Tag Archives: safety

How Much, How long?

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The financial dynamics of selling helicopter rides.

I went down to Goodyear, AZ yesterday to offer helicopter rides at the Goodyear Balloon & Air Spectacular. This was my second year doing rides at the event; last year I did them at Glendale as a subcontractor for another helicopter operator. This year, when the event was moved to Goodyear (a Phoenix-managed airport), the paperwork requirements were more stringent. The other company couldn’t get their paperwork together on time. They dropped out. I had all my paperwork in order. I did the show without them.

First I need to say something about the show. Formerly known as the Thunderbird Balloon & Air Classic (and still run by a company of the same name), the event is a combination balloon gathering and air show. The balloons, which can only fly early in the morning or in the evening, do their thing in their time slot. I wrote last year about walking among the balloons during the nighttime glow and about arriving at the airport as the balloons were departing at dawn. It was an incredible experience. Oddly enough, most people don’t go to the show for the balloons. They go for the air show which goes on during the day. There are aerobatic displays, war birds, F-16s, and this year, the Blue Angels. On the ground, there are food vendors, car and motorcycle dealers, navy recruiters, carnival rides, and souvenir sellers. There is literally something for the whole family. And although it ain’t cheap to attend — $15/adult, less for children and seniors — it’s a great event for a family to attend together: outdoors, surrounded by history, technology, and carnival food.

This is an extremely professionally run event, with excellent management and crowd control. The entertainment is top notch and the announcer is incredible. There’s no shortage of staff members to help with a problem. And the Air Boss, who works behind the scenes with the pilots and airspace, is safety-conscious, reasonable, helpful, and well…professional. I cannot stress what a pleasure it is to work at an event that’s so well run.

Unfortunately, the new venue at Goodyear had a bit of a dust problem. Instead of being on pavement like the vendors were at Glendale last year, they were on dirt. Which turned to dust. Even the water truck couldn’t keep up with it. Thank heaven it wasn’t windy like it always is in Kingman for the Mohave County Fair.

And unfortunately for us, my landing zone was about a mile away, near the main terminal building. (On concrete, thank heaven.) So we had to provide transportation from the ticket sales area to the LZ and back. The folks I was supposed to fly for were going to provide transportation via golf cart. We didn’t have a suitable golf cart, so we used Mike’s truck.

I say “we” because when I realized I’d be doing the event without the other helicopter company, I had to get together a full ground crew. For me, a full ground crew consists of three people: a money person to sell tickets, answer questions, and hold the money and two loaders who do safety briefings and escort passengers to and from the helicopter. (We do hot loading, like most helicopter operators do, and I don’t want anyone walking unescorted or unsupervised near the helicopter while the blades are turning.) In a pinch, with a secure LZ, I can do with one experienced loader (my husband, Mike), but I really like two. It speeds up the loading/unloading process by having one crew member on each side of the helicopter.

DarleneDave
Our great ground crew: Darlene and Dave (photos by Dave and Darlene).

I should point out one thing here about the R44 helicopter. The main rotor blades are 10 to 12 feet off the ground (depending on RPM and rotor droop) so the possibility of someone getting hit on the head by the blades is remote, especially at 68% RPM, which I maintain during loading/unloading. That’s one less thing to worry about when hot loading.

Me in the Pilot SeatBecause the LZ was so far from the rest of the venue and there were aerobatic displays going on while I was giving rides, I couldn’t fly past or around the venue to attract future passengers. That turned out to not be a problem. We had a steady stream of riders for our 8-10 minute rides. And, when the Blue Angels were done flying at about 4:15 PM, I started up and flew just about nonstop until 7:15 PM.

Here’s where the finances come into the picture. Last year, the other helicopter operator charged $45/person for 10-minute rides. Of that, I got $35, which I thought was a fair price for the ride. They did the money stuff and provided transportation to/from the LZ, which was about 1/4 mile from the ticket booth that year. (Easy walking distance, but who likes to walk?) They also provided one ground crew member, but since they were flying a helicopter, too, he mostly dealt with loading/unloading that helicopter. So Mike came along and took care of my passengers.

At $45/person, I flew 131 people last year over a 3-day period. To date, that’s my second-best gig, surpassed only by 2005 at the Mohave County Fair (150). I personally could not believe that so many people were willing to lay out $45/person for a ride. To put it in perspective, for about $120 a person can get a 25-minute helicopter flight over the Grand Canyon with Papillon. That’s a more memorable flight than 8-10 minutes over Sun City.

Yet this year, when I went to the Mohave County Fair and tried to sell 8-10 minute flights for $35/person, I had very few takers. I had to resort to Plan B, which offered 3-4 minute rides around the fair for $15. That kept me busy. In Congress, I did 5-minute rides for $20 around Congress. I had a line for 3 hours straight and probably could have sold the same rides for $25 without losing a single passenger.

So what I learned during the year (or thought I learned) was that I could keep flying if I priced the rides at a price most people would consider cheap. I want to keep flying. Sitting on the ground, spinning my blades while I wait for a passenger burns fuel without earning revenue or paying my ground crew. The problem is, if I make the rides too cheap, I don’t make any money. Duh.

At yesterday’s event, I offered the rides at $35/person, which was what I would have gotten if I’d flown with the other company anyway. I’m not greedy, but I do have loan payments to make. The result was a steady stream of passengers who couldn’t believe how cheap the rides were.

So what’s expensive in Kingman, AZ is cheap in Goodyear, AZ.

Our flight path, in case you’re interested, left Goodyear airport heading southeast. I flew straight down to the Phoenix International Raceway (PIR), where they have NASCAR events, and came back to the airport. There were cars on the track (not NASCAR) for much of the day, and people riding quads and fishing along the Gila River, which we crossed in two places. At night — because I flew for over an hour after sunset — I flew more to the east, trying to stay in a well-lighted area and give my passengers something to see. At night, the city is a blanket of lights in every color and it really doesn’t matter what you’re looking at. It’s just so darn pretty from the air.

Maria and MikeAlthough it was a 3-day event, I missed the first day due to a miscommunication. (Long story and please don’t ask me to tell it because I’m still pretty pissed off about it.) Yesterday was the second day and we did pretty well. Unfortunately, there are limitations on when I can fly. Those limitations are imposed by the Air Boss, who is basically an air traffic controller during the event. Keep in mind that the air show part of the event runs all day long and has many performers. Some of them simply don’t like operating while a helicopter is making flights in and out of the airspace. And in other instances, the Air Boss himself might consider my operations a hazard while other performers are on. So throughout the day, I’d be asked by the Air Boss to stay on the ground. These stoppages could be as short as 5 minutes or as long as 90 minutes. They broke up the flying day, limiting the number of people I could fly.

This happened last year, too, but there weren’t as many of these breaks so they didn’t affect me as much. This year, they really put a damper on things. People who showed up at the booth at 1:30 PM, ready to fly, were told they had to wait until 4 PM. Not everyone wanted to wait. And I certainly didn’t want to sit in the dusty booth waiting for the green light. But when 4:15 rolled along, I started flying again — for 3 hours straight.

Unfortunately, we had to skip today at the show. That’s not so bad. Mike is fighting a cold and he needs the rest. And I’m still exhausted from flying so long after nightfall — it takes more concentration, at least for me, and it really wipes me out.

Now if you’re doing all the math and coming up with some really big numbers for our ride revenue, remember a few things. It takes (and costs) more than just fuel to operate a helicopter. My insurance alone costs $60/hour (based on my current 200-hours per year flight level). And then there’s the reserve for the overhaul my helicopter will need at 2,200 hours — that currently costs $185,000, which is about $85/hour. There’s regular maintenance (at $50 to $75/hour), fuel (at about $4/gallon), oil (at about $5/quart), and hangar rent (at several hundred dollars a month). There’s additional costs to comply with service bulletins (SBs) and airworthiness directives (ADs). There’s advertising with signs, banners, brochures, and business cards. There’s business licenses and drug testing program fees and credit card acceptance fees. And there’s state and local sales tax, which must be paid out of every qualifying revenue hour — including rides. (Although we charged $35/person, $2.68 of that goes to Maricopa County and the City of Goodyear with its total 8.3% sales tax rate.) On an event like this, there’s also the cost of the ground crew, which must be transported, housed (in some instances), fed, and paid. There’s also the cost of operating the helicopter to get from its home base to the event location — cost that has no revenue associated with it. And let’s not even talk about the cost of equipment such as shade structures, tables, and chairs for a booth; a camper that can sleep up to 8 for overnight events; and a truck to haul all of this stuff around on the ground.

As you can see, the math isn’t as simple as saying 60 rides x $35 per ride – fuel costs = big profit. That’s the formula some passengers try to use. I only wish it were that simple.

What did I learn about this past weekend’s event? Confirm and reconfirm all the information I get. Stay involved in the setup process from the beginning. Don’t miss any meetings. Have a ground crew ready and waiting if needed.

And if they want to pay $45 per person for a ride, let ’em.

Many thanks to Darlene and Dave, Ground Crew Extraordinaire, for taking photos at the show and sharing them with me so I could put them here.

Helicopter Rides at Old Congress Days

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A great event for all.

It was a good day for all involved. Nice weather, calm winds, and a great little small-town event out in the desert.

Old Congress Days was sponsored by the Congress Senior Citizen’s Association. It was a revival of the old Old Congress Days event they used to have in Congress, AZ, annually. If you’re not familiar with Congress, it’s a small, unincorporated town on route 89 about 15 miles north of Wickenburg. If you drive from Wickenburg to Prescott, you’ll go right through it just before climbing the Weaver Mountains.

Congress was a mining community and the old Congress Mine is still being worked a little. But that’s not the big business in town. There are a few shops, including a restaurant, a market, and a dollar store, and a brand new gas station is coming soon. The Trading Post is a fixture on Route 89 and a number of other businesses have sprung up on both sides of the road just south of there. There’s also a great K-8 school (which invited me to do a helicopter demonstration a few years ago) and a relatively new post office. Homes range from single- and double-wide manufactured homes on lots up to 10 acres to stick-built homes in a brand new subdivision.

When I heard about the Congress Days event, I called one of the organizers, Jane Summers, and asked if I could participate by offering helicopter rides. She remembered me doing rides at Yarnell Days (another 9 miles up the road) a year and a half ago. We discussed arrangements and the local volunteer fire department very kindly allowed me to use their truly wonderful helipad. The helipad is used to airlift local emergencies down to Phoenix; no helicopter is based there, but one can get there within 25 minutes when needed. I had to be prepared to land elsewhere if the medevac helicopter was inbound. No problem. I’d already landed on the opposite side of the tracks a few times for visits to the Trading Post and was prepared to land in the lot behind the dollar store if I had to give them more space.

We arrived at about 9:30 AM on the day of the event. Across the street was the swap meet that was part of the event. I shut down and Mike and I took out the few supplies we’d brought along: a folding table, tickets, Helicopter Rides banners, a flag with a collapsable pole (we’d had two but the other pole broke at the Mohave County Fail last month). We put up the banners and set up the table, then went for a walk to check out the swap meet and watch the parade.

We ran into our friend Jeannie along the parade route and watched the parade with her niece and her niece’s 9 month old son. The boy looked cute in his cowboy hat. The parade had a few classic cars and lots of miniature animals: horses, burros, and mules. I don’t think think I’ve ever seen so many minis in one place. They were mostly pulling carts. The people in the carts looked very large, even though they really weren’t.

When the fire trucks came, marking the end of the parade, we walked back with them to the landing zone. Our ground crew, Darlene and Dave, arrived and introduced themselves. Darlene had answered an ad I put on wickenburg-az.com for ground crew. She and her husband turned out to be among the best helpers we’ve ever had. Darlene is a great salesperson and Dave understood the importance of safety and did a great job helping Mike load.

Flying M Air at Old Congress DaysLet me take a moment to describe this landing zone, since it’s the best one I ever had for an event. First of all, it’s a helipad. That means it’s laid out and designed specifically for helicopter traffic. It’s 60 x 60 feet and concrete. It’s surrounded by gravel, so there’s no dust. That’s surrounded by a 3-foot high chain link fence that has only two gates — both on the same side. The fence made crowd control very easy — no one gets through the fence unescorted. Beyond that is a parking lot that was blocked off, the firehouse (a one-story metal building with a wind sock on top), and a lot soon to be occupied by a longtime Wickenburg business that is moving from Wickenburg to Congress. Behind the helipad are some palo verde and mesquite trees — perhaps 10 feet tall and beyond them is the railroad tracks for the Santa Fe railroad. No wires near enough to matter. My approach was over some empty land east of the railroad tracks, then over the tracks and onto the pad. My departure was over the tracks and up some more empty land, then over the tracks again to start the tour. On the one time a train was moving through, I made a slow approach and landed behind the last car after it had passed. Everything — including its location — was perfect for the event.

The loading started almost immediately. We’d decided to go with $20 rides around Congress. We figured that the low price would make it affordable to everyone. Congress is not a big place so the ride took 5 to 7 minutes. And from 10:40 AM to 1:10 PM, I flew nonstop, with two or three passengers on each flight. Darlene sold the tickets (and took photos) and the people lined up along the outside of the fence. (It reminded me of my Papillon days, when the passengers for my next flight were often right on the other side of the fence when I landed, waiting to be loaded.) Every time I landed, the line seemed as long — if not longer — than it had when I took off. Mike kept telling me to make the rides shorter and I tried, but I wanted everyone to get the same experience. No one complained about the wait, which got up to 30 minutes at one point. Everyone was happy and friendly and genuinely excited to have a chance to fly over town. And I guess the price was right for them.

As for me, well, I love giving rides at events like these. It lets me introduce people to helicopter flight — after all, this was a first helicopter flight for more than half the people. I gave the kids helicopter toys with the Flying M Air logo on it. I even gave out a few to dad, since the toys are almost as popular with them as they are with the kids.

When the crowd thinned out, I gave Darlene and Dave the “deluxe” ride and Darlene took some more photos. A few more passengers waited while we were gone. I took them up while Mike paid Darlene and Dave for their time and they went on their way. We did a few more rides, then packed up and headed home. We landed at Wickenburg at 2:00 PM.

It was a great day for me and for Flying M Air. We figure we flew about 55 people that day. Many thanks to Jean and Virgil for making the day possible. I look forward to coming back next year!

The Lost Truck

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I take two guys up to find a misplaced pickup truck.

The call came mid-morning on Tuesday, just as I was preparing to take Zero-Mike-Lima down to Mesa for scheduled maintenance. The woman told me that her son and father were out in the desert looking for her son’s pickup truck. He’d parked it somewhere on Sunday before dawn, left it for some coyote hunting, and couldn’t find it in the morning.

One thing led to another. The son and his grandfather showed up at the airport. I gave them a safety briefing and loaded them on board the helicopter. A while later, we were heading out to the triangle of land between routes 89, 93, and 71, just north of Wickenburg.

Normally, I can spot just about anything larger than a washing machine from the air — especially if it’s a color other than desert beige. The truck had a crew cab and was pewter — about as close to desert beige as you can get. But it was a truck. A shiny, four-month-old truck. And that triangle of land isn’t that big.

I started by following the son’s directions to where he thought he’d come in from route 93. No luck. He claimed he’d parked near a corral. There were about a dozen cattle tanks in the area, each with its own bit of fencing that could be considered a corral. We flew over and around each one. Nothing.

I then went into a standard search pattern grid. Back and forth across the desert, moving northeast to southwest. Nothing.

“It must have been stolen,” the son said. “I can’t believe it. I left the windows open a crack. I guess someone must have found it and taken it.”

I found it hard to believe. It’s not as if there are car thieves hanging out in the desert, waiting for a hunter to park a brand new, $38,000 truck and walk away.

But the truck just wasn’t there.

I climbed about 1,000 feet for a final look. The entire area was spread out beneath us. No luck.

I headed back to Wickenburg. I wrote up a statement they could show the police to prove they’d looked hard for the truck. I cut them a good deal on the flight time, feeling sorry for them.

This morning, I called the mom to collect my fee via a credit card. I told her how sorry I was that we hadn’t found the truck. She told me that they’d found it afterward. It was by a hill. She didn’t have all the details.

I got the credit card info and hung up.

I’ve been thinking about it ever since. There was only one hill in that entire area. We circled it and flew all around it. It’s not as if it’s a forest out there, with big trees to hide something the size of a truck. If it were out there, we would have seen it.

Which leaves me to wonder whether he had me looking in the right area after all.

I guess I’ll never know for sure.

Dusting Off the Ducati

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Mike and I go for a motorcycle ride to Prescott.

Before I started flying, before I started horseback riding, before I even moved to Arizona, I was an avid motorcyclist.

Learning to ride a motorcycle was one of the four life goals I’d set for myself long ago. I was 29 (or thereabouts) when I learned. I decided it was time and bought a motorcycle. It was a 1980 Honda CB400 Hawk, black with a bit of chrome. A standard bike with an upright seating position.

The Hawk had belonged to a woman who had died of cancer within a year of buying it. She only put 941 miles on it before she stopped riding. Her husband, a motorcycle dealer, had stored the bike for 11 years, so it was in good shape when he finally decided to sell it and I came along. We replaced some parts that had succumbed to dry rot, gave it a good tune-up, and it was ready to ride.

Of course, I wasn’t. I didn’t know how to ride a motorcycle. So I enrolled in a Motorcycle Safety Foundation course. Mike enrolled with me. We took the course and got the proper introduction to safe motorcycling. And anyone who thinks an MSF course is a waste of time and money is, quite simply, wrong. I still use techniques I learned in that course every time I ride.

Mike thought that we’d ride together on my bike. That meant he’d ride and I’d be the passenger. I guess Mike didn’t know me very well yet. We’d only been together seven years at the time. But I made it clear that if he wanted to ride, he’d have to get his own bike.

So he bought a used BMW. It didn’t look good, but it ran well and he seemed to like it. Together we gained experience. We eventually joined a motorcycle club for long rides on the twisty roads in northern New Jersey and southern New York State. They were sport bike guys and liked to ride fast. I understood the appeal.

We went to Americade every year. That’s a big motorcycle rally at Lake George in the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York. Motorcycle manufacturers did test rides of their bikes there. That’s when I test rode a Yamaha Seca II, a “sport standard” bike. Like my Honda, it had a rather upright seating position. But it was sporty, chromeless, and faster. I wound up replacing the Honda with a Seca II.

Yamaha Seca IIWhen we went to pick up the Yamaha, Mike stopped in at the BMW dealer next door and fell in love with an end-of-year clearance BMW K65. He bought it. A week later we both showed up at a group camping trip along the Delaware with a pair of brand new bikes. A few jaws dropped that day.

That was in 1992.

We rode most weekends with the group and sometimes by ourselves. Our big trip came in the mid 90s when we took the bikes from our home in Northern New Jersey down Skyline Drive and the Blue Ridge Parkway, then across to the coast and up the barrier islands. It was a 10-day trip that was mostly camping, with a few motel days thrown in to ensure a good night’s sleep. The roads were great, the autumn leaves were turning. We got caught in a thunderstorm in the Smokies, impressed folks at a campground with how much gear we could pack on two bikes, and rode three different ferries island hopping along the coast. Definitely one of my top 10 vacations.

Then one weekend we joined the group for a camping trip in the Finger Lakes area of New York. And that’s when I found the top end of my bike. There were about a dozen of us racing down beautiful farm roads, a ribbon of sport bikes zipping past cows and barns and green fields. We were going fast. Very fast. I was last in line and that was probably a good thing. Because when I twisted my throttle just a little more to keep up, I found that there was no more to twist. I’d twisted up to the stop and the bikes in front of me were easing away about 5 mph faster than I could go.

In a flash, I fell out of love with my bike.

Ducati SS CRI didn’t waste much time replacing it with the Ducati. I’d taken one for a test ride at the local Ducati dealer — the same place I’d bought my Hawk years ago — and had been impressed. The bike I test rode was a Ducati Monster — a 900cc bike with a standard riding position and not much fairing. When the front wheel came off the ground in what I thought was normal accelleration, I knew I had a powerful machine beneath me. I wound up with a Ducati 900 SS CR, a sort of half-fairing sport bike. Well, to be fair, “sport bike” is a bit of an understatement. It’s really a race bike. Red, of course — I think they only came in two colors.

This was in 1996.

I kept the Yamaha for touring. I’d invested in Givi hard luggage for that bike and longed for another motorcycle vacation. The Ducati was not the kind of bike you’d want to ride for 400 miles in a single day, as I later found out.

We moved to Arizona. The bikes crossed over on the moving truck. We went back to New Jersey with a trailer to pick up Mike’s bike and brought the Ducati along. We made one last trip to Americade. Then we brought all the bikes to Arizona, where they have remained.

We made a trip with Chrome Caballeros in the late 1990s. It was a motorcycle camping trip where the outfitters carried all the gear. I took the Ducati. Mike took his BMW. All the other bikers on the trip rode Harleys. It was a great trip, but there was one day when we rode from Zion National Park to Flagstaff. That’s a hell of a long ride on a Ducati. I was pretty sore the next day.

I tried to find the top end on the Ducati once. It was out on Route 71 between Aguila and Congress. I had it up to 130 before I decided that I didn’t really want to go that fast or any faster. The Ducati had more to give but I didn’t need it.

Time passed. I started horseback riding. Then I learned to fly. I bought a helicopter. I decided I liked flying better than motorcycling or horseback riding. I began building a helicopter tour and charter business.

Mike kept riding, mostly by himself. He had a mishap on Mingus Mountain. A fox ran out in front of him, just as he was approaching a curve. He swerved to miss it and the bike got onto some gravel at the side of the road. He literally jumped off the bike. The bike went over an embankment and got really broken, really quickly. Mike tore the back pocket of his jeans and had to thumb a ride back to Prescott. A few weeks later, he bought a similar bike from a friend.

That brings us almost up to today. My two bikes had been lounging in my hangar, gathering dust and drying out their batteries. They both needed serious work to get them running again. I put $1,000 into them for repairs. But the repairs would only “hold” if I kept riding them.

We rode to Prescott on Saturday. I took the Ducati.

One of the reasons we don’t ride as often in Arizona is that there aren’t any really good riding roads nearby. Back in New Jersey, we were about 20 miles away from Harriman State Park, with seemingly endless roads that twisted through the mountains and forest, around small lakes. Challenging riding, beautiful scenery, lots of fresh air. Even getting there was a nice ride, on the Palisades Interstate Parkway, which I believe was designed by Robert Moses. Here in Arizona, there are lots of straight boring roads through empty desert before the roads start to twist and turn a little. So you have to work a little to get to that reward. And with only four roads leading out of town, there isn’t much variety.

But the ride to Prescott is one of the nicer rides.

First, you leave Wickenburg on route 93 and bear right on route 89 toward Yarnell. The road cuts straight across the desert until just past Congress. There, a sweeping right turn gets you started at the bottom of what we call Yarnell Hill. In just a few miles, you climb 1500 feet up the side of a cliff on a road that hugs the cliff face. There are guardrails, but hitting one would only serve as a launch pad for a flight off the cliff into space, so care is required. As you climb, the curves get ever tighter. Finally, at the top, you’re in Yarnell.

From there, you cut across high desert terrain on gently curving roads. The scenery is magnificent on this two-lane piece of blacktop and there’s very little traffic. At Kirkland Junction, it’s time for a decision: twisty White Spar Road or not-so-twisty Iron Springs Road? We always take White Spar.

At Wilhoit, the real fun begins, with a 15-mile stretch of mountain road. Imagine a ribbon of asphalt twisting among the 6000-foot mountains, hugging cliff-faces all the way. The double-yellow line is there for a reason: you can seldom see more than 50 yards ahead of you. You pivot the bike left and then right and then left as you take the curves one after the other, spending more time in a steep lean than vertical. As you ride with the RPMs high enough to take advantage of engine braking in the tightest of turns, a rhythm builds up inside you. This is why you ride.

It all came back to me on Saturday, just before I caught up with the midsize sedan from Kansas. He was driving at about 10 MPH below the speed limit, using his brakes for every single curve. (Hey buddy, you’re not in Kansas anymore.) There were plenty of places for him to pull over and let us pass — most considerate drivers do when they see motorcycles or a sports car behind them on this road — but he was either oblivious to us behind him or, more likely, too inconsiderate to care. I finally blew past him on one of the brief straightaways. Mike blew past him on the next.

Understand that the Ducati simply does not like to go slow. It lugs at RPMs under 3000 if you’re in any gear other than first or second and it takes some serious clutch work to keep it running smoothly at speeds under 20 mph. This is not the bike you’d take to work and ride in traffic. Your left hand would seize up from all the clutching. It likes to cruise with the RPMs up around 5000 and has no problem approaching that 9000 RPM redline when you need a little extra power for passing. Sixth gear is pretty much a waste.

We had lunch in a new restaurant in Prescott. Nawlins, or something like that. Supposed to be New Orleans style food. The food was good, but the restaurant’s territorial style and Santa Fe paint scheme didn’t match. (The place used to be Zuma’s.) Still, we’ll go back.

We hit the Mall, more to give us something to do and see than to buy anything. We had dessert. We stopped at the airport to put the current registration sticker on my Toyota, which lives up there. Then we fueled up and rode home, taking Iron Springs Road back to Kirkland Junction. From there, it was 89 through Yarnell and Congress and back to Wickenburg.

We’d ridden about 140 miles. I was sore. I’m really out of shape and not the person I was 10 years ago when I bought that bike. But the ride made me remember why I’d bought it and why I liked riding so much way back then.

Mike and I need to go to Napa, CA in June. We’re toying with the idea of taking the motorcycles up. It’ll be the Yamaha’s turn to get out for a while.

Another Great Gig in Buckeye

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Another great day of flying at the Buckeye Air Fair.

One of the things I like to do with my helicopter is to appear at outdoor events to offer inexpensive 8-10 minute helicopter rides in the area. I’ve done this as often as possible, notably at Robson’s Mining World, the Thunderbird Balloon Classic, the Mohave Country Fair, the ghost town of Stanton, Yarnell Daze, a shoot in Wickieup, and the Buckeye Air Fair.

We went back to Buckeye yesterday. The weather was better than last year — not nearly as windy — and although the forecast called for cloudy skies, it was mostly sunny. That drew in a lot more aircraft. That and the fact that the folks at Buckeye obviously know a thing or two about advertising their airport events to pilots.

It was a great event. There was an Albatross on static display, as well as a Groen Brothers gyroplane and a few other planes. Two medivac helicopters showed up for static display after I started flying and left before I’d finished, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to them. There was a bouncy thing for kids and someone selling pinwheels and kites. There were multiple food vendors selling barbeque, fry bread, chicken, hot dogs, and other stuff. A flight school was there, soliciting students. Game and Fish had a big trailer with some kind of display about shooting safety. (I guess they want to make sure Arizonans don’t mistake an elderly man for a quail while hunting.) They raffled off all kinds of prizes, including helicopter rides. Pilots flew in and out and were expertly guided to safe parking using a separate ground frequency. And there were parachute jumps, all landing at the northeast corner of the field. Sorry: no car show. After all, this was an airport event.

The event started late — from my point of view, anyway — at 10 AM. But Mike and I were there and set up by 9:15 AM. Although they’d originally positioned us on a dead-end taxiway near the parachute jump zone, I wasn’t too comfortable about that. I don’t think the jumpers would have been, either. So they moved us to a closed-off taxiway. It was an excellent location, clearly visible from the event’s entrance, yet easily secured. I parked with the helicopter’s nose facing the crowd and its tail pointing out toward the taxiway. There was no real possibility of onlookers walking behind the helicopter because there was no reason to go out there. Heavy-duty orange construction cones blocked off the taxiway on either side so planes wouldn’t be tempted to use it while I was out. The folks at Buckeye graciously provided a folding table and three chairs for us to set up shop.

It was a good thing we set up early. The crowd started coming in at 9:30 and I immediately have my first ride of the day. To say that I didn’t shut down until 4:30 is an overstatement, but only because I had to shut down twice for fuel, food, and a bathroom stop. My two breaks were only 15 minutes long; I flew the rest of the day. One of Mike’s co-workers, Steve (recently moved her from Iowa), showed up at about 10:30 to help out. Not a moment too soon; by then, the crowd was building.

The route started at the airport, headed south along the taxiway, and then east to the town of Buckeye. It passed over farm fields that were freshly sown with cotton or corn and alfalfa fields being harvested. Closer to town, you could clearly see that some farmers had sold out to developers and houses were being planted instead of crops. We circled back, crossing over a large (but not huge) dairy farm and more farm fields before landing back at the airport. My arrivals and departures were one of the big attractions at the show; at one point, I came in and saw at least 50 people lined up along the ramp area, watching me. Good thing the helicopter was clean.

When I first started out, the winds were less than 5 knots, so I’d come in for landing from the south. This would keep me away from any jumper activity. But as the winds picked up out of the southwest, I realized the folly of landing, sometimes heavy, with a tailwind and I began coming in from the north. I had to listen closely to the radio to make sure there weren’t any jumpers on their way down. If they were, I made a wide approach to the north east and landed along the taxiway, giving them plenty of space. It was nerve-racking to see those parachutes in the sky, high over my main rotor disc. I had to keep reminding myself that the wind would push them to their target well east of my position.

What was really amazing about this gig was that Mike and Steve were able to get three passengers on just about every flight. I price the flights — in this case, $35 per person including tax — so that if I took one person, I’d lose money; if I took two people, I’d make money; and if I took three people, I’d make pretty darn good money. Mike was able to put three on board for each flight because we had a pool of waiting customers from about 10:30 AM on that consisted of singles, couples, and trios. He sold tickets that were numbered and would use them to keep the order of the tickets sold. Then, if he had a couple flying next, he’d ask for a single with the lowest number and put him on board, too. This was not only an efficient way to keep the line from getting too long, but it was good for business.

That’s even more amazing than that is that I had at least one kid aboard for more than 75% of the flights. Flying kids is great for two reasons: first, I like to give kids what is normally their first helicopter flight experience. This goes back to my first helicopter flight experience (which I really should write about in this blog one day). I’m always happy when parents treat their kids to a ride. It tells me that they don’t have fears about flying that they’ll transfer to their kids. It also gives kids the opportunity to experience something truly different, to open their minds to the kinds of things they can do with their lives.

The second reason flying kids is great is because they’re light — usually under 100 pounds. So even with three people on board and 3/4 tanks fuel, I have no performance problems at all. That makes the flying easier — especially take offs and landings.

Once again, we didn’t finish flying until the fair was over and the airport had emptied out. Starting at around 2 PM, each time I landed, I’d notice fewer cars in the parking lot, fewer people walking around, and fewer vendors. By 3 PM, the only people left were the people waiting to fly. They were, for the most part, patient. I think they realized that if I started rushing the rides, they wouldn’t get as good a ride as the people who’d gone earlier in the day. I gave everyone pretty much the same ride, but would occasionally veer off to the south or north to show them their house if it was within range. I did a few flights to the west on request, using the helicopter’s timer to make sure I didn’t stay out too long or too short a time.

I haven’t done all the math, but I’m pretty sure I flew between 90 and 100 people. That comes pretty close to my daily record, which was set on a Saturday at the Mohave County Fair last September.

As for the money…well, let’s just say that I can keep the helicopter for another month. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’d like to thank the folks at Buckeye for putting on such a great event for the community and for allowing me to be part of it. And I look forward to next year.