Tag Archives: weather

Wind Gone, Thunderstorms Arrive

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My lessons on learning to fly in weather continue on a new track.

It’s monsoon season here in Arizona.

Monsoon season is the time of year when there’s a seasonal wind shift that brings moisture off the Gulf of Mexico up and into New Mexico and Arizona. (It may get as far north as Colorado and Utah, but I think we get most of it.) Most days start off sunny and pretty clear, with just a few friendly clouds floating low in the sky. But then the sun kicks in and puts those clouds to work. Convective activity builds them into towering cumulus clouds that move in an east to west flow (sometimes southeast to northwest; sometimes northeast to southwest). The clouds build very quickly and, after a while, gang up to form storm cells. The rain from the biggest of these clouds can start as early as lunchtime. But if they’re still around and still building in the afternoon, they turn into ugly cumulonimbus and start throwing lightning bolts and, on occasion, hail.

Fortunately, these storms are extremely localized and easy to see. Pilots flying at our altitudes (i.e., 300-500 feet above the ground) can usually fly around them. We can even get pretty close to them if we have to.

On Wednesday, my first day back to work, I got my first t-storm lesson. I was a spare pilot, flying someone else’s ship for lunch. I was returning from a tour, about 3 miles out, when a lightning bolt came out of an innocent looking cloud and struck the ground about a half mile away from me. I immediately saw smoke in the trees near where it had struck. Shit. I hurried back. When I made my 2-out call and they told me my next flight, I told them about the lightning, sure that they’d put on a weather hold. Silly me. I was told I’d better get used to it.

Later, the Chief Pilot told me that I was actually safer in the air than spinning on the pad when there was lightning around. Lightning wanted to hit the ground, not something in the air. I found his words comforting. (If they’re not correct, please don’t tell me. I’d prefer blissful ignorance on this topic.)Yesterday, I got a better lesson. I was the top priority pilot, which meant that I was going to be flying all day. That was fine with me. I’d rather fly a helicopter than waste time in the break room. The storms built up magnificently throughout the morning and by lunchtime were raining down in various places on the North Rim and far to the east. I had a lunch break and returned to fly at 1:20 PM. The storms had built up and were darker than before. I did a few flights and had no trouble staying clear — the storms weren’t on our route.

But then I did an Imperial Tour, which took me to the east. A storm I’d spied out that way seemed very close to Grandview Ridge. The tower had even commented on it. When I got out to Grandview, it was raining heavily on us, but we were on the storm’s northern edge. The lightning was still about 2 miles to our south. The temperature had dropped considerably — enough for me to close both vents — but the air was still smooth, with no heavy winds, updrafts, or downdrafts. I made a pirep to our company frequency, telling them about the storm and that it was still good to fly on the east side. Then we broke out of the cloudy area and were treated to views of a sun-drenched painted desert and the spectacle of the Little Colorado River’s flood flow turning the Colorado River brown at the confluence.

I was at the Split when I heard some chatter on our FM frequency. It appears that the storm we’d skirted had come straight to the airport. It was dumping “quarter-inch hail” on the helipad. Chuck’s voice sounded unusually perturbed as he reported all this to everyone. Visibility was zero-zero. He told the pilots on their way back to stay clear. To land near the ponds. No, the storm was moving that way fast. Land near the triangle.

What followed was chatter between the pilots in that area, deciding what they were going to do. By that time, I was over the North Rim and had a clear view to the south. Although I could see the South Rim, anything beyond it was lost in a dark gray cloud. With lightning. I got on the FM frequency and told them where I was. Should I double back and return the way I’d come so I could come in behind the storm? I was advised to continue. Although I doubted the wisdom of that, I followed orders. These guys had far more experience with canyon storm systems than I did.

The chatter started up again. AirStar, another helicopter company, had flown south to Red Butte and was able to come in from there. The pilots about to land (or landed, perhaps) decided to circumvent the storm system by flying around its western edge to the south. One by one, they made their way home and were told to shut down. Soon, I was one of only two pilots still in the canyon, now in the Dragon Corridor. The other pilot, Tyler, was about 15 minutes behind me, doing the same tour I was.

At first, it didn’t look good. There was definitely a storm system in front of me. But by the time I got to Dragon’s Head, I realized that it was two separate storms. Dripping Springs, where I had to fly, was remarkably clear, with a storm on either side. I reported this to Tyler when he asked. He sounded nervous. (But that could be his voice; he often sounds like that.) When I got to Dripping Springs, I got a good look at the storm that had hit the airport. It was a monster, right on my usual flight path, a wall of gray that completely blocked out everything. No flying through that. But I could clearly see Red Butte in the distance. I reported all this to Tyler. Someone got on the FM radio and started giving me detailed instructions how how to get it. But I didn’t need them. It was pretty obvious where I had to go. I made my call to the Tower. I told the controller where I was and what I planned — to skirt the western edge of the storm and come in from there. The controller read me the ATIS info, I thanked him, and continued in.

HailA moment later, I could see the tower. The airport looked clear. I reported this to Tyler, too. By this time, he was at Tower of Ra, still about 3 minutes from the Rim. It would be close for him, especially if the two storms decided to merge. I called our tower about three miles out and was assigned a pad. Then I called Grand Canyon tower and was given permission to cross the runway. It was raining lightly there but my landing was uneventful. All the other helicopters were already there, tied down. There was hail on the ground, making the scene look more like something out of a Christmas card than mid-summer. Here’s a photo I took later of the hail on the ground. I included my shoe to give you an idea of size. The smallest of the ice pellets was about the size of a pea. Some were about twice that size. Amazingly, there were still piles of the stuff at the bottom of gutter drainpipes at the Papillon hangar midday, the next day.

Tyler came in just as I was tying down my blades.

When it Rains, It Pours

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Monsoon season arrives and foils some travel plans.

Monsoon season started the other day. Although it didn’t seem very serious about raining at first, it soon got right down to business.

I was supposed to start work at 6:55 AM this morning at the Grand Canyon. The plan was to fly up from Wickenburg at 5:00 AM. Even with mild headwinds, I would still get to work on time.

Yesterday evening, we prepared by rolling out Three-Niner-Lima, topping off its fuel, putting some of my luggage on board, tying down its blades, and putting its cockpit cover on. I’d drive to the airport first thing in the morning, stow my car in the hangar, do a quick preflight, and take off.

I knew it was monsoon season. And I knew that thunderstorms were possible any afternoon. But I’d be leaving in the morning. And we hardly ever got thunderstorms in the morning.

The lightning woke me at 1 AM. Out to the south. I got up and peered out the french doors in our bedroom though half-asleep eyes. There was a storm to the south. I went to the den and peered out the windows that looked north. Nothing. It was still early. Whatever storm was raging would have plenty of time to wear itself out by the time I had to leave.

I slept fitfully for the rest of the night. When my alarm went off at 4 AM, I was already half awake.

And there was still lightning to the south.

I watched the Weather Channel. It showed a storm morning northwest. But those darn maps don’t have enough detail to really see where the storm is.

I hopped into the shower. An enormous boom thundered over my head as I rinsed off. I knew where the map was showing the storm.

It was unnaturally dark at 4:30 AM when I came downstairs. I was pretty sure I was going to have to drive. And be about an hour late for work. I called and left messages for the bosses. Mike had already made my coffee and I drank it, listening to the thunder and lightning and pouring rain. At one point, the storm seemed to be fading. I opened the front door and looked out to the north. A bolt of lightning shot from the sky about two miles away. It seemed to say: “Are you crazy? Of course you can’t fly.”

So I drove. I took the Honda, which is a pleasure to drive. I had to stop at the airport to pick up some of my luggage (in the rain) and then fill up with gas. But by 5:00 AM, I was on the road, heading north while the rain pelted the car, washing off weeks of accumulated dust.

As an Arizona driver, I have a problem every monsoon season: I find that I have to reacquaint myself with the controls for my windshield wipers. Although I’d purchased the Honda back in August 2003, I’d only driven it in the rain once or twice. It had less than 5,000 miles on it. That morning, it was dark when I tried to figure the wipers out. I finally learned enough to turn them on and off. Later in the drive, I’d get fancy with the different speeds and the washer fluid.

It rained hard with lightning in every direction all the way through Wickenburg to Congress. I got stuck behind a slow car on 89 and passed him without problem. There weren’t many other cars on the road. The skies stayed dark as I wound my way up Yarnell Hill and through Yarnell. The rain had stopped up there, but the pavement was wet. And before I could even turn off my wipers, the rain started all over again — with a vengeance. And that’s when I made a discovery about the roads in Arizona: they’re not crowned.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, think of the roads in a place like New York or New Jersey, where it’s common to get rain at least once a week. (Sheesh. I can’t even remember what that’s like!) The roads are taller in the middle — right around where the dividing line is — than on the edges. When it rains, the water hits the hump and rolls off either side. The result: the roads aren’t likely to get flooded.

In Arizona, the roads appear to be flat. Of course, that asphalt gets pretty hot every day at least half the year. People drive on it and their tires go in the same two ruts on either side of the dividing line. The result: the road has a pair of ruts in each lane. When it rains, the water fills the ruts.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that the ruts are probably about 1-3 inches deep and about 2 feet wide. And my little car, driving 10 mph below the legal limit of 65, could not handle all that water. It began to hydroplane. That required me to cut speed to 50 mph or less. Not a good idea when I was already going to be at least an hour late for work. So I improvised. I drove with one wheel on the line and the other on the hump between the two ruts. Because there weren’t many other cars on the road that early in the morning, I was able to drive without danger of scaring an oncoming car off the road. And I could keep up my speed.

By Kirkland Junction, the rain had stopped again. By Kirkland, it was starting to get light. After Skull Valley, I was able to turn off my headlights. The sun was rising behind the Mingus Mountains as I drove into Prescott. There were still plenty of clouds up there, but the ceilings were high. If only I lived there! Then I could have flown.

I stopped for breakfast at McDonald’s in Chino Valley. What’s another 5 minutes when you’re already an hour late?

I debated taking the top down, but decided not not. It was quite cool outside and I didn’t want to have to stop to put it back up if I ran into more rain.

I was on I-40 between Ash Fork and Williams when 6:55 AM came and went. I imagined the other pilots outside, preflighting their helicopters. I wondered if my bosses were pissed off and decided that it really didn’t matter.

I rolled into Tusayan at 7:45. By the time I got up to the break room and logged in, it was 7:55. An hour late. The priority board showed that I’d been made a spare. I wound up flying a total of only 1.5 hours all day.

I couldn’t tell if my boss was pissed. He has a way about him that sometimes makes him impossible to read. I told him that it wouldn’t happen again. That from now on, I’d fly or drive up the afternoon before I had to start work.

Of course, that’s when it normally rains this time of year.

What I’m Learning About Flying Helicopters

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My first real job as a pilot is actually the next step in my learning experience.

Before I started working at Papillon, my only flying experiences had been in Robinson R22 and R44 helicopters, with an hour here and there in a Bell 47, Rotorway Exec, and Hughes 500c. I was a piston pilot. I knew Robinson helicopters extremely well. And I knew the basics of flying any other helicopter.

The work I do at Papillon is taking me to the next level. Actually, it may be helping me skip a few levels to get to a much higher level.

A New (to Me) Ship

The first big difference is the ship I’m flying. No, it’s not a state of the art Eurocopter or fancy NOTAR ship. It’s a plain old (emphasis on old) Bell 206L1 Long Ranger with the Allison C30P conversion. The engine conversion gives it more power than a standard 206L1. And that’s a good thing, because at the Canyon, we need all the power we can get.

Ground school covered all the details of how the ship’s systems work. I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t fully understand everything I was taught. But I understood enough to pass a check ride and to intelligently preflight every morning.

Starting is a challenge. The problem is hot starts — getting the turbine outlet temperature (TOT) too high during start. It’s evidently easier to hot start when you start off the helicopter’s battery. So when you’re new at Papillon, they encourage you to start with an APU (auxiliary power unit). I’m not taking any chances. I’ve been flying for about two months and I still always start with an APU.

Learning about Torque

Another challenge is flying without overtorquing the engine. There’s a torque meter that displays the current power setting. I equate it with the manifold pressure gauge on an R22/R44. But they’re very different. If you redline an R22, the worst that can happen is that you get a rotor RPM droop. If you overtorque a turbine engine, all kinds of inspections have to be done. And if you really overtorque it, it’ll cost $100,000 to fix things back up the way they should be. Although Papillon won’t take that out of my paycheck, I still don’t want to be the one who does it.

Of course, there isn’t much of a chance of overtorquing in cruise flight. It’s when you’re hovering, taking off, or landing that it’s more likely to happen. And that’s where my re-education began.

Trouble is, the Robinson taught me that when I’m landing, I can reduce power on the way down and pull it all back in relatively quickly at the bottom, to come to a landing. Doing that in a 206 could easily result in an overtorque or a hard landing. So I learned to reduce power well before I begin my descent. Then, as I’m coming down, I increase power. The result is a smooth, controlled landing to a hover.

And let’s not even talk about what the Robinson taught me about pulling power at take-off! If I did that in the 206, I’d be overtorquing at least once a day.

Another interesting thing about torque is that pressing the left pedal increases torque. This can really get you into trouble in a crosswind. If you let it start getting away from you, rotating to the right, you can quickly get beyond the point where left pedal can stop you. This happened to me once and it almost got ugly. The trick, I found, is to lower the collective if you have to add a lot of left pedal. That reduces the amount of pedal you need to press and reduces power so pressing the darn pedal doesn’t overtorque the ship.

(If you’re an experienced turbine helicopter pilot reading this, you may be thinking, “Duh-uh.” Have patience. All this is new to me and I’m learning as I go along. If you find this too boring to read, move on to something else. Or go watch TV.)

Wind: Friend or Enemy?

I’ve also learned a lot about flying in strong winds. Someone once told me he had a flight instructor who said, “The wind is your friend.” I think that can be true. But I also think the wind can be your enemy.

Why a friend? Well, suppose you’re flying at max gross weight on a hot day and you need to take off from a helipad in a relatively confined area at 6600 feet MSL. You point your nose into that 20 knot wind, push the cyclic forward a bit, and voila! You’re at ETL (effective translational lift) and climbing. Same goes for landing. You can stay in ETL as you descend and maybe even as you hover to your helipad if there’s enough of a headwind.

Why an enemy? Well, what if that 20 knot wind at the helipad isn’t a headwind? What if it’s a crosswind? Or, worse yet, as you’re trying to set down on the pad, what if it’s a tailwind? Or what if it’s 24 gusting to 36? Or gusting to 50? (Yes, it does get that windy.)

I’ve flown in very strong winds and I’ve learned that taking off and landing isn’t always the biggest problem. At the Canyon, the problem is sometimes in the Canyon itself. Those nasty winds make nasty turbulence as they whip over the enormous rock formations. 3,000 foot-per-minute updrafts aren’t unheard of. Neither are their counterparts: 3,000 foot-per-minute downdrafts. Turbulence that smacks you from one side as you come past a butte. Or makes your helicopter seem like the car on a roller coaster.

Oddly enough, sometimes the worst turbulence are over the forest south of the rim. When you’re flying about 200 feet over the treetops, you’re really in it. It can seem pretty bad and you can feel bad for your passengers. But then you break over the rim and enter the Canyon and everything calms down. Go figure.

There’s no pattern to it. All the pilots have their own theories of how things should be when the wind is blowing from one direction or another. But it’s not science and it isn’t reliable. You never know how it’s going to be until you’re in it. And then it’s too late to do anything about it.

Power Settings

I’ve also learned a lot about power settings for different ships at different weights in different conditions. Papillon’s rule of thumb is to set the ship’s power to 70% torque and leave it there for the whole tour. While this might work in most situations, it doesn’t work in all of them.

For example, a relatively fast ship can do a North Canyon tour in the allotted time at 70% torque, but the same ship will come in too early on an Imperial Tour at that setting. So I set the power based on speed. I’d like to do 95-105 knots for a North Canyon Tour and 90-100 knots for an Imperial Tour. The difference in torque settings is usually about 5%.

Then there’s the descent on the east side of the Dragon. Both tours require a relatively quick descent in 2 to 3 miles. On a North Canyon tour, I descend from 8200 feet to 7500 feet. On an Imperial Tour, I descend from about 8800 feet to 7500 feet. If I follow the rules, I should be at 70% during the descent, pushing the cyclic forward to nose down. But that also increases my speed. Never exceed speed (Vne) at that altitude is around 115 knots. If I’m already doing 105 knots in straight and level flight, a 500-1000 foot per minute descent is going to make me exceed Vne. So I need to reduce power — sometimes to as low as 50%.

Turbulence has a lot to do with power settings, too. If there’s a lot of turbulence, you have to reduce power. And if there are a lot of updrafts and downdrafts, power must be adjusted to keep you within the allowable altitude range.

Fortunately, I haven’t had much of a need to increase power during the tour yet. At least not beyond 75% or so.

I’m Here to Learn

Every day is a new learning experience and I’m glad. After all, that’s why I’m here. Living in my own semi-controlled, R22 dominated world isn’t much of a challenge. But flying in all kinds of conditions in a ship that’s far more sophisticated, is like going away to school. I’ll learn more about flying helicopters this summer than I have in the past four years.

And the paycheck is kind of nice, too.