Tag Archives: Williams

Real Life Helicopters: Wildlife Survey Flight

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How I spent yesterday morning.

At 5 AM yesterday morning, I was at Wickenburg Airport (E25), filling two 5.5-gallon plastic fuel cans with 100LL. I had already topped off the helicopter’s tanks and it was sitting on the ramp, waiting for me in the predawn darkness. I was scheduled to do a wildlife survey in northern Arizona at 6:30. I’d have to pick up my passenger at Williams, AZ (KCMR), an hour away by helicopter. There was no fuel at Williams, and the closest fuel stop to Williams and our survey area was 20 NM north at Valle (40G). The FBO didn’t open until 8 AM, so I wouldn’t be able to get fuel before then. The survey area was 40 NM from fuel at Valle. I wanted my client to get as much air time as possible before our first refueling stop, so I figured I’d put the 11 gallons of 100LL that I carried with me into the tanks when I arrived in Williams.

So that explains why I was at the self-serve island, filling two plastic gas cans before dawn.

A while later, I was airborne, heading north to Williams. The two gas cans were strapped into the back passenger seats. They were good cans and wouldn’t leak on my leather seats. On board was an overnight bag, in case the job went two days, a 6-pack cooler full of bottled water, and the usual survival gear. I was listening to Steely Dan on my iPod as the sun rose at my 2 o’clock position. Moments later, I crossed the ridge east of Antelope Peak, clearing it by a mere 100 feet. From there, I sped north at 110 knots airspeed to get to Williams as quickly as possible.

At Williams, AZ

I had a tail wind and the wind was blowing pretty good at Williams. 210 at 9 gusting to 18 is what the AWOS reported. There was no one in the pattern. There never is at Williams. I made all my calls, then came around from the north to land into the wind on the big, empty ramp.

The terminal, which is very nice but completely underutilized, was unlocked. “Out of Service” signs appeared on both restrooms and the water fountain. I peeked into a stall in the Ladies room. There was water in the toilet bowl. That meant it would flush, even if it didn’t refill. I had to go so I took my chances. It worked fine. That made me wonder why the signs were there.

I was topping off the tanks with those two cans of fuel when my passenger arrived. He showed me maps and we made a plan. The main part of the job was to fly down the side of a 1,000-foot cliff face, 50 to 200 feet off the top, depending on where the rock ledges were. The cliff ran north to south. The wind was coming out of the south. Although my client suggested starting from the south, I pointed out that if we started from the north, the cliff face would be on his side of the aircraft and I’d be able to fly into the wind. That would make things easier all around. He agreed.

I added some oil, burning my fingers on the hot dip stick. We climbed in, I started up, and we took off, into the wind. A westerly heading put us on course for the survey area.

It was about a 30-minute flight. We chatted about this and that. My client was a youngish guy — certainly younger than me — and had spent more than 200 hours in airplanes and 20 hours in helicopters doing surveys like the one we were doing. As the morning wore on, he’d share a lot of his knowledge about raptors — specifically red-tailed hawks and golden eagles — with me.

The Survey

Cliffs
Satellite view of the cliff face we flew down.

We reached the survey area and I geared my mind down from 110-knot flight through 60-knots and finally down to about 20-knots. We’d survey the cliff face at this slow speed, about 50 to 100 feet away from the rock wall.

While this sounds very dangerous, it really wasn’t bad at all. Although it had been windy at Williams, it wasn’t very windy along the cliff. That might be because the wind was coming from the southeast and the tilted mesa beyond the cliff was blocking the wind, or, more likely, it simply might not have been as windy this far west. So It wasn’t as if I had to fight the wind. Flying was easy.

There were just two of us on board, so I had plenty of power, even though I was flying at about 7,000 feet MSL. I was even able to bring the helicopter into a rock, solid out-of-ground-effect hover a few times as needed.

Best of all, if I had any kind of problem — loss of tail rotor effectiveness (LTE), settling with power, engine failure — I could easily build speed by pulling away from the cliff face to my right, where a huge, open, flat valley offered unlimited landing zones at least 500 feet below us.

Frankly, I couldn’t have asked for a better setup for this kind of work. It gave me an opportunity to practice simple flying skills — especially OGE hovering and sideways flight — without having to battle the wind or worry about escape routes.

It took at least an hour to travel down the cliff face from north to south. There was a radar dome at the very south end and we could clearly hear it in our headsets, the closer we got to it. By the time we were within 1/4 mile, the sound was very annoying. I dropped beneath it to round the end of the mesa and it silenced. I realized that this was what “below the radar” really meant.

On the other side, we followed the edge of the mesa, which wasn’t nearly as well defined, north. Again, there wasn’t much wind. There also wasn’t much wildlife to survey. We popped over the top of the mesa and began following small canyons on its east side. We were looking for raptor nests. We’d found some on the cliff face, but they could also be in tall trees.

The mesa-top stuff was low-level — probably 50 to 100 feet AGL — at 30 to 60 knots airspeed. This is considerably more dangerous than the cliff face work we did earlier. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to recover from a settling with power or engine failure incident at that low airspeed/altitude combination. One of the reasons I got the job to work for this client is that I was willing to do this kind of flying. The first company they called — a flight school — refused to let its pilots fly like this. I’m willing to take this risk, so their loss is my gain.

At one point, I landed in a wide canyon so I could strip off my outer shirt. It was getting hot in the cockpit, flying so slowly with the sun shining in. We also dipped in the cooler for cold water. I didn’t bother shutting down. It was a 5 minute break and we got right back to business when we were done.

We’d flown for 2 hours from Williams when I decided it was time to go back for fuel. We traced a route northward to the edge of the survey area, then cut east to Valle. I used my GPS to pick the most direct route. There wasn’t much of interest along the way. Northern Arizona has lots of high desert plateau areas that are covered with dried grasses and a sprinkling of trees.

It took about 25 miles to get to Valle. We had a tail wind.

At Valle

Valle Airport is about 25 miles south of the Grand Canyon. I won’t pretend to know its history. I do know, however, that it’s home of the Planes of Fame Museum, which is an excellent little warbird museum. And I know that the lobby of the airport terminal is absolutely crammed with antique cars and trucks in museum quality condition.

And there were no “Out of Service” signs on the rest rooms.

The FBO guy filled the helicopter tanks and the two fuel cans. The idea with the cans was that if I flew too long on the survey and we couldn’t make it all the way back to Valle to get fuel, I could always land out in the desert, shut down, and add the 11 gallons. That would get me another 40 minutes of flight time, which was enough to reach any number of fueling locations.

I paid for the fuel and we went back outside. The FBO guy had managed to drench the fuel cans with fuel, so I had to dry them off and close them tightly before I could load them back in. I put shop towels under them to protect the seats. Still, one of them leaked a tiny bit during the flight that followed — not enough to do any damage, but enough for me to catch the occasional smell of 100LL.

We headed west again. It took nearly 35 minutes to reach the survey area. We had a head wind.

More Survey Stuff and the Flight Home

We spent the next two hours inching our way along the same cliff face. The light was better now and we spotted another nest. We also did another nearby cliff face and spent a bunch of time zigzagging along the mesa top. We found three more nests up there. The wind had also picked up, so the flying was a bit more challenging. But I’ve flown worse.

Then we headed south to check another area. We found an active prairie dog village there.

And then we were done.

I dropped my passenger off without shutting down. It was 85 NM back to Wickenburg from that point and my goal was to get there without having to detour for fuel or stop to tap into that 11 gallons on board. I bee-lined it, cruising at my best range speed of 100 knots.

For a while, as I flew over empty desert, I thought I might not make it. I considered the kind of place I could land and refuel without bothering anyone. There was no airport on or near my flight path. There wasn’t much of anything other than small mountain ranges, canyons, and rocky outcroppings. I passed over only 3 paved roads.

Then I was 15 miles north of Wickenburg, with about 8 gallons of fuel on board. No problem.

I landed and shut down. It was 95°F on the ramp. I put the helicopter away.

I’d flown 6.5 revenue hours and had learned a hell of a lot about birds.

An Off-the-Grid Thanksgiving

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A pleasant challenge.

Yesterday, on Thanksgiving Day, Mike, Jack the Dog, Alex the Bird, and I took the truck up to our getaway place north of Williams, AZ. It’s an off-the-grid camping cabin on top of a mesa, 5 miles from pavement. If you’re not familiar with the term off-the-grid, it means that it’s not connected to any public utilities. We have solar panels with related equipment for electricity, a propane gas tank, and hauled water.

We left Wickenburg at about 9 AM for the 2-1/2 hour, 154-mile drive. We made one stop on our way out of town — to buy milk and an onion — another stop at the Chino Valley Safeway gas station (where we got a 70¢/gallon discount on diesel), and a final stop at the Jack in the Box restaurant in Williams.

More about Jack in the Box

I do need to digress a tiny bit here. This was the first time since my college days 20+ years ago that I’d been in a Jack in the Box. The last one I’d been in was in Hempstead, NY. I’d been standing at the counter, waiting to place my order, when someone robbed the place by reaching over the counter and grabbing money out of the cash register drawer when it opened. The robber fled quickly — the whole thing happened in about 5 seconds. I clearly remember the manager of the place vaulting over the counter with a sawed-off shotgun. When I say it was a rough neighborhood, I’m not kidding.

The robbery isn’t why I’ve avoided Jack in the Box restaurants all these years. Back in those days, the menu at those places seemed to center around tacos that weren’t very good. I’m not a big fast-food person — I haven’t had a McDonald’s hamburger in at least 10 years — so it wasn’t easy to avoid Jack in the Box. But yesterday surprised me. Mike and I both had hamburgers (since we planned to have turkey for dinner) and agreed that they were probably the best fast food burgers we’d ever had.

Muddy Roads…Again

Anyway, we ate the burgers on the road. There was snow on the ground — maybe about 3 inches of the stuff. It was wet and didn’t completely cover the ground. The clouds were low and thick and slow-moving. Every once in a while, we’d get a clear view of some upper level clouds or some blue sky. Everything was wet and clean looking. It was so un-Arizona. It was magnificent.

Howard Mesa RoadsWe made the turn off pavement and started the five mile trek up to our mesa-top retreat. We’d gotten about 2 miles in when the road’s surface started getting snotty. That’s really the only way to describe the reddish brown dust when it gets wet enough to make mud. Soon, it had coated the truck’s tires and we were starting to fishtail. Mike put the truck in 4WD. We continued up a gentle grade. The truck would not stay pointed in the right direction. This was not a good thing since (1) the road was only a tiny bit wider than a single lane and (2) there was a deep ditch on one side with water flowing in a shallower ditch on the other side. The photo here shows what it looked like the next day, after at least two other vehicles had passed through. By this time, the snot had solidified a bit and the road was passable again.

Back in May 2005, as I summarized in my blog post, “The Roads of Howard Mesa,” Mike’s truck had slid off the road into a deep ditch about 2-1/2 miles short of our place. The conditions had been similar. We’d been fortunate in that a neighbor had seen us go off the road and had “rescued” us with a Jeep. But it had cost $250 to get a tow truck over to pull the truck out. Neither of us wanted a replay on Thanksgiving Day. So when it seemed clear that we weren’t going to make it up the hill, we decided to back down, turn around, and try another route. We wound up sliding into the shallower of the two ditches. Mike put the truck in 4WD Low and powered us down. It was a tense 5 minutes or so, but then we were making a tricky 3-point turn in a bend in the road and going back the way we’d come.

There are 3 roads to access the lots at the top of the mesa. The access road for two of them was the snot-covered road we knew we couldn’t pass. The other road went up to the west side of the mesa. Our friends live up there year-round and the road up is kept in good condition. Between their lot and our side of the mesa is a 2-track “road” carved in by ranchers and hunters years ago. It’s not maintained at all and seldom used. In fact, I’d venture to guess that I use it more than anyone else, since it’s a “shortcut” to our friends’ place from ours. But the good thing about the road is that it’s relatively level and free of the snot-like mud on all the mesa’s other roads.

So we went that way. It was a 2-mile stretch of snow-covered ruts. Mike took it in 4WD at a pretty steady pace. We were both very glad to see the big metal water tank at the other end of the road. We got back onto the gravel surface and drove the final 3/4 mile without any problems.

“Off the Grid” Doesn’t Mean without Conveniences

At our camping shed were more challenges. We had to get the systems up and running. That meant turning on AC power (flicking a switch), turning on the gas (a lever), getting the gas refrigerator started (sometimes tricky), getting the hot water heater turned on (also tricky at times), and firing up the furnace. It’s this last thing that caused the most grief yesterday. As usual, a mouse had build a home in the furnace’s burner area and it had to be cleaned out before we started it up. Our miserable ShopVac stopped sucking, making Mike’s job more difficult. He worked on it most of the afternoon while I cooked dinner.

Cooking wasn’t tough at all. After all, we had an oven big enough for our 7-lb turkey breast (and nothing else), a 4-burner stove, and the decent quality cookware I’d had at home until we replaced it last year. There’s enough counter space, a cutting board, two good quality, sharp knives, and all the bowls and other cooking implements I needed. If you didn’t know we were off the grid, you’d never guess it. The only thing I didn’t use was our 600-watt microwave — and that was mostly because I didn’t want to waste what battery power we had left on what had become a nasty, rainy day.

I made an abbreviated version of a traditional Thanksgiving dinner: turkey breast, stuffing. gravy, and rice pilaf. Although I’d fully intended to make a fresh batch of mango chutney to go with it (instead of cranberries), I’d forgotten to bring along the mango. Going to the store definitely wasn’t an option. So I made the mango chutney recipe with apples. It didn’t come out bad at all. I was going to make some brussels sprouts, but after cooking for about 3 hours, I was too tired.

By 5:30 PM, Mike had the heat going. It wasn’t cold in the shed — the oven and stove had taken care of the chill — but it was nice to get the heat up to a more normal temperature, especially while we ate. We got Jack the Dog back in — he’d spent all afternoon trying in vain to catch one of the fat pack rats living under the shed — and wrapped his wet muddy body in a towel. Then we settled down for a good Thanksgiving dinner, complete with wine.

Reward After a Long Day

After dinner, we did the dishes and spent some time relaxing. I really love it up here — it seems that the troubles of everyday life just don’t exist. We played some “Chicken Foot” dominoes, then loaded a DVD — “Flawless” with Michael Caine and Demi Moor — in my laptop, turned out the lights, and watched the movie. Later, we climbed up into the sleeping loft, where it was nice and toasty — remember, heat rises — and went to bed.

I spent a lot of time looking out the window into the almost perfect blackness. A cloud had descended onto the mesa and there wasn’t anything to see. I’m pretty sure we were the only people around for miles. Some brief flashes of light in the clouds to the north indicated a thunderstorm over the Grand Canyon.

View with FogIn the morning, when it got light, we were in a fog bank. We could see the clouds move in, then clear. It was all quiet except the sound of coyotes off in the distance.

I took this photo, mostly to remember the fog — and the moment. It’s the view from the shed, looking northwest.

In Arizona, fog is a special treat to be savored. There’s no better place to savor it than at our getaway place in the middle of nowhere.

Could it Be? Monsoon Season?

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Heat’s not enough. I want humidity and rain, too.

This morning, when I woke at 5:30 AM to the whistles of my parrot, I was surprised to see that Mike hadn’t opened the French door between our bedroom and the upstairs patio. He always opens it during the night this time of year. That’s the only time it’s cool.

But when I opened it, I realized why: it wasn’t cool. For the first time this season, the outside temperature remained in the 80s overnight. And that’s the first sign of what everyone in Arizona is waiting for this time of year: monsoon season.

A Monsoon? In the Desert?

Sure. I can’t make this stuff up.

Monsoon season in Arizona is marked by a number of meteorological events:

  • Dew point reaches at least 55°F for at least three days in a row. That’s the official indicator of the start of monsoon season in Phoenix. That means it gets humid outside. The “dry heat” isn’t so dry anymore.
  • The winds shift to bring moist air off the Sea of Cortez and Gulf of Mexico in a counterclockwise flow. This is why the storms, when they come to Wickenburg, come from the north or east during monsoon season.
  • My WebCamStorms build just about every afternoon. I can see them coming from my office window. (You can check out the WebCam image here; it’s usually available during daylight hours.) They’re isolated, severe thunderstorms, packed with high wind, lightning, and the occasional microburst.
  • It rains. That’s if we’re lucky. The clouds have lots of moisture, but if the ground is too dry, the rain dries up before it hits the ground, resulting in virga and, often, dust storms. But once monsoon season is underway, we get rain — although never enough of it to quench the thirst of our golf courses and swimming pools.
  • We get flash floods. That’s if we get enough rain all at once. A dry wash runs through our property and, with enough rain, it can turn into a raging river. For about an hour. Then it’s just a wet riverbed that, within 24 hours, turns dry again.

Want more info, you can get it here, here, and here.

And this is what most Arizonans are waiting for.

My Monsoons

I’ve experienced Arizona monsoons in three different places over the years.

Wickenburg
I’ve lived in Wickenburg for ten years now, and although I’ve been wanting to escape, like the snowbirds, in the summertime, I haven’t usually been able to. That means I’ve lived through a good bunch of monsoon seasons.

My office has always faced the mountains to the north (even when it was in a condo I own downtown). I’d be sitting at my desk, working away, occasionally glancing up out the window. I’d see the storm clouds building over the Bradshaw and Weaver Mountains, making their way southwest toward Wickenburg. The sky would get dark out there — while it remained sunny at my house — and lightning would flash. If the storm reached us before sunset, we were in for it. But in too many instances, the storm was just too slow and got to us after the sun set. Then it was a 50-50 chance that we’d get some storm activity — including welcome rain — before the storm dissipated.

Sometimes, the storms moved in more quickly — probably more moisture in the air. In those cases, we’d get a storm in the afternoon. What a treat! I’d stand under the overhang by my front door or on the patio at the condo and listen to the rain fall. Sometimes, if it looked rainy enough to get the washes flowing, I’d jump in my Jeep and head out into the desert, looking for a stream where streams don’t normally appear. I don’t drive through these — mind you — that’s dangerous. I just watch all that flowing water, remembering what it was like to live in a place where flowing water is a lot more common than dry streambeds.

On very rare occasions, a storm would move in just before dawn. I can’t remember this happening more than a few times, though. One time, it was the morning I was supposed to report back for work at the Grand Canyon, where I was flying helicopter tours. I had planned to take my helicopter up — the 1-1/2 hour flight sure beat the 3-1/2 hour drive. But with a thunderstorm sitting on top of Wickenburg, flying up was not a safe option. So I had to drive. I left two hours earlier than I would have and still got to work an hour late.

If you want to read more about the monsoon in Wickenburg, I recommend Lee Pearson’s excellent article for wickenburg-az.com, “The Monsoon Is Near“. It includes links to video footage he’s made available online.

Grand Canyon
In the summer of 2004, I worked as tour pilot at the Grand Canyon. I flew Long Ranger helicopters over the canyon 10 to 14 times a day on a 7 on/7 off schedule from April through the end of September.

My introduction to monsoon season came on my return from a flight in July. The storms had built up and were moving in toward the airport. I was about 5 miles out when a bolt of lightning came out of the sky less than 1/4 mile from where I was flying and struck the top of a Ponderosa pine tree. The treetop exploded into flames. I got on the radio, on our company frequency, and said, “It’s lightning out here. It just hit a tree about a quarter mile away from me.” The Chief Pilot’s voice came on and said, “Better get used to it.”

When you learn to fly, they teach you the danger of flying near thunderstorms. They advise you to stay at least 20 miles away. 20 miles! So you can imagine my surprise when I realized that the tour company had no qualms about continuing flight in the vicinity of thunderstorms.

And they were right — it didn’t seem to be dangerous at all. The storms were all localized — you could see them coming and usually fly around them if they were in your way. The rule we used was that if you could see through the rain, you could fly through it. Although it occasionally got a little bumpy, there were no serious updrafts or downdrafts. And although we were told that if things ever got too rough during a flight, we could land until the storm passed, I never had to. (Thus passing up my only opportunity to legally land a helicopter inside the Grand Canyon.)

The Grand Canyon with CloudsI do recall one other monsoon-related incident, though. The company I worked for had about ten helicopters on duty to do flights. Because of this, the company was very popular with tour companies, which would bus large groups of foreign tourists to the airport for helicopter flights. These flights were booked years in advance, so the company always knew when they’d need all helicopters to fly for a single group. One of these groups arrived late in the day during August. Nine other pilots and I were sitting out on our helipads, engines running, blades spinning, when the bus pulled up. Moments later, the loaders were bringing groups of five and six Japanese tourists to the helipads and loading us up.

It had been stormy most of the afternoon, with isolated thunderstorms drifting across the canyon. Farther out to the east, a controlled burn was sending low clouds of smoke our way. At the airport, however, the visibility was fine. We were scheduled to do a tour on the west side of the canyon, in the Dragon Corridor. One by one, we took off and headed west, making a long line of ten helicopters, all going the same way.

I was about six back from the front and could see we had a problem about five miles short of the rim. The north end of the Dragon Corridor was completely socked in with low clouds and falling rain. We couldn’t see across the canyon.

The lead helicopter announced on the company frequency that he was going to switch to an east canyon tour. He made a 180° turn. One by one, we all announced the same intentions and followed him. Now we were all heading back to the airport. We got permission from the tower to transition to the east, crossed about 1/2 mile south of the airport, and continued on.

Now we were in the smokey area. It wasn’t bad. Not yet, anyway. We crossed over the canyon and my passengers let out the usual oohs and ahs. And we proceeded to do the east canyon tour, which was reserved for weather situations because it normally ran about 35 minutes (and our passengers paid for a 25 minute tour). Of course, with the initial false start, their tours would be 45 minutes long.

The thing about flying at the Grand Canyon is that you have to stay on established routes. The only time I’d ever done that route was in training four months before, so I really wasn’t too clear on where I was supposed to go. Fortunately, there was a helicopter about 1/2 mile in front of me to follow. Unfortunately, the weather was closing in. It started to rain and visibility got tough. I focused on the other helicopter’s strobe light and followed it back across the canyon to the rim. Then I lost it in the smoke.

I pointed the helicopter in the direction I thought the airport might be and flew as if I knew where I was going. About a mile out, I saw the tower and other landmarks. I was only about a half mile off course. I landed safely, my passengers got out, and I shut down for the day.

I used to ask the Chief Pilot why we flew scenic tours in weather like that. His response: “If they’re willing to pay for it and it’s safe, why not?”

Howard Mesa
Howard Mesa is a mesa north of Williams and south of the Grand Canyon. It stands 300 feet above the Colorado Plateau. Our vacation property, with its camping shed, is at the very top of the mesa, with 360° views stretching out for 50 to 100 miles, depending on sky and dust conditions.

In the summer of 2005, I spent about a month at Howard Mesa, preparing our camping shed for its future duties. I lived in our old horse trailer with living quarters, a cramped space that was fine for one person, a dog, and a parrot. Mike came up on weekends to help out and escape Wickenburg’s heat.

Monsoon season atop Howard Mesa is a real treat. The clouds start building at around 11 AM and, because you can see in every direction, you can monitor their progress as they move across the desert. By 1 or 2 PM (at the latest), you can see rain (or virga) falling somewhere. This is where you can really get an idea of the individual storms because you can see them all, individually. I took this shot one afternoon around sunset. The view is out to the northwest. The mountain you see in silhouette is Mount Trumbull on the Arizona strip, 80+ miles away.

Monsoon Rain

The great thing about the monsoon up north is that when the rain comes, the temperature drops at least 20°F. I remember one day doing some work around our place in the morning. The temperature was in the 90s, which is pretty hot for up there. I was wearing a pair of gym shorts and a tank top. I hopped in the truck and drove down to Williams to do some laundry and shopping. While I was there, a storm moved in. In minutes, the temperature dropped down to the 50s. Needless to say, I nearly froze my butt off.

Of course, there’s also hail up there. Some friends of mine were on top Bill Williams Mountain south of Williams one summer day when a storm moved in. The golf ball-sized hail that fell did some serious damage to their car. And the fear of hail like that is what keeps me from leaving my helicopter at Howard Mesa, unprotected in the summertime. Rotor blades cost $48K a pair.

This Year’s Monsoon

Anyway, it looks like this weekend might be the start of the 2007 Monsoon Season here in Arizona. I’m hoping for lots and lots of rain — we really need it. And I’ll try to share some photos throughout the season. Sadly, I think all my old monsoon season photos were lost in my big hard disk crash earlier this year.