Tag Archives: war

How to Wash a Helicopter

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It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.

I washed my helicopter today. It isn’t the first time I’ve done the job and it won’t be the last. I don’t like doing it — it rates right up there with washing Alex the Bird’s cage. But it has to be done periodically to keep it looking nice for the folks who spend big money to fly in it.

Take a moment to consider the task. The helicopter is about 32 feet long from the front of its cockpit to the end of its tail. (Or 38-1/2 feet, if you include the main rotor blades, lined up front and back.) It’s twelve feet tall, from the bottom of its skids to the main rotor hub. The surfaces are painted aluminum and Fiberglas and Plexiglas. Few of the surfaces are flat.

Over the past two years, I’ve developed a technique for washing the helicopter. I start by pulling it all the way out of my hangar so it’s parked in front, on its ground handling equipment. I get a bucket of warm (or hot) water from the airport terminal (I don’t have hot water in my hangar) and add some car wash liquid detergent. I like Rain Dance, but I had some other “spot-free” stuff that I used today. I make it all sudsy with the hose. Then, after making sure all the doors and vents are closed, I get down to business.

The first task is spraying down the tail section, from the end of the main part of the body to the tail rotor. I use a spray nozzle on a hose. Power washers are not allowed and some people think you shouldn’t use a hose spray nozzle either. My response: how are you supposed to rinse it off?

Once it’s wet, I start at the very end and work my way forward with a car wash sponge and the warm soapy water. It’s the kind of sponge that’s spongy on one side and a bit rougher on the other. I use the rough end on the leading edges of the horizontal and vertical stabilizers and the tail rotor blades to remove the dead bugs that have accumulated there. They usually come right off with a little elbow grease. I need to climb a ladder to get the top of the vertical stablizer. I use an 8-foot ladder that I keep in my hangar for preflighting the main rotor hub. While I’m doing this, I’m checking all the screws and rivets and the tail rotor’s pitch change links, looking for weird stuff that I might miss on a preflight.

Then I rinse where I washed and rewet the forward part of the tail cone. I do a lot of rinsing. Unfortunately, unless I wash the helicopter an hour or two before sunset, I have to wash it in the sun. The Arizona sun likes to dry things very quickly. That’s not a good thing, because the water has a lot of minerals in it and it tends to spot when it dries, no matter what kind of car wash detergent you’re using. So I keep it wet until I can get it out of the sun.

I continue washing and rinsing and checking screws and rivets, moving forward on either side of the tailcone until it’s all done. I make sure I wash off the strobe light and antennas back there, too. Then I move the helicopter back into the hangar a bit so the part I just washed and rinsed numerous times is now in the shade and the rest of the helicopter is still outside.

Now I’m up to what I call the R44 butt. It’s a panel that covers the rear end of the fan scroll at the back of the engine compartment. It gets coated with a white, kind of greasy film. Car wash soap cannot remove it. So I get out what I call R44 Butt Cleaner. It comes in an orange spray bottle. I spray it all over that panel, as well as at the bottom of the tailcone near it, which also gets that nasty film. I spray so everything’s coated. Then I get out a shop rag and wipe the film right off. This stuff works great and I’m thinking of repackaging it and selling it to R44 owners as a specialized R44 product at three times what I paid for it.

Although the panel is all shiny when I’m done, that’s not good enough. I want to wash off every trace of whatever that junk is. So I spray it down and continue with my wash, rinse, wash, rinse routine.

Next are the skid pants. That’s not what they’re really called, but it’s what I call them. The skids are the long black things that make contact with the ground when the helicopter isn’t flying. There are four legs that attach the rest of the helicopter to the two skids. Each leg has an aluminum fairing. That’s what I call skid pants. Their front, rounded sides get full of dried bugs, which I usually scrub off with warm soapy water and the rough side of the sponge. Today I used bug and tar remover with a brush.

I do the back end of the body next, along with the back windows. They’re “bubble” windows that kind of bulge out so passengers can stick their heads out a bit and look in all directions. I use the soft side of the sponge; they don’t usually get very dirty.

Washing a HelicopterNext is the mast, which has a cowling over it. The front, rounded side of the cowling is completely covered with baked on, squished on bugs. It’s bad, mostly because it’s so darn high off the ground that I need a ladder to clean it so I only clean it when I wash the whole helicopter. I used bug and tar remover with a brush on it today. Not a good solution, but it did work. I have to move the ladder and climb up either side of the helicopter to wash it all properly. Then it’s rinse, rinse, rinse and move the whole thing back a bit more into the hangar.

The front bubble comes next. It’s usually pretty clean — after all, it is the window I look through when I fly, so I wash it before just about every flight. The area under it — including the painted area around the landing lights — is another story. The bugs are really stuck there. On a whim, I decided to try the R44 Butt Cleaner. Would you believe it worked? No scrubbing required, either. Of course, I still had to wash that junk off, so I did double duty. But it is the cleanest it’s been in a while.

After a good rinse, I move the whole helicopter back into the hangar and begin the drying cycle. I use towels. I have a bunch of towels that are pink because I consistently wash them with red shop rags. They’re my helicopter and car wash towels. I use them to dry the whole helicopter, from the bubble back. The tailcone is usually just about dry by the time I get back there, but I dry it with a wet towel anyway, just to prevent the spots from setting in.

No, I don’t wash the main rotor blades. They’re drooping about 11-1/2 feet off the ground and are very difficult to reach to wash properly. I’d have to climb to the second to the last step on the ladder, which I’d have to reposition four times for each blade. It’s a ton of work and I get very wet, with soapy water running down my arms as I reach up. And I simply can’t deal with the ladder thing.

It’s kind of funny, because I had a perfect technique for washing the blades on my old R22. Those blades weren’t nearly as high up. I’d drive to the airport in Mike’s pickup truck and back it up, perpendicular to the helicopter, aligned with the mast. Then I’d turn the blades so one of them was lined up right over the bed of the pickup. I’d climb up in the bed of the pickup with my bucket and sponge and wash the blade, top and bottom, scraping all the dead bugs off the leading edge. Then I’d climb down, spray the blade to rinse it, and rotate the blades a half turn so the other blade was over the bed of the truck and repeat the process. Another wash and rinse cycle and I was done. One time, I even waxed them.

Unfortunately, the R44 blades are so high off the ground that I’d need a ladder inside the bed of the pickup to use the same method. And that’s not something I’m ready to do. So they go unwashed until their 100 hour or annual inspection. The guys who do the maintenance wash and detail the whole helicopter for me, including the blades.

The was job takes a good hour. It goes faster with help — one person can rinse while the other washes and it gets done very quickly. Then it’s usually still wet when we dry it off.

If I have time and it isn’t too hot, I use some spray wax to finish it off. It’s sold as RV cleaner/wax and it does a nice job, as long as you use it in the shade. It dries too quickly in the sun. I don’t usually do the whole helicopter. It takes too long. Instead, I start with the painted surfaces in the front and work my way back. I usually run out of steam before I get to the tailcone.

I didn’t wax it today. I ran out of time and had to get it out on the ramp for a flight. It sure looked good out in the sun, all clean and shiny.

Although I don’t like to wash the helicopter — primarily because it’s so much work and I always wind up getting dirty and wet — I’m glad I do it. It gives me an opportunity to look over the entire ship closely. I once found a loose screw on the mast cowling and have never forgotten it. Now I check every screw, every rivet. There hasn’t been a loose screw since, but if there is, I’ll find it.

Reader Engagement Site Improvements

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I add a few “engagement” features to this site.

Blogging is more than just using blogging software to create and edit posts. After all, if someone shouts in an empty room, does her voice make a sound? An important part of blogging is to attract and retain readers. That’s where content, SEO, and site design come into play.

I’m a strong believer that once you get a visitor to your site, the site’s overall design can help keep them there, at least for longer than the average 30 seconds. (Read Jakob Nielsen’s books for the sad truth about site/page visit lengths.) You can do this by making sure the site is legible and by including navigation features that make it easy to find interesting content.

I read an excellent article on Connected Internet today: “Best WordPress Engagement Plugins: Make Users Read More Posts“. The author lists several plugins — some of which I already use or have tried in the past — that’ll help keep site visitors on your site, reading more content. I added two of them today.

Readers Posts

Readers Posts is a plugin that offers three features:

  • Within The Loop, indicate how many readers have read a post before you.
  • List the most recently viewed posts.
  • List the most viewed (i.e., popular) posts.

I installed the second of these three options in the sidebar of aneclecticmind.com. It began working immediately, drawing information from the WordPress database to list the ten most recently viewed posts. Refresh the page after a few minutes and the list changes. This site has, on average about 5 visitors online at any time and they don’t always come to the site’s Home page. That, of course, is the drawback of any plugin that lists recently read posts — it only lists the posts that have been read on their own page — not on the Home page or archive page. In a way, that’s a good thing. It means the person reading a post is reading it because he found it via a search engine or used a link on the site to read it. He’s reading it because he wants to read it (or thinks he does; as we all know, search engines don’t always display desired results). That’s more meaningful than Home page reads, which could include lots of articles that the visitor just isn’t interested in at all.

The benefit of this: site visitors are shown a list of articles that other visitors have found interesting. I love this feature because it shows me what people are coming to the site to read and it helps me write more content of interest to visitors.

If you try this plugin, don’t be alarmed when you click the link above and arrive at a German-language site. Scroll down on that page and you’ll find an English-language translation. Although it isn’t perfect grammar (what is?), it’s certainly good enough to understand the installation and configuration process.

Landing Sites

Landing Sites is a very cool plugin that does a bunch of things, when installed correctly:

  1. It checks to see if the visitor was referred to the page from one of several popular search engines. It the visitor has not, it stops working.
  2. It displays a message with the name of the search engine and the search word(s) or phrase used to find the page.
  3. It displays a list of links to posts on your site that also match the search criteria.

What I like about this plugin is that it only displays content if a visitor has arrived at the site by clicking a link in a popular search engine’s results list. I put it at the top of the sidebar, where visitors are most likely to see it when they arrive at the page.

Installing the plugin isn’t difficult, although you really do need to follow the instructions on the page you download it from. If you copy and paste the code right from that page, you’ll need to modify all the single and double quote characters so they’re straight quotes when pasted into your template file. (I didn’t notice this at first and got PHP errors. It was an easy enough fix.) The result is what you see if you happened to arrive at a page on my site via popular search engine results link. You can try searching for Hermosa Ranch Insanity (the test link I used) and clicking the link to content on my site to see what I mean.

The benefit of this, of course, is that if the article the visitor came to read isn’t enough for him, he’s given other possible articles to try. He may or may not follow the links, but at least they’re there for him. You could keep him on the site longer.

Conclusion

Read the Connected Internet article. It tells you more about these two plugins, as well as others I currently use or have tried in the past. You might find overlap among features; pick the plugin you like best. Give them a try and see how they affect your visitor stats.

Podcast Stuff

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Maria Speaks Episode 31: Podcast Stuff.

This episode marks my return to Maria Speaks after a two-month break. It covers my change in podcasting technique, a new video podcast I just created for Flying M Air, and the podcasts I subscribe to.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 31 of Maria Speaks: Podcast Stuff.

I just spent the past three hours redoing the Maria Speaks podcast. I used to publish it with Blogger and FeedBurner. Now, since my personal Web site is blog-based using WordPress, I cut Blogger out of the picture. It took me three hours to create or modify blog entries to embed my thirty existing podcast entries on this site. Well, twenty-nine. One of them covered an eBook I no longer distribute, so it didn’t link to it.

I developed this new method of podcasting — new to me, I should say — to reduce the amount of work required to publish a podcast and keep all podcast information together. I used to use a WordPress plugin called podPress, but I removed all references to it and disabled it today. Keep it simple — that’s what I decided. And the technique I worked out is relatively simple, utilizing an existing WordPress blog and FeedBurner. I wrote about it in an article to be published soon by Informit.com. When it comes out, I’ll link to it on the Aritcles page of my Web site and create a podcast based on its content.

For some reason, my “Maria Speaks” podcast has more subscribers than ever. That makes me wonder, since I haven’t released a podcast episode since September, and that episode was a bit more commercial than I like. This time last year, I was releasing one or two episodes per week. I ran out of steam last December and have been releasing them far less frequently. Still, my subscriber numbers have been climbing steadily. It doesn’t make sense to me, but it did convince me to release more content. The way I see it, when all these new subscribers start getting the new content, they’ll either like it and stick around or not like it and leave.

In the meantime, I started a new video podcast in October for my helicopter charter company, Flying M Air. I have literally thousands of photographs taken throughout the southwest, in places I fly to. I also have photos taken by my husband and by professional photographer and Bigfoot Hunter, Richard Noll.

Rick accompanied me on a test run of Flying M Air’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure. The deal we struck was that in return for all all-expense paid trip, he’d let me share copyright on all the video and still images he took. While he has the ability to sell these images as stock photos or use them in other projects, I have the ability to use them in marketing material to help sell the excursions and in articles I plan to write for publication about the trip. It was a win-win deal. Richard took lots of pictures from the air, which is something I simply can’t do while I’m flying. He also took video images with something a few clicks better than the little Canon digital video cameras I have. I’m still going through the over 1,000 still images and 3 to 4 hours of video he left on my MacBook Pro’s hard disk before departing back to the Seattle area.

I decided to turn my library of photos into video brochures for Flying M Air’s tours, charters, and excursions. The result is “Come Fly With Us!” (subscribe), which currently has three episodes. Another episode will be released Monday. (That’s one of the good things about my new podcast publishing technique; I can schedule a publication date and time. This makes it possible to record several podcast episodes at once and release them periodically over time.)

Part of the learning experience for creating this new podcast was finding legal music to play while the images were showing. I wasted a lot of time looking. Some sites promoting “royalty-free” music for podcasts required that you buy the songs to use them. That wouldn’t have been so bad if the songs were sold at iTunes prices or even a few bucks, but they were asking for $25 or $39 dollars per song. I use each song on just one video podcast episode and plan to release new titles once a week until I run out of material. That music was simply over my budget.

The much hyped GarageBand.com promised royalty-free, free downloads music. But the vast majority of artists didn’t allow free downloads of their songs. And since I was looking for relatively mellow instrumentals — you know, mood music — I had trouble finding what I wanted there in the first place.

I finally wound up on MagnaTune.com. I heard about it during an interview with the site’s founder, John Buckman, that Miraz had referred me to. MagnaTune predates iTunes by about two weeks. Although it has a limited number of artists on board, it offers very reasonable licensing of its music for podcast use. I’ve been getting tunes for my “Come Fly with Us!” podcasts from MagnaTunes since then and giving credit to the artists at the end of each video. I hope they sell some music.

Speaking of music, if you’ve been listening to Maria Speaks for a while now, you may have noticed that I changed the “theme song” for this podcast. The reason: I had a one-year licensing agreement with FreePlay Music for the old tune, Floater. Last year, when I bought that license, it cost $25/year, which I thought was reasonable. When I went to renew, the price had gone up to $100/year. I guess they decided to cash in when podcasting took off. That’s above my budget for a free podcast that doesn’t even earn any advertising revenue, so I decided to find a new tune. The new tune is is a segment from a nameless bit that I got off a public domain music CD I acquired back in 1996. I spent about an hour yesterday going through the one thousand plus songs on that CD set to pick this one. I’m not sure how much I really like it, but I do need something for my opening and closing credits.

The main topic of this podcast episode was supposed to be a quick discussion of some of the podcasts I listen to regularly. So let me dive into that for a few minutes.

I want to start off by telling you what I don’t listen to. I don’t like podcasts that mix discussion and “Garage Band” music. For example, I used to listen to a podcast about words hosted by two guys who seemed to guess more about word origins than actually research them. They’d pick few words or phrases and do a 40-minute podcast about them. The way they’d stretch out that podcast is by inserting a few Garage Band songs into it. Trouble was, their taste in music was nothing like mine, so I found myself having to fast forward through the music filler to get to the discussion meat. Fast forwarding is not always easy when you’re listening on an iPod and driving in traffic. When I realized that the content I was interested in wasn’t that good to begin with, I dropped the podcast. Ditto for the writing podcast some woman was doing. I wasn’t listening to hear music. I was listening to hear content. If the content was music related, the music would make sense. But it wasn’t and it didn’t.

In general, I don’t listen to music podcasts at all. Finding new music is low on my priority list. So if you you think you might find some tips for new and exciting music podcasts here, you will be disappointed.

What I do like listening to is podcasts that can enlighten me, teach me new things, or make me laugh with intelligent humor. I listen to podcasts primarily when I’m driving or flying, although I do have a i-Fusion speaker thing that makes it easy to listen when I’m working in the kitchen, making dinner or tidying up. So if I can be trapped in a place doing a relatively mindless thing and listen to something that’ll expand my horizons or make me laugh, I’m pretty happy.

That said, here’s a brief summary of some of the podcasts I listen to. You can find links to these podcasts on the transcript for this podcast. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com and click the Podcast link in the navigation bar to find it.

First on the list are a handful National Public Radio (or NPR) podcasts. There are 355 of these podcasts and I’ve tried at least 20 of them. I listen to five of them regularly.

  • NPR: Story of the Day is a daily selection of a story from NPR’s programming. These stories are wide-ranging in topics: business, war, travel, entertainment — you name it.
  • NPR: Business Story of the Day is a daily selection of a business story from NPR’s programming. Stories cover anything business related, from Silicon Valley news bits to global oil production information and lots of stuff in between. It keeps me informed about the business world.
  • NPR: Satire from the Unger Report is a weekly podcast of satire by Brian Unger. It’ll make you laugh — and think.
  • NPR: Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me! is a weekly radio quiz show about the news. It has a panel of three celebrities (no, not the kind in People magazine) and call-in contestants. The questions and answers lean toward the comical, so the show is extremely entertaining.
  • NPR: Sunday Puzzle is a weekly podcast of word games with an NPR host, Will Shortz (of the New York Times), and a telephone contestant.

I’ve tried other NPR podcasts, but eventually lost interest in them. And as I prepared this list, I noticed a bunch of new ones to try out. So I might report on some additional podcasts from NPR in the future.

I also listen to American Public Media (APM) Future Tense. It’s a great podcast with short episodes about technology topics.

I listen to three PBS podcasts:

  • American Experience is a podcast with short episodes about historical topics. Recent episodes included the Gold Rush and New York.
  • NOVA is a podcast of brief stories from the NOVA science television show.
  • NOW is a podcast of rather lengthy stories form the NOW news television show. Sometimes the stories interest me and I listen to them. Other times, the stories don’t interest me and I just delete them.

I also watch a NOVA video podcast, which I find excellent. It combines science information with video and still images in a 2 to 3 minute podcast. I like some episodes so much that I save them as movies on my iPod so I can show them to others.

Speaking of video podcasts, I also subscribe to a number of others:

  • GARY-PAUL TV is a video podcast of weird stuff published by Gary-Paul Prince of Peachpit Press. My favorite episode, which I’ve saved as a movie for future viewing, is “Drinking and Driving Texas Style.”
  • Comedy Central: Stand-Up is a video podcast of stand up comedy segments. I only like about half of these, but the ones I like arae really good, so I keep checking in.
  • National Geographic Video Shorts are short video segments from National Geographic television shows.

I also used to enjoy a video podcast called CockpitCast, which showed video out the front window of various commuter jets as they landed at airports in western U.S. cities, but there hasn’t been a new release in a long time, so I don’t know if the pilots are still doing it.

Another aviation podcast I enjoy is Betty in the Sky with a Suitcase. Betty is a flight attendant who loves to travel. She brings along her tape recorded and gets stories from other flight attendants, pilots, and people at the places she flies to. The stories are great but the audio quality is pretty bad sometimes. Still, I think it’s worth a listen. My favorite story? The one where a passenger who died of natural causes during a flight was not declared dead until after the flight was more than halfway to its destination.

For tech news and info, I’ve been trying two Wired magazine podcasts:

  • Wired Magazine is a podcast of short pieces from Wired magazine columns.
  • Wired News is a podcast of short news stories from Wired magazine.

I also subscribe to Slate magazine‘s Daily podcast, which includes interviews about Slate’s online pieces as well as audio versions of some of Slate’s online pieces. It gives me a chance to “read” Slate without having to visit the site. Of course, I only get a small portion of the thoughtful gems available online. I used to subscribe to Slate’s Explainer podcast, but have given it up because the topics weren’t all that interesting to me. You might like them, though, so check them and out see for yourself.

I subscribe to the WordPress podcast because of my interest in WordPress software. I admit that I’ve downloaded all episodes and have listened to just three of them. I think the podcast is good, but I have to be in the right frame of mind to listen to them.

The same goes for the Podcasting Underground podcast. Good, informative stuff, but I have to be in the mood to listen to information about podcasting.

For politics, I listen to a pair of real left-wingers. Sorry, but I am not a conservative at all, neo or otherwise.

  • Real Time with Bill Maher is an hour-long podcast of Maher’s HBO television series. He does an interview and then discusses one or more current political topics with a panel of three that usually includes one celebrity entertainer and one political figure. His panels always include someone sitting on the right, so both sides are represented. While I don’t agree with everything I hear, I like to hear the various viewpoints on current political topics. New Rules is a much shorter podcast that includes just the New Rules he lists at the end of his show.
  • MSNBC Countdown with Keith Olbermann is a collection of Olbermann segments from his MSNBC Countdown television show. Olbermann is a Bush basher — do doubt about it — and it amazes me that he says some of the things he says. It’s a real example of the First Amendment in action — if Olbermann said these kinds of things just once in a place like North Korea or Iran or Iraq under Saddam Hussein, he would have been shot dead for treason. But in our country, we’re allowed to voice all kinds of opinions. Olbermann’s aren’t the kind that’ll ever get on Fox News. My favorite bit? The count of times our president said “Stay the course” after Tony Snow told the press he’d only said it eight times. Classic reporting.

I also started listening to Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show on FreeFM, PennRadio. Penn Jillette is the big, fast-talking guy from the magic duo of Penn and Teller. An atheist (his Nevada license plate is the word “ATHEIST”) and libertarian, he definitely has some non-standard views of politics. But he also covers non-political topics. I don’t enjoy all of Penn’s podcast episodes — I probably delete about half of them without listening to more than a few minutes — but I like enough of them to keep my subscription. One of my favorite episodes was his interview of Phyllis Diller (who I didn’t even know was still alive). Ms. Diller had some fascinating stories to tell and I was especially touched by Penn’s patience when her memory failed her more than once during the interview.

And finally, one of the first podcasts I ever subscribed to, podictionary. This daily podcast, with 2 to 5 minute episodes, discusses the origin of a word or phrase. A weekly digest version is also available. Many, many thanks to Charles Hodgson for his dedication to the subject of word history.

Now you know what I’m listening to. What are you listening to? Share your comments and suggestions with me and other listeners by posting your comments on the transcript for this episode. Go to www.aneclecticmind.com, click the Podcasts link in the navigation bar, and scroll down until you find the “Episode 31: Podcast Stuff” entry. Or just use the Search box to search for the number 31. Then use the Comments link at the bottom of the entry to read other people’s comments and add your own.

And as always, thanks for listening. More later.

A Whinny in the Night…

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…means there’s something wrong.

Horses are generally very quiet animals. They spend their lives eating, pooping, and sleeping. And they do it without vocalizations.

So when I woke last night at about 1:30 AM to the sound of a horse whinnying, I didn’t just roll over and go back to sleep.

Although Wickenburg has traditionally been a horse-property town, the new subdivisions going in all over town don’t allow horses. How could they, with lot sizes shrinking from over an acre per house (we have 2-1/2 acres) to 1/2 acre or less? Even the subdivisions with relatively large lots bordering open land — Saddle Ridge comes to mind — have prohibited horses. Many horse people are moving out of town and existing horse property is being bought by newcomers who don’t have horses. So while there used to be nine horses in our immediate area, there are now only five. And two of them are ours.

Jake and Cherokee at Howard MesaJake and Cherokee are a pair of Quarter Horses. Jake is a former ranch horse that was likely abused — or at least handled roughly — during his working life. He’s very hand shy — don’t try to pet his face! — and doesn’t like to be bothered on his free time. To him, that means any time there isn’t a halter on his face or a saddle on his back. But get him saddled up and he’ll do whatever you want. Jake’s about 25 years old now, which is getting up there in years for a horse. He’s sorrel (reddish brown) and has a swayback. He’s the alpha male in our little herd, bossing around his buddy and terrorizing any other horse we might put in with them.

Cherokee is a paint Quarter Horse. He’s a very pretty boy and he knows it. Previous owners spoiled him and neglected to train him properly, so when we got him, he was difficult to handle and rather “bratty.” Over time, I showed him who was boss. He still tries to get away with things — stopping for no reason on a trail, dancing around while being saddled, biting Jake’s back leg on a trail ride — so whoever rides him has to be on constant vigilance. We don’t put visitors on Cherokee’s back. Cherokee taught me how to fall off a horse — and it took me several lessons over that first year to get it right. I taught him that rabbits were nothing to be afraid of. He’s about 17 now and very fat because he manages to eat more than half the food when we feed the two horses together.

Anyone who thinks that horses are just big dumb animals have obviously not spent any time around horses. Each horse has its own personality and, once you get to know a horse, you can predict what he’ll do in any situation. Jake is all business. He’s calm and will never kick or bite anyone — including another horse — while under saddle. You could drive a freight train right by him while there’s a rider on his back and he’d probably stand his ground until the train was gone. He’s very standoffish when he’s not working. Cherokee is the complete opposite. He’s friendly and will often come up to the fence when another rider goes by, just to silently say hello. He’ll always come to the fence when our friend Pete comes by with his grandkids or when John and Lorna stop by. He knows they bring treats and he wants to get the carrot or apple they’ve got for him. He loves to be petted and brushed and talked to. But get a saddle on him and take him out on the trail and you never know what might spook him or how he’ll behave.

The two horses are buddies, although it wasn’t Jake’s idea. Jake seems to hate every horse while Cherokee seems to love every horse. So when we first put them together, Jake would chase Cherokee away from him and his food and Cherokee would keep coming back for more. He’d be bitten and kicked but he’d take it like a dope. In time, he wore Jake down and now Jake doesn’t chase him off so often. It’s like he’s given up because he knows how useless it is.

Of the two of them, Jake is more vocal. He whinnies around feeding time, when he sees one of us around the hay shed preparing the food. It’s like he’s nagging us. “Hurry up! I’m hungry.” It’s an impatient whinny. Although Cherokee’s life revolves around food, he’s quiet about it.

The only other time they’ll whinny is when they’re separated. Horses are herd animals. They like to be together. When one of them is taken out for a ride or to the vet without the other, the remaining horse whinnies. Sometimes they both whinny. But if the one taken out is with other horses, he’s okay and usually stays quiet.

Sometimes when you get a bunch of strange horses together — like when we go on a trail ride with the Wickenburg Horsemen’s Association — they’ll whinny at each other. But our boys don’t usually participate in that ritual. They’re generally very quiet.

So when I heard a whinny in the middle of the night, I knew something was up. And since only two houses in the neighborhood have horses, there was a good chance that the problem was in our corral.

Now a lot of people who don’t live in a warmer climate think that horses live in barns. In colder climates, they often do. But not in Arizona. Most of the horses that live in Arizona live outdoors year-round. Our boys have two corrals: a large acre+ enclosure down in the wash (a dry riverbed) that runs through our property and a smaller pen with a turnout halfway up the driveway to our house. They spend the day together down in the wash, unless heavy rain is possible (and the wash could run). They eat their morning meal of alfalfa and grass and stretch out on the sand in the late morning for a nap. They spend the afternoon nibbling on whatever grass is left or biting the seed pods off the mesquite trees around them or just standing around the water trough dozing. At around 6 PM, we move them to the upper corral, where each of them has his own enclosure. We separate them in this area so Jake has enough time to eat. He eats more slowly than Cherokee and if they were always together, Cherokee would always get at least 3/4 of the food. We feed them alfalfa and grass, as well as a concoction we call “bucket” that includes red beet pulp, grain, bran, and a bunch of other stuff to add nutrition and keep their digestive systems clear. Jake also gets a “senior” pelleted feed and pelletized alfalfa to help fatten him up. If we didn’t do this, his ribs would show all the time.

Although they’re in separate enclosures, the two enclosures are adjacent to each other. In fact, you have to walk through one of them to get to the gate of the other. So they’re together. They just can’t share their food.

The other day, Jake wasn’t feeling too well. He was lethargic in the morning and we thought he was sick. Possibly with colic, a digestive problem that kills horses. We got him to the vet and he was checked out. The doctor gave him a shot and he seemed okay.

So when I heard the second whinny in the middle of the night, I thought of Jake.

Mike was awake as I pulled on my sweatpants. I asked him to come with me. I told him I was afraid of what I might find. We got a flashlight and started down the driveway. I immediately saw Jake, standing in his part of the corral, looking up at as as we came down. He was fine.

But Cherokee was nowhere in sight and the gate to his part of the corral was wide open.

Remember what I said about separation? Cherokee had wandered off and Jake was missing him. Thus, the whinny.

Now there were only two places he would have gone by himself. The closest (but less likely) was the lower corral. We walked down there and peeked in. The gate was open and there was no food down there, so there was no reason he’d be hanging out. He wasn’t. But it made sense to check there first.

The more likely destination was our neighbor’s horses. Remember what I said about horses liking to be together? We crossed the wash to their corral while Jake whinnied again behind us. My flashlight picked up Cherokee’s brown and white coat immediately. But he was inside one of their spare corrals. And when we got there, we found the gate securely latched behind him. He gave us a typically dopey look as we put the lead rope around him and started walking home. Our neighbor’s dog barked like crazy. Jake whinnied. One of our neighbor’s horses whinnied. It was a heck of a racket at 2 AM.

We walked Cherokee up the driveway and put him back in his corral. We opened the gate between the two horses. We closed the outer gate and secured it with a chain. That chain had been bought years ago when Jake learned to open gates. It appeared that Cherokee had learned the same trick.

In the morning, our neighbor stopped by to tell us our horse was in his corral. It was still dark and he didn’t realize we’d already retrieved him. He said that he’d been wandering around their place at about 10:30 PM. They’d caught him and put him in the corral for safekeeping. I’d figured it had been something like that.

But what I still can’t figure out is why he left in the first place. It’s so unlike Cherokee to take a walk by himself. The last time he’d opened the gate, he’d just hung around near Jake until we found him.

Could it be that our fat little boy is growing up?

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.