An Eclectic Mind

How does anyone get anything done in this town?

The old guy Mike called to give us an estimate for replacing two windows refused to take driving directions to our house. Instead, I had to drop everything and go out to meet him.

He wasn’t at the corner where he was supposed to be. Instead, he’d driven his unmarked truck past me and was waiting two blocks from our home. He used his cell phone to call me. I tracked him down and he followed me to my house.

The window on the right is the one that needs replacing.

The windows are upstairs. He followed me up the stairs. I pointed out the 4 foot by 8 foot double-pane glass panel that needed replacement. The seal between the two panes had failed and moisture had slipped in. Each day, the window would fog up in a way that couldn’t be wiped clean. Since the window is one of two that offer the best view in the house, we wanted it fixed quickly.

He walked up to the window and looked at the garage roof outside. “How do I get out there?” he asked.

“On a ladder,” I replied.

“We can’t do that. The glass is big and heavy.”

“You did it twelve years ago when we first bought the house,” I told him. I pointed at the identical panel of glass beside it. “You replaced that one right after we moved in.”

“How did we get up there?” he asked.

“On a ladder.”

The bathroom window is broken.

I took him into the upstairs bathroom to see the other window that needed replacing. This was a small two-part window of white-smoked glass. One panel slid back and forth to open or close the window. The other panel remained stationery. The stationery panel had always had a bad seal that let moisture in, but we never bothered to replace it since you couldn’t see through it anyway. But during a recent storm, that panel’s outside pane had broken. We wanted it replaced.

He pulled off the panel that slid back and forth and set it down beside the toilet. He reached around, pushing the screen out a bit and mumbling about how he hoped nothing fell.

“How do you get up to this window?” he asked.

“On a ladder,” I replied yet again.

“What size ladder?”

“My husband uses an extension ladder. We have one you can use.”

He put the other panel back in place. “I don’t know why anyone would build a house like this,” he muttered as he led the way out of the bathroom.

My patience was stretching thin. “People don’t usually design houses just to make it convenient to replace windows,” I told him.

He went downstairs, outside, and around the side of the house. I followed. He looked up at the bathroom window, which had to be at least 20 feet off the ground. Then he looked at the comparatively short climb to the garage roof.

“Once you get up there,” I told him, you can walk on the garage roof pretty easily.

He looked at the situation for another moment, then suddenly said, “I can’t help you, lady.”

I don’t know if he was expecting me to argue or beg with him, but if he was, he was disappointed.

“Okay, thanks for your time,” I said quickly. “You can find your way out? Be careful backing up.”

And then I went into the house, leaving him find his way back to wherever it is he’d come from.

Of course, since the old guy is the only glass replacement option in Wickenburg — or at least the only one my husband could find — we’ll have to get someone up from Phoenix to do the job. But that’s typical here. No matter how much you try to spend money locally, you just can’t get what you need.

Days in My Life home, repair, stupidity, Wickenburg

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Book value: $250. Reliability: Near 100%.

This morning, I had to drive down to Phoenix Deer Valley Airport (DVT) to pick up my helicopter for a charter out in Aguila, AZ. I have a 1987 Toyota MR-2 that I bought new in October 1986. That’s my airport car. It basically lives down in Deer Valley when I’ve got the helicopter out. The idea was to drive it down to Deer Valley, park it, do my flight, and then bring the helicopter back to its Wickenburg hangar so I could wash it before returning it to Deer Valley.

That was the idea, anyway.

This morning, the MR-2 roared to life, just like it aways does. But I had some trouble getting it out of first gear — I leave all my cars in gear when I park on our hilly driveway. I rolled back and got it half turned around. Then I attempted to shift into first or second to depart. The gearshift wouldn’t budge.

Understand this: the car is standard transmission. It was my first standard transmission car. I learned to drive stick on that car. A week after taking it home, I was driving back and forth to my job in downtown Manhattan from New Jersey, battling bridge and highway traffic. I got really good with a stick shift really fast.

And the car still has its original clutch.

It only has 133,000 miles on it. When I bought my Jeep in 1999, it became my secondary car. When I bought my Honda S2000 in 2003, it became my third car. I didn’t even need it for sporty drives anymore. That’s when it became my airport car.

Here’s my old helicopter and Toyota MR-2 parked at Howard Mesa during the summer of 2004.

I don’t think I put more than 1,000 miles per year on it after that. It spent the summer of 2004 at Howard Mesa or Grand Canyon Airport when I flew helicopter tours for one of the operators at the Grand Canyon. It spent at least two years in Prescott as an airport car — my mechanic was based there for a while — and then another whole season in Scottsdale — I used to fly there quite often. When the Scottsdale cops called and threatened to tow it away, I drove it home. It spent a year or two in my hangar. Then I brought it down to Deer Valley to be my airport car there.

It didn’t mind neglect. It just about always started up when I turned the key. The only exception was once in Prescott, when the battery had finally died. Fortunately, I’d parked it pointing down a little hill. I released the break, popped the clutch in second gear and got it started. Drove it to Sears, put in a new battery, and went about my business.

Every year or so, I get the oil changed. I bought it new wiper blades and sun screens about a year ago.

Today, when the clutch wouldn’t engage, I wasn’t very surprised. Hell, it was the original clutch! More than 23 years old! What the hell did I expect?

My Honda visits my Toyota at DVT.

I took my Honda down to Deer Valley. I locked it up. I wasn’t happy about leaving my best car overnight at Deer Valley. The Toyota was disposable. The Honda wasn’t.

As I flew west to my gig, I thought about the Toyota. I wondered if this was how it would all end. It didn’t seem right to put hundreds of dollars into a car with a Kelly Blue Book value of under $250.

I did my gig. It involved over 3 hours of flying north of Aguila. It ended with a flight to Wickenburg to photograph some property. I’d drop off my clients at either one of the spec homes they’d built or nearby private helipad that they led me to believe was part of their property. We were doing the photo flight when I heard some chatter on the radio. Wickenburg Airport was closed. Turns out, an F-16 trainer had crash-landed there earlier in the day. So I landed on the helipad. I didn’t have enough fuel to get back to Deer Valley and I couldn’t land at Wickenburg. I wound up leaving it there for the night. As I type this, the airport is still closed.

Back at home, Mike got the idea that maybe the Toyota’s clutch wasn’t broken. Maybe it just needed fluid.

We pulled the owner’s guide out of the glove box and looked it up. We found the reservoir. It was bone dry. (Oops!) We grabbed some of the recommended DOT 3 brake fluid out of the garage and filled the reservoir. I pumped the clutch pedal. A lot. I started the car, pushed down the clutch pedal, and smoothly shifted it into first gear.

It works.

So my Toyota continues to run smoothly with its 23-year-old clutch. Best of all, it seems very forgiving of my neglect.

How can I not love a car like that?

Days in My Life, Flying cars, helicopters, repair, Toyota MR-2

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The saga comes to an end…I hope.

If you follow the helicopter-related posts in this blog, you may know that I’ve been having a problem with my helicopter’s mixture control. My usual interface with this device is the red knob with a button on my instrument panel. Push the knob to get fuel flowing. Pull the knob to shut down the engine. Don’t mess with the knob in flight.

Simple enough, until it got stiff and then broke. I wrote about it here and here.

Turns out, the reason the mixture cable became fractured is because the mixture control arm (lavender in this image) on the fuel control was too stiff. When I pushed or pulled the mixture control in the cockpit it was buckling and fraying. Pushing it in may not have resulted in full rich fuel, which could result in the engine running hot and lead to even more problems.

Good thing we caught it!

Ed, Wickenburg’s very best airplane mechanic, followed up by pulling the fuel control and fixing it, following instructions of the device’s manufacturer in Wichita, KS. Here’s what it looked like sitting on his workbench with the offending arm removed for repair. This is a lot more of my helicopter’s innards than I usually like to see. But it was interesting to see the piece I’d found an illustration of for this blog (see above) in a place where it was clearly recognizable.

Ed has since put everything back together. I was busy yesterday with the Endurance Ride, so I didn’t fly. And I don’t want to bother Ed on a Sunday. But come tomorrow morning, I’ll be at the airport with the helicopter out on the ramp. I’ll start it up and Ed will likely look at everything from below as its running to make sure the mixture is indeed full rich. I’ll pull the mixture and he’ll watch it work. And then he’ll sign off on it.

And give me a bill. (Ah, the joys of aircraft ownership!)

Of course, if things don’t go as planned, you’ll likely read more about it here.

Flying helicopters, repair, troubleshooting

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It could be worse.

The other day, I reported a mechanical problem with my helicopter. In summary, the mixture control had been kind of stiff and it made a weird noise when I pulled it out. When my mechanic attempted to lubricate it, the mixture cable snapped.

The photo here shows a Robinson Raven II instrument panel very similar to mine. I’ve circled the mixture control. Remember: push in to allow fuel flow, pull out to stop fuel flow. Airplanes have similar controls. Airplane pilots adjust this in flight — that’s called leaning the engine. Helicopter pilots generally do not do this. It’s either in and the engine is running or out and the engine is stopped.

I didn’t make a big deal out of it then because it seemed to be a simple enough fix. We ordered the replacement cable from the factory and I figured that Ed, my local mechanic, would get that sucker installed not long after it arrived.

The more amazing thing to me — at least at the time — is that I’d proactively found and set about resolving a minor mechanical problem before it got me stranded somewhere inconvenient. The timing couldn’t have been better. The day before, I’d written an article for HeliNews about that exact topic. I was pleased that I’d learned a lesson.

Well, things are never as easy as they should be. Ed got the cable and went to work installing it. He soon ran into problems. The cable wouldn’t move smoothly. It wouldn’t go in all the way. He’s pretty sure we’ll have to order the entire cable assembly today. (This image, taken from Robinson SB-55, shows where the mixture cable attaches to the fuel mixture control. I highlighted the cable and its sheath in red. We ordered just the cable and it is apparently having trouble moving in the original sheath.)

Today is Friday. Although they could overnight the part for Saturday delivery, Ed doesn’t normally work on Saturdays. So I’ll save a few bucks on shipping and get it delivered Monday. With luck, it’ll be just what Ed needs and he can install it then.

Until it’s installed, there’s no flying for me.

But that doesn’t seem to matter much. I have no flights scheduled for this week and I have plenty of writing work to do. (I’m developing my third course for Lynda.com and have an open request for short how-to articles to fill for one of my publishers.) This weekend, I’m volunteering at the annual Land of the Sun Endurance Ride by marking horse butts with numbers, making my famous vegetarian bean soup, and timing in the 50-milers at the 25-mile manditory break. It’s almost a good thing that the helicopter is down for maintenance; less of a distraction for me.

I do want it running soon, though. Murphy’s Law of helicopter charter operations states that the most calls for your service will come in when you’re least able to meet customer needs. It must be a sign of the economy that my phone hasn’t started ringing off the hook yet.

Flying helicopters, repair, troubleshooting

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Start with two million dollars.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Doing the Math

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Paying for It

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

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

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

Flying aviation, business, credit, driving, FAA, ghost towns, humor, New York, night, Phoenix, radio, repair, river, shopping, sky, time, troubleshooting, Wickenburg

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