Best in the Desert’s Parker 425 off-road race is a huge event in Parker, AZ. Attended by thousands of people with hundreds of entries, the race begins just before dawn and ends — at least for some racers — after nightfall.

The course stretches about 30 miles across the open desert east of Parker, zig-zagging on existing dirt roads, including more than a few power line roads. The land out there is mostly old sand dunes like those shown in this photo. (This photo was taken from about 800 feet AGL; the dots are bushes about 3-5 feet tall.) The land here is remote and mostly barren. A bold pilot could fly 50 feet AGL without fear of hitting anything. Except, of course, the power lines.

This was my third year flying at the race and, by far, my busiest. I flew for three separate clients and even took a local couple for a quick ride so they could photograph their business and home from the air. I learned a bunch of things that I want to document here, for my own reference and for other pilots’ consideration.

Navigating

Finding your way around the course can be a challenge. If you don’t stay on the track, you can easily lose it in the vast empty desert. This is especially true if there’s been some rain and there’s no dust. If there’s dust, you can see the racers from miles away with just a few hundred feet of altitude.

Track locations are identified by mile number. There are no visible markers, though — that would make it too easy. Instead, if you’re lucky you have a copy of the course map and have secured it to something so you can consult it in flight. Remember, at least one door is off, so the wind is whipping around the cabin and loose paper is not an option. Although you could put all the mile markers in your GPS, that would make quite a mess. So I just have about 10 points in my GPS and I can use them to home in on the point I need to get to.

The Photographers

I flew a total of three professional videographers, one professional photographer, and three amateur photographers around the race course this year.

Let’s take a closer look at the video guys, since they’re the most interesting to me. We’ll call them A, B, and C.

• Two of the three videographers (A and B) were seasoned professionals with either prosumer or professional video equipment. They were a pleasure to work with. The third (c) was a young guy who was obviously very new to the game. He was doing video with a Canon DSLR hooked up to an awkward shoulder rig. His attitude was cocky and he didn’t seem able to either give or follow instructions. In fact, he didn’t seem very alert and I wonder whether his young mind is fully operational. (More on that in a moment.) After the flight, when we were settling up the bill (paid by his client), he told his companion that he was going to charge extra for the aerial work. (As if he’d paid for the helicopter.) I was so put off by his attitude and behavior that I will not fly him again — and that’s something I seldom say.
• One of the videographers (A) claimed he weighed 260 lbs. I added 10 pounds, as I usually do, for clothes and equipment. I then calculated my weight and balance several ways, hoping he’d choose a back seat location with his 190-lb still photography companion beside him. Earth to video professionals: If you want to do aerial photography from a helicopter, slim down. If you want OGE hovers and aggressive maneuvers, your pilot will need all the performance he can get.
• Only one of the three videographers (B) had ever shot video from a helicopter before. He understood the benefit of sitting behind the pilot so the pilot can see what he sees. He probably got a lot more and better video for his time because of the simple fact that he didn’t have to direct me. I could see the racer as well as he could. The other two videographers didn’t understand the importance of positioning. A insisted on sitting in the front, despite the fact that his heavy weight in such a forward position made us front-heavy (see W&B charts here), which, in turn, limited my maneuvers. The only reason C sat in the back was because he was accompanied by a still photographer and I had to put them both on the same side so they could shoot at the same thing at the same time.
• Because A sat up front, he shot at least 50% of his video through the front bubble window of the helicopter. I estimate that 75% of that video will be unusable because of glare.
• Only one of the videographers (B) had ever worn a harness before. I’d brought mine along and he was very happy to have it. He climbed right in and hooked up. I had to assist the other two with the harness. Tragically, C did not fasten the seatbelt behind him before sitting down and the buckle slipped out of the open door during flight. Dangling there in the slipstream, it did serious damage to the paint on the left side of the helicopter. I can’t imagine how he didn’t see or hear the metal buckle banging, but, as I said earlier, he wasn’t entirely there.

The Flying

The flying can be intense. I’ve written about it before, so I won’t go into very much detail here. Perhaps a more analytical look is in order. I can break the flying down into different phases or activities:

• Point-to-point travel. In most cases, the photographer(s) on board are interested in shooting just one or maybe a few specific vehicles. When they get on board, they often have a general idea of where those vehicles are. So if the photographer tells you the truck just passed mile marker 38 and you’re at the airport, you have to haul ass out to the middle of the desert to pick up the truck somewhere beyond mile marker 38. The best way to do that is to cruise at top doors-off speed — which is 100 knots for an R44 — in as straight a line as you can. Avoid the track to avoid other aircraft. Pick up the track somewhere around the mile marker where the truck was when you left the airport 20 or more minutes before and drop down into the next mode: search.
• Search mode. In search mode, you’re actively looking for a specific vehicle. You have the vehicle number and usually know what kind of vehicle it is (i.e., truck, buggy, jeep, etc.) and what color it [mostly] is. If you’re lucky, you have a photo of the vehicle — one of my videographers (B) had an excellent illustrated sheet that actually had photos of the four trucks we needed to find, all on one page. So in search mode, you drop down low enough to actually read the numbers on the roof or hood or side panel of each vehicle. The very best way to do this if you don’t know where the vehicles might be is to move backwards along the track so the vehicles are coming to you as you’re moving towards them. This way, you pass more vehicles more quickly. But if you’re playing catch-up, you’re coming up behind the vehicles. They’re doing 30 to 120 miles per hour, depending on the vehicle, driver, and road conditions, so there’s often up to four minutes between vehicles, especially after the first lap. The whole time, you’re watching out for other helicopters and obstacles while you and your spotter/photographer are trying to identify vehicles as you pass them. When you find the one you need, someone usually shouts out, “That’s it!” and you drop into the next mode: chase.
• Chase mode. In chase mode, you pair up with the vehicle, putting the photographer(s) in position to shoot. That often means dropping down to 50-100 feet over the desert floor. It almost always means matching the speed of the vehicle you’re chasing. On straight, smooth stretches of road — like one of the power line roads — the vehicle could be going over 100 miles per hour. On roads cutting through lava beds or through canyons or zig-zagging around high tension power line towers, the vehicle could be moving at just 30 miles per hour. The pilot’s job is to keep on the target, always watching out for obstacles and other aircraft, listening to the instructions of the photographer: higher, lower, faster, slower, right, left. It’s tricky when you don’t have brakes or 0-to-60-in-5-seconds acceleration capabilities. I prefer having the photographer sit behind me so I can see the action as well as he can, but that’s not always possible. With two photographers on the left side of the aircraft, I usually can’t see the vehicle — although I can often hear the sound of its engine and passing horn — through my noise canceling headsets and over the sound of the helicopter! — if I’m properly lined up with it. When the photographer has enough footage shot alongside the vehicle, he sometimes asks me to position myself for what I call photo mode.
• Photo mode. Let’s face it — minute after minute of footage shot alongside a racing vehicle can get dull after a while. A good videographer will vary his shots. So I might be asked to circle the vehicle or cross in front of it or behind it from a certain direction at a certain speed. Good videographers can envision the shots and I’ve done enough work with them to envision them, too. I also use photo mode in locations where the track bends and curves around itself. “The Python” at the Parker 425 is a perfect example. It’s supposedly 11 miles of track in an area roughly 1/2 mile by 1-1/2 miles in size, right next to the airport. The pits are in there, too. There are lots of banked curves, short straightaways, and huge humps in the road. Spectators all around, just ready to get hit by flying sand as they snap photos with their cell phones and feel the adrenaline surge with each roaring truck that passes. This is what the photographers want to capture — real action. And this is where an inexperienced pilot or an overweight aircraft is most likely to get in trouble. There’s hovering and tight turns at low altitude. Add a crosswind or tailwind and flying in photo mode is a recipe for disaster.

Conclusion

This was my best Parker 425 ever, in terms of work. It was also my most costly: between the ferry time, which was only partially compensated, two overnight stays with meals, and the damage to the side of my aircraft, I’ll likely net zero profits for the trip. But it was a good experience and a lot of fun.

I really do love this kind of flying.

Note to Readers: If you have any photos or videos of a bright red Robinson R44 in action over the Parker 425 for 2008, 2009, or 2010, please get in touch. I’d love to show it off on this blog or the Flying M Air Web site.

This afternoon, I got a call from a potential client. He’s the manager of a country club that does catering for weddings and other big events. He wanted to know if it were possible for me to land my helicopter on the country club property after dark, pick up a couple — say a new bride and groom — and fly them around Phoenix for about 45 minutes before dropping them off at a hotel with a helipad or an airport where a limousine would be waiting. He also wanted to know whether it was okay for them to have some wine while aboard the aircraft.

Off the top of my head, I said, yes, we should be able to do that. But then I listed the things I’d have to check out before giving a definitive answer.

I thought this might make a good topic for a blog post for commercial helicopter pilots interested in real life helicopter missions. You see, commercial helicopter flying is not always as easy as picking up two passengers at an airport, flying them around for a while, and returning them to the starting point. So, as an example, I’ll discuss the things that come into play for this particular kind flight.

Landing Zone

Off-airport landings are something I’m accustomed to. Photo by Jon Davison.

First and foremost is the safety of the landing zone. How big is it? Is it level? Are there obstacles such as trees, buildings, or wires? What are my approach and departure paths like? Can it be controlled to prevent onlookers from coming too close or walking behind the aircraft? How about neighbors? Are there homes in the area? Is it close to another airport where air traffic control might be an issue? Since landing and departing will be at night, can the landing zone be properly lit so I can find it and land safely on it?

I made an appointment to meet with the client to see the landing zones he had in mind. Hopefully, one will work. I also checked the location of the country club using the satellite view of Google Maps. Although its golf course is indeed surrounded by homes, there’s also a nearby freeway and shopping center that’s likely to be empty at night. I could see some possible approach and departure paths, but could not judge obstacles, such as light posts or wires.

As for a destination hotel — if one is found, I’ll have to go through the entire process there, too. It’s more likely, however, that I’ll just land them at Deer Valley Airport, which is my home base.

Local Ordinances

Of course, no off-airport landing would be possible without a lot of hoop-jumping if there were a local ordinance that prohibited off-airport landings. Scottsdale has such an ordinance, enacted, primarily, to prevent local helicopter pilots from doing asinine things like landing in residential subdivisions. (I guess it was done one too many times.) Wickenburg’s ordinance isn’t quite as restrictive; it states that landing is possible with the permission of the Police Chief. When I asked the Police Chief about this some years ago, he had no idea what I was talking about.

The client said that the mayor the country club’s city is a member, so if there was an issue, he might be able to get permission on an as-needed basis. But when I hung up the phone with him, I started making other calls. First, the local police, to see if they knew of any ordinance. They directed me to the city’s compliance office. They told me they had no ordinances, but that I should check with the FAA. I already know that the FAA is fine with landing a helicopter on private property, as long as it is done safely and in accordance with any related FARs.

So this would not be an issue for this particular location. No hoop-jumping necessary.

Passenger Loading

The lights of Phoenix are beautiful at night. Photo by Jon Davison.

The client wants to use the helicopter as part of the event’s entertainment. At the predetermined time, the guests would be guided to “the patio” (wherever that is) where they could watch the helicopter come in for a landing. The bride and groom would climb aboard and the helicopter would take off, perhaps doing a quick circle of the area before departing.

This sounds great and its sure to make a memorable wedding party. But passenger loading could be an issue here.

Is the client willing to wait for the helicopter to cool down and shut down before the passengers are loaded? And then wait again while the helicopter starts up, warms up, and spins up before departure? If the wait is okay, the pilot (me) can do the passenger briefing and loading. While this might not make for good entertainment, it is the safest option.

The other option is “hot loading,” where the passengers board the helicopter while the engine is running and blades are spinning. Many people will simply not do hot loading, but I will — provided there’s a qualified ground crew to escort all passengers to their seats and ensure they’re buckled in. That means operating with someone on the ground — likely my husband — who would arrive before me and handle briefing and loading duties.

While you might think I prefer the first option, I actually prefer the second. It minimizes the amount of time I’m on the ground and ensures a qualified person is there to handle my next concern: crowd control.

Crowd Control

I firmly believe that a spinning helicopter is more dangerous on the ground than in the air. My tail rotor is literally invisible when it’s spinning — even at idle speed — and if someone walked into it, they’d be dead. That’s why I always set down in a landing zone with my tail pointed away from where people are most likely to be. Any helicopter pilot who doesn’t do this is looking for trouble.

Unfortunately, when landing in an uncontrolled area, there’s nothing to stop people from running up behind the helicopter. There’s a restaurant in Peoria, AZ that I used to land at for lunch quite often. It’s in a relatively remote area with lots of open desert around it. I always landed just outside the parking area with my tail rotor facing away from the building. The last time I landed there, however, a bunch of kids on off-road motorcycles saw me come in and began swarming around the helicopter as I was shutting down. Good thing my husband was with me to keep them clear. I haven’t gone back since.

When I inspect the landing zone, I’ll try to determine how well it can be controlled. And then I’ll put a plan in place to control it for my arrival. Having a reliable and experienced ground crew person will certainly help when the time comes for me to operate there.

Alcoholic Beverages

The final request that requires research is the glass of wine during the tour. FAR 135.121(a) states:

No person may drink any alcoholic beverage aboard an aircraft unless the certificate holder operating the aircraft has served that beverage.

This means they can’t bring their own alcohol aboard — it’s also why you can’t legally bring your own alcohol aboard an airliner!

If you’re wondering who the “certificate holder” is, well, so am I. It’s either me personally — since I have a single pilot Part 135 certificate and I’m the pilot — or it’s my company, Flying M Air. If it’s me, serving wine while I’m at the controls of a helicopter will be nearly impossible. If it’s my company, I can theoretically have an employee or agent of my company serve the alcohol for me, preferably right before we take off.

If there are any pilots out there who have real knowledge about this, please do use the Comments link or form to share what you know with me. Otherwise, I’ll just ask my FAA Primary Operations Inspector (POI). He’ll either tell me or help me figure it out for myself based on what I know.

One thing I do know: if I can’t legally serve alcohol on the flight, I won’t. No client request is more important than my certificate.

FAR 135.121(b) and (c) offer two other rules regarding alcohol:

(b) No certificate holder may serve any alcoholic beverage to any person aboard its aircraft if that person appears to be intoxicated.
(c) No certificate holder may allow any person to bard any of its aircraft if that person appears to be intoxicated.

That means I can’t serve them if they’re drunk and I can’t even allow them to board the aircraft if they’re drunk. This is something I need to make sure the client knows. It would be a shame if I brought my shiny red helicopter in for a landing at the big party and the bride or groom was too shitfaced from champagne to fly. (It would be a bigger shame if one of them puked on my leather seats.)

The Other Usual Stuff

Every flight has the usual collection of pilot tasks before it can be completed. I’m talking about things like calculating weight and balance, getting weather and NOTAM information, creating a flight plan, preflighting the aircraft. I might want to do a daytime landing at the landing zone in advance, just to make sure I was familiar with it. There’s lots of the usual responsibilities, none of which can be taken lightly for any flight.

This Is What It’s All About

This should give most folks an idea of what goes into planning what seems like a simple mission. Any pilot faced with a client request like this who doesn’t look into these things — at a minimum — is simply not doing his job.

I’ll know by Saturday, when I review the landing zone, whether we’ll be able to work for this client. I hope so. It would be great to have some regular gigs like this throughout the year.

I did an ash scattering the other day. Normally, that wouldn’t be a big deal. I’ve done ash scatterings before. (Read about two of them here and here.) But this one didn’t go exactly as planned.

By ash scattering, I mean the aerial scattering of cremains. Cremains is short for cremated remains. That’s what the next of kin get in a baggie and a box when someone is cremated. An ash scattering normally refers to scattering those remains over a large tract of empty land.

My Technique

I should start out by saying that I have ash scattering from a helicopter down to a science. After several trials, I’ve got a technique that works like a charm — for most scatterings, anyway. I get some tissue paper — the kind of paper you might put inside a gift box around a shirt or other item of clothing. I spread it out. The family (or friend) pours the cremains onto the paper. They gather up the corners and sides and twist them at the top to make a kind of paper package of the departed’s remains. This is all done inside, where there’s no chance the wind will foul things up.

Then we climb into the helicopter with the person responsible for scattering the cremains sitting behind me. All doors are on. I start up and fly to the location where the remains will be scattered. I climb to at least 1,000 feet over the target area. Then I bring the helicopter into a high hover — or at least a very slow flight speed.

We close all vents except the one in the ash scatterer’s door. The whole time we’ve been flying, he’s been holding the cremains in its paper package on his lap with the top still twisted closed. He untwists the top and grasps the package by its top. He slips it out through the vent and tosses it gently away from the helicopter.

The package is closed at first, but as it begins its tumbling descent, the wind whips it open. The ashes explode from the paper in a poof and drift away with the wind. The paper also falls to the ground, but since it’s thin, uncoated tissue paper, it’s likely broken down by the elements within a few months or a year.

I like this technique for several reasons:

• It scatters the ashes with a certain amount of dignity. (One of my clients even bought their own tissue paper. It was printed with a pattern of shoes because the woman who was being scattered had liked shoes.)
• It prevents the ashes from blowing back into the helicopter when dumped out.
• It prevents the ashes or their packaging from creating a danger to the helicopter’s tail rotor or other parts.
• It does an amazing job at scattering the ashes over a wide, open area.

Unfortunately, I didn’t use this technique on Saturday.

Saturday’s Scattering

Saturday’s ash scattering mission was tough for two reasons:

• The next of kin were the adult children of the two cremated people they wanted to scatter. They were not small people. The lightest one weighed in at 216 pounds. Add me and you have four fatties on board.
• The ashes were to be scattered over the family orchards, which covered a mere 30 or 40 acres and were surrounded by other farmland and orchards.

Clearly, I’d have to fly lower and use a different technique to scatter the ashes over such a small area. And because we were so heavy, I’d have to drain all but about 15 gallons of fuel out of the helicopter so I had the power I needed to fly low and slow without getting into trouble with the power curve.

We kept it simple. The ash scatterer would sit behind me and dump the two bags of ashes out through his vent. He’d do everything possible to make sure the bag opened on the outside of the helicopter. I made sure he clearly understood what would happen if he let go of the bag and it got into the tail rotor.

I examined both bags of cremains before the flight. The technology has come a long way. The mom’s ashes, created five years ago, were of a sand-like consistency, with very few grains larger than a tiny pebble. The dad’s ashes, created only recently, were powder-like.

We were all in good spirits when we did the flight. I took them out over the target area and made a high reconnoissance as they pointed out the orchard blocks. Apples, pears, and cherries. (Wash your fruit, readers!) The wind was coming from the west at about 7 miles per hour and would really help me deal with the weight I was carrying. I could point into the wind and fly on a diagonal while the scattering was being done behind me. But also to the west was a set of high tension power lines. If I got into a settling with power incident — which I’d have to identify before it became a problem — I’d have to avoid the wires on any kind of escape route. The best thing to do would be to keep moving at a speed above ETL. I’d come in from the northeast for my pass.

With that plan made, the ash scatterer prepared the first bag. I came in over the northeast corner of the first orchard block about 200-300 feet up. On my word, he began dumping ashes out of the helicopter. I could see through the corner of my eye how they streamed behind us. I pointed the helicopter into the wind and flew almost sideways to keep the ashes away from the aircraft as well as I could. I was probably doing about 20 knots ground speed.

The second bag had a small hole in it, which was discovered when the ash scatterer’s sister handed him the bag. (And yes, I still have bits of Mrs. B all over the back seat of the helicopter.) Those remains followed the first. I only had one moment when there was a power issue and I resolved it quickly by picking up speed.

Then we were done.

We made a pass over the family home before returning to the airstrip where I’m based for the summer. I set down on the concrete pad, cooled the engine, and shut down.

The white dust you see is the cremated remains of Mr. & Mrs. B.

But it wasn’t until we got out of the helicopter that I noticed a fine dusting of Mr. and Mrs. B on the right side of my helicopter.

The family wasn’t the least bit upset about their parents hitching a ride on the side of the helicopter. Or even about bits of mom in the back seat. They were more concerned about cleaning it up for me. But I told them I’d take care of it, after making sure vacuum use wouldn’t bother them.

Then I did a complete walk around of the helicopter, opening up panels to make sure there were no traces of cremains inside any of the compartments. I also looked in the fan scroll area behind the engine. It looked clean, too. The only thing that looked as if it could be a problem was the air inlet behind the right passenger door. As shown in the photo below, it apparently got a heavy dose of dust.

The Extent of the Dusting

I flew the helicopter at least two more hours that day. I gave some rides to a grower’s kids and three hired hands. I flew to Cave B to join the ash scatterers for a celebratory lunch. I flew up the Columbia River as far as Chelan, where I spent the day with a friend, and flew back at high speed along the Waterville Plateau, landing at dusk in 95° heat.

The helicopter flew fine. Cylinder head temperature was up a bit more than average on the last flight of the day, but I figured that was due to my high speed and the hot temperatures. I’d seen it that high before when flying during Arizona summers. It wasn’t anywhere near red line — it was just a bit higher than the tickmark on the gauge where it normally sits.

I’d hoped that Mr. & Mrs. B would get blown off the aircraft, but they didn’t.

Cremains sucked into the air intake on the side of the helicopter. The filter will be replaced today.

The air filter had me worried. It would likely need to be replaced. I called my Seattle mechanic on Sunday morning. He proceeded to tell me about all the damage that could be caused by the cremains. Best case scenario: none of it got into the engine. Worst case; it did and was already grinding away at moving engine parts. I was told that symptoms of a problem would include increased oil use and overheating. He promised to overnight the filter for Tuesday delivery.

I went out to the helicopter with a sponge and bucket of clean water and sponged Mr. & Mrs. B off the side of the helicopter. Today, when I go out to change the filter, I’ll bring along a vacuum and inverter so I can vacuum Mrs. B out of the back seat.

And I’ll monitor the helicopter’s operations closely in flight, keeping an eye out for overheating and other indications of a problem.

You can bet that the next time I scatter cremains, I’ll do it with tissue paper and a high altitude drop.

One of the things I’ve said again and again is that it’s nearly impossible to load a Robinson R44 helicopter out of CG. Nearly, but not completely.

What is CG?

For those of you unfamiliar with the term CG, it stands for center of gravity. All aircraft have a specific center of gravity or point at which they could (theoretically) be lifted and hung level. While an aircraft doesn’t need to be in exact balance to fly, there are limitations to which it can be loaded out of balance. These limitations form an envelope of acceptable loading and if you’re loaded within this envelope, you’re said to be within CG or simply in balance. The aircraft controls are rigged with this in mind.

If you load an aircraft out of CG, you’re asking for trouble. For example, if I load my helicopter too heavy on one side, I could run into trouble in a turn by not being able to move the cyclic enough in the opposite direction to come out of the turn. After all, all controls have limits, normally defined by a physical stop. Running out of right cyclic while trying to come out of a left turn would be very scary indeed. Of course, I probably wouldn’t get to that point because I’d feel the problem as soon as I pulled up into a hover — I simply wouldn’t be able to keep the aircraft from drifting left.

[Note to all you flight instructors out there; if I completely mangled this description -- since I'm not a CFI -- feel free to step in to clarify in the Comments. This is my understanding after 10 years and 2,000+ flying hours, but I never had to teach it to anyone.]

Pilots are required to have an aircraft Weight and Balance (W&B) calculation on board for every flight. This is part of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) in the U.S. In non-commercial flight, it’s usually enough to have the W&B for the empty aircraft. But in commercial flight, there are usually requirements for an individual W&B to be calculated for each flight with the given load.

So yes, when you fly on a commercial airliner, there’s a computer program somewhere that’s spitting out a W&B calculation for your flight. Your pilot has it in his possession in the cockpit.

Now you might say, “Hey, wait a minute. How do they know what I weigh?” They don’t. They’re allowed to use estimates. It all depends on the airline’s Operating Specifications (Ops Specs), which are established with the FAA.

I have Ops Specs, too, but I’m not allowed to estimate for my Part 135 Charter work. That’s why I ask for the name and weight of each passenger when I book a flight.

Four Fatties is Too Many

When I asked for names and weights yesterday while booking what was supposed to be a 2-hour aerial survey charter, I got three weights that I knew would be trouble:

A: 240 lbs
B: 220 lbs
C: 195 lbs

That’s 655 pounds of passengers alone.

Add the pilot (who is trying hard not to reveal her weight; don’t do the math, guys!) and you could only put on about an hour and 20 minutes worth of fuel to stay below the 2500 lbs max gross weight — the absolute maximum weight of the aircraft at takeoff time — limitation of my Robinson R44 Raven II.

Of course, the situation gets worse when you factor in the simple fact that all passengers lie about their weight. Every single one of them. If I put a scale out and made them stand on it, I guarantee anyone over 200 lbs. has shaved at least 10 pounds off their weight when reporting it. They either don’t figure the weight of their clothes or they’re in denial about their weight or they’re afraid that I’ll say they weigh too much. Even folks under 200 lbs are guilty of this. So I routinely add 10 pounds for each passenger. That 30 pounds corresponds to 5 gallons of 100LL fuel or 15-20 minutes of cruise flight.

Since I’m really supposed to have 20 minutes more fuel on board than I expect to need — per FAA reserve requirements — I was really sunk. Apparently, I’d be able to load up my passengers and just enough fuel to take us on a brief flight around the departure airport.

This is just the weight portion of the equation, which is easy enough to do. Add empty aircraft weight to passenger, baggage, and pilot weight. Then add the weight of required fuel. If the number exceeds 2500 lbs, something’s got to come off the aircraft. It can’t be the pilot and it can’t be the fuel required to complete the mission. Simple as that.

How the CG Stacks Up

While I could have done the math in my head, I did it as part of a complete CG calculation. It’s a pain in the butt do to one of those manually, but I have a spreadsheet solution that I worked up to do it for me. I punch in the weights and amounts of fuel and it draws the CG envelope with points for takeoff weight and empty fuel weight. So while manually doing this task would likely take 15-20 minutes of calculator punching, I can do it in about 30 seconds. I can also easily play “what if” by changing fuel quantities and moving the passengers into different seats.

Here’s what I got for the proposed flight and 2 hours of fuel on board:

Note that both points (square and triangle) are outside the boundaries of the CG envelope. The red line indicates the rotor mast. The points clearly indicate that the CG is way forward. In other words, I’m front-heavy. If I pick up to a hover, I’m likely to start drifting forward immediately. I may hit the back stop of the cyclic when I try to stop that forward motion. In other words, I won’t be able to stop.

Of course, the aircraft is also 100 lbs over weight.

Just for grins, I moved the passengers around in a what-if scenario. I’d put the biggest guy up front, since that’s where the leg room is. After all, maybe he’s not fat. Maybe he’s a former professional basketball player. It doesn’t matter for my calculation how tall a person is — all I care about is weight. But if he’s got long legs, he’s likely to be miserable in the back seat.

So I put the light guy up front and got something like this:

A little better, but not safe or legal. But I kept playing. I really wanted to do this flight. The only thing left to fiddle with was the fuel, so I started off-loading fuel on my worksheet until I got within weight limitations. I needed to drop 99 pounds to get down to 2500 takeoff weight. That’s 16.5 gallons or about an hour’s worth of fuel. This what-if scenario would produce be for a short flight, with only 56 minutes of fuel on board:

And this is where the sad truth of the matter emerged. It didn’t matter how little fuel I had on board — we would always be out of CG for this flight. Too many fatties on board. Both points remain outside the envelope.

I called the client back and told him the problem. I said that together, we weighed too much. I gave him two options: leave one of the passengers behind or fly with a company that had larger aircraft. I suggested a company based in Scottsdale. He wasn’t happy, but he understood.

I’ll be interesting to see if the big fatty (A in my list above) gets left behind. If he does, we’ll be good to go — with full tanks, as you can see here:

It was 1 PM yesterday afternoon when the Concierge of a downtown Phoenix resort confirmed a Phoenix tour for two at 3 PM, departing from Scottsdale Airport. The helicopter and I were in Wickenburg.

I took down the particulars, hung up, and went into my office. I created a flight plan and the weight and balance I needed to be legal for my Part 135 charter work. Then I took a very quick shower, dressed in black jeans with a button-down Flying M Air logo shirt and black shoes, and fled to the airport with my paper work.

The Flight Down

Things were quiet (as usual) at Wickenburg Airport when I arrived. I opened my hangar and did a preflight. Everything looked fine, but I was low on fuel. I swapped out the old Airport/Facilities Directory with the current one — again, required to be on board for all Part 135 flights — got in the golf cart, and towed the helicopter out to the fuel island. A while later, I had 3/4 tanks of fuel and was warming the engine on one of the “helipads” on the west end of the ramp.

The tow cart owned by one of Wickenburg’s other helicopter owners — there are four of us here — was on the pad beside mine. I wondered where he’d gone and whether he was having fun. Unlike me, he can afford to fly anytime he likes. Flying is costly and I’ve gotten to the point where I only fly when I have to — or have someone else picking up the tab.

That day’s flight was out of Scottsdale Airport, which was about 35 minutes away by helicopter. I wished they’d chosen Deer Valley Airport, which was 10 minutes closer, but I offered the option of Scottsdale and they’d taken it.

[This map, which I created at the request of one of the concierges, shows my Phoenix-area pickup locations. It's interactive, so you can click a blue bubble to learn more about a location or zoom in to see the exact pickup location.]

There was no one in the pattern when I brought the rotors up to 100% RPM and made my departure call. I took off over the ramp, followed the taxiway parallel to Runway 05, and climbed out quickly. I dialed Deer Valley (DVT) into my GPS as I turned to the southeast. Soon I was flying over town and past my friend Tom’s ridgetop home just south of town on my way to the city.

Flying conditions were good. Very little wind, a few high, thin clouds. I’d checked the weather as part of my flight plan and knew the winds were light and variable all over the valley. It was also warm — 75°F. It would be an easy and comfortable flight.

I flew at about 400 AGL over rolling cactus-covered hills. Down below me, here and there, were RVs and ATVs making the most of our public land. The dust from a dirt bike traced the line of a trail in the near distance.

I was halfway to Deer Valley when my TIS woke up and began picking up signals from Sky Harbor. I was very surprised to see a target at my altitude just a few miles away. I looked but didn’t see anyone in the sky there. I was tuned into the Northwest/Northeast practice area frequency (122.75), as I’d be passing right through the Northwest practice area. A flight instructor made a radio call to announce that he was doing ground reference work over the Quintero Golf Course at 2800 feet. My altitude. What the hell was a plane doing down in helicopter territory?

I made a call with my location and altitude about a minute later. I got a bit of pleasure when I saw the altitude indication for his target on my GPS climb several hundred feet. Scared ya.

I didn’t have to worry about airplane traffic as I passed between the hills on the southwest side of Lake Pleasant. None of the training airplanes would dream about being that low. A rocky desert terrain, surprisingly green from winter rains and studded with tall saguaro cacti passed beneath me in a blur. Out on the lake, there were dozens of sailboats — not very common on a lake normally filled with motorboats and jet skis. I descended with the terrain, made another call as I passed south of the New Waddell Dam and Lake Pleasant, and continued southeast.

I tuned my GPS’s comm to the Deer Valley ATIS and listened for the altimeter and runway in use. I wasn’t landing, but I wanted to know what the other traffic would be doing. When I cleared the area near Pleasant Valley Glider Port (P48), I turned more southbound toward Deer Valley. I crossed Carefree Highway a second time and tuned in Deer Valley’s North Tower.

“Deer Valley Tower, Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima, nine to the northwest with Gulf, request transition along the canal toward Scottsdale.”

“Helicopter Six-Three-Zero Mike-Lima, Deer Valley Tower. Proceed as requested at or below two thousand. Deer Valley altimeter Three-Zero-One-Four. Report over the canal abeam the tower.”

I repeated the altitude restriction and headed toward where the Central Arizona Project canal crosses I-17, just inside Deer Valley’s airspace. The canal crosses both runway centerlines remarkably close to runway ends, but the altitude restriction put me below the landing traffic. It wasn’t that busy at Deer Valley anyway — probably fewer than four planes in the north traffic pattern.

I dropped down to 1800 feet as I hooked up with the canal and began following it southeast bound. The water was glass-like and reflected the few clouds high overhead. I wondered whether the people whose homes backed up against the canal were bothered by a helicopter flying past their backyards.

I made my call abeam the new tower. It’s been in operation about a year now and is huge, towering over the desert floor on the north side of the airport, midfield. I was told to monitor the south frequency. I’d already dialed it in and pushed the radio’s switch button.

I popped up about 100 feet to give myself extra space as I crossed some high tension power lines, then dropped back down to 1800 feet again. By then, I was crossing the runway center lines. Once clear, I called the south tower, requested a frequency change, and got it.

I listened to the Scottsdale ATIS on my GPS comm while I tuned into the tower frequency on my main comm. They were landing on runway 21 and the altimeter was the same. I punched Scottsdale (SDL) into my GPS.

I keyed my mic. “Scottsdale Tower, Helicopter Six-Three-Zero Mike-Lima, six to the northwest over the canal, request landing at the terminal with Alpha.”

The controller was a woman. Although I think I recognized her voice, she obviously didn’t recognize my N-number. She asked if I was familiar and I told her I was. Then she told me to continue inbound and report 2 miles west.

I left the canal and steered more southbound so I could come in more from the west. Now I was passing over homes and freeways, a good 500-700 feet off the ground. I heard the controller talking to another helicopter landing at Westworld for the Barrett-Jackson auction going on there. Then a jet getting an IFR clearance. Then I was about 2-1/2 miles to the northwest.

I called in. The controller cleared me to land, instructing me to stay east of the runway and taxiway. I repeated the landing clearance and restriction back to her. It was only after I’d released the mic button that I realized we both meant west. I debated calling her to clarify, but I knew that she meant west because to remain east, I’d have to cross the runway to the side opposite the terminal. So I didn’t call her. Instead, I just came in over the air park buildings, turning to parallel the runway on the west side for landing. A while later, I was setting down on the ramp with a Landmark Aviation guy in front of me, directing me as if I were some kind of commercial airliner. Silly.

The Tour

My passengers showed up a while later. I was waiting in the terminal for them. I’d wiped down the cockpit bubble to get the few bugs off before going inside to meet them.

They were a pair of newlyweds, in town for the big football game. Cardinals against Philadelphia, I think. He was in real estate and had been in helicopters a few times before. He was also a fixed wing pilot. She’d been in a helicopter only once before. I gave them the safety briefing and loaded them on board. He let her sit up front while he sat behind her.

My passengers wanted to see a mix of desert beauty with cacti and city. I had already planned to take them up to Lake Pleasant and the flight out there would give them all the desert they wanted — and more. Then I planned to take them south, past the Cardinals Stadium. We’d finish up with a flight up Central Avenue, then right on Camelback so they could see their hotel from the air. From there, we’d return to Scottsdale Airport.

The flight was supposed to take 50 to 60 minutes. That’s how I advertise it. I don’t do the same route each time. It really depends on the passengers and the weather and the time of day. Since these folks were staying in a hotel on Camelback, I figured I’d stay north of Sky Harbor so I could easily fit an overflight into my plan. Since I was shorting up the distance that way, I’d have to lengthen it with a flight up to the lake.

Timing is always tricky. You come in too short and the passengers could get pissed off. You come in too long and you’re throwing money away. The trick is finding that happy medium — and being smart enough to adjust speed along the way to make it work.

This particular plan required me to talk to Scottsdale, Glendale (GEU), Sky Harbor (PHX), and Scottsdale airports’ control towers. I had to use six different radio frequencies and change my transponder squawk code twice. It was almost choreographed, like a dance, with very little time between communications points to change frequencies, think of what to say, say it, listen for the response, and react accordingly. All the time, I was narrating a tour, pointing our places of interest, and answering questions. My passengers were very talkative and I had to isolate them three times to hear instructions from a controller.

I like talkative passengers. It gives me a way to read their satisfaction about a flight. I really hate passengers who just sit there quietly. You never know if they’re happy.

Main highlights on this flight included horses in people’s backyards in Scottsdale, open range cattle and cattle ponds, dirt bikers, the lake and sailboats, the canal, Cardinals Stadium, mobile homes on the west side of Phoenix, Central Avenue “skyscrapers,” Camelback Mountain, the resort where they were staying, the mall where they’d used their American Express card the night before, and pools.

The flight took about 52 minutes. I consider that short, but my passengers were happy. I think they had something scheduled afterwards. I walked them back into the terminal, got paid, and left.

The Flight Home

The flight home was about the same as the flight out, but in reverse. I managed to screw up the frequency for the north tower at Deer Valley (should have been 120.2 but I was listening to silence on 122.2) and was off-radio for about 2 minutes. I realized the error and fixed it just as the controller was trying to raise me. I got scolded and felt like an idiot — especially since one of my friends was flying in and probably heard the whole exchange. Sheesh.

Northwest of there, I passed some hot air balloons being inflated. Since one was already fully inflated and I worried about the effect of my downwash, I kept my distance as I circled to take this shot with my Treo. Then I dropped down and skirted the empty desert, low level. I passed by some horses that may or may not have been wild — they didn’t seem the least bit interested in me. More campers, more quads, more lines of dust in the distance. I climbed back up to 500 feet AGL when I reached the homes on the outskirts of Wickenburg. I overflew my house and saw Mike on the driveway, waving up at me, before landing at the airport.

I put the helicopter away, feeling tired, hungry, and thirsty. I’d flown 2.2 hours and had earned enough to make one half of a helicopter loan payment.

I don’t have much time to write this — and that’s the reason I haven’t been writing more regularly. I like to compose at least 5 blog posts a week, yet this is only my third in just over a week. The last post — a video — doesn’t really count, since I didn’t write anything.

So why the neglect? As I mentioned above: time.

Every once in a while, life throws a perfect storm at us. You know what I mean — it’s a period of time when everything seems to go crazy at once.

In my case, it was the following, which have all occurred since July 29:

• Completion of the annual revision of one of my books (ongoing throughout this period).
• Reposition my helicopter from Quincy, WA to Seattle, WA.
• Reposition my camper from Quincy, WA to Page, AZ.
• Brief 3-day catchup period at home in Wickenburg, AZ.
• Distribute the animals among multiple boarding facilities.
• Trip to Seattle, WA.
• Reposition helicopter from Seattle, WA to Page, AZ.
• Set up housekeeping in my camper in Page, AZ.
• Entertain an overnight guest in a very tiny camper.
• Deal with FAA, airport manager, and local tour operators in Page regarding tour, photo flight, and charter work in Page, AZ (ongoing).
• Provide moral support for my sister, who has been laid off from her banking job.
• Three photo flights from Page to Monument Valley.
• Start of new book with August deadline.
• Three trips to medical facilities in an attempt to diagnose some severe back pain.

It’s this last thing that’s really gummed up the works. I did something to my back while I was home and the pain became unbearable after the commercial flight to Seattle the next day. I was in an urgent care clinic there where I got prescriptions for drugs I couldn’t take because I had to fly. The pain has varied from annoying but bearable to absolutely crippling every day since then, with one day so bad I was in the hospital emergency room. It hurt to sit and since I need to sit to write, I couldn’t work on the new book — let alone write blog entries.

Miraz hit the nail on the head in her Twitter comment to me, when she said, “Pain is so time consuming and draining.” Wow. I’d never really thought of it like that — probably because I’ve never been in such severe pain for so long.

So now I’m behind in just about everything, racing against the clock to finish a book that’s due tomorrow. (It ain’t gonna happen.) The pain is under control — yesterday was the first day that it was tolerable throughout the day — and physical therapy starts on Monday.

Please bear with me. I do have lots to write about. When I get this book off my plate and catch up on my FAA stuff, I’ll be back with some interesting (I hope) new content here.

One of the drawbacks of being based in Wickenburg is the fact that most of my flying business doesn’t originate here. In fact, a good bit of it originates at locations at least an hour away.

The problem with this is that not everyone is willing to pay the cost for me to fly from Wickenburg to the job location and back. And I simply cannot reposition the aircraft to a job site for free — especially for short jobs.

Low-Time CFIs Wanted

That’s where certificated pilots — preferably CFIs — can help. There are quite a few of them out there who have their ratings but don’t have enough time to do anything with them. They’re interested in building time, but they have limited budgets.

So the idea is this: when I have a flight that requires the aircraft to be repositioned more than an hour away, one of these pilots can fly with me, from the left (co-pilot) seat to build time and gain valuable cross-country experience. He’d contribute to the hourly cost of flying the helicopter, thus enabling me to pass these savings on to my client. And his cost would be considerably less than the hourly cost to rent a helicopter like mine from a flight school or other organization in the business of renting aircraft.

For me, having someone share ferry costs can mean the difference between getting a job and not getting a job. For example, I recently lost a job opportunity at Primm, NV because my client would have to pay the 3.4 hours (round trip) ferry cost. Although my per hour flight fee was cheaper than my competition, my competition was closer and didn’t have to charge for the ferry flight.

Future Flights Up for Grabs

[Revised April 20, 2009]

I’m currently looking for pilots interested in sharing ferry costs on the following tentatively scheduled flight legs:

• Wickenburg or Phoenix, AZ to Seattle, WA – May 2009 – approximately 9 to 12 hours; will require an overnight stay
• Seattle, WA to Wickenburg or Phoenix, AZ – August 2009 – approximately 9 to 11 hours; will require an overnight stay

Occasionally, this list will include ferry flights are for photo jobs and may offer experience as an observer with dual controls out.

If pilots don’t pick up these flights, they’re likely to appear as Be Spontaneous! offers for non-pilots (see below).

Get On My List

Are you interested? If so, great! But are you qualified? Here’s a list of qualifications:

• Certificated private or commercial helicopter pilot or certified Flight Instructor for helicopters. You must be a helicopter pilot; I cannot take student pilots because I am not a CFI.
• At least 200 hours flight time in Robinson Helicopters.
• R44 Endorsement.
• Prior attendance at Robinson Factory Safety Course.
• Weight less than 250 pounds. (Under 200 lbs. is preferred.)

If you meet all of these qualifications and are interested in building some time, I want to hear from you. Contact me via e-mail.

I will provide rate information to qualified pilots only, so please don’t use the comments for this post to ask about rates.

Not A Pilot? You Can Still Fly Cheap

Of course, since I’m a Part 135 operator, I can take regular passengers on these ferry flights — with the dual controls out, of course. That’s what some of the Special Offers on the Flying M Air Web site are all about. If I have to reposition the helicopter to anywhere more than 30 minutes away, I often offer cheap seats on the repositioning flights.

For example, if I have a tour out of Scottsdale, I might offer a $95/person round trip flight from Wickenburg to Scottsdale. Up to three people can make the flight with me before my scheduled tour and have breakfast or lunch at the airport restaurant while they’re waiting for me to finish up. Then we fly back together. My passengers get two cheap scenic flights totaling over an hour of flight time and I get part of my ferry costs covered.

Or perhaps I have a two-day photo job in Page, AZ. I might offer two seats for $250 each to Page one day with a return flight the next day. Passengers would be on their own to get hotel accommodations and fill the time there until the return flight. They’d get about 4 hours of scenic flight time for much less than I would normally charge for the flight ($1,980 for the flight at my current rate).

Similarly, if I have to go to Scottsdale or Deer Valley or Page for a client, I might offer other tours at a reduced rate there the same day, before or after my scheduled flight.

If you’re in the Wickenburg or Phoenix area and this sounds interesting to you, you can use the form here or on the Flying M Air Web site to sign up to receive Be Spontaneous! special offers by e-mail. Or you can just check in at Flying M Air periodically to see what’s available.

Keep in mind that these prices don’t even begin to cover my costs, so please don’t expect me to offer or honor them at times other than when listed as an offer on the Web site.

And if you’re wondering why I often call them “Be Spontaneous!” offers, it’s because they’re sometimes made available with as little as 2 days advance notice. You have to make a decision quickly to take advantage of them.

Part of Being a Small Business

All this is part of being a small business — finding ways to help cover costs and maximize revenues.

If you or someone you know can help, we can both benefit.

I promise to spend more time at the keyboard tomorrow.

About two weeks ago, I wrote one of my typical flying posts, where I described an unusual flying gig. In the post, I described how I was hired by a company to help them find some lost items in a remote area.

Do I sound vague? It’s because I apparently have to be.

The post was read about 330 times. That’s all. It was Dugg twice.

Yet that was enough for at least three people to track down my client in their remote location, trespass on their private property, cause a nuisance for workers, and put themselves at risk of harm in a work zone. One of these people actually showed up twice.

Why? That’s what I want to know. Apparently they thought they could get some kind of reward if they found the missing items — which aren’t even missing anymore!

One of the trespassers told my client he heard about the lost items on this blog. My client found the post, read it, and then called me, asking me to remove it.

This is my client. I’ve worked for them on three occasions and would like to work for them again. Obviously, I did as they wished. I was ashamed and embarrassed that they had to call me about it.

And that’s why other pilots won’t be able to read about this unusual flying gig.

Is this going to happen again? Am I going to have to remove something I wrote about because readers thought my coverage was an open invitation to be a nuisance to someone else?

Do you know how many things I haven’t written about because I was worried that something like this would happen?

Or how many times I purposely kept details vague — or even lied about them — to prevent people from doing something I would have to regret?

I don’t know who caused this problem — other than me, of course — and I don’t want to know. But I hope the people who bothered my clients are reading this and I hope they have enough sense to stay away from my client’s private property in the future.

One of the best things about being a pilot in Arizona is the weather. It’s darn near perfect just about every day. What else could a pilot ask for?

So when weather moves in, it’s a big deal. Especially when you need to fly in it.

Wickenburg to Sedona

Saturday’s flight had been booked a month in advance. Three friends from Phoenix wanted a day trip up to Sedona. To save money, they drove up to Wickenburg — which was on the way to their weekend place in Yarnell anyway — to start the flight at my home base.

I’d spent Friday night in Phoenix for Mike’s company Christmas party. When I woke at 6 AM, it was dark and rainy. But I had my laptop with me and wasted no time checking the weather. I’d told my client that I’d call him by 8 AM if we needed to cancel. If he didn’t hear from me, it was a go.

The forecast called for chance of showers before 11 AM, then partly cloudy. More showers after 11 PM. Sounded good to me. OUr flight would depart Wickenburg at 10 AM and we’d arrive in Sedona around 11, when any weather in the area would be moving out.

The drive home to Wickenburg was long but the weather was definitely clearing. There was some flooding on State Route 74 (Carefree Highway) not far from I-17. Nothing I couldn’t drive through, though.

At 9:30, when I pulled the helicopter out of the hangar and fueled it, there was still a layer of clouds sitting atop the Weaver Mountains. That wasn’t good.

Let me explain my usual route from Wickenburg to Sedona by air. I depart to the northeast, crossing the Weaver Mountains just east of Yarnell. Then I continue northeast, following the path of Route 89 through the Bradshaw Mountains and over the town of Prescott. Then I head skirt along the southern edge of Prescott Airport’s airspace and cross over the top of Mingus Mountain at the pass so I can descend right past Jerome. Then it’s north until I reach the red rocks and east until I reach Sedona Airport. I chose the route because it’s relatively direct, it shows downtown Prescott and Jerome from the air, and it completes a “red rock tour” outside of Sedona’s noise-sensitve areas and away from other helicopter traffic. The return flight is much more direct. I fly southeast over Oak Creek, then head southwest to Wickenburg, crossing the southern end of Mingus Mountain and the Bradshaws at Crown King or Towers Mountain, and passing east of the Weaver Mountains. You can see this usual route on the chart below; it’s the blue route.

You may have noticed that the word “mountain” is used extensively in the above paragraph. That’s because there are a lot of mountains here. The ones I have to cross range in elevation from 5000 to 8000 feet. While that’s not a big deal on a typical Arizona day, it is a big deal when the clouds are sitting at 6000 feet. All pilots know about mountain obscuration — mountains hidden by clouds. And smart pilots avoid it.

So one look at the Weaver Mountains made me wonder how much detouring I’d have to do that day and what the clouds looked like in the valley beyond the mountains.

But there was plenty of detour space. I could avoid the mountains entirely by flying around the west end. That would add time to the flight, which was billed at a flat rate. Not in my best interest, but neither is hitting a “granite cloud.”

By the time my passengers arrived, however, the clouds had lifted a bit. And since they really wanted to see Yarnell from the air, I headed that way. When we got close, I saw a clear path beneath the clouds and a clear valley beyond it. I popped over the ridge and even circled their weekend home once so they could get photos of it from the air. Then we continued on our way.

In the valley between the Weaver and Bradshaw Mountains, I’d estimate the cloud bottoms at 6,000 feet. I was flying at 5,400 feet, 600 to 800 feet off the ground, so I had plenty of space. But I decided to file a pilot report, since the weather forecast had nothing about the low clouds.

A pilot report — for those readers who are not pilots — is a report of observed conditions where a pilot is flying. Normally, pilots file pilot reports when they encounter unexpected conditions, like low ceilings, turbulence, or icing. These were low ceilings and they were low enough to get an airplane pilot in trouble. They were worth reporting. It’s unfortunate that more pilots don’t file pilot reports since, once filed, they appear on weather briefings for the area and they’re a valuable source of information for other pilots.

I think that hearing me talk to the Prescott Flight Service Station on the radio about the weather scared my passengers a bit. When I was finished, my client said, “If the weather is too bad, we can do this another day.”

I assured him that the weather did not pose any danger to flight. I then told him how interesting to me it was since I’m so accustomed to flying in perfect weather.

Meanwhile the tops of the Bradshaws were socked in pretty good, so I decided to go around the west side of Granite Mountain. That took us over the Williamson Valley Road area of Prescott and Chino Valley. From there, it was a straight shot past the northwest end of Mingus Mountain (which was also cloud-covered) to the red rocks. I did my usual tour, listening to my passengers ooh and aah. (It really is beautiful out there, even when the weather is overcast and otherwise ugly.) Then I landed at the Sedona Airport.

It was cold and windy there. We walked to the terminal and my passengers left me to have lunch at the airport restaurant, which overlooks the rock formations around Airport Mesa. I chatted with the FBO folks, placed a fuel order, and settled down with the IFR training material I’m reading in preparation for getting my instrument rating.

I got a call from one of the Phoenix-area resorts I occasionally do business with. They had a couple who wanted to do a Sedona Tour the next day. We agreed on times and my contact said she’d fax me the reservation form. As I hung up, I was glad I hadn’t delayed this flight for a day, making me unavailable for the next day’s flight.

I read about IFR flight instruments. It wasn’t terribly exciting. After about 20 minutes, I happened to look out a window. It was snowing outside, just southeast of the airport. One of the low clouds was dumping a flurry of flakes. While snow didn’t bother me, the fact that I couldn’t see through the snowfall did.

When I flew at the Grand Canyon, the pilots had a saying: if you can see through it, you can fly through it. I couldn’t fly through this little snowstorm.

Of course, I didn’t have to go that direction, either. So went outside and had a good look. There were little snow squalls here and there in every direction.

I went over to the computer they’ve got set up for flight planning and got on the National Weather Service Web site. The forecast had changed. There was now a 50% chance of snow showers. Duh.

Things looked good to the west. Although there was falling snow out that way, I could see sunshine beyond it near Mingus Mountain. That meant the snow was localized. It would probably blow through.

And it did. But other snow blew in to take its place.

Still, when my passengers returned, I didn’t want to wait around. I’d seen a good clearing to the west and I wanted to be through it before the situation at Sedona worsened. So we loaded up, started up, warmed up, and took off.

We were in snow showers almost immediately. Visibility wasn’t bad, though, and the air was still smooth. It was safe. It was just…well…different.

We got clear of Sedona’s weather and popped into the sun. But there was still a cloud atop Mingus Mountain, so crossing over the top on the way back wasn’t an option. And the weather radar I’d looked at showed me that conditions were better to the west than to the east, so I should avoid my usual return route. So after taking a low-level pass alongside the ghost town of Jerome, I headed northwest to retrace our route back the way we’d come.

We hit a bunch of snow along the west end of Mingus Mountain. I must have been flying in it for close to 10 minutes. My passengers were very quiet. But I kept chatting — as I usually do — to keep them at ease. Then the snow cleared out and we were flying with the clouds at least 1,000 feet above us. I looked for and found the indian ruins on top of one of the mesas in the area and pointed it out to them. A sort of consolation prize for taking the same route each way. When we got closer to Prescott, I thought I might be able to overfly it and follow Route 89 back to the Yarnell area. But by this time the wind had picked up and flying along the foothills of Granite Mountain was tossing us around a bunch. And since I couldn’t see the pass south of Prescott that I needed to slip through, I didn’t know it’s conditions. I didn’t want to look and see — I’d already done too much detouring on this flight and it was quickly losing profitability. If conditions were bad at the pass, I’d just have to come back, thus adding at least 20 minutes to the flight time. So I steered us around the west side of Granite Mountain again.

Ahead of me, in the Yarnell area, the clouds looked low again. So I detoured to the west some more, around the west end of the Weaver Mountains. That put us in the valley near Hillside. The clouds seemed to move up as we descended down to 4000 feet. I followed Hillside Road to Congress Mine, then detoured once again to the Hassayampa River just so see how it was flowing. From there, we made a quick pass over the town of Wickenburg before landing.

It was mostly cloudy but cold when we got out of the helicopter. It had been an interesting flight for me, but not one I was anxious to repeat. It had taken 30 minutes longer than the round trip flight usually takes and about 15 minutes longer than my budget for it. I hadn’t lost money, but it hadn’t been a very profitable flight, either.

But my passengers really enjoyed it and maybe I’ll see them again.

Scottsdale to Sedona

The next day is a good example of how quickly weather can change. I was scheduled to fly from Scottsdale to Sedona with two passengers at 2 PM.

I checked the weather shortly after getting up that morning. Partly cloudy, 10% chance of showers, high 46°F. Not bad at all.

I checked the weather again at 10 AM. It was the same. My passenger called right after that. I told him about the weather and that we were good to go. He promised to meet me at the airport at 2 PM.

At noon, I prepared my flight plans and manifests. I checked the weather again. Now it was mostly cloudy with a 50% chance of show showers. Dang!

I dug deeper into my weather resources. Flagstaff looked bad, with low visibility forecast right around the time we’d get to Sedona. Flagstaff is only 20 miles from there, but its up on a higher plateau. Was the altitude part of the problem? Would it be clear in Sedona? I called the FBO and asked what the weather was like. He said it was cloudy and that a small storm had passed through, but it was okay then. I got back online and looked for Webcams. I found a few in Sedona and they all showed good visibility. One of them even looked as if there was a little sunshine.

I called my passenger and left a message on his cell phone. Then I called the concierge who had booked the flight and told her the situation. I said I didn’t think it was a safety issue, but I thought the weather might make the views a bit less appealing. (Wow, did that turn out to be an understatement!) She wanted to cancel. She tried to reach the passengers, but couldn’t. I told her I needed to leave Wickenburg by 1 PM to get to Scottsdale on time.

I was warming up the helicopter on the ramp at Wickenburg when my cell phone rang. I answered it. It was the Concierge. She’s spoken to the passengers and they were still good to go.

So I went.

It was cloudy in Wickenburg but there were very low clouds atop the Weaver Mountains. I didn’t have to go that way. I had to go to Scottsdale, which is southeast. I passed through heavy rain in North Phoenix. I was sunny in Scottsdale when I landed, but it soon started to pour. I was wet when I got into the terminal.

Let me take a moment to review my flight route from Scottsdale to Sedona. I fly northwest to Lake Pleasant and follow the shoreline up past the Agua Fria River to Black Canyon. Then I follow I-17 (mostly) to the southeast end of Mingus Mountain. I follow the mountain’s northeast slope to Jerome, then head north to the red rocks. I do my red rocks tour and land. The return trip takes us through Oak Creek and Camp Verde before climbing up along I-17 and following that back all the way to Phoenix. Again, it’s the blue line in this illustration.

I met my passengers, gave them a briefing, and loaded them up. One of them looked startled that the helicopter was so small. I talked to the tower and we took off to the north.

I could immediately see that the weather in the vicinity of Lake Pleasant would be anything but pleasant. So I headed north up into the mountains. The area was remote and undeveloped. All the little runoff channels were full of water, with waterfalls everywhere. It would have been kind of cool to fly lower and really see them, but I needed to climb to clear mountains ahead of us and I definitely didn’t want to get caught in the area if weather moved in.

It rained on us. It was mostly a light rain. The drops were pushed off the helicopter’s bubble by the force of the wind.

I couldn’t get much speed because my passengers (and I) were heavy and I’d topped both tanks off in Scottsdale. (You can never have too much fuel when weather is questionable.) We were not far from max gross weight.

We hooked up with I-17 just south of Cordes Junction. The freeway was covered with water — you could tell by the splashing of the car and truck tires. The clouds were low. North, along I-17, they seemed even lower. I couldn’t see the Bradshaws at all. I flew to Arcosante and circled it, telling them what it was all about. I also told them that I didn’t think I could go any farther toward Sedona. I was actually heading back along I-17 when I decided to take another look. I swung the helicopter around and, sure enough, the clouds had lifted enough for me to see the pass down into the Verde Valley. “Let’s give it a try,” I said.

Conditions improved a bit as I reached the pass. The clouds were much higher over the valley — primarily because the valley is much lower. I descended through the pass right over I-17. I skirted along the foothills of Mingus Mountain as I normally would, but lower. The top of the mountain was completely obscured. We reached Cottonwood and I still couldn’t see Jerome. It was in the clouds.

So I altered my course and headed northeast toward the first red rocks I could see. I’d start the tour there.

I should mention here that my passengers didn’t seem the least bit concerned about the weather. They were from British Columbia in Canada and they live, as one passenger told me, “in a rain forest.” Sadly, they’d come to Arizona for sunshine and it had been cloudy and/or raining since they arrived. They commented on all the terrain we passed over, asking me a lot of questions. Apparently he wants to buy a place here and she’s not convinced it’s a good idea. They did appreciate the views, especially when we got right up to the red rocks. I did a modified tour, going into a canyon I usually avoid, mostly because it was clearer than some of the other areas I do go.

It was snowing hard at the airport, and since they hadn’t been very interested in landing anyway, I decided to recommend against it. By big worry was that the weather would worsen while we were on the ground and that we’d be stuck there when the sun set in less than 2 hours. Then I’d have to pay a car service to take them back and I’d have to spend the night in Sedona. None of this would impress the Concierge that had booked the flight. My passengers understood the situation and agreed that it was best to continue. So we flew around Airport Mesa, getting a few last good looks of Sedona, and headed toward Oak Creek. We were only in snow for about 5 minutes.

The return trip was relatively uneventful, After crossing over Camp Verde, we climbed along the path of I-17. I’d been tempted to follow the Verde River south — it looked pretty clear that way — but did not want to get trapped in that canyon by weather, especially since my flight plan had me going a different way. When we came out atop the mesa north of Cordes Junction, I was surprised to see that the ceilings had risen by at least 500 feet. In the distance, toward Lake Pleasant, the sky was bright. Whatever had been there had cleared out. I headed toward the light.

A while later, we flew along the northwest side of the Agua Fria River. I showed them the ruins atop Indian Mesa and flew down the west side of the lake. We caught sight of a rainbow about 10 minutes out from Scottsdale.

My flight home was quick and easy. By 5 PM, the helicopter was tucked way in its hangar, clean from the rain.

It was spring 2006 when my friend Ryan suggested I go with him to the Big Sandy Shoot and give helicopter rides. I didn’t know much about it, but I had nothing else do to that weekend. So I loaded my tent, sleeping bag, and air mattress into my helicopter and followed Ryan’s friend’s Sikorsky S-55 helicopter to the tiny town of Wikieup, about 40 minutes north of Wickenburg on highway 93.

I detail the events of the weekend here.

Although I did fly into this spot and I did sleep in this tent the night before, I didn’t sleep in this tent where it’s shown in the photo. I moved the tent to take the photo. With a dome tent like this, it’s easy. Just empty it out, pick it up, and put it where you want it. The helicopter was in such a pretty spot and the early morning sunlight make it look really beautiful. Why not take advantage of the light?

I cooked up the photo for possible advertising use. Flying M Air (my helicopter charter company) can do overnight excursions. There’s no reason why we can’t offer heli camping.

But, so far, we just haven’t had any calls for it.

Oh, and for the record, I’ll be back at Wickieup for their autumn (forgive me, Miraz) shoot in October. Anyone want to come along for the ride?

Earlier this month, I wrote a post that briefly touched upon my experience as an author finding my copyrighted books freely distributable on a pirate Web site. (Refer to “Copyright for Writers and Bloggers – Part I: Why Copyright is Important.”) The post generated some comments that made me think more about the electronic versions of my books that my publishers sell: eBooks.

About eBooks

An eBook is an electronic book. While some eBooks are published in electronic format only, others are published in print and then are followed up with eBook versions of the same book.

Sometimes both print and eBook versions of a book are put out by the same publisher. This is common with modern-day titles. But there are also a number of eBook publishers out there who take older titles that are still in copyright and make arrangements with the publisher or author to create and sell eBook versions. And, of course, anyone can take an out-of-copyright book, like the works of Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe — the list goes on and on — and publish them anyway they like: in print, electronically, or even tattooed on someone’s leg. Project Gutenberg came into existence by making out-of-copyright works available to the world and that’s what you’ll find among its thousands of titles.

eBooks are available in a wide variety of formats, from plain text to PDF to Windows Help Viewer format. They can include or exclude illustrations. They can contain hyperlinks to make it easy to move from one topic to another. They can be printable as a single document or by pages or sections.

My first involvement with eBooks was way back in the 1990s when I used a program called DocMaker on the Mac to create my monthly, freely distributable newsletter, Macintosh Tips & Tricks. I later moved to PDF format. 10 Quick Steps, one of my publishers, publishes all of its books as PDFs optimized for onscreen reading. I later published some of my own eBooks in the same format.

eBooks and Copyright

eBooks are usually sold with the same licensing used for software. One copy, one user. This is pretty basic stuff. Although I admit that I’ve never read an EULA for an eBook, I assume that if an buyer is finished with it and wants to give his/her only copy to someone else, he can. After all, that’s how books work. And, as someone who has legally transferred ownership of software by selling it (after removing the original from my computer), I’m pretty sure eBooks have a legal second hand market.

Unfortunately, due to their portable nature — pop them on a CD or compress them and send them in email or leave them on an FTP server for others to download — they are often the victim of piracy and copyright infringement. People put eBooks — whether they obtained them from legal means or not — on pirate Web sites, FTP servers, or other file sharing systems for free or paid download to anyone who wants them.

As this problem becomes more and more widespread, readers begin to think that there’s nothing wrong with downloading and sharing illegally distributed eBooks. They begin looking to illegal sources of eBooks rather than legal sources, hoping to save $10 or $15 or $20. They justify their participation in this illegal activity by saying that “knowledge should be free” or that the publisher makes enough money or that eBooks cost nothing to produce. And soon this affects the sale of both printed and electronically published books.

Who Suffers?

The real victim of this is the author, who often makes less than a dollar for every book sold.

Most authors these days can’t afford to just write for a living. Some of them have regular day jobs. Others are consultants or speakers or programmers or some combination of those things.

About 95% of my net income comes from writing books and articles. My helicopter charter business, which is still in its infancy, eats up all the cash it brings in. (Helicopters are extremely costly to own and operate.) And between writing and flying, I simply don’t have time to do anything else to earn money.

So when I find my books being illegally distributed on pirate Web sites, I get angry. Can you blame me?

Is It Worth It?

In the comments for my “Copyright is Important” post, reader Nathanael Holt asked this question: “Do your digital sales warrant the increased risk posed by piracy?”

This is a really good question — one I had to go to my royalty statements to answer. And, after a quick glance at that most recent 60-page document, I’d have to say no.

For example, one of my recent titles sold more than 2,600 printed copies in the quarter ending March 31, 2007. That same title sold only 2 electronic “subscriptions.” Another title, which is older and which I have found online on pirate sites, had 9 copies of the PDF sold during the same quarter, earning me less than $15.

My conclusion from this: eBook versions of my books aren’t selling very well. And apparently the ones that get out there are going to pirate Web sites.

I’ve e-mailed my publisher’s royalty department to get lifetime figures for all of my in-print titles. I’m hoping the numbers they deliver will paint a more rosy picture. But I doubt it.

I’m an eBook Reader, Too

This is disappointing for me. You see, I’m an eBook reader.

A while back, I was looking for a book about .htaccess. That’s a normally invisible configuration file found on servers. I wanted to modify the .htaccess file for my Web site so it would do certain things for me.

This is an extremely technical topic and one I didn’t expect to find a book about. But I did: The Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite by Rich Bowen. And after a bit of research, I learned that I could either buy the book from Amazon.com for $40 and wait a week to get it or buy it as an eBook in PDF format from the publisher’s Web site for $20 and download it immediately. I admit that the deciding factor was the length of the book: 160 pages. Since I like to be able to look at a computer-related book (rather than switch back and forth between a book and an application onscreen), I could print it for reference.

And that’s what I did: I downloaded the book as a DRM-protected PDF and sent it to my printer. Within an hour, I had the whole thing in a binder and was editing my .htaccess file to my heart’s content, with all kinds of notes jotted in the margins of my new reference book. (That’s another thing: I’m far more likely to mark up a printed eBook than a printed and bound traditionally-published book.)

I also read eBooks on my Treo (when I’m trapped somewhere with nothing to do).

The only reason I don’t buy and read more eBooks to read onscreen is because I think I spend enough time in front of a computer without using one to read, too.

What Does All this Mean?

Well, first I need some solid information from my publisher regarding lifetime eBook sales. Then I need to sit down with my editor (figuratively, of course — we never see each other in person) and decide whether eBook editions of my work are something we want to continue to publish. If we decide to go forward, we need to come up with a solution that will protect eBooks from piracy.

What Do You Think?

Have you ever bought an eBook? Why did you buy that version instead of a traditional print version? Did you like it? What do you think about eBooks in general: pricing, formats, licensing, etc?

Don’t keep it all to yourself! Use the Comments link or form to share your thoughts with me and other readers.

Yesterday’s mail brought a big white envelope from Hofstra University, my alma mater. May 20 was the 25th anniversary of my graduating class, the Class of 1982. Although I was tempted to make the cross-country trek to Long Island, NY from my home in Arizona, I’d scheduled a helicopter rides gig for May 19 in Yarnell and preferred to do that. I’m glad I did.

A few months before the event, Hofstra’s Alumni Association sent out a survey form requesting bios from class members. Proud of what I’ve done since my college years, I promptly filled mine out and returned it to the school. They wanted a digital photo to go with it, but I forgot to go online (as they requested) and upload a suitable image.

My College Years

Understand this: my college years were among the most difficult yet enjoyable years of my life. Difficult primarily because of the expense. Hofstra, a private school, was getting about $120 per credit in those days. While I know that’s nothing compared to today’s tuitions, that $1800 to $2200 per semester tuition bill (plus books plus room and board) was killing me. The deal I cut with my parents was that each of them (they were divorced) would cough up 1/3 and I’d put in the final third. I consider myself lucky for being able to get that much from them. I also consider myself lucky for getting two scholarships that knocked more than $1000 off the annual tuition fee. So yes — I only had to come up with about $1200 a year. But I had to work two part-time minimum wage jobs (at less than $3/hour, if I recall) to make that and the money I needed to keep my car running and food in my mouth. I was 20 when I graduated and, by that point, I’d already worked harder than anyone else I knew.

(I was also incredibly thin at one point, weighing in at only 105 pounds. I ate little and worked hard and simply couldn’t keep the weight on. At 5′8″ tall, I looked terrible — absolutely skeletal. It took the school’s meal plan and those delicious hot rolls at dinner to fatten me back up.)

I’m not complaining about the hard work or financial situation. I believe in working hard to get ahead. And 25 years later, I still believe it. Too many people are looking for a free ride. Too many people spend more effort trying to get away with as little real work as possible than actually doing the work they’re being paid to do. And then they wonder why they’re not getting anywhere in life, why the promotions are always going to someone else, or why they’re first in line for layoff when their company starts sending jobs to India and Pakistan.

I also think that everyone should be a little needy at least once in their life. Back in those days, having $20 in my pocket made me rich. The money I made went to my tuition bill, to feed myself (until I got on that meal plan and my parents picked up 2/3 the cost), and to put gas in my car. (I drove a 1970 VW bug and gas cost 70¢ per gallon.) Most of my friends were in a similar situation, although I think I was the only one footing part of the bill for my education. We learned how far you could stretch a dollar and how important it was not to waste money on things we didn’t really need. I think that’s a lesson many of today’s kids could learn from. When you have to earn every dollar you spend, that dollar becomes a lot more valuable.

As for my college years being the most enjoyable of my life — well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s mostly true. It gave me my first taste of real freedom — and real responsibility. I learned how to have fun and take care of the things I had to do to stay in school, get decent grades, and earn enough money to get by. I had a lot of friends — mostly people like me. I never joined a sorority, but I did become part of the yearbook staff as a photographer. I spent my off-hours during the day in the school’s game room, shooting pool with some friends and becoming a reasonably good pinball player. In the evening, we’d head over to a local bar, which had excellent french onion soup for just a buck and cheap beer on Thursday nights. We also hit the Ambassador Diner in Hempstead periodically for greasy but excellent batter dipped onion rings. Almost all of my friends were guys, but there was no sex between us. (I’ve always been “one of the guys” and I still am.) I dated two different guys while in college and, unlike so many of the girls at Hofstra for their “MRS” degree, wound up single when I graduated at the age of 20 with a BBA in accounting. That was fine with me.

Affection for My Alma Matter? I Don’t Think So.

I never really felt any affection for Hofstra. It seemed like every time I turned around, they had their hands out for money. I nearly got kicked out for late payment of tuition twice, yet they never failed to send requests for donations to my family. I get those requests now. They come to my house with full-color booklets about the newest on campus building and latest event, along with a summary of what the entire alumni student body has been up to — well, at least those members who bothered to provide updates. I used to provide updates once in a while, announcing a new book or providing information about my latest endeavor. They even featured my helicopter charter business in one issue. But the way I saw it, I struggled enough to pay them when I was a student and they never cut me any slack when I had trouble coming up with the dough. I didn’t owe them a thing.

I’m Not the Only One Who Doesn’t Care. But at Least I’m Still Breathing.

But when the reunion material arrived, I decided to fill it out and return it. I was curious about my classmates, curious about what they’d been up to all these years. I even toyed with the idea of blowing off my helicopter gig and going out for the reunion.

But when the reunion materials arrived today, I was glad I’d made the decision I’d made. Accompanying the “sorry we missed you” letter and donation request form was a thin booklet titled, Congratulations to the Class of 1982 on your 25th Anniversary. In it were photos as “bios” from 59 students (including me). I’d known two of them well — one of them is my step cousin. The photos were right out of the yearbook, with current photos added for the folks who had bothered to send them. Few had. Most bios lacked any amount of imagination, simply stating what degree the person had earned during his stay at Hofstra and whether he had gone on to earn additional degrees. Marriages to college sweethearts were mentioned more than a few times. Women were sure to mention how many kids they had. It was pretty boring stuff; only about 5 people wrote bios that actually brought readers up to date. (I was one of them, as you probably guessed.)

What was more tragic was the “In Memoriam” page after the bios. It listed 54 classmates that are no longer walking on this earth. 54! Sheesh! Almost as many dead ones as ones who bothered to respond to the reunion notice. And remember, this is a 25-year anniversary — not a 50-year. Most of my classmates are under 50. That means that at 54 of them died before their 50th birthday.

Now I don’t know how many people were in the class of 1982. I know that the School of Business, which was my slot at the graduation ceremonies, had hundreds of students in it. There had to be at least 2,000 students in the entire class. And the alumni association got reunion responses for just 113 of them — 54 of which were dead. Can you say apathy? And I thought I was alone in my feelings — or lack thereof — for the school.

And how many people actually showed up for the May 20 party? I hope they didn’t rent a big hall.

The call came at 9:30 on Friday morning. The voice had a heavy Japanese accent. He wanted to go from Sky Harbor, Phoenix’s busy Class Bravo airport, to Sedona or the Grand Canyon.

“The earliest we can pick you up is 12:00,” I told him. “That’s a little late for the Grand Canyon.”

Flying M Air offers day trips to Sedona and Grand Canyon. The day trip includes roundtrip helicopter transportation following scenic routes, 4 to 5 hours on the ground, ground transportation to Uptown Sedona or into Grand Canyon National Park, and a Sedona red rocks helicopter tour. Grand Canyon is about 45 minutes farther away from Phoenix than Sedona. I’d need to leave either one by about 5:30 PM.

We agreed on a Sedona day trip. I took down his name and weight, his companion’s name and weight, and his credit card information. I’d charge the card before I flew down to get him and he’d sign the receipt when I saw him. Then I hung up and began the process of planning the flight and doing all the paperwork required by the FAA for charter operations. That includes checking weather, creating and filing flight plans, and calculating a weight and balance for each leg of the flight. I do all of it by computer, using Duats for weather and flight planning and my own R44 Manifest form, built with Excel, for the passenger manifest and weight and balance calculations.

By 10 AM, I was done with the paperwork. I changed into more professional clothes, debating whether I should wear a long sleeved or short sleeved shirt. Fortunately, I went with the long sleeved shirt. I packed some hiking shoes and a T-shirt into my day pack, along with my 12″ PowerBook, punched my passengers credit card info into my terminal, and stuck the resulting charge receipt in my shirt pocket. I was ready to go to the airport by 10:30.

At the airport, I did my preflight in the hangar before pulling the helicopter out onto the ramp for fuel. Both Sky Harbor and Sedona tend to have outrageous fuel prices, so I wanted to top off both tanks in Wickenburg. With only two passengers on board, each weighing less than me, weight would not be a problem. By 11:08, I was lifting off from Wickenburg Airport for my passenger pickup point.

Flying into Sky Harbor

These days, most of my big charters are out of the Phoenix area — usually Deer Valley or Scottsdale Airport. Every once in a while, however, I’ll get a charter out of Sky Harbor. Sky Harbor, which lies just southeast of downtown Phoenix, has three parallel runways, with a row of terminals between the north runway and the middle runway. The general aviation FBOs, Cutter and Swift, are on the southwest corner of the field, requiring me to cross arriving or departing airline traffic for my approach or departure.

Sky Harbor, like many towered airports, has a letter of agreement with helicopter pilots called Sharp Delta. Sharp Delta defines terminology and lays down rules for transponder codes and flight altitudes. It used to include instructions and diagrams for landing on the helipad on top of Terminal 3, but that helipad closed down when they began construction on the new tower. I never landed there. I don’t know if it’ll reopen any time soon, but I hope so. It’ll make things a lot easier for my passengers, who have to get transportation to or from Cutter (my FBO choice) to meet me. Cutter has a free shuttle to the terminals, but it adds a step of complexity for passengers who don’t have their own ground transportation.

At first, flying in and out of Sky Harbor was extremely stressful for me. Let’s face it: I fly in and out of Wickenburg, a non-towered airport. I could fly all day long and not have to talk to a tower or controller. The only time I talk to controllers is when I fly into one of the bigger airports in Class Delta, Charlie, or Bravo airspace. And among pilots, there’s this feeling that the controllers at the big airports full of commercial airliners simply don’t want to be bothered by little, general aviation aircraft. We feel a little like recreational baseball players asking the manager of a professional baseball team if we can join them for practice.

Of course, there’s no reason to feel this way. In this country, general aviation aircraft have just as much right to fly in and out of Class Bravo airports like Sky Harbor, O’Hare, LAX, or even JFK as the big jets do. But since those controllers are generally a bit busier than the ones at smaller towered airports, we need to know what we want and where we’re going before requesting entrance into the airspace, be brief and professional with our requests, and follow instructions exactly as they’re given.

The Sharp Delta agreement makes this easy for helicopter pilots flying in and out of Sky Harbor’s space. And, at this point, I’ve done it so many times that it really is routine.

I fly from Wickenburg down to the Metro Center Mall on I-17 and Dunlap. By that time, I’ve already listened to the ATIS recording for Sky Harbor and have dialed in the altimeter setting, which is vital for helicopter operations down there. I wait for a break in the radio action and key my mike: “Phoenix Tower, helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima at Metro Center, Sharp Delta, landing Cutter.”

My usual route.

The tower usually comes back with something like, “Helicopter Six-Three-Zero-Mike-Lima, squawk 0400. Ident.” This means I should turn my transponder to code 0400 and push the Ident button. The Ident button makes my dot on the controller’s radar stand out among all the other dots so he can see exactly which dot I am.

“Zero-Mike-Lima identing,” I reply as I push the button. I don’t know if ident can be used as a verb, but other pilots do it, too.

I keep flying toward the airport, heading southeast toward Central Avenue, waiting for clearance. The controller might give an instruction or two to a big jet landing or taking off. Then he comes back on the radio. “Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, radar contact. Proceed via Sharp Delta. Remain west of Central.”

That’s my clearance. He must say either “proceed via Sharp Delta” or “cleared into the Class Bravo airspace” for me to enter the surface airspace for the airport. Because I’m a helicopter using Sharp Delta, I get the Sharp Delta clearance. An airplane or a helicopter not on Sharp Delta would get the other clearance.

I continue toward Central Avenue, the main north/south avenue running down Phoenix. Most of Phoenix’s tall buildings are lined up along this road. I need to stay west of Central and descend down to about 1800 feet MSL (mean sea level). That’s about 600 feet AGL (above ground level). When I’m lined up a block or two west of Central, I turn south and head toward the buildings.

If I have passengers on board, this is usually pretty exciting for them. I have to stay low because of other air traffic, so I’m not much higher than the building rooftops. These days, I have to watch out for cranes for the few buildings under construction downtown. But it gets better. By the time I cross McDowell, I have to be at 1600 feet MSL — that’s only 400 feet off the ground.

Somewhere halfway through Phoenix, the controller calls me again. “Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, contact tower on one-one-eight-point-seven.”

I acknowledge and press a button on my cyclic to change to the south tower frequency, which I’ve already put in my radio’s standby. “Phoenix tower, helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima is with you on one-one-eight-point-seven.”

“Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, proceed south across the river bottom for landing Cutter.”

I acknowledge. At this point, we’ve crossed the extended centerline for the airport’s north runway, which is less than 5 miles to the east. Commercial airliners are either taking off or landing over us, depending on the wind, which will determine runways in use. I’m always worried about wake turbulence, but it’s really not a problem because we’re so far below.

I cross the extended centerline for the other two runways and approach the bed of the Salt River. It’s usually pretty dry — dams upriver have trapped all the water in five lakes. I’m only about 300 to 400 feet off the ground here and need to keep an eye out for the power lines running along the river. Once across, I turn left and head in toward the airport. I make my approach to the west of Swift, follow the road that runs between the taxiway and the FBOs, and come in to Cutter. They’ve usually heard me on the radio and have a “Follow Me” car to guide me to parking. I follow the car in until it stops and a man jumps out. He uses hand signals that tell me to move up a bit more and then to set down.

That’s all there is to it.

Well, I should mention here that I’m seldom the only helicopter in the area. One of the medevac companies is based at Swift and has two or three helicopters going in and out of there. I also pass a few hospitals with rooftop helipads. And if there’s traffic or an accident or a fire or an arrest going on, there’s usually at least one or two news helicopters moving around. So although I don’t have to worry about other airplanes, the helicopter traffic can be pretty intense.

That’s how it went on Friday. I shut down the helicopter and hitched a ride in a golf cart to the terminal. My passengers were waiting for me: two Japanese men. My contact was probably in his 30s and his companion was possibly in his late 50s. After making sure they both spoke English, I gave them the passenger briefing.

“Can we go to the Grand Canyon instead?” my contact wanted to know. “We really want to see the Grand Canyon.”

I didn’t really want to fly to the Grand Canyon, but there was no reason I couldn’t. Changing the flight plan would be easy enough and I’d already checked the weather for the whole area. I warned him that we wouldn’t have much time on the ground and that we needed to leave by 5:30. I didn’t want to cross any mountains in the dark with passengers on board.

So I did what I needed to do and we departed for the Grand Canyon instead of Sedona.

To the Grand Canyon

I won’t bore you with the details of leaving Sky Harbor. It’s basically the same but backwards. South departure, west until I’m west of Central, then north low-level over the river bottom. They cut me loose when I’m clear to the north.

My two passengers enjoyed the flight through Phoenix, even though they were both seated on the side opposite the best views. (They’d get the good view on the way back.) They both had cameras and were using up pixels with still and video images. We crossed through the west side of Deer Valley’s airspace — with permission, of course — and headed north. I pointed out various things — the Ben Avery shooting range, Lake Pleasant in the distance, the Del Webb Anthem development, Black Canyon City. Once away from the outskirts of Phoenix, I pointed out open range cattle, ponds, roads, and mountains. We saw some wild horses grazing near some cattle in the high desert past Cordes Junction.

I took them along the east side of Mingus Mountain and showed them the ghost town of Jerome and its open pit copper mine. Sedona was to the east; I told them we’d pass over that on the way back. We climbed steadily, now on a straight line path to Grand Canyon airport, and reached an altitude of over 8,000 feet just east of Bill Williams Mountain. From there, it was a slow descent down to about 7,000 feet. Our path took us right over our place at Howard Mesa, which I pointed out for my passengers, and right over Valle. I called into Grand Canyon tower, and got clearance to land at the transient helipads.

At the Grand Canyon

Once inside the terminal, I asked my passengers if they wanted to go right into the park or take a helicopter overflight. I’m not allowed to fly over at a comfortable altitude, so if my passengers want to overfly, I set them up with Grand Canyon Helicopters or Maverick Helicopters. Both companies fly EC 130 helicopters — the Ecostar — which are much nicer than the old Bell Long Rangers I used to fly for Papillon. I prefer Maverick these days (for mostly personal reasons that I’d prefer not to go into here).

“What do you recommend?” my passenger asked.

“Well, if money is not a concern, I definitely recommend the helicopter flight,” I told him. And that was no lie. Everyone who can should experience a flight over the east side of the Grand Canyon. It’s the longer, more costly tour, but if you don’t mind spending the money, it’s worth every penny.

“Okay,” he said simply.

I didn’t have Maverick’s number on me, so called Grand Canyon Helicopter. A long tour was leaving in 20 minutes. I booked it for two passengers and we walked over to Grand Canyon Helicopter’s terminal.

The helicopter returned from the previous tour and they switched pilots. The woman pilot who climbed on board was the tiny Japanese woman who’d been flying for Grand Canyon Helicopters when I was a pilot a Papillon. I told my passengers what her name was and that they should greet her in Japanese.

Then they got their safety briefing and were loaded aboard. I took a photo of them taking off. Then I hiked over to Maverick to meet the Chief Pilot there. I had 45 minutes to kill and planned to make the most of it.

I was back at Grand Canyon Helicopters when my passengers’ flight landed. They were all smiles as they got out. I called for transportation into the park and was told it would be 20 minutes. As we waited, the Japanese pilot came into the terminal and spent some time chatting with us. She’s 115 pounds of skilled and experienced turbine helicopter pilot — a dream come true for any helicopter operator. This is her fifth year at the Canyon. They call her their “secret weapon.” When the van pulled up, she bowed politely to my passengers, saying something to them in Japanese. I think they really liked getting a reminder of home so far away.

We took the van into the park and were let off at El Tovar. It was 3:20 PM. I told my passengers to meet me back there at 5 PM. It wasn’t nearly as much time as I like my passengers to have, but our late start had really limited our time. I left them to wander the historic buildings and rim trail on their own and went to find myself something to eat. I hadn’t eaten a thing all day and was starved.

What’s weird about this particular trip to the Canyon is that I don’t think I spent more than 5 minutes looking into the canyon from the Rim. I didn’t take a single picture. This is why the word routine comes to mind. It’s almost as if the Grand Canyon had ceased being a special place. A visit like this was routine. It was something I’d do again and again. If I didn’t spend much time taking in the view this trip, I could do it on my next trip. I think that’s what was going on in the back of my mind.

The time went by quickly. I had lunch, browsed around Hopi House, and took a seat on El Tovar’s porch to wait for my passengers. I was lucky that it was a nice day — I didn’t have a jacket. Several people told me it had snowed the day before and there had been snow on the ground just that morning. But by the time we got there, all the snow was gone and it was a very pleasant day. Not even very windy, which is unusual for the spring. But as the sun descended, it got cool out on the porch. I was glad when my passengers showed up just on time.

I called for the van and was told it would take 20 minutes. That’s the big drawback to taking people to the Canyon — ground transportation. I’d rent a car if there was a car there to rent. But there isn’t, so we’re at the mercy of the Grand Canyon Transportation desk. The fare isn’t bad — $5 per person, kids under 12 free — but the service is painfully slow, especially during the off season. It’s about a 15-minute drive from Grand Canyon Village to the Airport in Tusayan, but between the wait and the slow drivers, it stretches out to 30 to 45 minutes. That’s time taken away from my passengers’ day at the canyon.

Back to Sky Harbor via Sedona

We were in the helicopter and ready to leave the Grand Canyon Airport at 5:45 PM. At that time of day, the airport was dead. Tour operators have a curfew and cannot fly over the canyon past 5 PM this time of year; that changes to 6 PM in May. So there wasn’t anyone around. Fortunately, the terminal was still unlocked with people working at the Grand Canyon Airlines desk when we arrived so we had access to the ramp.

I’d put in a fuel order before we left earlier, so both tanks were topped off. We warmed up and I took off to the south. I set the GPS with a Sedona GoTo and the direct path took us southeast, past Red Butte, east of Howard Mesa. We saw a huge herd of antelope — at least 50 to 100 of them! — in an open meadow about 10 miles north of I-40. It was the same meadow I’d seen antelope before.

We climbed with the gently rising terrain. The forest ended abruptly and I followed a canyon east and then south, descending at 1000 feet per minute into the Sedona area. The low-lying sun cast a beautiful reddish light on Sedona’s already red rocks. The view was breathtaking. My passengers captured it all with their cameras.

We flew through Oak Creek Village, then turned toward I-17. I started to climb. There was one more mountain range I needed to cross. Although a direct to Sky Harbor would have put us on a course far from I-17, I prefer flying a bit closer to civilization, especially late in the day.

At one point, I looked down and saw a single antelope running beneath us, obviously frightened by the sound of the helicopter above him.

We watched the sun set behind the Bradshaw Mountains as we came up on Black Canyon City. There was still plenty of light as we came up on Deer Valley Airport. I transitioned through the west end of their airspace and continued on.

Sky Harbor was considerably busier when I tuned in and made my call. But my approach was the same as usual. My passengers took more pictures and video as we passed downtown Phoenix just over rooftop level, then crossed the departure end of the runways and made our approach to Cutter. It was just after 7 PM when we touched down.

We said our goodbyes in Cutter’s terminal, where I got my passenger’s mailing address in Japan so I could send him a receipt for the additional amount I’d have to charge him for the longer flight. They called a cab for their hotel and I paid the landing and ramp fee Cutter sometimes charges me. (I don’t mind paying the $17 fee because my passengers nearly always use their free shuttle and I rarely take on any fuel.) Then I hurried out to the ramp for the last leg of my flight, back to Wickenburg.

Flying Home

It was dark by the time I was ready to leave Sky Harbor. This was the first time I’d depart Sky Harbor at night. Of course, just because the sky was dark doesn’t mean the ground was dark. It was very bright, well lighted by all kinds of colored lights.

I launched to the south just seconds before a medivac launched from Swift. We were both told to squawk 0400 and Ident. I never caught sight of the helicopter behind me, but he had me in sight. Together, we flew west to Central. Then he headed up Central Avenue and I headed direct to Wickenburg. The north tower cut us both loose together as we exited their space.

The flight to Wickenburg was easy. I simply followed the bright white line drawn on the ground for me by traffic heading southeast on Grand Avenue. The road goes from Phoenix to Wickenburg and is the most direct route. At night, it’s lit up by traffic and very easy to follow. When I got closer to Wickenburg, the red taillights heading to Las Vegas far outnumbered the white headlights heading toward Phoenix. After all, it was Friday night.

I set down at the airport in Wickenburg and gave the helicopter a nice, long cool down. I’d flown 4.1 hours that day and was glad to be home.

Yesterday afternoon, not long after the stock markets closed in New York, Apple put a one-paragraph announcement on its Hot News page. The announcement told the world (or whoever happened to be watching that page) that because Leopard resources had been used to finish up the iPhone, Leopard would be delayed. Instead of seeing the finished OS in June, we’ll now see it in October.

Why it Matters to Me

I took the news with mixed emotions. I had begun working hard on my Leopard Visual QuickStart Guide for Peachpit Press. The book will be the eighth or tenth (I’ve lost count) edition of my Mac OS VQS, which is one of my biggest selling titles. The book is important to me; the last edition accounted for half of my annual income for two years in a row. When that book is ready to write I drop everything — even helicopter charters — to work on it.

The most important part of it is getting it done on time. When Tiger came out in 2005 only two authors had books in stores beside the brand new software on its release date: Robin Williams and me. Both long-time Peachpit authors with reputations for churning out books that satisfy readers. If Robin’s book sold only half as well as mine — and I’m not fooling myself; it probably sold twice as well — we kicked butt. It was a great reward for hard work and grueling deadlines. But I have to say honestly that my Tiger book was one of the ones I’m most proud of.

This Time was Different

This time around, things were definitely different. The software wasn’t ready yet — that was obvious in the way certain features just didn’t work right. Lots of bugs to iron out, but few developmental releases. It was almost as if Apple’s Mac OS team was overwhelmed. This announcement from Apple explains a lot. Apparently they were overwhelmed, but not by the task at hand. They were overwhelmed by being shorthanded to tackle the task at hand.

Add to that the fact that my screenshot software of choice, Snapz Pro, “broke” in Leopard. Don’t misunderstand me; it did work and it took fine screenshots. But the shortcut key to invoke it did not work — even when I fiddled with Mac OS settings and tried other shortcut keys. So, for example, there was no way to take a screenshot of a menu.

I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a Visual QuickStart Guide, but they rely on screenshots to communicate information. The book is full of step-by-step, illustrated instructions. I estimate that my Tiger VQS has at least 2,000 screenshots in it. Some screenshots show windows, others show menus. Almost every single one is less than a full screen of information. Now think of how much fun it might be to take 2,000 screenshots with something as awkward as Grab or, worse yet, Apple’s built-in screenshot shortcut keys. And then manually edit every single screenshot in a graphics program like Photoshop. Not having Snapz Pro (or something equivalent, if something equivalent exists) was going to seriously slow down my workflow.

What was even worse for me (and all other writers, I assume) was the “secret features” Steve Jobs alluded to when he first showed off Leopard. I had no idea what they were. And no one else did either. What if those features changed the way part of Mac OS X looked? All my screenshots would have to be redone. And what if the features were big enough to warrant their own chapters? Or replaced existing features? That could mean significant reorganization of the book, with changes to all the chapter and feature references. I could be working my butt off to finish a 700+ page book, only to have to redo major parts of it.

So I was under a lot of pressure. I had the ticking clock that said the software would be out “this spring.” That meant before June 20. I knew my publisher needed 2-3 weeks to get the final files printed and turned into books. That meant I needed to be done writing and editing by the end of May. But not knowing what the future would bring, was crippling me, making it difficult and frustrating to get things done.

I was not a happy camper. So when the announcement came yesterday, it was a bit of a relief for me.

The Problem with the Postponement

There is a problem, however: timing.

I had planned to work on my Leopard book for April and May. Then comes my annual secret project (which I can’t talk about until after publication) for the month of June and a bit into July. Then my annual one-month stay at Howard Mesa to get some work done on our property and knock off a few articles for Informit and possibly try to reconstruct that mystery novel I was working on (which was lost in the great hard disk crash and backup screw-up of February 2007). Then we’d planned to take a vacation to the northwest to continue our search for a new place to live. By that time, it would be September and the helicopter business would be heating up again; I already have two charters lined up for that month. Also, around that time, I’d be ready to start work on my Word for Macintosh revision.

There was a plan B for this summer, too. It consisted of me getting a job as a pilot for someone else, flying somewhere other than Arizona. I could work on my secret project while I was away and escape Arizona’s brutal heat and get to fly someplace different. I have a very good lead on a job in St. Louis (of all places) and a few possibilities in Oregon and Washington. But nothing finalized.

Now these plans for the next six months of my life are completely up in the air. Assuming an October 1 release of Leopard — this is just a date pulled out of the air; I swear I don’t know anything and if I did I wouldn’t repeat it — I have to be finished with the book by the first week in September. So I’ll work on it in July and August. While I still have my secret project to work on in June, I don’t have anything lined up for the rest of April and the month of May.

What’s even worse about all this is that I can’t work on a VQS at Howard Mesa or at a summer job elsewhere — I need a desktop computer with a big monitor to do the layout — and I can’t take a vacation when I need to work on this book. (See above for how important it is.) So my whole summer schedule is completely screwed up.

And It’s a Money Problem, Too

And since I get paid advances when I work and I don’t have anything lined up between now and the beginning of June, I’m not going to see a payday until the end of June or July. Ouch. So my finances will be screwed up, too.

It gets even worse. If the book had a release date in June 2007 (with the original release of Leopard), I’d start seeing royalties at September 2007 month-end. But because it won’t be released until October, which is after the start of the last quarter, I won’t see royalties until March 2008 month-end. That’s a 6-month payday delay for a 4-month publication delay. Double-ouch.

But that’s what the freelance writer’s life is like: a financial roller coaster.

What to Do?

Today I’ll be making some phone calls. The goal is to pin down exact dates for all of my known projects so I can decide, once and for all, if I can get a pilot job according to Plan B. And, while I’m at it, I’ll try to pick up a small book project to work on in May. (Not likely but remotely possible.)

Then I’ll get to work doing other things that I’ve been neglecting — cleaning out the condo I want to rent, washing the helicopter, organizing my office, reserving rooms for next year’s Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure trips.

After all, life goes on.