An Eclectic Mind

Running the big fan.

It’s official. I’m going to Washington State for the cherry drying season.

(You can learn more about the kind of work I’ll be doing in “Drying Cherries with the Big Fan.” The photo here shows what helicopters try to prevent: split cherries, in this case, with brown rot. Would you want to eat this? Yuck.)

This is the third year I’ve tried to get into this kind of work — the second year that I’ve tried hard — and I’m finally in.

This has pretty much set the basis for my schedule for the entire month of May.

100 Hours

As those of you who are pilots know, every aircraft is required to have an annual inspection. N630ML’s annual inspection is due in June. But aircraft used for commercial (for-hire) purposes must also have an inspection every 100 hours of flight time. This 100-hour inspection is almost the same as an annual inspection. In fact, an annual inspection meets the requirements of a 100-hour inspection. Since I fly just over 200 hours each year, I normally get one annual inspection and one 100-hour inspection.

As I type this, N630ML has about 15 hours left before its 100-hour inspection is due. It’ll take us about 12-13 hours to fly to Seattle, which is where I’ll get my annual inspection done. That leaves very few hours to spare. Even though I’m allowed to go over the 100 hours by as many as 10 hours if I’m moving the aircraft to a facility to get this job done, I’d rather keep the aircraft 100% legal for commercial flight, right up to the time I drop it off.

So I’ve been turning down flights. I can’t tell you how many I’ve turned down. Tours to the Grand Canyon, tours of the Phoenix area, pipeline survey flights, air-taxi flights. The list goes on and on. Where were these people in January, when I was twiddling my thumbs and flight conditions were perfect?

You might say, well why not fly those hours and get the maintenance done here in Arizona?

It isn’t that simple. The maintenance takes up to a week to complete. Because my former helicopter mechanic went belly-up in February, I have to build a relationship with a new shop that’s willing to “make room” for me on its schedule when the time comes. Otherwise, it has to be scheduled far in advance. I don’t know when I’ll need it.

My partner on the cherry drying work, Erik, suggested his mechanic. Two months ago that seemed like a perfect solution. I’d just keep flying until I had about 15 hours left before maintenance was required, then put it in the hangar until I was ready to take it to Washington. I never dreamed I’d reach the 15 hours left mark so quickly. Great for my business and bank account, but I wish I had 10 more hours to burn off with other people picking up the tab.

Erik’s mechanic is based at Boeing Field in Seattle. He works on Robinsons all the time and has a lot of experience with the one thing no local mechanic wanted to tackle: painting my blades. Arizona’s dusty environment, coupled with my frequent off-airport landings, strips the paint off my main rotor blades at an alarming rate. We had them “touched up” once, but I want it done right. This guy can do it.

So I scheduled the maintenance for May 19. That means I had to have the aircraft in Seattle by then.

The Ferry Flight

I’m really looking forward to the ferry flight from Wickenburg to Seattle, WA. We’re planning a coastal route that’ll take us up the coast of California and Oregon before coming inland to Portland, OR. We’ll do that over two days, starting on Saturday, May 17.

I say “we” because I won’t be flying alone. Louis, a CFI (certified flight instructor), will be joining me, sharing the costs to make the flight more affordable. Louis has close to 300 hours of flight time but wants more. He also wants the experience of a long cross-country flight. This one, which will include deserts, mountains, valleys, and coastal lands, will give him plenty of experience. He’ll be sitting in the left seat, as a CFI normally would. I hate flying from the left seat.

He’ll be doing most of the flying while I take photos. I plan to have my door off for part of the trip. We can stick it in the back seat where it’s out of the way. I’ll do mostly still photos with my Nikon D80. I should be well positioned to put the sun behind the camera for most of the flight.

I’ll also have the POV.1 hooked up, possibly to the helicopter’s nose. The control panel for the camera had to be replaced because of a power-related problem, so I haven’t had a chance to check that position yet. I’ll probably do it on Friday, before Louis and I pack up the helicopter. I’ll try to get some interesting video during the flight. I’m sure I’ll capture each takeoff and landing and, hopefully, get some good footage along the coast.

In addition to taking photos, I plan to spend some time practicing my navigation skills. I think I depend too much on my GPS to get me from point to point. So I’m going to practice following a route on a map. I figured I’d pick a place out in the desert between Wickenburg and Palmdale, CA, set the GPS to give us the heading, and let Louis fly it. Then I’d cover the GPS’s map with a Post-It note and follow our path through the otherwise featureless desert on a sectional chart. Louis’s task will be to stay on course without checking the GPS. My tasks will be to know where we are at all times and have him adjust his course if he needs to. I think it’ll be a good exercise for both of us — and it might just make that part of the flight a little less boring. (Having flown it about a half-dozen times, I can’t begin to describe how boring it is. You can read about my first experience flying through that area in “Wickenburg, AZ to Placerville, CA - Day 1,” one of my very first blog entries.)

Although Louis is in charge of flight planning, I came up with two possible routes. One is the coastal route he said he wanted to try. The other goes right up California’s Central Valley. That’s the route I know best — I’ve taken it as far as Placerville (in my old R22, N7139L) and Georgetown (in N630ML), in the foothills of the Sierras. I created two possible routes just in case weather moves in. I don’t want to get delayed. I need to be in Portland by the evening of May 18.

Portland?

Yes, you read right. I have to make a stop in Portland on the way to Seattle. That’s where I’m meeting up with Darin, a cherry dryer turned ENG (electronic news gathering) pilot. Darin says drying cherries is the most dangerous work he’s ever done in a helicopter. He trained Erik and has agreed to train me.

Let’s face it: when you’re drying cherries, you’re operating in the deadman’s curve of the height velocity diagram. You’re flying at about 5 knots about 15 to 20 feet off the ground. If you have an engine failure, you’re not drying cherries anymore. You’re chopping them. (Perhaps we can call that “doing a George Washington without an axe”?)

Because you’re going slowly, you’re flying below ETL (effective translational lift) which means you’re on the front side of the power curve. You’d basically doing an out-of-ground effect hover the entire time you’re operating — which can be the full 2-1/2 to 3 hours between refuelings, if the field is large enough. (They say an R44 can dry 40 acres in an hour; I’ll see if that’s true this summer.) Not only is that incredibly boring and tedious, but I’m sure it’s fatiguing.

Now add a little wind — maybe the quartering tailwind that can cause LTE (loss of tail rotor effectiveness). While Robinson helicopters have very authoritative tail rotors, a few gusts from behind will certainly give the helicopter a case of what I call “the wigglies.” Remember, a helicopter wants to point into the wind, like a weather vane. Blow a little gust up its butt and you’ll be dancing on the pedals to keep it pointed the right way.

While it’s common to release the collective while cruising in straight and level flight — the old set-it-and-forget-it approach to cross-country flying — a cherry drying pilot operating in anything but dead calm air will be lucky if he gets enough time with his hand off the collective to scratch his nose or reach for a bottle of water. So there’s a good chance he’ll be holding that collective tightly, making constant pitch adjustments. I’ve discovered that when I do any kind of intense flying — like chasing race cars — I hold the collective with what CFIs call a “death grip.” (That’s me: either let go completely or get finger impressions in the throttle grip.) The trouble with that is that Robinson helicopters have a very effective throttle governor that automatically adjusts the throttle based on power requirements to keep the RPM in the green. It works like a charm — really! Unless, of course, you’re holding the damn throttle grip so tightly that it can’t turn on its own. Then you might just prevent it from getting enough power to keep the RPMs up. That low rotor RPM horn should be enough to wake up any pilot, but I’d rather not hear it at all. I know I’m going to need to relax that grip.

I also have to wear a flight helmet and a Nomex flight suit. I bought the helmet last week. When I get the flight suit, I’ll put both on and model them for readers. I expect to look like a big, fat, white-capped khaki pickle. But what’s worse is that I have to wear these things in June and July, when temperatures could get into the 90s and it’ll definitely be humid. (Remember, it just rained, right?)

On the positive side, an R44 Raven II with just one person on board isn’t likely to have any density altitude-related power issues, especially under 2,000 feet MSL (mean sea level) elevation. So it’s not like I have to worry much about having enough power to fight a little breeze in a turn or climb over the occasionally power line. (Did I forget to mention that the fields are sometimes bordered by power lines or have power lines running across them?)

So what you wind up with is flying that is potentially dangerous and more than a little challenging while being completely and utterly boring. By boring, I mean not fun. Chasing race cars is dangerous and challenging and fun. Drying cherries is likely to be dangerous and challenging and boring.

Drying cherries does pay better, though. And it’s something new and different for me. I’m always interested in trying something new and different, trying things that’ll hone my flying skills and make me a better pilot.

Seattle, Wenatchee, Quincy, Wenatchee, Seattle, Oakland, Mountain View, Oakland, Phoenix, Wickenburg

That’s my planned return route. All business.

When I get to Seattle’s Boeing Field, I’ll drop off the helicopter with my new mechanic and say goodbye to Louis. I’ll spend the night somewhere relatively close to Seattle-Tacoma Airport (SEA).

Then, in the morning, I’ll hop on a 45-minute flight to Wenatchee. I’ll rent a car and start exploring the area around Quincy, WA, where I’ll be based. I’m looking for a campground where I can get a full hookup and WiFi. There are at least two options that I know of — maybe I’ll find others. Or maybe the private airport where the helicopters will be based will give me electricity and water for the trailer. But I do need WiFi — I’ll be writing two books while I’m there, waiting for the cherries to get wet.

I’ll spend the night somewhere around there — Quincy or Wenatchee — after getting a real good feel for the place. Then I’ll drop off the rental at the airport and hop on a flight back to Seattle, with a connecting flight to Oakland, CA.

I’ll spend the night at a nice hotel in Jack London Square, courtesy of one of my publishers. In the morning, I’ll have breakfast with an editor and make the drive with her to Mountain View, for a meeting with a software developer.

When that’s over, we’ll speed back to Oakland so I can catch a 2 PM flight to Phoenix.

There, I’ll pick up my car, which Mike will have left earlier that day when he came to the airport for his flight to New York. I’ll be home before sunset.

The Long Drive

I’ll be home just a few days and all of it will be spent preparing my pull trailer and truck for the long drive to Washington State.

To save money and give me a bit more flexibility, I decided to stay in the trailer where I could prepare my own meals and have plenty of room to work rather than stay in a cheap motel. The going rate for campsites appears to be $30 to $40 per night, which isn’t exactly cheap, but I’ll have my own home away from home. And I can bring Alex the Bird for the summer, too.

The truck needs its new 82-gallon fuel transfer tank, pump, and static reel installed. I also need to pack it with the things I’ll need for the trip: Alex’s big cage, a 6-foot ladder, and various helicopter-related equipment, like the new hail-protection blade covers I bought.

The trailer needs to be filled with all the computer equipment I’ll need to write those two books and do any other writing I may want or need to do. I also need to pack it with the usual collection of items a person needs on a three-month stay away from home.

Then, right after Memorial Day, I start the long drive. Just me and Alex the Bird, driving about 1400 miles on the most direct route I can. I figure it’ll take about 3 days. I need to be in Quincy by that Friday to hitch a ride with Erik’s friend back to Seattle so I can pick up my helicopter and get it to its base for June and July.

That’s Job #1

Come June 1st, I’m on contract in my mobile summer home, waiting for the rain.

But that’s only my first summer job. I have another one starting in August. More about that in another post.

The weather in Anchorage.

I’m preparing to take a trip to Anchorage, Alaska next week for a job interview. If all goes well, I’ll be moving up there for the summer, flying tourists around glaciers and delivering 50-gallon drums of dog food to sled dog camps via long line.

In trying to get a handle on what to pack for my 3-day trip, I’ve been monitoring the weather in Anchorage, using the National Weather Service Web site. Here’s what I read this morning at 6 AM my time (4 AM Anchorage time):

Remainder Of Tonight…Mostly cloudy with a few sprinkles. Lows in the 30s. Southeast wind 40 to 55 mph along turnagain arm and the higher elevations with occasional gusts up to 70 mph. Elsewhere southeast wind 10 to 25 mph with localized gusts to 40 mph.

Okay, I added the emphasis. The NWS evidently doesn’t think 70 mph gusts of wind is unusual, since the forecast didn’t include a weather advisory. I know there would have been one in the Wickenburg forecast page if the winds were expected to reach 70.

My Experience with Wind

I flew tours at the Grand Canyon in 2004. In the spring, the wind was howling, occasionally reaching 50 mph or more at the airport. Because we flew Bell 206L (Long Rangers), which had a two-bladed rotor system that didn’t do well in high turbulence, we’d shut down if the wind got that bad. But the experience of flying at the Grand Canyon in spring and having to deal with all of that wind made me a lot more comfortable with high winds than the pilots who haven’t had to deal with it. That’s why I always recommend flying at the Grand Canyon as a first “real” job after flight school and duty as a CFI. Lots of good experience there.

Still, I don’t expect to fly in Alaska with 70 mph gusts. (I hope my potential employer doesn’t expect me to, either.)

Yesterday, I did a flight to Scottsdale with a client. Although the winds were relatively calm when we flew down there — variable at 4 mph according to the Scottsdale ATIS recording — they were forecast with gusts to 30 mph for that afternoon. Sure enough, when we left the area at about 5:15 PM, the wind was 16 mph gusting to 23. That’s certainly not bad enough to keep me on the ground, put I did have to give the pedals a workout as I lifted off the ramp. I also had to put in a lot of directional correction against the wind when I took off, just to prevent it from blowing us over the runway (which would have gotten me in hot water with the Tower there).

What’s Wrong with Wind?

There are two things that can make high wind especially bothersome for helicopter pilots:

• When flying in mountainous (or even hilly) terrain, the wind coming over those mountains (or hills) makes the air turbulent. Here’s how I describe it to passengers. Imagine a stream with rocks in it. As the water flows downstream, it sets up eddies and weird water flows around the rocks. The water has to go up or around the rocks in its path. It then goes down or rushes in from the sides on the downstream sides of the rocks. Can you imagine it? Now imagine the mountains or the hills as those rocks and the wind as the water. The helicopter is like a little boat bobbing around in that water. That’s the turbulence you feel when you’re flying relatively close to the ground on a windy day near rough terrain.
• A gust spread — that’s the difference in airspeed between the steady wind and the gusting wind — sets up what probably meets the definition of wind shear. Most pilots know that a wind shear is created where the wind suddenly shifts direction or speed. A gust changes the speed, right? The result, therefore, is the same kind of turbulence you’d feel in a wind shear. The bigger the gust spread, the bigger the shear, the greater the turbulence.

Not all helicopters handle turbulence the same way. Generally speaking, a fully articulated rotor system is better for handing turbulence than a semi-articulated system. But no matter what you’re flying, you’re going to feel those bumps. So will your passengers. Fortunately, they’re likely to get sick before the pilot does.

When I flew at the Grand Canyon, the wind was so bad a few times that I started feeling sick. Some of my passengers, as you can imagine, were making full use of the plentiful barf bags we had on board.

Will Alaska Be Worse?

Right now, I’m left to wonder whether Alaska will be more of a challenge due to wind than the Grand Canyon was. Although I’d prefer calm winds — who wouldn’t? — I’m up for the wind challenge, if I have to face it.

I just hope it’s not 70 mph.

An empty summer packs up quickly.

Less than a week ago, on the morning of Friday, February 8, I was looking at a pretty empty summer season. I had one book contract lined up — an annual revision I usually work in in June and July — and no idea where or even if I’d be flying for someone else during the April through September timeframe I’d set aside for Alaska.

Two other books had been dangled in front of me on and off for the past two months. If I got them, they’d keep me busy from now until the summer time. But it didn’t look as if I’d get them.

And while I was hoping to spend the entire summer flying for someone else in Alaska, the recent demise of Silver State Helicopters dumped all of their CFIs (certified flight instructors) on the job market. If any of them had 1,000 hours (or said they had 1,000 hours), they’d be lined up for the few entry level jobs at the Grand Canyon, Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska. My experience level is a bit higher than entry level for those jobs, so employers would have to pay me more. Why pay for steak when hamburger will do? Despite four resumes out there in the land of the midnight sun, my phone remained silent. So it didn’t look as if I’d be going to Alaska after all.

And that was the state of things last Friday morning.

A Telephone Call Changes the Scene

I did have one other resume out in the wild: I’d sent it about a month before to an Illinois-based Part 135 operator. They were looking for a full time pilot to help them with a special contract and then do odd flying jobs as needed in the midwest. (And yes, I’m being purposely vague. Last week’s fiasco has put me into high caution mode.) I exchanged a few e-mails with the owner, who said that a contract pilot — which is what I’d prefer — might work out better for him. He told me to call him. I did, but never seemed to get him on the phone. I waited for him to call. He didn’t. I sent him an e-mail, asking if the job had been filled; if it had, I’d stop bothering him. He wrote back to say the job wasn’t filled, he was definitely interested in me, but he was swamped with work. He’d call. He didn’t. All this happened during the course of a month.

On Friday, I decided to call again. I wanted to either cross off this opportunity or bring it into the realm of possibility. I got the owner on the phone. We hit it off right away. I got the feeling he’d spoken to a few other people about the job and they weren’t interested in some of the more unusual aspects. (Again, I’m being vague on purpose; I don’t want anyone to screw this up for me.) I also got the feeling he was being inundated with resumes from Silver State casualties of Chapter 7 — guys who have earned their 1,000 hours in a simulator or as an active passenger during dual instruction flights. He wanted someone with experience flying passengers for hire, which I’ve been doing since 2001. We joked around a little. He told me that mid-month, he would fly me up to his base for a face-to-face meeting and a chance for me to see their equipment. I assume a flight would also be part of the interview process.

I hung up the phone feeling good. This opportunity had gone from a long shot to a 75% or more chance of getting the job. And without going into details, I can assure you that the job will be very interesting, with plenty to blog about — if I’m allowed to.

Two More Calls, Three More Books?

My phone rang on Monday morning. It was one of my editors. He’s been swamped since the holidays and has just dug out of the pile of work on his desk. He pulled one of the dangling books out of the air and slapped it on the negotiation table. We talked terms, we agreed. (My co-author on the book agreed yesterday.) I’m looking for a contract in the mail any day now. Time frame? Well, the book is already listed on Amazon.com, so I guess I’d better get to work on it soon.

He also dangled that other book around some more, but no decision was made. We didn’t even talk terms. So although I can’t count on it yet, it’s definitely still in the picture.

Yesterday, I got another call from another editor I work with regularly. She flat-out offered me a book deal with terms that would be tough to turn down. So I said yes. The contract should come within the next week or so. Timeframe: late summer. Sorry; no details will be forthcoming anytime soon.

What’s good about all this is that I have enough writing work lined up to support me through the summer, when Flying M Air continues to incur expenses but does not incur much (if any) revenue.

Another Call with another Flying Possibility

Between the two editor calls, I got a call from a California-based Part 135 helicopter operator. They’d seen my helicopter forum post that had a subject line like “Single Pilot Part 135 Operator with Helicopter Available for Summer Months.” This guy is interested in expanding his business to offer a major city’s commuters with helicopter transportation into that city from the suburbs. (Yes, I’m being vague again; jeez, I hate this.) Rather than invest in a lot of equipment and train pilots, he thinks we might work together with me and my helicopter subcontracted by his organization to provide the flights. If things work out, he’ll expand; if they don’t, no serious money lost.

While this is very interesting to me, I’m worried that there won’t be enough revenue in it to support me and my aircraft. After all, I’d have to relocate for the entire summer and the city in question ain’t exactly cheap to live in. But it is a really nice city, one I wouldn’t mind living in at all. I told him about my other opportunity and how I wanted to pursue that first. He said that if that job didn’t work out and I was still available, I should call him in a month or so to talk about flying for him.

I’m calling that “Summer Job Plan C.”

Plan D, I should mention, is cherry drying in Washington State, which, as usual, is always dangling out there but never quite attainable.

Today

My helicopter calendar has a few — but not many — things on it. I’ll be doing rides at the Buckeye Air Fair again on Saturday. I picked up a Sky Harbor Charter for March with some folks who already told me they want another day trip when they come to Wickenburg. And I have a Wickenburg area tour prebooked through a tour company for March 1.

The Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure simply is not selling. It could be my limited marketing budget. But I can’t see paying $10-$15K for a magazine advertisement if it’ll take the sale of more than 10 excursions just to pay for the ad. (The trip really is a smoking deal and I don’t make much money on it.)

But I do have some possibilities on desert racing aerial photography gigs lined up for March and April. We’ll see how that goes. The ferry cost is hard for most of those companies to swallow. I’d do a lot better with race photography gigs if I’d relocate to Lake Havasu or Bullhead City. (And believe me, I’m thinking about it.)

Today, I’m finishing up an article I started on Monday for FileMaker Advisor magazine. Then I’m going to work on my outline for my half of our WordPress book revision. If I finish that before the end of the day, I’ll finish up my series of articles about using Viddler with WordPress. And maybe — just maybe — I’ll record another video blog entry.

But only if I can do something with my hair.

Or why I changed my flight school.

Yesterday, I dropped out of one flight school and signed up with another one.

For those of you who don’t know me from this blog or elsewhere, I’m a commercial helicopter pilot with close to 2,000 hours of flight time. The vast majority of that time is in Robinson R22 and R44 helicopters — in fact, I have more time in Robinson helicopters than most flight instructors doing training in them. I owned a 1999 Robinson R22 Beta II from 2000 through 2004 and have owned a 2005 Robinson R44 Raven II since January 2005. My other helicopter time is in Bell 206L LongRangers at the Grand Canyon during a summer job.

On Robinson Helicopters

I like Robinson helicopters. I think Frank Robinson has done a fine job designing, building, and selling helicopters that are comfortable, have good performance, and are easy to own and operate. They also give you the most “bang for the buck.” The Robinson is probably the least expensive helicopter to operate when calculated on a per seat basis.

Although my passengers have occasionally commented on the small size of my R44, they’ve never been disappointed with its comfort or the smoothness of the ride. In fact, I’ve had plenty of comments from people who say that the ride was a lot smoother than they expected. (I’d like to think that at least some of that comes from pilot skill.)

No doubt about it: the R22 is a squirrelly little aircraft. It’s a challenge to learn to fly. Other than the electronic governor, there’s no mechanical assistance to make flying easier. The controls are sensitive and unforgiving. Some people think that’s bad. Other people point out that if you can fly an R22, you can fly any helicopter. I can confirm that I had no trouble transitioning from an R22 (max gross weight 1470 lbs, if I recall) to a turbine-powered, hydraulically controlled LongRanger (max gross weight 4200 lbs). In fact, I used to transition from one to the other on a daily basis.

I’m not willing to say that Robinsons are the best helicopters out there for two main reasons: (1) I’ve only had time in one other make/model so how can I know? (2) No helicopter is “best” at all missions. I’m also not willing to say my Robinsons have been perfect for me in every way — no aircraft (or car or fill-in-the-blank mode of transportation) is perfect. But I am certainly proud to say that I’m extremely pleased with my R44 and confident that I made the right purchase decision.

Why am I telling you this? Well, it’s important in the story that follows.

Finding a Flight School

I decided in the spring that I wanted to get an instrument rating.

If you’re not a pilot, let me explain. An instrument rating is a pilot certificate that authorizes you to fly by instrument flight rules (IFR) in instrument meteorological conditions (IMC). It requires you to learn how to fly the aircraft — in my case, a helicopter — without visual references outside the cockpit. Training covers attitude flying (so you don’t get disoriented and crash) and navigation using a variety of radio and satellite based navigation tools: VOR, DME, GPS.

An instrument rating makes a pilot more valuable, especially if they plan to fly in an area where weather could be an issue. I want to get a summer job in Alaska. I’ve been there and I saw that weather is indeed an issue. So I want the rating to make myself more valuable to potential employers and to help prepare me in the event that I do inadvertently lose visibility and need to rely on instruments for part of a flight.

My aircraft is only partially set up for IFR operations. That’s unfortunate because it means that I can’t use it for training. So I have to find a flight instructor who is a CFII (certified flight instructor for instruments) who has access to an IFR trainer aircraft. That means a flight school.

The trouble with helicopter flight schools these days is that they all want to take students through “the program.” This is a soup to nuts approach to learning to fly and it assumes that you want to learn to fly as part of a career.

When I learned, career flying wasn’t on the horizon for me; it was going to be a hobby. Things change. While I do fly for hire now, flying isn’t my full-time career. (I’d starve.) I got my training — private and then commercial ratings — piecemeal or “a la carte” when it was still widely available that way.

It’s tougher now to find flight school that will take a pilot for just one phase of training. Still, I located four candidates: three in Arizona and one in Florida. After deciding that I didn’t want to be away from home for an intensive two weeks of training in Florida, I was left with three choices in Arizona. Let’s call them A, B, and C.

A was really expensive. Although I talked to a flight instructor about the program, I never got the call back I was promised. A fellow pilot had some mildly negative things to say about A, so I decided not to pursue them.

B, which specializes in “the program” was willing to make an exception for me, primarily because of other business we do together. I’d been in a dialog with B for at least six months and we’d come up with a price structure for my lessons. They were very affordable, since they had a simulator I could use for up to 20 hours of my “flight” time, thus saving a whopping $340/hour over their aircraft flight time. I was sold.

Unfortunately, just when I was ready to start, there was an ownership change that caused a reorganization. Things went into flux. I was called down to the flight school to “get on the schedule” and, once there, told that we’d have to have a meeting the next day with the General Manager to review everything. They’d call to let me know when.

I was deeply POed. The flight school is an hour drive — each way — from where I live. They’d lured me down there on false pretenses — doing paperwork, getting on the schedule — and, instead, had wasted my time with a 5-minute meeting that accomplished nothing. And now it wasn’t even certain that I could get my training there.

If there’s one thing I value, it’s time. Wasting my time is a good way to get on my shit list. The new chief flight instructor at B was at the top of that list.

To make matters worse, I never got a call for the meeting he said we needed. Three weeks passed without getting that call.

In the meantime, I found C. C was at the same location as B. They were a much smaller organization that did a lot of charter work with LongRanger helicopters. They also fly Enstroms — two or three place piston helicopters. That’s what they used for their modest training operation.

I’d never flown an Enstrom, but I’m always interested in getting experience in different aircraft. Although they didn’t have a simulator, the Enstrom IFR trainer would be much cheaper per hour than the R44 IFR trainer at B. So I wouldn’t be paying that much more and would get all 30+ hours of flight time that I needed in a real aircraft.

Still angry at B and uncertain of the future due to the reorganization there, I signed up with C.

At the Flight School

I went for my first lesson at C last Friday. The company is based in a big hangar that houses all of its aircraft — turbine helicopters and airplanes — and provides space for its flight training operations. The layout for flight training wasn’t very practical, but I think there was only one other student there while I was there. I have no problem with small flight schools — I think they offer better personalized instruction. So that was not a problem.

My flight instructor was a great guy. Very nice, very understanding. Best of all, he had more flight time than I did, and had even spent a season at the Grand Canyon flying LongRangers. We’ll call him Joe.

Joe and I took care of paperwork and I handed over a check for my first 11 hours of flight time: $2,300 (which didn’t include the instructor time). We covered a plan of action for my self study — I was hoping to save money on ground school by learning as much as I could with home study aids — then discussed what we’d do in our flights together. He patiently explained how a VOR works — which is something I was supposed to learn as a private pilot but never did (and never needed to, as each of my aircraft was equipped with a GPS). Then we went outside, where the Enstrom was waiting, to fly.

Joe and I went through the startup checklist together and he made me start the helicopter. Starting was similar to the R44 Raven II because the Enstrom had fuel injection. I got it started on the second try. But there were significant differences in the rest of the procedure. Clutch activation is done with a weird handle that requires more strength than I have in my right arm — I had to use two hands to pull the darn thing up. And all the time we were on the ground, the whole helicopter was shaking and rattling and Joe was adjusting the mixture to lean it out properly. The whole idea of leaning was stressing me out, since Robinsons generally aren’t leaned at all. (If you lean an aircraft too much in flight, the engine may quit. Helicopters are damn near impossible to restart in flight.) The aircraft’s cyclic also needed to be trimmed using a little “hat” button on top.

Joe and I picked it up into a hover. He tried to trim it out but was not successful; the trim button wasn’t working. It was also running hotter than it should have been. He decided he wanted a mechanic to look at it. I hovered us back into our parking spot — we’d drifted forward — and set it down as gently as I could. It thumped and rattled and I immediately thought of ground resonance, which is something a helicopter with a fully articulated rotor system like the Enstrom is more likely to get than anything I’d ever flown. But we were okay. We cooled down the engine and shut down.

By now, I was having second thoughts about my decision to go with the Enstrom. It was so different from what I’d flown in the past that I was worried the differences would distract me. Perhaps I’d need more than 30 hours of dual to get the instrument skills I needed.

But 30 hours was a long time. Surely I’d get used to the Enstrom quickly — probably within my first 5 hours. And getting stick time in something so different would be good for my development as a pilot.

So before I could talk myself out of it, I’d talked myself back into it.

Things Take a Wrong Turn

Joe talked to the mechanic on the way in. We went to the schedule book and set up two dates for training the following week — the first week in January. Joe promised the helicopter would be ready. We chatted for a short while. I really liked Joe and looked forward to working with him.

On the way out, he introduced me to C’s new operations guy. Turned out, I already knew him from another company in the Phoenix area. He’d moved to C but wouldn’t get specific on why he’d left his former employer. We’ll call him John.

As Joe left us, John began an animated, one-sided discussion about his big plans for C. And that’s when he said two things that really got under my skin.

The first thing he said, numerous times, was that Robinson helicopters were “a joke.” Apparently, that wasn’t just his opinion. He said the owner of C felt the same way.

Now I’ve already reported my feelings about Robinson helicopters. I don’t think they’re a joke. I do think that his criticism of Robinsons — when he knew damn well that I own one — was incredibly rude, insensitive, and just plain stupid.

I didn’t counter with what I was thinking about Enstroms: that they’re rattletraps and that I’d be embarrassed to put paying passengers into one.

The second thing he said was that he planned to “take over” the Phoenix area tour business by offering flights in C’s Enstroms. “We put people into them and fly low and fast over the trees and they love it!” he exclaimed.

Apparently, FAA safety regulations don’t come into the equation. I know that my minimum altitude for Part 135 flights is 300 feet and I know that there aren’t any 250-trees anywhere in the Phoenix area. I also know what the height-velocity diagram looks like for most helicopters. But heck, who cares about safety when there’s money to be made, right?

That was his attitude. And it was also insensitive since he knows damn well that I’ve been working hard to build a helicopter tour business in the Phoenix area. I don’t have a big operation with multiple helicopters and pilots and an unlimited marketing budget. I don’t treat my passengers like cargo, either. But he could easily attract far more business than I could by simply undercutting my prices. It’s cheaper to fly a 3-place Enstrom than a 4-place Robinson, and that’s all people care about. And that’s what he was bragging to me about.

I started to get seriously POed. I started wondering why I’d just handed over a check for $2,300 to an organization which obviously thought so little of me and my aircraft and my business. I started wondering why I was helping to fund this guy’s efforts to put me out of business.

I held my temper. I managed to escape out into the sunshine without trying to wring his neck.

What Happened Next

On the long drive to my next destination across Phoenix, I managed to talk myself into ignoring John. He was a jackass, an idiot. I wouldn’t be dealing with him. I’d be working with Joe. Joe was a good guy. I was lucky to have such an experienced and knowledgeable flight instructor.

But when Wednesday morning came along, Joe called. The helicopter still wasn’t fixed. We’d have to postpone our lesson until the next day.

And he called to say the same thing on Thursday.

And I started thinking that maybe the stars and planets were moving together to give me a second chance, a way out of my arrangement with C.

You see, I was still deeply offended by John’s comments and couldn’t get them off my mind.

I called my main contact at B. After a bit of telephone tag, we had things settled. The pricing we’d discussed was fine. He didn’t care how I paid or when I started. He was extremely supportive. And he got the Chief CFI at his location to call me back. I could get training at B after all. I’d start on Monday.

I called Joe. “Did you folks cash that check yet?”

“No,” he told me.

“I have to ask you not to,” I said. I told him I’d changed my mind about training there. I assured him, in no uncertain terms, that it had nothing to do with him. I told him it was a combination of two things. First, I thought flying a ship as different as the Enstrom might distract me from my instrument training. Second, that I’d been seriously annoyed by comments made by John during our discussion. I got specific. I told him how these comments made me feel and how it was difficult for me to support an organization that thought so little of me, my aircraft, and my business.

Joe understood. He told me that his boss, the chief flight instructor there, might give me a call. I told him that was fine. I also told him that I had no trouble paying for the time we’d spent together the previous Friday. Just send me a bill. But please don’t cash that check.

A New Beginning

So that’s where I stand today. After a false start, I’m ready to begin training at the flight school I’d originally chosen.

But I feel better about this flight school than the one I’d tried. Why? Because my main contact understands good customer relations. Even if hr doesn’t really give a damn about me or need my business, at least he’s pretending that he does.

And when I get ready to hand over close to $10K of my hard-earned money, I want to feel good about who I hand it to.

Maria Speaks Episode 26: Summer Plans.

A discussion of Howard Mesa and flying for hire, including cherry drying in Washington state.

Transcript:

Hi, I’m Maria Langer. Welcome to Episode 26 of Maria Speaks: Summer Plans.

Summer is here in Wickenburg and thermometer readings prove it. For the past three days, the thermometer on my back patio, which is positioned in the shade, has reached 110 degrees farenheit or more. While the metric equivalent of 42 or so sounds cooler, I don’t think it would feel any cooler. It’s downright hot here.

Wickenburg lies in the northern part of the Sonoran desert. That’s the desert with the big saguaro cacti and other low-water vegetation. We’re at about 2400 feet elevation here, which is at least a thousand feet higher than Phoenix, so we’re cooler than Phoenix. Well, cooler in temperature, anyway. You might be able to imagine how hot Phoenix is. Or you can just check the Weather Channel’s Web site for the shocking details.

For the past two summers, I’ve bailed out of Wickenburg for the summer months. In 2004, I got a job as a pilot at the Grand Canyon, flying helicopter tours on a seven on/seven off schedule. I lived in a trailer at our property on Howard Mesa during my on days. Howard Mesa is a 40-minute drive from Grand Canyon Airport at Tusayan. I was five miles from pavement, in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by peace and quiet and not much else. Unfortunately, I had a 13-hour work day, including commuting time. Near the end of the season, in September, I was leaving for work before sunrise and returning after sunset. Didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy the place.

Last year, in 2005, I spent the entire month of July at Howard Mesa with Alex the Bird, Jack the Dog, and our two horses. The property is fenced in, so the horses just wander around. I was living in the trailer again, but working on a project. We’d installed a 12 x 24 foot shed there and needed to get things inside it organized. In the future, we’ll use it to store materials for when we build a house up there. Now, it stores other stuff.

Don’t get the idea that our place at Howard Mesa is some kind of luxury accommodation. It isn’t. It’s off the grid, so we don’t have electricity. The trailer has a solar panel on the roof that tends to keep the battery charged. There’s a thousand-watt generator up there just in case the batteries die down. There’s no television, telephone, microwave, or dishwasher. Water comes from two tanks that hold a total of about 2100 gallons; when water levels get low, we pay someone to fill them back up. We did install a septic system, so there are no worries when it comes to using a toilet. Thank heaven.

The shed now has solar panels and will soon be wired for lighting. There’s a fridge and stove in there and a big propane tank out back that keeps them running. There’s other camping gear there, as well. It’s very basic, covering the bare necessities. That’s fine with me. Sometimes it’s good to get down to basics, just so you realize how luxurious your regular home — no matter how small or sparsely furnished — really is.

This year I was trying to get completely out of Arizona for the summer. I applied for two different jobs in Alaska and was told I could have either one — if I started in April. I couldn’t start that early. I was working on a Visual QuickStart Guide for Peachpit Press and those require that I spend long hours in front of a computer with a big screen, laying out every page of the book manually. Although I originally expected to be finished by early May, some medical problems slowed me down. I’m okay now, but the book is just being finished. It’s early June, so the way I see it, I lost a whole month.

I also got called about a job drying cherry trees in Washington State. I wrote about it in my blog. Here’s how it works. The cherry trees start getting fruit in June. It also rains in June. The raindrops settle on the fruit. If the fruit isn’t dried, it splits. No one wants to buy split cherries, so the farmer loses his crop. Evidently, a number of people sell what they call insurance to the farmers. If the farmers buy in, when it rains, a helicopter magically appears over their fields to dry the cherries. The helicopter does this with downwash from its main rotor blades. It hovers about 4 feet over the tree tops and moves along the rows at about 4 miles an hour. A helicopter like mine can dry 40 acres of cherry trees in an hour.

The work is dangerous, primarily because of the wires that are all over and around the fields. Every year, a couple of pilots get their tail rotors tangled up in wires and wind up down in the trees, wrapped up in a mangled helicopter. But I’m always willing to try something different. The way I see it, I did okay at the Grand Canyon and I did fine racing with boats at Lake Havasu earlier this year. I’m a careful pilot and should be able to do a decent job in the cherry orchards.

Of course, there are only a certain number of spots open to pilots and aircraft. I had three things going against me: First, I’d never done it before, so I was an unknown. Second, I didn’t have a fuel truck driver to deliver fuel to me out in the fields. (One of the guys offered to let me share his truck, though, so that wasn’t a big hurdle.) Third, I was based in Arizona and would have to make an 8-hour flight to Washington State just to settle into my base there. The folks who do the hiring didn’t want to pay for that 16-hour round trip ferry flight and I couldn’t blame them. But I had to charge a bit more than some of the local pilots to cover my travel costs and the outrageous cost of special insurance I’d have to get just for the job.

So they never said yes. But they never said no. When questioned, they kept saying maybe. Time passed. The season start day approached. I assumed they weren’t interested — they never said yes. One of my contacts — the guy who brought me into the running — got an assignment that started on June 5. That’s yesterday. He put me in touch with someone else. That guy told me I had an 85% chance of getting work if I came up there. I read between the lines. He was suggesting that I fly up there and just settle into a hotel and wait. Without a contract.

Now let me explain how payment for this kind of job works. Pilots get a contract that’s usually for about 30 days. The contract includes a per diem amount for standby time. That amount covers the cost of your hotel room, food, ground transporation, and, in my case, insurance (at a whopping $150 a day). The contract also includes a per hour fee for actual flight time. So the more you fly, the more you make, but if you don’t fly, at least you have your basic costs covered.

This guy was suggesting — without actually suggesting it — that I fly up there and go on standby without per diem compensation. So not only would I have to eat the ferry cost, but I’d have to eat my hotel cost, too. Unless I flew. I was told that I could charge more per hour if I didn’t have a contract, but I’d obviously be the last pilot called if I was also the most expensive.

When I pretended, in our phone conversation, not to pick up on this, he went on to tell me that they might still need me. They’d know for sure by Monday (yesterday) and would call then. They’d need me to be there by the end of the week.

This kind of bugged me. I was finishing up my Visual QuickStart Guide and needed the rest of the week to get it done right. These guys expected me to drop everything, hop in my helicopter, and fly up. When they called. If they called.

Well, I didn’t get a phone call from cherry-land yesterday.

Now I do need to admit that this whole wait-and-see situation was starting to get on my nerves. It was okay back in April when I was first introduced. With enough notice, I could shape my summer around the job. True, I did have a book to work on in June, but I figured that I could work on it in my hotel during my standby time. I’d just have to get a PC laptop — which I was due to buy anyway — and find an Internet connection somewhere. I could figure it out. But as time slipped by and I was still waiting, I started to get antsy. Since I didn’t know if this job would work out, I couldn’t really make any plans for something else. I half-heartedly applied for a job at the Grand Canyon again, but didn’t follow up. I didn’t want to go to the Canyon. I wanted to go to Washington. I wanted to try something new, have more free time, and fly my own helicopter. I wanted to open a new door.

So yesterday, when the phone didn’t ring, I was both disappointed and relieved.

Now I can make a real summer plan. And, at this point, it appears that it will involve Howard Mesa again.

I figured I’d go up there with Alex, Jack, and the horses again. But I’d also get involved with the Town of Williams. I’d get a business license there and join the Chamber of Commerce. Then I’d build a relationship with some of the local businesses and offer day trips by helicopter to Sedona and the Grand Canyon. If I got two or three flights a week, it would keep Zero Mike Lima flying and me out of trouble.

Best of all, it’s cool at Howard Mesa — generally 20 degrees cooler than in Wickenburg.

Which is a good thing, because there’s no air conditioning there, either.

I return to Papillon for a visit.

I ran into John Becker, Papillon’s Director of Operations, at a Grand Canyon Overflight meeting in Flagstaff the other day. (Unfortunately, I picked the wrong day of the two-day meeting to attend, but that’s another story.) I always liked John — he’s an upbeat kind of guy that didn’t put on “big boss” airs — even when talking to a lowly pilot like me.

I told John about my new helicopter and how I wanted to show it to him. I asked when he’d be around Papillon. He suggested Friday. So today, I decided to make a Williams run in Zero-Mike-Lima, with a stop at the Grand Canyon Airport on the way.

Okay, so the Grand Canyon Airport isn’t exactly on the way from Howard Mesa to Williams. It’s north of Howard Mesa and Williams is south. But you get the idea.

I left early — I really hate flying when it gets hot and the thermals kick in — and landed at GCN’s transient helipad at about 7:45. That’s before the tours start flying. I walked from there to Papillon’s helipads on the east end of the airport. As soon as I stepped inside, I started seeing people I knew. It was a nice reunion with these folks, full of hand shaking and hugging. I ordered a latte at the coffee counter and even got an employee discount. Upstairs, I visited the break room and checked the list of pilots to see how many of last year’s pilots were still around. I ran into Ron G and Walter. I saw that the Gimp was still with Papillon (they’ll have to fire him to get rid of him, since he’s already been fired by two other employers), and so were a few others, including Tyler, who I really liked.

John was in a meeting, although I did get a few words with him before the meeting started. So I spent some time chatting with Evelyn and Ilse. After a while, I asked them if they thought I could take a flight with someone, maybe Tyler. Evelyn consulted her computer screen and told me that Tyler had a 9:05 flight with two empty seats. They convinced me to go downstairs and ask Rosa if I could get onboard.

Rosa remembered my face, but not my name. When I told her my name, she remembered me very well, mostly because of my June 10 incident. She put me on Tyler’s flight, in the front seat. I paid her $16 for the fuel surcharge and airport fee. I didn’t even know which tour I was going to be on.

They made me watch the video, which I’d seen many times. So it didn’t really matter that they showed it to me in French with two other tourists.

Tyler was very surprised when I climbed on board beside him. He fiddled with the intercom switches so I could hear the radios, which I really appreciated. It really helped bring back memories of all the flights I’d done. I discovered that I was booked on the shorter North Canyon flight, which goes over to the Dragon Corridor on the west side of the canyon. But since there was a lot of smoke on that side of the canyon due to a controlled burn, we’d be doing an East Canyon tour. Although Papillon doesn’t sell that tour, it is the best one. It starts off like an Imperial Tour, going out over the east side of the canyon, then turns west at the confluence of the Little Colorado River and makes a big loop back to the rim.

The canyon was hazy but beautiful. I had my camera with me and took a few pictures, including this one of Tyler in flight. (I always wished I’d asked one of my passengers to shoot a picture of me like this, at the controls with the canyon in the background. I’ll e-mail this to Tyler.) When we got back, I kept Tyler company while he shut down. Then I went inside to see if John was finished with his meeting. He wasn’t. I thanked Evelyn and Ilse for the flight and chatted a while with Ilse. Then, as it was getting late, I wrote a note for John on the back of a Flying M Air postcard and left it on his desk. It asked him to give me a call when he had time for a ride in my helicopter.

I walked back to Zero-Mike-Lima and after checking fuel prices — an insane $3.75/gallon! — I started up and headed south to Williams. It had been a nice visit to my old summer job.

I miss flying over the canyon, but I don’t miss it enough to want to do it full time again.