (1.6 hours round trip), so I don’t know how much work he’ll give me in the future.

We shut down and I closed up the ship. Then we went into town, where he dropped off the video and still photos at his office. One of the guys who works with him, Larry, wasted no time feeding the video into a computer. I got to see some of it. The beginning wasn’t too impressive as I warmed to the task and Todd got used to a new video camera. But then there were a bunch of great sequences. He had over 45 minutes of raw video to go into a 10-minute final video. The still photos were even better. I got to see them on Todd’s computer. He promised to send me a few; maybe I’ll get to show one or more of them off here.

Larry dropped me off at the Nautical Inn, where I met with the client and presented my bill. He was a nice man, excited about the sport and his new boat. He paid me with a check and I left them to find my next client.

Todd had gotten me hooked up with the guys from Extreme Boats magazine. They wanted to get photos of some of the other speedboats as they went downlake for a “lunch run.” So I met with Casey, the magazine publisher, and hitched a ride out to the airport with him and two other guys from the magazine. The other guys left us at the helicopter and a video guy joined us a while later. I took off two doors, stowed them in the video guy’s truck, handed out life vests, and we climbed aboard. A while later, we were on our way back to the cove south of the bridge.

This flight would be significantly different. There were a bunch of boats to shoot and they were all waiting for us. A soon as they caught sight of the helicopter, they took off downlake. Although I was already moving at close to 100 knots, these guys weren’t planning on cruising at only 50. They were race boats and they wanted to race. With a helicopter.

I caught up with our first target boat and dropped down to lake level. I was flying at 90 knots, 20 feet above the water’s surface, and got a real rush out of the experience. Casey snapped away at each boat — his camera could do 8 shots per second at 8 megapixels — then instructed me to chase down the next one. I’d do what I could — some boats were just too fast and too far ahead to catch up with — and then we’d turn around and head back up the lake looking for other boats to shoot.

This was entirely different from the morning’s shoot, which I now considered a training exercise. This was closer to real life race boat photography. The only difference here is that the drivers weren’t in a real race. They wanted the helicopter to take pictures of them. So when they saw me drop back and pick up another target, some of them turned around and chased me down.

To further complicate matters and make it a bit more challenging, it was after noon and the lake was full of boats. Dodging them became a real chore, but overflying them was not an option at that altitude for safety reasons. There was a slight breeze that occasionally sent a ripple of air over the water — just enough to give the helicopter a vertical wiggle. A downdraft — even a slight one — was not something you wanted when you were only 15 feet off the water’s surface.

Meanwhile, the video guy shot some video out the bubble and through his open door. One of his targets was a boat full of girls promoting David Clark products. We were racing along beside them and he was shooting what was probably excellent video when one of the bimbos on board decided to stand up and moon us.

“What the hell is she doing?” one of the guys said.

“We’ll have to edit that out,” the other guy said.

The guys obviously weren’t amused. Sometimes women can be so stupid that I’m embarrased to be one.

We flew around the lake for about an hour, chasing boats, trying to pass them for bow shots, and sometimes succeeding. One of the boats we were supposed to shoot was having engine problems and was dead in the water. They didn’t shoot any pictures or video.

On the way back to the airport, Casey told me about how one of his photographers had taken a swim in an R22. The pilot had been flying so low along the water that he routinely dragged one or both skids along the water surface. The photographer had asked him several times to fly higher, saying that if he wanted photos from that low, he’d be in a boat. The pilot evidently hadn’t gotten the message. On one of his low dips to the water, he dug the skid in too deeply and it caught. The helicopter flipped over and sank. The pilot and photographer were okay, but I wonder whether the pilot learned his lesson.

I don’t think I’d impressed Casey as much as Todd. I like to think that isn’t my fault — that the boat driver’s desire to race with a helicopter — and beat it — had made me look bad. But my helicopter’s never exceed speed with doors off is 100 knots. How can I be expected to catch up with and pass a boat going faster than that?

I settled up with Casey and spent a half hour relaxing in the FBO while the fuel guy topped off my tanks. (There’s still a price war going on at Lake Havasu City Airport and the fuel at Sun Western Flyers is cheaper than in Wickenburg.) It was about 2 PM when I climbed on board and headed home.

Page to Havasu by Helicopter

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I fly from one gig to the next.

I had two long distance flying jobs this past week: one in Page, AZ and the the next in Lake Havasu City, AZ. Although the two cities are on the Colorado River, they’re 200 miles apart by air.

My Page job ended at around 6:30 PM on Thursday. With sunset less than an hour away and dark clouds on the southern horizon, flying home was not an option. That didn’t matter; I was prepared for an overnight stay.

The FBO guy at Classic Aviation gave me the courtesy van for the night and I drove into town. A while later, I was checked into a comfortable first-floor room at the Best Western Hotel, with a “Manager’s Special” rate of only $65. Dinner was across the street at the Lake Powell Steakhouse, one of those small-town restaurants that features a soup and salad bar no one would miss if it weren’t there. They had a wine list and I ordered a half bottle of Clois du Bois cabernet — which actually came in a little bottle with a real cork — to go with my prime rib. I couldn’t finish the wine with dinner, so I corked it back up and took it back to my room, where I finished it off out of a styrofoam coffee cup.

I watched a little television before passing out at around 9 PM. I was awake at 3 AM. I’ve been having trouble sleeping lately — have a lot on my mind. I spent some time writing about the day before. Then, at 5 AM, I washed up, dressed, and packed up. I was getting back into the van at 5:30 AM.

Sunrise over Navajo MountainI dropped off the van at the airport, leaving the keys tucked inside the van’s logbook under the seat with a $10 contribution for fuel. It took five tries to get the combination right on the locked gate to the ramp. There was no one around. I walked out to the helicopter just as the sun was rising over Tower Butte and Navajo Mountain to the east. The air, which had been completely still, now stirred to life with a gentle breeze. There was enough light for a good preflight and I took some time stowing my bags and the life jackets so I’d be organized when I arrived at Havasu.

Glen Canyon DamI started the engine and warmed it up, giving the engine plenty of time to get to temperature. (Take care of your engine and it’ll take care of you.) At exactly 6 AM — right on schedule — I raised the collective, made a radio call, and took off toward the lake. I swung over the dam for a look and a photo before heading down the Colorado River, over Glen Canyon.

I had a long flight ahead of me.

The Vermilion CliffsMy flight path would take me south along the eastern edge of the restricted Grand Canyon airspace. In a way, it was ironic — less than two years ago, I’d earned part of my living as a pilot flying over the canyon every day, but now I can’t fly past the imaginary line that separates that sacred space from the not-so-sacred space I was allowed to fly. That didn’t mean I didn’t have anything to see. As I flew past Horseshoe Bend and over the narrow canyon, I could see reflections of the canyon wall on the slow moving river below. To the west were the Vermilion Cliffs with Marble Canyon at their base.

The air was wonderfully smooth — as it usually is early in the morning. I could fly at dawn every day. It’s cool and crisp and clear. The sun hasn’t warmed the desert yet so there are no thermals to bump you around. The helicopter goes exactly where you tell it to. Sometimes, it’s like sitting on a lawn chair in an enclosed bubble, guiding yourself over the landscape with gentle pressure on the stick in your right hand. My iPod was connected and turned on with hours of classic rock music to keep me entertained while the radio remained quiet.

Navajo HomesteadsI detoured slightly to the east, keeping to the left of the green line on my GPS that marked Grand Canyon’s airspace. The red rock terrain gave way to rolling hills studded with rock outcroppings and remote Navajo homesteads. I flew low — only a few hundred feet up — enjoying the view and the feeling of speed as I zipped over the ground, steering clear of homes so as not to disturb residents. I saw cattle and horses and the remains of older homesteads that were not much more than rock foundations on the high desert landscape.

Ahead of me, past the Little Colorado River Gorge and route 64, were the cliffs that marked the southern boundary of the reservation. I’d have to climb 2,000 feet to clear them. But above them was a layer of low clouds. From my position near the ground, it almost looked like a fog bank sat on top of the higher plateau. That would be bad news and mean a course change. I started to climb, leaving the earth behind.

Once I was level with the cliff’s edge, I could see that there was some clearance between the plateau and the clouds above it. I reached the southeastern corner of Grand Canyon’s airspace and programmed my GPS for a direct course to Lake Havasu City airport. I turned to the desired course, putting the little airplane on the pink line, and crossed onto the plateau about 300 feet over the top of the cliff. The clouds closed in above me. I split the distance between them and the high desert terrain, flying at about 8,000 feet MSL.

I knew the terrain below me well. Coming from the south, the terrain rose gradually to its highest point at the edge of the cliff. Now, coming from the north, it would descend. I was moving southwest, over tall pines and meadows just like the ones I flew over when I flew at the Grand Canyon. My handheld GPS showed a maze of forest roads and I was surprised to see a handful of ranches I’d never noticed before. But I was on a different course now, not heading toward Howard Mesa or Wickenburg.

The air remained smooth, despite the clouds. The weather was worse to the south. It was cold in the cockpit — although I’d worn long pants, I’d neglected to put a sweatshirt on over my polo shirt. I pulled the heat on.

I switched to Grand Canyon airport’s ATIS frequency. It was still early and the tower hadn’t opened yet. The automated system gave me the winds (light out of the south) and altimeter setting. Then I switched to the tower frequency. I was just passing between Valle and Tusayan when I heard a Scenic Airlines plane make a CTAF radio call. I’d hear him three more times before he finally landed and I was miles away.

The cloud bank ended abruptly, leaving me in the sunshine of a beautiful day. The ponderosa pines were gone and I was flying at about 6500 feet now, over remote ranch land. I’d set my sights on a mountain in the distance to keep on course and the mountain was getting ever closer.

Mountains Near SeligmanThen there were more homes beneath me and pinon and juniper pines. Wisps of low clouds clung to the mountains at my altitude. Past the mountain I’d been aiming for was the town of Seligman on Route 66 and I-40. I crossed over with a quick radio call to the airport and kept going.

Now I was flying over completely new terrain. It was a pleasant mix of tall pines, rocky outcroppings, and rugged mountain peaks. There were a number of nice but mostly small custom homes on large lots below me. They looked, for the most part, deserted — like vacation homes. A sort of Howard Mesa where they actually cared about what people built.

I followed the pink line over a mountain range, flying at about 6,000 feet MSL. Then came a familiar valley — the one route 93 follows up to Kingman. The Big Sandy River was below me and the Hualapai Mountains were in front of me. Rather than dropping down to the valley floor, I kept high, crossing at at least 3,000 feet above the ground so I wouldn’t have to climb again to cross the mountains. At that altitude, I seemed to move at a snail’s pace, although my GPS indicated 120 knots groundspeed. I still had to climb to clear the mountains.

All the time I flew, I kept checking my clock with my GPS’s ETE. Throughout the flight, it appeared that I’d make it to Havasu with about 5 minutes to spare. My airspeed was limited by my altitude — I couldn’t pull as much power or fly as fast at 6,000 feet as I could at 3,000 feet. With that last mountain range behind me, I descended quickly toward the valley floor, bringing my airspeed up to 120 knots with only a slight reduction in power. When I was about 500 feet above the valley, I brought power back in and kept my airspeed at 120 knots.

I switched to Havasu’s frequency and heard a plane call in. I was almost there. Then I passed between two small peaks and followed a wash to the east side of the airport. After two radio calls, I crossed the runway and set down on the ramp.

It was exactly 8 AM.

Sedona’s Coffee Pot

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The view from our motel patio.

Mike and I took Mike’s mom to Sedona when she visited in February. We spent the night at what I think is Sedona’s best kept secret: Sky Ranch Lodge. I wrote a bit more about that overnight trip here.

Sedona's Coffee PotWe had a rim-view room that overlooked some of the most beautiful rock formations Sedona has to offer. We spent the late afternoon on the room’s back patio, sipping wine and watching the setting sun change the shadows on formations like the Coffee Pot shown here.

We enjoyed the peacefulness of Sky Ranch and have already made reservations to return for a weekend in the autumn. We’ll come back with my Jeep and tour the red rocks and Oak Creek Canyon at the height of the fall colors.

About the Photos

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I add a new category to Maria’s WebLog.

I’m not sure if readers are aware of this, but I took all of the photos that appear in the header to this site. There are about 20 of them now in the random header rotation and they’re from all over the place.

It struck me that it might be somewhat interesting to learn more about each of the photos and the circumstances under which they were taken. So I added the About the Photos category. During the upcoming weeks, I’ll be writing a bit about the photos you see on this site, explaining where they came from.

I was heavily into photography for a while — mostly while I was in college (and dating a photographer) and for several years afterward. I don’t think I have any special skill. I believe that anyone who goes to an interesting place, points an autofocus camera in the right direction, and snaps off dozens of shots has to get at least one good shot. (A friend of mine’s sister proved that when one of her photos was published as a poster for a rock band; 99% of her photos were absolute crap.) So I keep snapping and every once in a while, I get one worth sharing.

Bear with me as I tell you about some of them.

Sunset Over Alamo Lake

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I do a custom photo flight at the lake in the middle of nowhere.

The call came on Friday. Could I fly over Alamo Lake for some pictures around sunset?

I asked the logical questions. How many people? Three. Are any of them really big? One big, one medium, one small. Doors on or off? On. Then I told him I couldn’t fly low over the water or anywhere where there were a lot of people. I could get him there and back in about an hour — from Wickenburg. Where was he calling from?

Universal Studios in California, came the surprising answer. But he’d be in Mesa on Saturday and would drive up to Wickenburg. He then proceeded to tell me what he wanted the pictures for and ask a bunch of questions about whether Alamo Lake was a good choice.

“Lake Pleasant is nicer,” I told him. “And closer, too. Alamo Lake is in the middle of nowhere. Not much going on out there.”

“Perfect!”

He agreed to meet me at Wickenburg Airport at 6 PM. It was my understanding that sunset was at about 6:30 in Wickenburg. That would give us plenty of time to get to the lake. The moon would be up and filling out. Even if it started to get dark on the way back, there would be plenty of moonlight for the 30-minute flight over empty desert.

Saturday came. Mike and I decided to take a motorcycle ride up to Prescott. If I get time, I’ll write about that in another blog entry. It was a nice trip. My passenger called at 3 PM while Mike and I were having dessert at a restaurant at the mall. They were on their way. From Mesa.

I’d told him the day before that it was only a 90-minute drive, but I guess he wanted to make sure he got there on time.

I got to the airport at 5 PM. Mike helped me bring the helicopter out and fuel up. I preflighted. My passengers showed up at 5:50 PM. The guy who’d booked the flight, along with his brother and his son. I gave them their prefligtht briefing and we boarded. I was warming up the engine when Mike rode away on his motorcycle. He’d be back in a little over an hour to get me. (My motorcycles live at the airport in the hangar so I had no way to get home.)

I won’t get into details about what the photos were for. Let’s just say that my passenger was writing a work of fiction with an illustrator and needed some photos of what was in his imagination so his illustrator could create the accompanying artwork. He told me a great deal of the plotline as we headed west toward Alamo Lake. He asked a lot of questions, especially about the weather.

He told me he had three data cards for his camera and each of them could take 130 pictures. I wasn’t terribly thrilled with the prospect of flying around Alamo Lake long enough for him to take 390 photos of it. I could spend a lifetime there and not find that much to take pictures of.

As we flew west, the sun was sinking low and the streaks of dirt really showed up on my bubble. It not only embarrassed me, but it kind of pissed me off, since I’d cleaned the bubble while I was waiting for them. I wondered whether my passengers would comment on it (“Don’t you ever clean this thing?”) but they didn’t.

We flew over the lake. My passengers were happy to see it. They started snapping photos. I tried to find one of my stock photos for this piece but couldn’t track one down. Imagine a rather broad valley where three water sources converge: the Big Sandy River, the Santa Maria River, and Date Creek (usually dry). They come together to form the Bill Williams River, which cuts through a canyon as it heads west to join the Colorado River. But Arizona dammed up the mouth of the canyon to form a lake. (Rumor has it that they created the lake to prevent California from getting the water from those three sources.) The lake is roughly round with very few of the flooded canyons that makes Lake Powell or even Lake Pleasant so attractive. Mike and I had camped out there twice and although it was a nice place to get away from it all, there wasn’t much to get away to there.

I remarked at the number of campers in the two main campgrounds. The place seemed packed. They must have had some kind of fishing competition going on. That was the only thing that could ever get that many people out to Alamo Lake. Hell, it was a two hour drive from Wickenburg. Add another hour and a half from Phoenix and you have a long drive. But if you’ve ever been to the Wayside Inn, you know there are fish in that lake.

We flew relatively low to the southwest of the lake and beyond the dam. My passenger wanted to get specific views of the lake and it was my job to deliver him to the exact location where he’d get those shots. I wouldn’t fly low over the lake (no floatation devices on board) or over the campground (no desire to get complaints from the rangers stationed there).

Then we climbed in a spiral over the lake. “As high as you can go,” my passenger told me. I figured that would be about 9000 feet before the vibrations started weirding me out. The lake was at 2000 feet elevation (or thereabouts). The higher we flew, the cooler it got. It started at about 80° by the lake and wound up at about 51° 5000 feet above it. That’s as high as I got. Although the helicopter was behaving nicely, it felt really weird being that high over all that open desert.

The view was bigger up there, although there was a lot of haze. I could see the Bill Williams River winding its way West and the Colorado River and Lake Havasu out there to meet it. I could see the edge of the huge leach field out by Bagdad mine. I could see the mountain ranges lined up in every direction, each range a slightly different shade of color than the one before it. This is the kind of view my passenger wanted, so he was happy. And that’s what counts.

The was one thing that would have made my passenger happier, but it was something I couldn’t provide: clouds. He wanted to see clouds over the lake. But there wasn’t a single cloud in the sky as far as the eye could see. It was a perfectly clear Arizona April day. The kind an east coast girl like me can get sick of when there are too many in a row.

Of course, the higher we got, the higher the sun appeared to get. Sunset was quite a way off at this elevation. I suggested that we descend to hurry things along. My passengers agreed and I started a spiraling descent back down toward the lake. We were about a thousand feet over the lake at 7:00 PM when the sun finally slipped beneath the horizon. It was a typical attractive yet rather boring sunset. A big orange globe sinks. No clouds to turn beautiful colors, no contrails to glow in the sky. The air temperature immediately started to drop.

We headed back to Wickenburg, making one stop to get a shot down the road toward the lake. The darker it go, the higher I flew. It was technically night when I landed at the airport. We’d been up for 1.7 hours, according to the Hobbs meter.

Mike was there waiting for us. My passengers settled up their bill and we went our separate ways.

It had been an interesting flight — mostly because my passengers were city folks from Los Angeles who were unaccustomed to empty desert landscapes. The assignment was interesting, too — not because of what we had to take pictures of but what the pictures were for. It was satisfying to me, as a writer, to see another writer going through the legwork of researching his subject matter. He didn’t just imagine what Alamo Lake was all about based on what he saw on a map or Web site. He’d driven out there once and had gone the extra step (and expense) to fly out there. It was important to him to get it right.

And I was pleased to help him.