Here’s a teaser for a three-part series of blogs post I’m working on right now. And really — the best time for me to do talking head videos is definitely right after some moderate drinking.
Another video blog entry.
I brought my laptops to the airport today. The air conditioning there works a lot better than the air conditioning in my trailer. There’s a big empty space with desks on the second floor of the terminal building and that’s where I set up to work. I got a lot written today on the book I’ve been working on this month, but when 5 PM rolled around, I was burned out.
I made this video from the adjacent room, which we call the “tower” room. It’s just a second floor room in the corner of the building with windows on both walls. Excellent views of what’s going on at the airport. There’s a UNICOM radio there, too, so you can hear the pilots giving their position calls as they do their tours, as well as the occasional non-local pilot flying in. The room is right next door to where I work, so I can hear the radio while I’m writing. It’s a bit distracting, but with my backache, it’s good to get up and walk around every once in a while anyway.
This video shows the pilots at American Aviation loading up their passengers and taking off on a tour of Lake Powell. I narrate it so it’s not too boring. Near the end, I show off some more of the ramp while planes launch into the blue sky. I hope you enjoy it.
High density altitude with heavy ship.
During our ferry flight from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ, we decided to make a fuel/lunch stop at Bryce Canyon airport (BCE). Although I think we could have made it to Page with the fuel we had on board — about 1/3 tanks or 18 gallons to go 60 miles — we’d barely make our legal requirement of 20 minutes of reserve fuel for the flight. We’d also be flying direct over relatively hostile yet strikingly beautiful desert terrain. Not the kind of place you want to make an emergency landing prompted by a low-fuel light.
Bryce Canyon Airport is at 7590 feet MSL. We listened to the AWOS as we approached and learned that the temperatures were in the 80s (can’t remember exactly) and the density altitude was 9400 feet. (Whoa.) There was a 4-6 knot wind coming from the north.
Louis, a sea-level pilot, was at the controls. I figured we weighed about 2300 lbs. I knew we could hover at 6300 feet/104°F at max gross weight. Although I could have pulled out the manual to double-check the performance charts for our exact combination of weight, altitude, and temperature, I didn’t think it was necessary. After all, the 6300 feet/104°F combination equaled almost 11,000 feet density altitude (consult the chart; you can click it to see a larger view on Wikipedia). 9400 feet was well within that.
And Louis did well on approach. Although he came in a little fast at the beginning, he had a good approach speed and angle — at least by my standards — as we flew into the wind for landing direct to the ramp. He even got it into a hover where we’d park. But then the low rotor RPM horn went off. The helicopter wasn’t generating enough power to keep the blades spinning at the required RPM.
We were about three feet off the ground when this happened, so it wasn’t a big deal. I told Louis to just put it down. He was either fixated on the RPM gauge or trying hard to put it down gently, because he didn’t set it right down. He drifted backwards a few feet as we descended with the horn blaring. Finally, he put it on the ground. The rotor RPM shot up, but didn’t overspeed into redline.
I should make a few things clear here, especially for non-pilots, non-helicopter pilots, and non-Robinson pilots.
The horn at landing had me concerned. After all, I was at the airport to have lunch and add fuel — both of which would add weight to the aircraft. (Okay, so lunch wouldn’t add that much weight.) If I couldn’t get it flying with what we had on board, adding fuel would only make matters worse. It was midday, after all, and we’d have to wait hours before the temperature started to drop. There was a chance we could get stuck there for a while. In that case, I wanted to know before I went to lunch so we could do something interesting in the park rather than sit around the airport terminal.
So I took the controls, bought everything back up to 102% RPM, and started raising the collective. I’ve done a lot of flying in high density altitude situations, so I know from experience that it takes a certain “touch” to avoid low rotor situations. I pulled the collective up slowly, felt the helicopter get light on its skids, and kept pulling. We were off the ground at 22 inches of manifold pressure, in a nice, steady hover. The engine sounded good, the low rotor RPM horn kept quiet. Keeping in mind that it takes more power to hover than to fly, I was satisfied that I’d be able to take off at our current weight and density altitude situation. I set it back down and we shut down.
But when I placed my fuel order, I asked for only 5 gallons. That’s 30 lbs of 100LL.
The line guy at the airport told us about how he liked watching the R22s take off from the airport. He said they only come in the late fall and early spring. They almost always do running takeoffs. I kind of wondered why they’d come at all. That helicopter, with two people on board, simply does not perform well at high density altitude.
We went to Ruby’s Inn on the free shuttle they offer from the airport. Three other folks who’d come in from Scottsdale in a small plane joined us for the ride. We had lunch in the restaurant there, ordering from the menu rather than waiting on line for the buffet. I had salad. I’m trying to lose weight and this seemed like a good time to stay on my diet.
After wandering around the huge “General Store” there, we hitched a ride back to the airport on the shuttle. I paid for my fuel, stopped in the restroom, and headed outside.
I admit that I was a little nervous about our departure from Bryce. One of the reasons for this was a recent R44 accident in Washington State that involved Louis’s old flight instructor. She’d been flying a Raven I in the Snowqualmie Pass area with three passengers on board when she’d crashed on takeoff. The NTSB report is still preliminary as I write this, but most folks are pretty certain that density altitude played a part in this fatal crash.
I’d wanted to depart into the wind, using the 6 to 8 mph breeze to help me get through effective translational lift (ETL), which occurs around 24 knot airspeed in an R44. The trouble was, the wind was blowing across the ramp area and a small jet was parked at the edge of the ramp, making a low-level obstruction there. If I hover-taxied over to the taxiway, I could takeoff downhill, but with a quartering tailwind that would not help the situation. Of course, a running takeoff — that’s where you get the helicopter light on its skids and run on the skid shoes until you’re through ETL — would be possible on the taxiway, which was smooth. In the end, I decided to pick it up into a hover and take off with a quartering headwind toward the runway and big empty space beyond its approach end. I’d have pavement under me for at least 200 feet, so I could always slide along it or abort the takeoff with a running landing if I couldn’t get enough lift to clear the fence and the road beyond it. You can see all this in the diagram; we were the red X.
I started up and we listened to the AWOS. Density altitude was now 9900 feet. (I guess it had warmed up a bit because there hadn’t been earth-shifting earthquakes while we ate.) Mike and Louis were quiet as I pulled pitch and brought the helicopter into a hover. I’m not sure if they were as surprised as I was that we didn’t get a low rotor horn. I pointed the helicopter in the direction I wanted to go, pushed the cyclic forward gently, and started my takeoff run. We varied from 3 to 8 feet off the ground before I felt the familiar vibrations of ETL. Then we were climbing nicely, well clear of the fence and the road. No horn.
I turned to the southeast toward Page and flew for a while before handing the controls back to Louis.
Initial thoughts about my new flight following solution.
My friend, Jim, is an Idaho-based R44 pilot with a company very similar to mine. He’s a single pilot Part 135 tour and charter operator who sometimes operates over very remote terrain.
One of the challenges we face as charter operators is last-minute route changes requested by paying passengers. For example, suppose the passenger books a flight from Scottsdale to Sedona. I’m required by the FAA to file a flight plan that indicates my route so that if we don’t turn up in Sedona, they’ll know which way we went and can [hopefully] find us. But at times — sometimes after the flight is already under way — the passenger might say something like, “Can you follow the course of the Verde River to Camp Verde?” This is not the most direct route and it’s not likely to be the one I planned. But what do I do? Say no?
[The right answer is yes, say no. That's the answer the FAA wants to hear. But the FAA is not paying by the hour to conduct the flight. The FAA is not going to refer its friends to a friendly, accommodating pilot.]
The problem is, if I deviate from a route and something goes wrong, the search teams may not be looking for us anywhere near where we are. So they might not find us. And sure, I have an ELT (emergency locator transmitter) in my aircraft — even though it is not required by the FAA. But how well do those really work? It certainly didn’t help them find a pilot and his co-worker when they literally disappeared on a flight between Deer Valley in North Phoenix and Sedona nearly two years ago. They’re still missing.
And then there’s Steve Fossett. Or maybe I should have said, where’s Steve Fossett. They must have spent millions by now to find him and he’s still among the missing.
Airplane pilots and pilots flying in the flatlands of the midwest can request something called flight following from the flight service station (FSS). Flight following keeps you on radar so they pretty much always know where you are. The problem with helicopters is that we fly so darn low. Even if I flew up in nose bleed territory at, say, 1500 feet above ground level (AGL), the terrain in the area I fly is too mountainous to keep me on radar. I’d have to fly much higher to stay on radar. And if I’m going to be that high, I may as well fly a plane. So flight following is not a practical solution.
Jim also flies in remote and often mountainous areas. And, like me, he’s a true gadget lover — someone who likes to fiddle with electronic toys. (I think he’s lusting for a POV.1 after seeing mine.) He was based in Chelan for cherry drying season and happened to see the SPOT Messenger displayed at the local Radio Shack. He went in and checked it out. Then he did more homework. Then he bought one and told me about it.
The SPOT Satellite Messenger is a personal location device. It’s about the size of my Palm Treo and, as you can see here, bright orange so it’s easy to…well, spot.
My understanding of the unit is that it combines GPS receiver technology with satellite transmitter technology. So you turn it on and it acquires its position via GPS. You can then use one of four different features, depending on the subscription plan you choose:
Jim went with both plans. When I bought mine on Monday, I did the same.
I’ve been playing with SPOT on and off since Tuesday morning. In general, I like it and I think it’ll do the job I intend to use it for — flight following on those long cross-country flights.
After configuring message recipients, I started out by sending a few OK messages. Although the marketing material makes it seem as if those messages are instantaneous, they’re not. After pushing the OK button, the unit will try for up to 20 minutes to send your OK location via satellite uplink. It’ll send the message 3 times, but only one message is forwarded to the people on your list. For experimental purposes, I made myself one of those people. I had to wait longer than 20 minutes to receive one or two of the messages. To be fair, part of the reason for that could be my location at the time — flying between Wenatchee and Seattle in mountainous terrain. (I don’t think my cell phone was receiving very well.) The delay is satisfactory, once you realize that it’s not an instant communication.
For obvious reasons, I have not used Help or 911 yet. Let’s hope I never have to.
I did set up tracking. It took several tries to turn it on properly. The unit does not have a screen, so you have to rely on understanding the blinking lights to know what it’s doing — if anything. Twice I thought I was enabling tracking, but discovered that all I did was send OK messages. Once, tracking was on and in trying to turn it on, I really turned it off. In all cases, it was operator error. Evidently, you cannot turn on tracking during the 20-minute period in which an OK message is being sent. Since both features use the same button, it’s pretty easy to do one thing instead of the other if you don’t pay attention to how long you hold down the darn button.
My husband complained that the messages he received did not include the date and time. We later realized that it was because he was not viewing the message on his phone; he was viewing its summary. (My husband is text message challenged.)
The e-mail version of the OK message is handy because of the link it includes. Click it and go right to Google Maps with the position clearly marked. Here are two examples. In the first one, we’re flying just to the east of Snowqualmie Pass over I-90. In the second one, we’re sitting on Pad 6 at Boeing Field in Seattle. These images are at two different magnifications. All GoogleMaps features work — it’s just the location put into GoogleMaps. My personal Messages page on the FindMeSpot.com Web site displays all points with the option of displaying any combination of them on Google Maps. It also enables me to download these points to a GPX or KML format file for use with a GPS receiver or GoogleEarth.
The Share page feature, which is still in beta, was not working when I first tried it. But it’s working now — and quite well! I set up a page that does not require a password so anyone could check in and see where I was when I was traveling with SPOT tracking turned on. Apparently, it only shows the past 24 hours of activity, so it you’re checking it now and there’s nothing going on, it’s because I’m not traveling with SPOT. But here’s what it looks like right now; as you can see, I spent a lot of time exploring Walla Walla, WA today:
A few things about this feature:
The URL for this feature is long and impossible to remember, so I created a custom URL using TinyURL: http://www.tinyurl.com/FindMaria. I invite you to try it for yourself.
My overall opinion is very positive. It will certainly give me peace of mind while flying in some of the remote desert locations I fly in. I think it’s worth the $150 unit cost plus annual subscriptions.
Even if something goes terribly wrong out there, I want to be found.
My next challenge: getting it to send OK messages to my Twitter account. Anyone have any ideas?
Flying through a mountain pass in marginal conditions.
Louis and I flew from Wenatchee (EAT) to Seattle’s Boeing Field (BFI) yesterday afternoon. The flight required us to cross the Cascade Mountains. There are two passes to choose from: Snoqualmie, which I-90 goes through and Stevens, which State Route 2 goes through. I’d wanted to take Stevens — I’d already traveled Snoqualmie once and wanted a change — but the decision would not be mine.
It was a weather issue, of course. After weeks of picture-perfect weather here on the east side of the Cascades, a cold front had moved in. Rain clouds were coming over the Cascades. It even drizzled in Quincy.
As I flew out of Quincy Airport for the last time this season, I took a good look at the ridge between Ellensburg and the Columbia River, where all those windmills are lined up. The sky was dark out that way, with thick gray clouds. Although the windmills were clearly visible, I could also see the vertical streaks of falling rain. It looked as if a flight up I-90 was out of the question.
But the picture was worse when I reached the Wenatchee area and could see out toward Stevens pass. The sharp, rocky mountains are closer there and the clouds clung to them like cotton balls rubbed across coarse sandpaper: lots of wisps in an 8 to 10 knot breeze. The clouds were definitely lower; the pass was definitely higher.
It looked as if scud-running would be in my near future.
If you’re not a pilot, or you’re a very new pilot, you might not know the term scud-running as it pertains to aviation (or anything else, for that matter). I define scud-running as flying in variable visibility conditions, when you have steer around low clouds or fog enroute to get to your destination. Scud-running is never a good idea. In fact, it’s usually a bad idea. More than a few pilot have met their end hitting a “granite cloud” while attempting to run the scud.
Helicopters, however, are uniquely suited for scud-running. We normally fly low, so the clouds have to be really low to affect our flight. We can travel at a wide range of speeds, from 0 to (in my case) 115 knots, so we can take our time and really look at what’s around us before committing to a path. And if that path turns bad, we can make a 180° turn to get out of it in a very narrow space. Best of all, if things get really out of hand, we can always land in a field or parking lot and wait out the problem.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m not recommending scud running to any pilot. It’s dangerous. I’m just saying that if you’re flying a helicopter and the clouds start to close in, you’re more likely to live to tell about it — if you handle it right — than someone flying a plane.
In Wenatchee, I checked the weather. I used Duats to get conditions in Stampede Pass, which is just south of Snowqualmie pass, and every other place along the way on both routes. There was no information handy for Stevens Pass, but my eyes had told me enough. Stampede pass had ceilings of 6000 feet. That was more than enough for me. Then I checked the radar in motion to see which way the rain I’d spotted near the windmills was going. It was driving northeast. We were north of the rain; it would pass to the south of us if we flew direct to Ellensburg or Cle Elum. It was cloudy and raining on the other side of the cascades, with 4,000 foot ceilings. Wind was light everywhere, so turbulence wouldn’t be an issue.
I decided to take Snowqualmie Pass.
We started up and I took off on a steep, 1,000 foot per minute climb from Wenatchee Airport. We had to cross the river and then cross the high ridge on the other side. To our left, the rainclouds were moving east. To our right, the low clouds were stuck on mountain peaks. The ridge was clear; the clouds were at least 1,000 feet above it. I aimed slightly to the south of the GPS’s direct-to Ellensburg, pointing the helicopter at the friendliest piece of sky.
I gave Louis the controls when we reached the ridge. He continued the climb, but adjusted our route to intercept with Ellensburg. We climbed closer to the clouds. I thought for a while about how I use a GPS for en route navigation — as a sort of general guide. Louis was putting us on the GPS track. Whatever.
We topped the ridge and the land dropped down toward Ellensburg on the other side. We stayed pretty high. Didn’t seem any reason to descend to a 500-foot cruise altitude when we’d just have to climb again. I set Cle Elum as the next go to waypoint in the GPS. Louis adjusted course to head west.
Ahead of us, the mountains closed in. I-90 threaded its way through them in one narrow valley after another. Although we still had at least 2,000 feet of cloudless sky right above us, the clouds dropped up ahead. The entrance to the mountainous area looked shrouded in a white haze. It didn’t look good.
I dialed in the Stampede Pass ASOS. It assured us that the ceilings were 1700 feet. Plenty of space for us. But we weren’t going through Stampede Pass. We were going through Snowqualmie Pass. They were very close, but would they have the same conditions?
We continued on. I paid close attention to the high-tension power lines that ran along the side of the road. If we had to descend and turn, I wanted to make sure I knew exactly where those wires were.
The road climbed into the mountains. We stayed at pretty much the same altitude until we were about 500 feet above the road. Then we climbed with it. We slipped into the white haze, which turned out to be a light mist. Tiny raindrops covered the helicopter’s cockpit bubble. Visibility was still okay, but there wasn’t enough moisture to bead up and run off the window, so we had to look through all those little droplets. Still, so far, so good.
We passed the two little airports at Cle Elum and I punched the next airport into the GPS: Easton State. If I have to make a precautionary landing, I like to do it at an airport, so I like to keep an airport dialed into the GPS. Sure, we could land in a big parking lot or field, but that’s a good way to get unwanted attention in these little towns.
Meanwhile, the clouds continued to come down. My internal alarm systems came to life when we started flying between low-hanging wisps of clouds. The last time I’d done that, I’d flown into one I hadn’t seen. That produced about 2 seconds of terror before I made a descending 180° turn to get out. I didn’t want to be there again. I told Louis, who was still flying, about my experience.
We passed Easton State. The next airport was Bandera, on the other side of the pass. I punched it in. We were now flying in a deep canyon, about 400 feet over a lake and I-90. The wires were not an issue anymore. At the west end of the lake, the highway made a sharp turn to the left into what looked like a cloud bank.
I listened to the Stampede Pass ASOS again. Now the ceilings were 1400 feet — still not bad. We weren’t far from there. We continued to the end of the lake, where we could see into the next canyon. Visibility was still okay, so we went in. This was the narrowest part of the canyon with very little room to maneuver. The clouds stayed high enough. The misty rainfall continued. We were okay, but I knew it could turn bad at any time.
Then we were through the pass and the road started to descend. The clouds went down with it. So did we. We’d made it through the pass but I still wasn’t sure whether we’d have a clear enough shot out of the mountains. We could never see more than a few miles ahead of us because of the mist and the twisty turns of the canyon.
But by the time we passed Bandera, it was obvious that we wouldn’t have to turn back or land. As the road continued to descend, the clouds stayed put. I tuned in the ATIS for Boeing Field and heard 10 miles visibility with 4000 foot ceilings. We landed there about 20 minutes later.
Here’s our entire route, laid out on a sectional chart;
I wouldn’t call this experience scud running, but it was about as close as you could get. I don’t think too many airplanes would have made this flight successfully without getting into the clouds — granite or otherwise. Although something small and slow like a Piper Cub could have handled the altitude and airspeed, the uncertainty of what lay ahead, coupled with the extremely narrow spaces that would make it impossible for an airplane to turn around, would make this a very dangerous flight for any plane.
I’ve been in worse weather situations than this one, but I don’t think I entered into this one lightly. The entire time we were in the mountains with low clouds, I kept thinking about escape routes, landing zones, obstacles to turning, and what could happen if we let it. In Arizona, I don’t get much practice flying weather. While I think that what we experienced yesterday was marginal VFR at best, other pilots more accustomed to weather flying might think I was taking the whole thing too seriously.
But it’s when you let your guard down that Mother Nature sometimes steps forward to slap you in the face.
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