Tag Archives: time

Heli-Shopping

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The latest craze? I wish!

You’ve probably heard of heli-skiing, where they take you to the mountaintop in the ultimate “lift”: a helicopter. And heli-hiking, where they take you by helicopter to a remote trailhead and pick you up someplace equally remote. Well, thanks to one of my regular passengers, I’ve now started doing heli-shopping trips.

Here’s the deal.

Wickenburg has serious limitations on its shopping opportunities. Sure, there’s a great supermarket (which even has a Starbucks now, if you can imagine that) and there are a handful of shops down and around town for buying souvenirs, items for your home, and gifts. And even a little boutique.

But for hard-core shoppers, that might not be enough. For these people, it’s Scottsdale or bust.

Scottsdale, by car, is a good 90-minutes from Wickenburg. And that’s if you don’t hit any traffic and push the speed limit a bit. But by helicopter, it’s only 30 minutes away. The obvious benefit for the shopper: less time in the car, more time in the shops.

Last year, a couple who flies with me every time they come to stay at one of Wickenburg’s guest ranches, drove down to Scottsdale for a shopping day. The weather was awful and rainy and since people who live in Arizona don’t know how to drive on wet roads, the traffic was terrible. When they got to the shops, she got right down to business while he tried, in vain, to get a seat at one of the mall restaurants for lunch and a few hours of reading time. But the mall was packed and he couldn’t get a seat, so he wound up in their rental car in the covered parking garage, reading by the car’s dome light. Then, when she was finished shopping, they had another long, miserable drive back to Wickenburg.

This unhappy memory stuck with them. So this year, when they came to visit, they asked me if I could simply fly her down to Scottsdale, while he did something in Wickenburg that he enjoyed: a round of golf.

I’m never one to turn down a good charter, so yesterday at 10:30 AM, I was winding up Three-Niner-Lima with my eager passenger on board. We had an uneventful flight down to Scottsdale, landed, and locked up the helicopter on the ramp. Then, since I had only one passenger and my Scottsdale airport car is a two-seater, I drove her down to the Scottsdale Fashion Mall and let her loose by herself for four hours. Then I spent the time doing some errands, having a nice lunch, and doing a bit of shopping on my own.

I picked up my passenger at 3:30 and drove back up to Scottsdale Airport. I put the car away and we carried our bags back to the helicopter. I stowed everything under the seats and, a few minutes later, we were heading north for a slightly different route back to Wickenburg that would include an overflight of Lake Pleasant and Castle Hot Springs. We were back on the ramp at Wickenburg in time for cocktail hour at the ranch.

Mission accomplished. In style.

Heli-shopping isn’t for everyone. For one thing, it ain’t cheap, so potential heli-shoppers have to be really serious about their shopping time. And shoppers simply have to say no to that great deal on an end table at Restoration Hardware — or anything else that won’t fit in the helicopter.

But heli-shopping is more than just transportation to the shops awaiting your discretionary spending dollars. It’s a scenic flight from one world (the sleepy retirement community of Wickenburg) to another (the busy city of Scottsdale). The transition from town to open, empty desert to suburbs to city is something to see. And you won’t believe the kinds of things you can see from the air that are simply invisible from the road.

Heli-shopping takes shopping to new highs. Pun intended.

Reading Feeds

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I just don’t have time.

A while back, I started using endo, a feed reader application, to keep up with new content on a few sites. At first, I was able to check in once or twice a day and the number of unread articles never exceeded 20. But then I got busy with other things and couldn’t check in regularly. Now the unread article count is over 500 and I dread wading through what’s there.

What’s In It For Me

I find that about 50% of the material on the feeds I follow is simply not the least bit interesting to me. Unfortunately, those articles are spread out among all the feeds I follow — about two dozen of them. (If I find more than 75% of the content from a single feed uninteresting, I simply unsubscribe.) Those are the easy articles to go through. It takes only a few seconds to read the title and scan through the first paragraph or summary before I hit the up arrow key and move on to the next unread entry.

Of the remaining 50% of the content, about 80% (or roughly 40% of the whole) is mildly interesting and worth a good read. I sometimes link to these articles using del.icio.us bookmarks to generate the This Just In category links entries you might see online here. In fact,that’s how you can find out whether I’ve been reading Web-based content; if there’s a Links post in the morning, I was reading Web content the day before. The more links in the post, the more I read and enjoyed. This takes time, of course, because I have to read through these articles to really appreciate them.

The remaining content (if you’re following the math, that’s 10% of the total content for the feeds I follow) are what I call “keepers.” A keeper is an article that is worth reading not just once, but at least twice. It’s worth keeping a link to — perhaps even bookmarking for future reference. (I’m very stingy with my internal bookmarking.) These articles trigger ideas for writing in my own blog, for expanding on the thoughts of the source blogger to add fresh content to the blogosphere. They also give me ideas for other projects or things I can do to change my way of working to be more productive. This is the real time sucker and the reason I can’t keep up with the feeds I subscribe to. I don’t want to miss these articles. I want to find them and give them the time they deserve. Unfortunately, I just don’t have enough time to give. So I don’t give any; I wait until — well, what?

Why I Don’t Have Time

Currently, I’m under contract to write two books. One is about halfway finished; the other hasn’t been started yet. I’m using up all my big blocks of time at my desk these days, writing about Excel 2007 for Windows. I’m also writing articles for FileMaker Advisor and Informit. And I’m writing blog entries — or trying to — at least once a day.

I’m also preparing for a big “trade show” in Scottsdale — Big Boys and Their Toys Luxury Men’s Expo. I’ll be parking my helicopter on the show floor for two days, handing out brochures and signing people up for my multi-day excursions. So I’m preparing for that by ordering new brochures and logo hats, arranging for booth furniture and electricity, and trying to find two energetic and dependable people to help out with the booth. (If you live in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, have a neat and presentable appearance and an interest in helicopters, and want a job for the weekend of March 17-18, contact me.) And in the evening, I’m sitting in front of my computer, turning hundreds of photographs and hours of video into a DVD of destinations to show at our booth.

Between all that, I’m flying helicopter charters. I did two on Sunday, I have one today, I have one on Thursday, and I have another one on Saturday. This is revenue my little company sorely needs to cover the cost of things like this trade show, so turning down flights like this would not be a good idea.

Does that give you an idea of how I’m spending my time? Can you see why I don’t have time to wade through the hundreds of accumulated posts that have accumulated in endo?

Well, enough whining for today. Time to get back to work.

And if you’re wondering how much time I used up writing this, it was less than 30 minutes. My morning coffee time. Thank heaven for multitasking.

How do you make a million dollars in aviation?

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Start with two million dollars.

That isn’t my joke — it’s standard aviation humor. And if you think it isn’t true, start an aviation-based business.

Yesterday, against all odds, UPS actually delivered the auxiliary fuel pump I needed to get Zero-Mike-Lima up and running again. Yes, on Saturday. In Wickenburg.

The UPS guy was at our neighbor’s house, looking for ours when we spotted him. Mike gave a New York hail-a-cab style whistle and the driver saw us waving at him from our hillside. Moments later, he was on our driveway in front of the house.

“How many deliveries did you have to Wickenburg today?” I asked.

“Two,” he replied. “And you’re lucky it was me driving. I was out for four weeks. If the other Saturday driver can’t find a house, he just doesn’t deliver.”

Yes, I was lucky. I needed the part to replace the fuel pump that had gasped its final gasp on Friday, right at the end of a flight. Although the pump is redundant in flight (so there was no danger during the flight), I do need it to prime the engine at startup. I couldn’t fly without it. And I had three relatively lucrative gigs lined up between Sunday and Thursday.

The fuel pump cost $1,500. Add another $40 or $50 for overnight Saturday delivery by UPS. Then add the cost of the mechanic who graciously agreed to come in on Saturday — one of his usual days off — to install it. I told him to charge me extra. He said he would. Hell, it’s only fair. He could have said it would have to wait until Monday. Then I’d miss out on one (which turned into two) of my gigs.

Doing the Math

Unexpected repairs like this are only part of what makes operating an aviation business a lot more expensive than people think. How many times have I been at a rides gig where people asked how much fuel the helicopter burned? Every single one. I tell them it’s 16 to 18 gallons an hour and sometimes they ask how much fuel costs. I tell them $4 a gallon. They do some math in their head to come up with $64 per hour. Then they see us loading people on board for $30 a head, sometimes three at a time, and figure I can get 6 10-minute flights in per hour. That number comes out to $540/hour. Jeez! I must be making a fortune!

The truth of the matter is, fuel is among the least of my expenses.

What people always fail to consider is insurance (at about $11,500 per year); regular maintenance like oil changes ($120 each), 100-hour inspections ($2,000 each), annual inspections ($2,000 each); and the cost of the oh-so-important overhaul due at 2,200 hours that costs (currently) a whopping $182,000. (Do the math on that: $182,000 ÷ 2200 = $83/hour.)

And then there are things like this fuel pump. The original pump lasted only 416 hours. If the final cost of replacement is $1,700 (with all labor and expenses), that works out to another $4/hour. Add that to the cost of replacing my primary radio, which is currently in the shop and may be declared dead: $2,100 for a used one plus several hundred for troubleshooting the old one and swapping them out. And the cost of that clutch down-limit switch that had to be replaced 200 hours ago: the $8 part with $800 labor. And, oh yeah, let’s not forget $120 just to make sure my transponder is working right — that’s something I’ll be paying for every two calendar years.

How about the support stuff that doesn’t go on my helicopter? Like the $1,200 tow bar and the $600 golf cart (used, thank heaven) to pull it? And monthly rent for the hangar to keep it safe and dry and out of the sun? And the charts and other FAA publications I’m required to keep up to date, including sectionals (twice a year per chart), terminal area charts (twice a year per chart), airport/facilities directories (every 56 days), and the FAR/AIM (once a year)? Or how about my annual medical exam, which is required just to keep my license? Or credit card fees just so I can accept credit cards for payment?

And how about marketing? The $1,600 I just spent on 4-color, tri-fold brochures and the $459/month I spend during the high season to get them in brochure racks throughout the Phoenix area? And the cost of the trade show I’ll be attending later this month to sell my multi-day excursions to folks looking for a different kind of vacation?

And how about the cost of my ground crew on those outdoor ride gigs and the cost of permits and commissions just so I can do them? And the cost for operating the helicopter just to get to and from the gig — sometimes more than an hour each way? And the cost of the table and chairs and shade structure and signs that we use on those gigs? And those orange cones and all that yellow Caution tape? And overnight lodging and meals for me and the ground crew on distant, multi-day gigs?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining. I knew I was in for it when I launched this business.

But it does explain why I have to charge $450/hour for flight time. I’m not pocketing nearly $400 in profits as most people may think. I’m barely covering my costs.

Paying for It

Today is Sunday and Zero-Mike-Lima is sitting snug in its hangar, all ready to fly. I picked up a second tour today, one of my Ghost Towns & Mines air tours. Right after that, I’m doing my first ever Swansea Town site day trip. On Tuesday, I’m taking a winter visitor to Scottsdale for some upscale shopping. And on Thursday, I’m taking some folks to Sky Harbor so they can catch a flight to Canada. The total revenue for these four flights is estimated at $1,895. That’s revenue, not net income.

Just enough to cover the cash outlay for that fuel pump and labor.

Would I give it all up? Hell, no! But I do hope the new fuel pump lasts longer than 416 hours.

In-Flight “Emergency”…

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…on a check ride.

There’s no better way to test a pilot on his or her knowledge of emergency procedures than to simulate an in-flight unusual situation. I hesitate to use the word emergency here, because what most check pilots simulate is not really a full emergency. It’s more of a situation that requires the pilot’s attention, knowledge of procedures, judgement, and action.

Real Throttle Chops are a Thing of the Past

Gone (or almost gone) are the days when helicopter flight instructors or examiners did “throttle chops.” A throttle chop is a simulated engine failure in which the instructor or examiner twists the throttle to idle suddenly during flight. The engine and rotor RPM needles split and the rotor RPM needle immediately starts to drop. The student or pilot in command is required to immediately enter an autorotation. The experts estimate that the pilot has about two seconds to react properly. Failure to react could lead to unrecoverable low rotor RPM, which is a very bad thing.

Flight instructors and examiners pretty much stopped doing real throttle chops — the kind with absolutely no warning to the student — when helicopters started crashing. It seemed that in some cases, the student pilot or pilot in command wouldn’t react fast enough and the instructor or examiner didn’t either. Or, in some rare cases, the sudden reduction in power caused the engine to hiccup and really fail. Now most instructors usually warn the student in advance. Some slowly reduce the throttle, which leads to an audible change in engine sound that warns the student — not to mention that he or she can usually feel the adjustment in his or her collective hand. Others do a throttle chop and enter the autorotation at the same time, not even giving the student a chance to react.

Robinson Helicopter issued several safety notices recommending against throttle chops (see SN-27 and SN-38). The company even amended its Pilot Operating Handbook so practice autorotations would be done with just a tiny needle split rather than a full throttle-to-idle setting. (Not a very good simulation of an engine failure, if you ask me.)

So What’s an Instructor/Examiner to Do?

One of the instructor/examiners I’ve worked with in the past was extremely fond of failing instruments or illuminating warning lights. This particular instructor, who works for Robinson Helicopter, has a whole collection of circuit breaker tricks that he uses on unsuspecting students. He’ll pull an engine tach circuit breaker so the engine tachometer drops to 0 during flight. No lights, just that dead gauge. He does it to see how long before the pilot notices and whether the pilot knows what do do about it. He’ll do the same for other gauges that are important but not vital to safe flight.

I took my commercial check ride with this particular instructor/examiner and he made me do a run-on landing with “failed” engine tachometer, rotor tachometer, and governor (switch the governor off to simulate). The trick was to make very small collective inputs and hope the mechanical correlator would keep the RPM within range; listening to the sound of the engine helped a tiny bit. But I still managed to make that low rotor RPM horn go off as we approached the runway surface. Evidently, I exercised enough finesse, because although he was disappointed that the horn had come on, he didn’t fail me for it. Personally, I like to see him do it perfectly.

(A side note here. What real-life situation would require you to land with all that stuff inoperable? The only thing I can think of is a complete electrical failure. But even then, I think there’s some trick in the Robinson wiring scheme that keeps the tachs alive. Just can’t remember what it might be right now. Guess I need to look it up.)

My Recent Mechanical Failure

I’ve taken 6 check rides since I started flying about 8 years ago: 1 private, 1 commercial, and 4 Part 135s. There’s usually some kind of simulated failure during a flight. So when the Aux Fuel light came on during my most recent check ride on Thursday, my first inclination was to ask the examiner, “Did you do that?”

“What?”

We were doing an instrument approach at Williams Gateway Airport and I think he was paying more attention to my altimeter (I was supposed to be at 1880 feet) than anything else.

“That light,” I replied.

He saw the light. “No,” he said.

I didn’t believe him and asked him again. He repeated that he wasn’t responsible.

“Is the circuit breaker out?” I asked.

He looked down at the bank of circuit breakers at the base of his seat. “Yes.”

“Okay, it’s not a big deal,” I said. “It’s the auxiliary fuel pump. It’s a redundant system and we don’t need it for flight. The book says land as soon as practical. Do you want to push the circuit breaker back in?”

“No.”

(For the record, I would have.)

“Well, how about if we land here and have Kelly look at it?” I suggested. Kelly is my helicopter mechanic. By some unbelievable stroke of luck, we were landing at the airport where he was based and it wasn’t 5 PM yet.

He agreed that would be a good idea and talked to the tower for me. He then directed me to parking. I set it down in one of the helicopter parking spaces that Silver State uses. He pushed the circuit breaker back in. It popped back out. He got out to track down Kelly while I cooled down the engine and shut down.

Long story short: Kelly pulled off the side panel and found that one of the bolts on top of the fuel pump was loose. He removed the pump, bench tested it, tightened up the bolts, wrote up a logbook entry on a sticker for me, and sent us on our way. The whole process took a little more than an hour. The pump sounded much better when I primed the engine for startup and the light didn’t come on again as we did some more maneuvers at Williams Gateway and flew back to Scottsdale.

I passed the check ride. I like to think that the failed fuel pump helped me. It showed that I knew enough about the procedure to stay calm and make the right decision about it. In a way, it was a real-life “emergency” during the flight. Again, I don’t like to use the word emergency because there was never really any danger — unless, of course, the engine-driven fuel pump went bad, too. Then we’d have a problem.

Postscript

I flew back from Scottsdale with no further fuel pump problems.

The next day, I did a 50-minute scenic flight with two passengers on board. We were about 45 minutes into the flight — less than 5 miles from the airport — when the darn light came back on. I finished the tour — which was basically on the way to the airport anyway — and landed. When I pushed in the circuit breaker, it popped right out again.

When my passengers were on their way, I visited Ed, my local mechanic. I asked him to take a look at the pump when he had a chance, then put the helicopter away in my hangar, which is just down the row from his. He called with the bad news a while later. The pump was seized. I’d have to get a new one. I called the factory at 2:30 PM (their time) and managed to get it on a UPS truck for overnight (Saturday) delivery to Wickenburg. With luck, it’ll arrive as planned (Saturday deliver is a very iffy thing in Wickenburg) and Ed will put it in. I’ll be flying again on Sunday.

Unfortunately, it’ll take the flights I have scheduled on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday just to pay for the new pump.

The Who, In Concert

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Not too old to rock and roll.

Mike and I were lucky enough to have seats on the floor at Wednesday night’s Who concert at US Airways Center (formerly America West Arena) in downtown Phoenix. It was an amazing experience.

First of all, the last time we saw The Who, John Entwistle was still alive. We saw the concert at Shea Stadium (I think; you’d think I’d remember something like that), which is a huge venue. Most of the rock concerts I’ve been to have been in big venues: Madison Square Garden (where I always managed to be in the Yellow “nose-bleed” section) for Elton John and led Zeppelin (in the 1970s) , Nassau Coliseum (for Styx and Yes), Shea Stadium (for the Rolling Stones, The Who, and Elton John and Eric Clapton (together, in the 1990s)), and Giants Stadium (for Pink Floyd, Division Bell tour, 1990s). US Airways Center is smaller than Nassau Coliseum (I think), so seeing these legends of rock and roll in such a “tiny” place was a real treat.

Second of all, I was among the youngest people in the place. The average age of concert-goers was approaching 50. Lots of balding heads and beer bellies and overweight women. Mike and I fit right in. There were exceptions, of course. One guy apparently had his son (or perhaps grandson?) with him. And there were a half dozen geeky 20-year-olds who became somewhat of an annoyance by bouncing along with the music past the floor sections, only to be pushed back repeatedly by security. (I would have kicked them out after the second incursion.)

Our seats were 20-30 rows back from the stage. Very nice seats. There was an aisle in front of the row in front of us, so it wasn’t as if we had to look over a sea of heads. Mike did good.

We arrived just in time for the opening act, The Tragically Hip. I can understand how the word “tragic” got into this band’s name. It was a tragedy for us to arrive in time to hear them. It was also a tragedy that they played 5 or 6 songs, all of which sounded pretty much the same to me. And the lyrics:

You’re not the ocean.

You’re not even close.

Huh?

The lead singer had some kind of weird dance move that isn’t exactly original — Cab Calloway was doing the same thing back in the 1930s a hell of a lot better. And I guess he didn’t understand that the thing he was shouting into was a live microphone, because he found it necessary to scream most of the lyrics.

You’re not the ocean.

You’re not even close.

Yeah. Whatever.

The Tragically Hip exited the stage amidst applause. The roadies came out and started working on the stage. The people who had been watching the opening act, went out to get beer and nachos. (Yes, nachos; very strange for an east coast girl.) The smart people who knew that the opening act would suck started filing in. The place filled up. They were playing recorded music over the loudspeakers. They were in the middle of Led Zeppelin’s When the Levee Breaks when the music died out, the hall went dark, and Daltrey and Townshend took the stage with their band (drummer Zak Starkey, keyboardist John Bundrick, guitarist Simon Townshend, and bassist Pino Palladrino).

Endless WireEveryone was immediately on their feet. And we stayed there for the next two hours, sitting only when the band played a track from their new CD. We were all there to hear the old stuff and they didn’t disappoint.

They opened with I Can’t Explain. And for guys in their 60s, they looked pretty damn good. Daltrey is in excellent shape — he looks like he works out. Even Townshend, who never stuck me as the kind of guy overly interested in appearance, looked good. The show was great, full of energy and the “trademarked” moves Who fans have come to expect: Daltrey’s swinging of the mike (he’s probably the only performer who still needs a mike with a wire) and Townshend’s “windmill.”

The concert lasted about two hours, including a 20-minute encore. They played Teenage Wasteland, Pinball Wizard (leading off a Tommy medley), My Generation, Behind Blue Eyes, and more than my addled brain can remember. (If you were at the concert, please use the Comments link to fill in my memory gaps. You can also read a review here.)

The show was great and kept my attention for the entire time — which is something unusual (I think I suffer from ADD symptoms sometimes). I was energized, dancing and singing at the top of my lungs. (Don’t worry; no one heard me above the sound of the band.)

But the thing I came away with from the experience is this: I’m not too old to rock and roll — and neither are the two surviving members of The Who.