Tag Archives: troubleshooting

A Flying Kind of Day

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And proof that I apparently can learn a lesson.

I flew to Prescott, AZ today. I had to get my transponder’s biennial check and my annual medical exam done. Both my avionics shop and AME are based at the field.

How to Start an R44 Raven II

The first indication that I’d have a less than perfect day came when I started up the helicopter on the ramp at Wickenburg. The main part of the startup procedure on an R44 Raven II goes like this:

  1. Turn on the master switch. This provides electrical power to the aircraft.
  2. Push in the mixture to full rich. This enables fuel flow to the engine.
  3. Turn the key to Prime and count off the seconds. This uses the auxiliary fuel pump to prime the engine. The number of seconds depends on conditions such as outside temperature (cold means more priming) and engine temperature (already warm means less priming). This is something you get a feel for when you fly the same aircraft in all kinds of conditions.
  4. Turn the key to Both. This turns on both magnetos.
  5. Pull the mixture completely out. This cuts fuel flow to the engine.
  6. Push the starter button while slowly pushing in the mixture. The idea is that when the engine catches, the mixture should be full rich. This can be tricky, but most pilots get the hang of it pretty quickly.

When these steps are completed, the engine should be running. You then follow up with a bunch of other stuff to get the blades spinning and everything else working.

This morning, when I pushed in the mixture (step 2), it felt different — like it was scraping on something. It felt okay when I pulled it out again (step 5). Then it felt weird when I pushed it back in (step 6). The engine didn’t catch, so I repeated steps 2 through 6 again with a bit more priming. (It was cold out.) The mixture still felt weird when I pushed it in.

I debated whether I should shut down and talk to my local mechanic, Ed, about it. But then I convinced myself that the stiffness of the mixture cable was probably due to the cold. I finished my warmup and departed to the north.

Flight to Prescott

E25 to PRCPrescott is 30 minutes north of Wickenburg. It’s a “mile high” city, with an airport at 5,000 feet elevation. The airport is home to Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, as well as two helicopter flight schools. It’s a busy place, with three runways and a tower that occasionally splits radio coverage to two frequencies to handle the traffic load.

I’ve flown to Prescott more times than I can count over the past nine years. This morning, I planned a direct route. I departed from the ramp at Wickenburg and crossed the runway low level, heading 017°. Then I began my climb toward the first of two mountain ranges I had to cross: the Weavers. I had about 15 miles to climb from 2400 feet at Wickenburg to the 5,500 feet (minimum) I’d need to cross the mountains just east of the flat-topped Antelope Peak.

I was past Wickenburg within minutes, climbing at nearly 500 feet per minute at 100 knots. It was just after 8 AM and the sun was still low in the sky, casting deep shadows on the cactus-studded Sonoran desert below me. I listened to my iPod, catching up on Future Tense podcasts. The miles passed quickly. Soon I was crossing the Weavers and leveling off at 6,000 feet.

Now I was over the high desert, passing Yarnell, Peeples Valley, Kirkland Junction, and Wilhoit. I began another climb, to 7500 feet, to cross over the Sierra Prieta Mountains. There was snow on the north sides of the hills in the mountains below me. Ahead of me was the town of Prescott and the wide, flat areas of the Chino and Prescott Valleys.

I tuned into Prescott’s ATIS and used its altimeter reading to set my altimeter. Then I keyed the mic to call the tower. “Prescott Tower, Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima is nine to the south with Zulu, request landing at Mile High Avionics.”

“Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima, Prescott Tower, proceed inbound for landing on the numbers of Runway Three-Zero. Report two miles out.”

I read back the instructions and modified my course to come in from the southeast, pushing down the collective to begin my descent. I was cruising at 120 knots, descending at about 300 feet per minute. My course took me over the south end of Watson Lake and the Granite Dells. I was three miles out and had both the tower and runway end in sight when the tower came back on the radio.

“Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, cleared to land on the numbers of Runway three-zero. You can then taxi down the runway to exit at echo-three and taxi to Mile High.”

I read back the important parts of the instructions, wondering whether echo-three was prominently marked. Helicopter pilots rarely deal with taxiway exits, so we don’t usually study airport diagrams to learn them.

I exited at the right intersection and taxied over to the big ramp on the back side of Mile High Avionics’ hangar. I cooled down and shut down. The blades were still spinning as the big accordion doors opened. A short while later, we had the ground handling wheels on the helicopter and were pushing it into the hangar.

Errands in Prescott

It was 8:45 AM and the avionics guys were ready to get to work on my helicopter. My doctor’s appointment was at 10:00 AM right across runway 30. The only way to get there was to make a five-mile drive around the airport.

The avionics guys very kindly gave me a pickup truck to use while they worked on the helicopter. I headed over to the doctor’s office to see if I could get my medical exam taken care of early. It was a good thing I did. The doctor took ill not long after my exam. As I was leaving with my new medical certificate, an ambulance was arriving to take him away.

I’d like to think that taking my blood pressure and having me read an eye chart didn’t give him a heart attack.

I took the pickup to a hardware store in Chino Valley, where I picked up some weed pre-emergent. I have a gravel “helipad” at our Howard Mesa property and we’ve had some serious problems with tumbleweeds there. I wanted to get the problem under control this year.

Then I went to breakfast at the airport restaurant. Bacon, egg, and cheese on an English muffin. Yum.

I was back at the avionics shop by 10:30 AM. The helicopter was done. I paid up and the avionics guys helped me pull the helicopter back outside.

Next Stop, Howard Mesa

When I started up the helicopter, the mixture problem was just as bad as it had been that morning in Wickenburg. But now it wasn’t cold. There was no excuse for it. I was getting concerned.

PRC to Howard MesaThe tower cleared me to depart to the southwest, parallel to Runway 21, which the planes were using. A plane had just taken off and was climbing out. The controller had me switch to the north tower frequency and that controller instructed me to make my right turn, staying low level to depart to the north. I was at 5300 feet, about two miles north of the airport, when the controller asked what my altitude was. I told him and he replied with “Frequency change approved. Have a good day.”

I thanked him and wished him a good day, thinking that that last exchange had been a little weird.

I listened to an episode of Skeptoid on my iPod as I flew north, over Chino Valley and Paulden. I was heading toward the west side of Bill Williams Mountain and would have to climb to about 7500 feet to get up onto the Colorado Plateau. I was abeam Williams’ Clark Memorial AIrport before I saw it. I was already on frequency and made a courtesy call to the empty airspace.

There was a lot of snow on the ground. I started wondering whether there would be snow on my landing zone. And whether it was wise to spread pre-emergent when I might blow it away when I took off. And whether there was something wrong with my mixture control that would prevent me from starting up when I was ready to leave.

This last thought was weighing heavily on my mind. I didn’t want to get stranded at Howard Mesa. Sure, I could always start up the heat in the shed and wait for Mike to rescue me, but I wasn’t interested in a repeat of my 2004 mesa-top helicopter repair.

I began to slow down and descend when I was still two or three miles out from Howard Mesa. By the time I flew over my place, I was only about 200 feet off the ground. I was surprised to see the windsock hanging almost limp. There were patches of snow on the ground and a series of partially melted animal tracks across the snow-covered driveway. I swung around, made a tight turn to the right, and came in for a final approach from the north. I set down behind the shed, pushed the collective full down, and opened my door to see how my skids were set in the snow and ground. I didn’t want to sink into any muck (again). It looked solid enough.

And then I made a radical decision: I wasn’t going to shut down. Instead, I cooled down the engine and throttled it down to idle RPM. I tightened the cyclic and collective friction. And I stepped out to take care of my chores, leaving the helicopter running.

Now before you other pilots start scolding me, remember this: there was almost no wind and I was on private property in the middle of nowhere with no one around. The cyclic and collective friction on my helicopter do what they’re supposed to; neither control moves when they’re tightened up. The blades had enough spin to keep them from drooping. I was facing where I needed to go, so there was no reason to walk behind the helicopter. There really was no danger. Really.

I offloaded the pre-emergent and brought it into the shed. Then I fetched the two small pieces of furniture I’d come to get. I put one on each of the rear seats, fastening them down with the seatbelts. I climbed back in, double-checked the doors, and fastened my seatbelt. I think I was out of my seat for about four minutes.

I loosened the frictions and spun up. Then I very slowly and carefully lifted the collective, just in case some of that mud was trying to suck me down. The helicopter lifted straight up. I pulled more pitch, pushed the cyclic forward, and took off between two trees.

Mixture Problems Back in Wickenburg

Howard Mesa to E25I flew a direct route back to Wickenburg, detouring only a tiny bit around Granite Mountain. I listened to NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! podcast.

There were three planes in the pattern when I arrived — all flight training planes doing touch and goes on Runway 5. I came in behind the last one and set down on one of the helipads on the west end. When I shut down, I recorded a total of 2.2 hours of flight time for the day.

I fetched my cart and towbar and brought the helicopter back to the hangar. As I was getting ready to back it in, I noticed that oil had been leaking on my muffler. I got down on the ground and took a closer look. Oil was dripping in the vicinity of the starter motor. A leak somewhere. That could explain why I’d been using more oil than usual later. I decided to see if Ed wanted to look at it.

He came over with me. While he was checking that out, I told him about my mixture control. We backed the helicopter into the hangar and he looked underneath while I pulled the control knob in and out. It made a weird kind of squeaking noise when I pulled it out.

Let me explain how the mixture works. It’s a knob that’s attached to a long cable. The knob is in the cockpit. You pull it toward you to cut fuel; you push it in to add fuel. AIrplane pilots know mixture controls very well, since they often have to “lean” the mixture in flight. Robinson pilots don’t do that. It’s either full mixture while flying or pulled mixture when the engine is shut down.

Ed also had a service bulletin to take care of for me. Since he didn’t have any planes to work on, we figured it would be a good time for him to take care of the SB, lubricate the mixture cable, and see if he could find the oil leak.

I spent some time updating my log book, then drove off to get my hair cut. When I got back, Ed shared some bad news. He’d been working on the mixture and, when he pulled it, the cable broke.

With a broken mixture cable, my helicopter wasn’t going anywhere.

A Lesson Learned

I took the news well. You see, I’d spent a good part of the day before writing an article about how inconvenient some mechanical problems can be. I’d concluded that preventative maintenance could have saved me a lot of bother.

In this instance, I’d identified a potential problem with the mixture control. Even though it still worked, I’d asked my mechanic to take a look at it at the first opportunity. Sure, he’d broken it, but if he hadn’t, I probably would have.

And maybe that break would have been on top of a mesa.

Or when taking charter clients to Sedona or the Grand Canyon.

Any mechanical problem that occurs anywhere other than at home base with a mechanic around is a mechanical problem you want to avoid. Writing that article had reminded me of that simple fact.

And I managed to remember it for a full day.

Anyway, we ordered the cable. It should arrive on Thursday. Ed will fix it then. In the meantime, I hope he tracks down that leak.

Giving My iMac a Fresh Start

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Why I’m reformatting my iMac’s hard disk.

iMacAs I type this, I’ve set the wheels in motion for my iMac’s internal hard disk to be reformatted and a fresh installation to be installed on its clean surface. This is a “clean install,” in the real sense of the phrase, and I expect it to take most of the Christmas holidays to get things back up and running in a way that I can be productive again.

This may seem drastic, but drastic times call for drastic solutions. My computer has been plagued with problems for the past two months — since my return from points north after this summer’s galavanting — and I simply cannot tolerate it anymore. I not only get kernel panics several times a week, but I also get what I call “blue screen restarts” (screen turns blue and computer restarts itself for no apparent reason), frozen mouse pointers, and unresponsive applications. I’m losing unsaved work — although less than you’d think because I’ve actually come to expect problems and save often.

I’ve run every diagnostic tool I have on the hard disk, booting from the CD/DVD drive whenever possible. Disk Utility says the hard disk is fine, but it finds all kinds of problems with permissions, which it just can’t fix. Drive Genius won’t even check the permissions, but it finds an error with my preferences file and gives up scanning. Permissions are definitely screwed up because my document permissions include permissions for (unknown).

Did I mention that it’s just over a year old now?

I know the cure for the problem — reformat and reinstall. So that’s what I’m doing.

Oddly enough, I used to do this regularly back in the old days, before the operating system got so darn complex and my hard disk filled up with music and video files. Each time a new version of Mac OS came out, I’d install it by reformatting my hard disk and putting the software on a clean disk. Then I’d reinstall all my applications and copy back the documents I needed on my hard disk. It took about a half a day to get the job done and the computer worked flawlessly afterwards.

But nowadays, things aren’t that simple. Reformatting a hard disk and reinstalling everything from scratch is a real pain in the ass. Before I could even think of doing it, I started by making three backup copies of what was important on the disk: the Time Machine backup I always have, a disk image of my entire hard disk, and a copy of my home folder. All this had to wait until I got an external hard disk large and fast enough to make the extra two backups. I bought it yesterday: a 1TB Western Digital FireWire/USB drive.

Never in my wildest dreams did I think I’d own a 1 TB hard disk. The amazing thing: it only cost $200. So storage is no longer an issue here.

At least not for the next few months.

Right now, my iMac is still verifying the installation DVD. I can still change my mind. But the thought of dealing with daily blue screen is too frustrating for words. So I’ll do the drastic thing and fix my problem.

And next week, I’ll pump my iMac up to 4 GB of RAM. If that doesn’t make it happy, nothing will.

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Strobe Trouble

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Troubleshooting and fixing a pesky strobe light.

My helicopter — like all helicopters, I assume — has an anti-collision or “strobe” light on the tailcone. This light serves two purposes:

  • On the ground, the strobe light helps alert bystanders that the helicopter’s engine is running or that its blades are turning. This is an important function, especially when you consider what would likely happen if a person walked into a spinning tail rotor. The strobe light is positioned atop the tailcone, just forward of the tail rotor, so it’s a pretty good in-your-face reminder.
  • In the air, the strobe light helps make the helicopter more visible to other aircraft. This is especially true at night, when the bright flashing light seems to scream out, “Here I am!” That’s probably why they call it an anti-collision light.

The Non-Strobing Strobe

I’d just returned from my last cherry drying flight on July 4 when Mike commented, “You know, your strobe light isn’t working.”

I didn’t know.

We went through the motions of checking it. Powering it up and down, resetting the circuit breaker, etc. It wouldn’t work and there was no obvious reason for it.

Helicopter Parked at PaterosI wasn’t too bothered. The helicopter was parked on the lawn beside the Lake Pateros Inn. The tail rotor was hanging over the river bank. Although there were a few people around, there wasn’t much of a chance of someone walking into it while I was starting up or shutting down.

I called my mechanic. He said it was probably just the bulb. He said he’d ship me one. Since I would be back in Quincy by the time it arrived, I told him to send it there.

Three days later, I flew the helicopter back to Quincy. I put it away in the hangar I was renting. The weather was perfect and the forecast called for more of the same. It didn’t seem likely that I’d dry cherries anytime soon. But I needed the strobe light working in case I did any passenger work. Although it isn’t technically required for Part 91 tours, it’s definitely required for Part 135 work. In fact, every single piece of equipment on the helicopter has to be properly functioning for Part 135, since I don’t have a minimum equipment list (MEL). In any case, I considered it an important safety item, especially if I operated anywhere where there might be people on the ground.

The Bulb and the Canadians

I picked up the bulb at the post office on Thursday as I headed out of town in my truck for a day in Wenatchee, about 30 miles away. I got back too late to put the bulb in. On Friday morning, I worked on a book. Around four, I headed out to the airport to put the new bulb in.

There was a twin Cessna on the ramp when I arrived. Six people stood around it. As I slid open my hangar door, a taxi drove in. A few minutes later, it drove out. I was organizing my tools and dragging a chair to stand on over to the tailcone when two men appeared in the doorway.

“You have a helicopter in here,” one of them said. I could hear the surprise in his voice.

They were two Canadian pilots. They’d just flown a rich guy, the girl he was trying to impress, and another couple from Toronto to Quincy for the Police concert at the Gorge Amphitheater. Now they had to wait around until their passengers returned for the flight back. They figured that would be around 10:30 or 11:00 PM. That meant they’d be waiting about six hours.

At Quincy Municipal Airport.

Let me tell you a little more about Quincy Airport. It’s a 3000 or so foot paved runway and I think it has lights. The taxiway parallels it for about half its length. At one end is the ramp area with an ancient hangar building that contains exactly six T-hangars. There’s a plastic port-o-potty structure that’s so old and dirty that I’d prefer squatting in poison ivy. There’s also a small storage container where the local Elks or VFW or some other community organization has stored stuff. There’s no FBO so there’s no FBO office. All around is farmland, growing potatoes, feed corn, wheat, and alfalfa. Town is 2-1/2 miles away.

I felt bad for these guys.

Helicopter in HangarMeanwhile, I’d pulled out my MAC ratchet screwdriver — the tool I usually use to prove to men that I don’t believe in buying junk tools — and was attempting to remove the red lens from the strobe light’s bulb. The lens was held in place with a plastic ring, held closed tight with a small philips screw and a tiny nut. I wasn’t getting far. When I turned the screw, the nut turned. I was just realizing my problem when one of the guys took notice.

“Got a pair of needle-nose pliers?”

Of course I did. I didn’t think there was enough room to use them to hold the nut steady. But there was. And before I could stop him, he went to work on the screw, holding the nut in place with the pliers.

In another mood, I would have been annoyed. After all, I could eventually do it. But I was hot and these guys would soon be bored out of their minds. I figured I’d let them do their male thing: helping the female in distress. Frankly, I don’t get as much of that as I did when I was younger and thinner so it’s actually kind of nice to experience it again.

He got the lens off. The bulb was still inside it. I carefully unplugged its three-pronged plug from the hole now in my tailcone. Then I pried the bulb’s base from the lens bottom with a fingernail. I laid the bulb aside and carefully inserted the new one, being sure to keep my fingers off the bulb surface. Skin oils on the glass could overheat when the bulb was turned on and damage the bulb. I took the assembly, plugged it back in firmly. My “assistant,” whose name was Howie, verified that it was plugged in. We then set it back into place.

“I’d better try it,” I said.

I went into the cockpit, turned on the Master switch, and flicked the strobe switch. “Blinking?” I called out. I knew the answer. Even though I couldn’t see the strobe from the cockpit, I would have been able to see its flash on the hangar’s inside walls.

“No,” he called back.

I recycled the switch and the circuit breakers. No joy. Then I went back and we both confirmed that the plug was in all the way and it could only go in one way. So unless the new bulb was bad — which was doubtful — it wasn’t the bulb.

“Well, I can’t leave this hanging,” I said. We put the plastic ring around the base of the lens and Howie tightened it down.

Mexican with Canadians

I called my mechanic and left a message on his voicemail. Then I drove the Canadians into town. I really did feel sorry for them. And frankly, the only thing I had to do was go for a bike ride. This would be a good excuse not to do that.

I only knew one restaurant in town that would be a good place to hang out: Tijuana. It’s a Mexican place near downtown Quincy. I went in with them. They bought me dinner. I’d been planning to skip dinner, so I ordered a quesadilla appetizer. It was huge. One of my companions said he’d never heard of half the things on the menu. I guess they don’t have as many Mexicans up there in the Great White North as we do here.

We talked pilot talk. Howie was retired from the airlines. He worked with the other guy’s company (can’t remember his name!) as the second in command on some flights. He wasn’t doing it for the money. He was just doing it to get out and fly once in a while.

My mechanic, Rich, called back. He listed a bunch of other things it could be: loose plug under the cowl, bad charger box, bad switch, bad circuit breaker, bad bulb. I’d have to check what I could.

We went back to the airport. It was about 8 PM and still daylight. (The sun sets here around 8:45 PM these days and my hangar faces west.) They went into the hangar with me and we started checking connections. I used a flashlight to really get a good look under the rear cowl. Rich had told me to check the gray wire that was fastened to the frame inside the helicopter. That’s the wire for the strobe. I looked at a bundle of wires fastened with wire ties to the frame. None of them appeared to be gray, but one was black. I figured that was it. In any case, they were all securely fastened and plugged into their plugs. Snug as a bug in a rug.

I thanked my new friends for their help and dinner, closed up my hangar, and drove back to my trailer. When I left the Canadians, they were walking the runway.

Troubleshooting with a Pro

After considering and then discarding the notion of flying the helicopter to Seattle for Rich to troubleshoot and fix it, I called Rich back the next day and reported my findings. He said it might be the strobe’s power supply then. He’d send me a used one to swap out.

It arrived in Wednesday’s mail. I was on my way out for a late afternoon/evening in Leavenworth. The next morning, I headed out to the airport. I planned to swap out the part before the sun started beating on the roof of the hangar.

This particular part goes behind the right passenger seat back. It required me to remove about a dozen small black philips screws. I got all of them except one. But I was able to pivot the seat back and see the part.

And that’s when I turned chicken. You see, I am absolutely terrified of electricity. Three people had warned me that the strobe’s power unit packed a lot of voltage. The damn thing even had a warning on it. Rich had told me about losing the feeling in a few fingers for two weeks after getting zapped by one of these things. So even though the master switch was off, the strobe switch was off, and the strobe circuit breaker was pulled, I was afraid to even touch the damn thing.

I got on the phone and called my friend, Jim. He was in Chelan, also waiting for it to rain. But rather than being stuck in a pretty dull farm town, he was stuck in a resort town on a mountain lake. Rather than get his Internet connection through a cell phone’s dial-up connection that frequently dropped, he walked to the local Starbucks and logged on while sipping a latte. (Do I sound jealous? What do you think?)

Anyway, Jim is an electronics wiz. I asked him what he was doing that day and he said he had nothing planned. I told him I needed help with my strobe problem, which he knew about. I said I could be there by 10 AM. He said to give him a call before I headed out.

I was running late. You see, while I was fiddling around with my screwdriver, a Cirrus had landed and discharged two passengers. The pilot was hanging around. We got talking and it turned out that he was weathered out of Renton, which had 600-foot ceilings. He had to wait until the marine layer moved out.

I felt sorry for the guy, so I took him into town and dropped him off at McDonald’s. Then I went back to the trailer, changed my clothes, grabbed my laptops, and locked up. I drove back into town, stopped at the post office, and picked up the pilot at McDonalds. All that burned about 40 minutes.

Chelan Airport RampIt was a 30-minute flight to Chelan Airport. I went the most direct route, over the plateau. (You can see a slightly-edited, narrated video of the route here.) I parked in the field where Jim and Mark had their R44s parked. (Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the three of us all lined up, but here’s a shot of the rock hill at the end of the ramp; the airport’s rotating beacon is on top, which I think is weird.) Then I called Jim. He arrived a few minutes later.

He removed the stubborn screw and pulled aside the seat back. Then he plugged my old bulb directly into the strobe power unit that was installed. When I pushed the breaker back in and powered it up, it flashed. So that meant it wasn’t the power unit. It also meant there was nothing wrong with bulb.

Next, we looked under the hood again. He confirmed that the plugs I’d checked were tight. But when he checked the color of the wire from the power unit, he realized we were checking the wrong wires. We removed part of the cowling to get a better look. And that’s when I could have slapped myself on the head.

There was another wire with a plug fastened to another part of the frame that wasn’t visible with the cowling on. And it was unplugged.

We plugged it in and powered it up. It worked.

Do you know how embarrassed I would have been if I’d flown all the way to Seattle to get this plug plugged in?

In my defense, I want to mention that I did have the Robinson Maintenance Manual with me. I’d brought it along just to troubleshoot any problems I had during the trip. And although it did have a wiring diagram that included the strobe, it did not identify where the wires ran on the aircraft. We had to trace the wires to see the right color and where they ran.

But yes, I admit it: I’m an idiot.

I put the cowling back on and refastened the seat back while Jim insisted on waxing the grease off the helicopter’s back end. Then he cleaned the area around the cowling panel I replaced. I think that if I’d really taken my time about it, he might have cleaned the whole helicopter while he was waiting.

Then I grabbed my laptops, locked up my ship, and spent the day in his neck of the woods. Not only did I get lunch, but I used the restaurant’s Internet connection to download two episodes of the Daily Show for later viewing. Then Starbucks for a new beverage. Then dinner at a winery (sans wine). I flew out of Chelan after 7 PM and was back in my camper before sunset.

So I guess you can say that the strobe light experience had a very happy ending.