An Eclectic Mind

Sometimes you just get lucky.

This is a follow-up to the post that appeared here on Friday, “The Tour Operator’s Fly or Don’t Fly Decision.” In that post, I explained why I wasn’t going to take a party of three passengers on a 3+ hour scenic flight in northern Arizona in Thursday’s high winds.

It was a very good decision. We flew on Friday instead. What a difference a day makes! The skies were completely clear and winds seldom topped 10 MPH anywhere on our route.

We had a smooth flight up the Verde River before climbing over the Mogollon Rim west of Payson to Meteor Crater. We passed a herd of buffalo just southwest of the crater and I was able to do a low-level circle around them for the benefit of my passengers.

Here’s a quick video of the Meteor Crater overflight, taken from a camera mounted inside my helicopter’s bubble. Narration was added afterward.

It was a bit bumpy from there to the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River, which were flowing but not exactly “grand” that day. (We need more snow melt to really get them going.)

This video shows the no-so-grand Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River. Look closely and you’ll see a truck parked along the right rim of the canyon; gives you an idea of scale.

Then south of Flagstaff Airport to Oak Creek Canyon and into Sedona. My passengers had lunch at the airport restaurant while I arranged for fuel and chatted with the folks at the terminal. On the way back, we did a quick flyby of Montezuma’s Castle, climbed up the mountains southwest of Camp Verde, and followed the Agua Fria River to Lake Pleasant. I showed them the ruins atop Indian Mesa and one of my passengers spotted some wild burros, so I swung around to give them all a good look. From there, we returned to our starting point at Scottsdale Airport.

I logged 3.4 hours of flight time in the nicest of conditions. My passengers — and I! — really enjoyed the flight. And it was nice to put a little cash in Flying M Air’s coffers.

On Saturday, the wind kicked up again, although not as bad as it was on Thursday. Then storms moved in. It rained almost all day in the Phoenix area (and Wickenburg) and snowed up north. There were low clouds all day Sunday and even now, as I write this around dawn on Monday, I can see low clouds out my window. (Oddly, I got a call from a Phoenix area concierge asking if I could do a nighttime tour of Phoenix last night; what kind of scenic tour did they expect when you can’t see more than a mile or two in mist? Sheesh.)

Of course, all this rain is very unusual for Arizona. We’ve had more rain in the first two months of this year than we did all 12 months of last year.

In general, I consider myself (and my passengers) lucky to have slipped into that narrow window of opportunity for such a long flight. It worked out great for all of us.

Flying Arizona, Flagstaff, helicopter video, helicopters, Sedona, tourism, videos, weather

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It should be about client experience, shouldn’t it?

Yesterday, like all other days I’m scheduled to fly, I faced a pilot’s usual weather-related fly/don’t fly decision. While the weather in Arizona is usually so good that flying is possible just about every day of the year, yesterday’s weather forecast was different. It required me to make a real decision.

As this marked-up WAC shows, the most direct route I’d take for this flight has us spending extended periods of time at high elevation over mountains.

I was scheduled to do a custom tour of Meteor Crater and the Grand Falls of the Little Colorado River in northern Arizona with a lunch stop on the return trip in Sedona. The total flight time would be about three hours, with much of it conducted over mountainous or high altitude (or both) terrain.

The Weather

I’d been watching the weather forecasts for Winslow (east of the Crater), Flagstaff (between the Grand Falls and Sedona), and Sedona for a few days. Earlier in the week, there had been a 10% chance of snow in the Flagstaff area. That wasn’t worrying me much. What did worry me was the wind forecast: 20 mph plus gusts. That would make for an uncomfortable and possibly very unpleasant flight.

On the morning of the flight, the weather forecast had taken a turn for the worse. According to NOAA what I was looking at for the places we’d fly over:

Phoenix: Sunny, with a high near 64. Breezy, with a south southwest wind between 7 and 17 mph, with gusts as high as 28 mph.

Sedona: A 10 percent chance of showers after 11am. Partly cloudy, with a high near 58. South wind 6 to 9 mph increasing to between 18 and 21 mph. Winds could gust as high as 33 mph.

Flagstaff: A 30 percent chance of snow showers after 11am. Partly cloudy, with a high near 43. Breezy, with a southwest wind 8 to 11 mph increasing to between 20 and 23 mph. Winds could gust as high as 37 mph. Total daytime snow accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Winslow: Sunny, with a high near 58. Breezy, with a south wind 8 to 11 mph increasing to between 25 and 28 mph. Winds could gust as high as 44 mph.

To be fair, we weren’t actually flying to Winslow. But we’d be about 20 miles to the west, on the same big, flat, windswept plateau.

But if that wasn’t bad enough, there was also a Hazardous Weather Outlook for entire area:

A VIGOROUS PACIFIC LOW WILL BRUSH NORTHERN ARIZONA BRINGING SOUTHWEST WINDS OF 15 TO 25 MPH WITH LOCAL GUST TO NEAR 40 MPH AND COOLER TEMPERATURES. IN ADDITION…PARTLY TO MOSTLY CLOUDY SKIES WILL SPREAD ACROSS THE AREA WITH SCATTERED SHOWERS DEVELOPING FROM ABOUT FLAGSTAFF NORTHWARD TO THE ARIZONA…UTAH BORDER. THE SNOW LEVEL WILL RANGE FROM 4000 TO 5000 FEET BY THIS AFTERNOON

Flagstaff is at 7000 feet.

I know from 2,300 hours experience flying helicopters all over the southwest that when the winds get above 20 mph and you’re flying over mountainous terrain, you’re in for a rough ride. A 15 mph gust spread in the mountains can make you feel as if you’re riding a bull at a rodeo.

And a 10% to 30% chance of rain or show showers didn’t make the situation any better. I’ve been in snow showers in the Sedona area that cut visibility to less than a mile in localized areas. Not very scenic.

The Decision

There are three ways I could make the decision:

• Do I have to go? The simple truth is that if I had to make the flight — for example, if it were a matter of life and death — I could. I’ve flown in high winds before and although it caused white knuckles and a lot of in-flight stress, it was doable. But this was not a “must go” situation.
• If paying passengers weren’t involved, would I go? The answer to this one was no, I wouldn’t. If this were a personal pleasure flight, I simply wouldn’t make the trip that day. I don’t take much pleasure in a rodeo ride 500-1000 feet off the ground.
• Would passengers enjoy the trip? I’d guess the answer would be no. I fact, I’d expect the passengers to actually experience fear at least once during the flight. Turbulence are scary, especially when you seldom experience them — or have never experienced them in a small aircraft.

So the decision was actually quite simple: I would call the client and advise that we not make the trip that day. I could offer a tour of Phoenix (relatively flat, a shorter flight, much lighter winds) or the same trip the next day when the weather was expected to be much better.

I’m Selling an Experience

This is what separates me from the tour operator I worked for at the Grand Canyon back in 2004. In the spring, we routinely flew in winds up to 50 miles per hour, with fights that were so bumpy that even I, as the pilot, was starting to get sick. (Puking passengers was a daily occurrence.) Keeping in mind that we did “scenic” flights, near the end of the season, we occasionally flew in conditions with minimal visibility due to thunderstorm activity and smoke from forest fires (planned and unplanned). After one flight, when the visibility was so bad that I had trouble finding my way back to the airport, I asked the Chief Pilot why we were flying. After all, the passengers couldn’t see any more than I could. His response was, “If they’re willing to pay, we’re willing to fly.”

I don’t have this same attitude. My passengers are paying me for a pleasant, scenic tour. While I can’t control the weather, I can control when we fly. If I suspect that the weather will make the trip significantly unpleasant — or possibly scare the bejesus out of them — how can I, in good conscience, sell them the flight?

I’m not saying that I won’t fly in less than perfect conditions, but if the conditions are downright horrible for flight, why should I subject my passengers — or myself — to those conditions?

I called the passenger and explained the situation. He consulted his wife. They agreed to do the flight the next day. He seemed happy that I’d called and given him the choice.

I’m sure we’ll all have a great time.

Flying Arizona, aviation, helicopters, tourism, weather

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Frightening at night.

Arizona is known primarily for one thing: its brutally hot summers. To be fair, it’s only 110°F + for a few months and only in the lower elevations of the state. The rest of the state has much milder weather — at least in the summer. In the winter, places like Flagstaff and the Grand Canyon can get the same kinds of winter storms that caused me to flee the New York metro area years ago.

Our house in Wickenburg is at a slightly higher elevation than Phoenix: 2200 feet vs. 1000 feet in the Valley. Because of this, we get just about the same weather as Phoenix, although we tend to run 5°F cooler year-round. (This is one of the reasons I escape to northern Arizona or Washington State every summer.)

The autumn, winter, and spring weather, in general, is a monotony of perfectly clear sunny days. In the height of winter, nighttime temperatures might dip to below freezing, but it general climbs back up to the 60s or even 70s once the sun rises high into the cloudless sky. Rain is a welcome treat. Storms are a rarity.

We had a storm yesterday, however. A low came in from the Pacific coast, dragging along tons of moisture as it moved in from the southwest. We had low clouds all day long — it was one of the 10 or so days each year when it’s impossible to fly VFR. The rain came and went — a good, soaking rain that the desert really needs. The radar showed various shades of green throughout our area, with pink and blue (icy mix and snow) in higher elevations just 10 miles north.

It got dark and the rain continued into the night. Then the wind started. The weather forecast warned of a Wind Advisory with winds gusting as high as 58 mph throughout the area. It even suggested that vehicles stay off of I-10, which runs from the Los Angeles area through Phoenix and then south to Tucson before turning east again toward New Mexico.

I was alone at home last night with Jack the Dog and Alex the Bird. Jack wanted no part of the outdoors yesterday and it was tough just getting him out there long enough to do his business. We closed up the house around 7 PM, shutting off the lights downstairs so Alex could sleep. I watched a movie on our DVR while the wind started to whip up around the house. By the time I climbed into bed to read, the storm was in full swing.

It was the sound of the wind that prompted me to write this. I want to remember, in the future, how it sounded, so I figured I’d write it down in my journal — after all, that’s what this blog really is.

The wind had an otherworldly sound. It was the low frequency moan of a male voice, almost ghostly, rising and falling in pitch as as the wind’s intensity rose and fell. Rain pelted the flat roof and big windows. All this noise was accompanied by the rattling of the french doors that lead from our bedroom to upstairs patio and the pulsating of the window panes. More than once, I got up to check the doors to make sure they wouldn’t suddenly blow open.

Sometimes I heard a deep rumbling sound off in the distance. I’ve read time and time again that tornadoes sound like freight trains. I wondered whether there was any danger of that. Nothing in the forecast; I told myself not to worry.

Occasionally, the house shook on its foundation. It made me wonder what the wind speed really was. I dialed up the AWOS for Wickenburg Municipal Airport (E25) and listened to the automatically generated recording. Winds from 220 at 26 gusting to 39. I thought about how hurricane force winds would sound and feel against the house. I resolved yet again not to move into an area likely to get hurricanes or tornadoes.

I grew tired of reading and turned out the light. But I lay awake for a long time, listening to the sounds around me, comforted by the steady drone of the heat pump keeping the upstairs warm until its set-back time at 11 PM. Just as I was thinking about how unusual it was that we hadn’t lost power, the power failed. The heat-pump went quiet and the ambient light from my neighbor’s yard went dark. Now the only thing to hear and feel was the wind and the vibrations on the house.

I fell asleep a while later and slept remarkably well until 4 or 5 am. I woke suddenly and looked out the bedroom door toward the big window facing southeast. A bright splash of moonlight illuminated the shelves and floor there. The storm had cleared out. The waning moon, approaching its last quarter, was shining like a beacon over the desert.

Outside, the wind still howled. I fell back to sleep.

Days in My Life Arizona, Phoenix, weather, Wickenburg

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Let’s hope I get six like this in a row.

I start my final Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure 6-day helicopter excursion for 2009 today. And after a week of extremely blustery weather — by Arizona’s standards, anyway — it looks like we have a week with calm wind conditions.

I can’t express how happy I am about that. While I’m not afraid to fly when the wind is howling — even up to 20 or 30 knots — it’s so much more pleasant to fly without all that wind. You can really feel the joy of flying when there isn’t some natural force (other than gravity) messing with your flight path.

Wind makes for mountain turbulence, which is caused by the flow of air over uneven terrain. Think of a stream with rocks in it. How does the water move over and around those rocks? Now imagine the water being air and the rocks being hills and mountains. Helicopters are flying only 500 to 1000 feet off the surface, so we’re in all that bumpy air. The more wind and hills and mountains, the more bumps. It’s usually not bad enough to be unflyable, but it’s certainly a lot more pleasant to fly when you’re not being bumped around all the time.

When I flew at the Grand Canyon, it was windy every day from April into June. Oddly, the bumpiest air usually occurred during flight segments over the National Forest. We were 300 feet over the ground, not far from the ponderosa pine treetops. The ground was gently rolling plateau that ended abruptly at the edge of the Canyon. It was the rolling hills that set up the bumpiest air. Over the canyon, with several thousand feet of open air below you, the wind wasn’t nearly as bumpy — despite all those buttes and “temples.”

Anyway, I’m looking forward to a smooth flight, where each moment in the air feels like gliding through space. Let’s hope it holds out for the whole week.

Flying Arizona, Grand Canyon, helicopters, weather

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Nine weeks was enough.

On Saturday, we left Wenatchee. I’d been in the area — Quincy and Wenatchee, WA — since June 8 and was really ready to go. But there were a few things that needed doing before we could go.

A Day in Seattle

First I had to meet up with my husband. He’ll be joining me for our return drive to the Phoenix area. He flew up from Phoenix to Seattle on Alaska Airlines with some luggage, his bicycle, and Alex the Dog. His flight was scheduled to arrive at 9:30 AM Thursday, so at 6 AM that morning, I was in the truck, driving west to meet him. We had a nice reunion at baggage claim carousel 14, where Jack was very surprised to see me waiting for him when they rolled in his new travel crate.

SR-71 on display at the Museum of Flight in Seattle, WA.

Not to waste a day in Seattle, we had breakfast at 13 Coins near the airport and then headed over to Boeing Field for a visit to the Museum of Flight. We spent a few hours there, enjoying the exhibits. It’s a great aviation museum with something of interest to people of all ages.

Afterward, we went to Mike’s cousin’s house in the northern part of Seattle, not far from the University of Washington. Mike’s cousin Rick and his friend Lisa live in a tall, narrow house on a quiet residential street. We went for dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant, where were were joined by my friend, Tom, who I hadn’t seen in about 15 years. Tom, who lives in Vermont, was in the Seattle area on business and we managed to plan our day in Seattle for the same day Tom had some free time. It was great to see him.

Afterwards, we drove back to Wenatchee along scenic Route 2. Unfortunately, we left too late in the day to see anything; it was dark long before we reached the pass. It was also a bit foggy. I’d love to drive this route on a nice day. I flew it in June with my Twitter friend, @Jodene, and it was incredible.

Moving the Helicopter

The idea was to fly the helicopter back that way the next day. I’d booked tickets for Mike and me on Horizon from Seattle to Wenatchee on Friday’s 4 PM flight. The plan was to spend Friday morning moving the trailer from where it was parked in a Wenatchee Heights orchard back down to Wenatchee, where we’d get one of its tires replaced. Then we’d fly the helicopter to Boeing Field, where one of my mechanics is based. Then we’d catch that 4 PM flight back to Wenatchee, finish packing up, and be out of the area by Saturday morning.

The weather didn’t cooperate. It had been almost rain-free all summer, but it poured like hell on Friday in Wenatchee. The storm came from the north and moved slowly to the southeast. We managed to stay on schedule to fetch the trailer and get its tire changed, but when we were ready to take the helicopter to Seattle, a thick blanket of clouds clogged both mountain passes — Snoqualmie (I-90) and Stevens (Route 2). There would be no flight that day.

It was unfortunate because, as Seinfeld’s Kramer might say: in my mind, I was already gone.

The next day, I was awake at 6 AM. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny morning. If we could get our act together quickly, we could fly to Seattle and catch the 9:55 flight back to Wenatchee. Otherwise, we’d have to wait until 4 PM. After checking the weather as well as I could, I decided to go for it.

We were airborne by 7 AM. I climbed out with a direct-to Cle Elum on my GPS, requiring a 500-800 fpm climb rate for the first 5 minutes of the flight to clear the mountains. As we climbed, we could see the tops of clouds out in the mountains in the distance ahead of us. I was hoping that those cloud tops were for a shallow band of clouds and that there would be room beneath them for us to fly over the highway through Snoqualmie Pass.

We descended over Cle Elem and hooked up with I-90. Soon we were flying under the cloud bank with plenty of space between us and both the ground and the clouds. But as the terrain rose toward the pass, the clouds descended. We passed Easton and things began to get uncertain. Just short of the pass, we realized that the clouds came right down to the ground. There was no safe way through.

I turned around and headed back toward the edge of the cloud bank. There were plenty of tempting holes in the clouds where I could have passed through to fly above them. But I don’t like flying atop a bank of clouds. Eventually, you have to come back down, and if there’s no hole on the other end, you’re stuck up there. I did not want to put myself into that situation.

Mike took this shot as we approached Mt. Rainier. You can see a little bit of the cloud cover around its base.

We reached the edge of the cloud bank and turned to the south. We climbed and were soon above the level of the clouds. Mt. Rainier was poking out of the top of the cloud bank, but there was plenty of clear, cloud-free space around its base. We headed that way. Beneath us, several deep valleys were full of cottony clouds, as if stuffed by some well-meaning giant. Ahead of us, Mt. Rainier rose tall and proud and snow-covered out of the rocky terrain. Grassy slopes of its foothhills glowed bright green with thick grass, speckled with tall pines and granite outcroppings. The views were incredible.

Unfortunately, I was too concerned with our flight path to enjoy the view. I needed to get under the clouds in a valley that sloped downward toward Seattle. I needed to do that without actually flying through any clouds. My first instinct was to find a road, since most roads lead to a pass. But some roads climb, descend, and climb again. Any of the climbs could take the road into the clouds. I soon realized that a mountain stream or river would be better.

We found just the one we needed on the northwest side of Rainier. I descended at 2,000 fpm at the edge of the cloud bank, ducking under it with plenty of room to spare over the riverbed. We followed it closely, winding back and forth, keeping an eye out for wires. Finally, the canyon opened up and we could see homes and towns in front of us. A while later, the skyline came into view on a typically gloomy Seattle day. We touched down at Boeing Field at about 8:45 AM. We’d logged 1.6 hours of Hobbs time on a flight that should have taken 45 minutes.

You can see our entire flight path on the chart here:

But the bigger miracle was that we caught a cab to SeaTac and were sitting on the Wenatchee-bound plane less than an hour later. By 10:30 AM, we were on the ground in Wenatchee.

By 3 PM, we were packed up and on the road, headed for Walla Walla. But that’s another part of the story.

Flying, Travels with Maria helicopters, Seattle, travel, Washington, weather

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