Tag Archives: Wickenburg

Heli-Shopping

Posted on by
Comment

The latest craze? I wish!

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

Here’s the deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mission accomplished. In style.

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

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

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

How do you make a million dollars in aviation?

Posted on by
Comment

Start with two million dollars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doing the Math

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paying for It

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

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

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

In-Flight “Emergency”…

Posted on by
3

…on a check ride.

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

Real Throttle Chops are a Thing of the Past

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

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

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

So What’s an Instructor/Examiner to Do?

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

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

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

My Recent Mechanical Failure

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

“What?”

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

“That light,” I replied.

He saw the light. “No,” he said.

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

“Is the circuit breaker out?” I asked.

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

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

“No.”

(For the record, I would have.)

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

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

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

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

Postscript

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

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

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

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

Web Site vs. Blog

Posted on by
10

What’s the Difference?

Today I got a phone call from our local newspaper’s “business advocate” — the guy who writes stories about business. He was researching an article about blogging and figured that I was the most active blogger — if not the only blogger — in town, so I might be able to to provide some information about it. He wasn’t aware that I’d co-authored a book about WordPress blogging software (WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide) in 2006 and he probably wasn’t aware that I wrote Putting Your Small Business on the Web back in 2000. He probably also doesn’t know that I’ve written four books about Web authoring software (various versions of PageMill, now defunct) and that I’ve been building and managing Web sites since 1994 (although I’m not crazy enough to do it for a living).

We stumbled a bit in our conversation. He referred to my Web site, wickenburg-az.com, as a blog. (The site has been around since 1999, predating the blogging phenomena by at least 3 to 4 years.) I responded that it wasn’t a blog, that it was a Web site built with blogging software. And then he asked me what the difference was.

I had to think about it. What is the difference between a Web site and a blog?

They’re very much alike.

Let’s take a look at the similarities.

  • Web sites and blogs are both published on the Web and can be read with any Web browser. This gives them the same basic look and feel and similar user experiences. Web sites built with blogging software can look and feel just like a blog, even if that’s not what they are intended to be.
  • They depend on good, useful content. Web site visitors and blog readers come to read content. If the content is good and meets their needs, they’ll be back for more. If the content sucks, they won’t.

But they are different.

Of course, I needed to explain how they were different — not how they were the same. The response I came up with centered around the purpose of visitors coming to to the site, but there are more differences.

  • Web site visitors come to a site to look for specific information. That information does not need to be new. It just needs to be what the visitor is looking for. For example, I visit the HP Web site when I need a new driver for one of my printers. I know it’ll be there and I don’t care if it’s been there for five years. People visit wickenburg-az.com to get basic information about Wickenburg: what it’s like, what to do there, etc. But blog readers visit or subscribe to blogs to get fresh information or insight on topics that are important to them. I read ProBlogger, for example, because it has timely articles that can help me understand how to be a better blogger. People visit aneclecticmind.com to read articles like this one about blogging, or other articles about flying, or even other articles about what it’s like to live in a place like Wickenburg — all from my point of view.
  • Blogs tend to be more opinion-based than Web sites. Sure, HP is going to tell you on their Web site that their printers are the best, but what would you expect? On my blog, I’ll tell you what I think about my HP printer and compare it to other printers I might own or have experience with. I’ll also tell you what I think of Apple Geniuses or local restaurants or life revolving around the Internet. (Although some locals might find this hard to believe, I keep most of my negative opinions of Wickenburg out of wickenburg-az.com. Most.) The opinion aspect makes blogs more personal than a Web site.
  • Blogs rely on fresh content. It’s commonly accepted that a blogger should post at least 3 to 5 new entries a week. Web sites, on the other hand, are more static and don’t require as much updating. Their visitors don’t expect it, either.

Does it matter?

Who knows? But it’s made me think about blogging a bit more than usual lately. And I’m sure it will lead to a few more articles here about what makes a blog a blog in the near future.

Long Lost Cousin Found

Posted on by
Comment

A true story involving an odd last name, the Daytona 500, Google, and one of my Web sites.

The other day, I got an e-mail message from a guy named Steven P. Obviously, his name was not just P. It began with a P and was somewhat unusual. Pretend, for simplicity and to keep this guy’s identity private, that it was just plain P.

Here’s what he wrote.

My name is Steven P. I was getting tickets for the Daytona 500 and was surprised to find another P in the Ticket registery. All I got was Mike P from Pheonix. I googled his name and got a website with your writings. I also got a guest book for Benny Parson’s that Mike had left a message at. I was just wondering if you know Mike? I have lived in Tampa Florida all my life. I have family in Bradenton. All of them have passed, just cousins left. I was just trying to find out if we are family. If you know him and could tell him about this message I would be thankful. My EMail is scp@yahoo.com [not his real address].
Thanks, Steven

I don’t know who or what Benny Parson’s is, but I did track down a comment written by Mike P on my wickenburg-az.com Web site.

I don’t know Mike P. He’s not listed in the Wickenburg phone book. And I wrote back to Steven P to tell him that. But, at the same time, I told Steven P that I’d send Mike P a copy of his message. Since WordPress requires commenters to enter an e-mail address, I had one for Mike P. (Oddly enough, it was also a yahoo.com address.) So I forwarded Steven P’s message to Mike P with an apology for bothering him just in case they weren’t related.

A few days later, I got the following message from Steven P:

Thank you so much for forwarding my Email to Mike P. He Emailed me back and we are family. His Dad is my cousin who lives in Florida. We don’t see each other and I never knew he had kids. Thanks again. Steven

Now doesn’t that make you feel all warm and cuddly inside?