Flying At Night

I was at the hunting camp the other evening. I’d taken one of the Boss’s business partners on a flight over to Mississippi, where he’d spent the day in a meeting. We got back to the camp a little before sunset. Nobody met us when we landed, so I shut down and went down to the camp house. After a few minutes the Boss arrived. When I could get a word in, I asked about his plans for Thursday and Friday. In other words, did he need me to spend the night?

“Oh no, I don’t have anything for you to do. You can go home,” he said.

I grabbed my coat and headed for the door so fast that it surprised him. Not that I was in a hurry to leave the camp and the meal that Chef Giovanni (of “Hell’s Kitchen” fame) was preparing. I just wanted to get airborne while there was still some light left in the sky.

As I get older, I find that I really don’t like flying at night. The Boss, on the other hand, loves flying at night. He doesn’t understand why I don’t.

But here’s the deal: I fly a single-engine helicopter. If the engine were to quit over the terrain between the hunting camp and our Home Base it would be, as we pilots call it, ugly. The chances of me setting it down safely are slim. We have a saying…an emergency procedure really, about this particular event:

ENGINE FAILURE AT NIGHT:

Autorotation - ENTER
Landing Light – ON
If you don’t like what you see…
Landing Light – OFF

Yes, it’s a joke. But it’s based in reality. Because there’s not much choice of landing sites at night. You take what’s below you and hope for the best.

I know, I know…the rate of engine failures is very low…so low in fact that it really is not a concern. And when we think about possible emergencies that can occur to helicopters, there are a bunch! For instance, there is only one main transmission, and one tail rotor, and one hydraulic system… So there are a few more things that can go wrong than just the engine quitting. In a well-maintained aircraft, these things rarely fail. That doesn’t make me feel any better, however. It’s a psychological thing.

Back in 1971, ABC newsman Harry Reasoner had visited Viet Nam. He wrote a treatise about helicopters and the people who fly them that has become famously definitive:

You can't help but have the feeling that there will come a future generation of men, if there are any future generations of men, who will look at old pictures of helicopters and say, "You've got to be kidding."

Helicopters have that look that certain machines have in historical drawings. Machines or devices that came just before a major breakthrough. Record -changers just before the lightweight vinyl LP for instance.

Mark Twain once noted that he lost belief in conventional pictures of angels of his boyhood when a scientist calculated for a 150-pound men to fly like a bird, he would have to have a breast bone 15 feet wide supporting wings in proportion.

Well, that's sort of the way a helicopter looks.

The thing is helicopters are different from airplanes. An airplane by it's nature wants to fly, and if not interfered with too strongly by unusual events or incompetent piloting, it will fly.

A helicopter does not want to fly. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other.

And if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance the helicopter stops flying immediately and disastrously.

There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter.

That's why being a helicopter pilot is so different from being an airplane pilot, and why in generality airplane pilots are open, clear-eyed, buoyant, extroverts. And helicopter pilots are brooders, introspective anticipators of trouble.

They know if something bad has not happened it is about to.

That last line says it all. It is me to a "t." And it is every other helicopter pilot I know, too. Now, I fly both airplanes and helicopters, so you might assume that I possess the qualities of both. Sadly, I know fully well that I am at heart a "brooder, introspective anticipator of trouble." I accept this. I cannot help it (although I do try to compensate for it). I'm not sure if a career spent flying helicopters has made me this way, or whether I had these inherent qualities to begin with and they have made me a successful (read: still breathing) helicopter pilot.

All I know is that I do not like flying at night.

Looking For The Funny

When you get to a certain age they stop calling you a "stand up comic" and start referring to you as a humorist. Jeanne Robertson certainly is that. She's hilarious. My kind of woman.

I try to find stuff to laugh about. And I love people who actively look for the humor in life's various situations. Because you know there is always humor around, even if it is sometimes difficult to detect. I think it is important to smile and laugh - every day. It puts us in a more light-hearted mood, which in turn makes the bad stuff easier to take - and I'm sure you have as much "bad stuff" in your life as anyone, including me. Why not try to find the funny in it?

When I die, I want people to say, "That ol' Bob, he sure was always in a good mood! I don't think I *ever* saw him seriously pissed-off for too long about anything."

I would be very grateful to have that as my epitaph. I'm sure Jeanne Robertson would too. Please watch her other videos up on the Tube of You. They will brighten your day.


JEANNE ROBERTSON

The Basic Instructions Continue

You know how much I love "Basic Instructions" by Scott Meyer. Reading the comic this morning literally had me convulsing in fits of laughter, coffee spewing out of my nose. "B.I." is consistently funny and smart. I love when things actually make me laugh out loud, not just type it. Sunday's strip is particularly brilliant.


The concept behind "Omnipresent Man" is genius. I love the Google Maps locator pin/superhero logo on his costume, not to mention the little "dig" at law experts. Ending it with Scott getting in trouble (as usual) with Missy is hilarious. Damn!

Usually I just post the actual comic and leave it at that. But here is a screenshot of my computer.


You can see that our temperature in friggin' PENSACOLA, FLORIDA at 8:00 this morning was 21 degrees. Again. I'm not complaining, mind you, just sayin'.

C-C-C-Cold!

Screenshot of my computer at 10:07 this morning. The little weather "gadget" under the clock in the upper right-hand corner says 25 degrees! What?! It's not supposed to get this cold!

So…couple of weeks ago the temps got down into the 40’s. The battery in my car was getting weak. The engine was slower to crank and was taking longer to start. I knew I’d have to replace the battery soon, but had been putting it off and putting it off in the way that some (all) guys do… “I’ll get to it, alright?”

Then after coming home one night, like an idiot I left a dome light on. There are four of them (Jeep Grand Cherokee), and for some reason they do not come on automatically when you open a door, don’t ask me why. Next morning I was supposed to meet some friends for an early breakfast, and when I went out to start the car it would barely turn over. You know, that depressing, Rrrrrrrrr-rrrrrrr-rrrr-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick... that says, "Hey stupid! You should've already bought a new battery!" Damn.

I used the motorcycle to jump it off (and thank God for the huge Harley battery). The Jeep battery charged up okay on the drive downtown as I figured it would, and I considered not doing anything about it. But that little voice inside my head got louder and I decided to listen to it for once.

So I stopped by O’Reilly’s Auto Parts on the way home and picked up a new battery. Had my tools with me and changed it right there in the parking lot. Fifteen minutes after walking out of the store, I walked back in to give them my old battery and get my “core deposit” refund. The kid behind the counter said, “Man, that was quick!” Heh- he doesn’t know me; I could overhaul my engine in their parking lot if I had to.

And now for the past week or so we’ve been waking up to temperatures in the low to mid-20’s every morning. Sometimes it doesn’t get much above freezing at all during the day. And when I go out to the car, I have full confidence that it’s going to start. I can only imagine how badly I would have been stranded if I’d walked out on one of these 19 degree mornings (like this morning) and had the car not start…and Harley not even be strong enough to jump it off.

Winters down here have been mild. Last winter was unusually so. We had few days below freezing, and not all that many days below 50. This winter has been harsh…well, “harsh” for us Floridians who did not move here for consistent days of 30 degree temperatures. Then again, Pensacola is hardly in a tropical zone, and it is January, and it does get cold. (Thank the Lord, it does not snow here.)

Now, I'm not complaining about the cold. I know there are plenty of other areas of the country that are colder than here, and will continue to be for longer than us. Being raised in New York City, the cold does not really bother me. I’m not saying I like it, but I can deal with it. Funny though - people here have been bitching about it like it’s the end of the world. "Hey, where's that global warming we were promised?!" They’re actually angry about the cold! As if being angry will do any good. Eh- it’ll warm up , and then we’ll be complaining about the heat again soon enough.

At least, I sure hope so. Like everyone else, I’m tired of the cold too. At least I don't have to worry about the car not starting.

Looking Backwards and Forward

I tallied up my flight time for the year 2009 and discovered that the helicopter and I only flew 118 hours. Not very much. I did put in another 80 or so hours as “copilot” in our King Air, which has since been returned to the leasing company. Even 200 hours per year is not a whole bunch of flying.

On one hand, I get paid a lot of money to do very little. In many ways, this is the “cake” job that we all seek. On the other hand, I flew on New Year’s Day, and I flew a couple of days later on Sunday. So it’s not like I have weekends and holidays off – just the opposite, often enough. I flew on a whole bunch of weekends in 2009. That’s just the nature of this (and most) flying jobs. But the Boss doesn’t require me to be in the office on non-flying days, so I spend a lot of time at home.

My neighbors must think I’m strange. I keep very odd hours, sometimes departing well before sunrise and many times not arriving back until well after midnight, sometimes on the same “day” but not always. I’ll be home for days at a time, and then be gone for days at a time with no rhythm or regularity. Whenever I walk out of my house, the very first thing I do is look up and study the sky, even if it’s severe-clear. It’s an old habit.

2009 was a strange year. We needed a part-time mechanic, and a great one just happened to fall into our lap at exactly the right time. It was a coincidence that is hard to explain. We did not advertise. It sort of just…happened. He has experience working on Bell 206’s, and has all the documentation (manuals, etc.) the FAA requires and so is “legal” to work on our ship. (It’s complicated, but basically, not every mechanic can work on every aircraft just because he has a mechanic’s certificate.) I’m still amazed by the timing of it. Chris has been…(is there any other way to say it?)...a godsend.

I’d write more about my flights, but the Boss is an intensely private guy who doesn’t like other people knowing his business – like where he goes and what he does. He’s alluded to this blog a couple of times, and never said anything negative about it, but there’d be hell to pay if I put something in here that didn’t belong. So I’ve cut back on the details a bit, as you may have noticed. But aside from that, we really haven’t been doing anything interesting lately. Although you might think that every flight is jam-packed with excitement and adventure, the truth is just the opposite. We pilots work extra-hard to keep our flights mundane and unexciting. (It’s safer that way.) I go here, I go there…and it’s been pretty routine. Like driving a car.

I don’t know what’s in store for 2010. As a company, we’re doing well in spite of the down economy. (People always need inexpensive places to live.) Still, I can’t see any increase in helicopter flight time. We will undoubtedly get another airplane for the longer trips. And that would be fun - I like flying airplanes.

I wasn’t sure how long this job would last when I took it. I figured that if it lasted a year or two, that’d be great. Time passes quickly. It’s hard to believe that we’re into our third year already. I get restless. And I’m getting old(er). There are still things I want to do with my life, and they don’t include sitting around waiting for the Boss to call with a flight. Not that I’m looking to make a change – I like my boss a lot and this is much too good a job to quit. So I’m happy to stay put and see what happens, airplane-wise.

If I fantasize, I see myself as a flight instructor at some busy flight school. Flight instruction is normally the bottom rung on the aviation ladder, the first place young pilots go to build their time so they can move on to supposedly bigger and better things. But there are a few of us “old guys” around – the ones who’ve already had their career and want to give something back. And that’s me: the seasoned, gray-haired guy who still gets a boner when he gets to go flying, and who would like to show the young guys all about it.

Wait…uhh…that didn’t come out right…

Flying! I meant, “show them about flying.” But for that to happen I have to get a few other prerequisites done. I am not a Certified Flight Instructor, which you have to be. So it’s not something I can jump into tomorrow. But these past couple of years passed in the blink of an eye. Who knows what 2010 will bring?

Strange Things We Pilots See From The Air

There are a lot of military bases in the northwest Florida area. Right here in my home town we have the Pensacola Naval Air Station (summer home for the Blue Angels!), which still has active training squadrons. Nearby Whiting Field is where the bulk of the Navy’s “primary” fixed-wing and helicopter training takes place. (That’s where the newbies get their first real flight training.) Just to our east is the Air Force’s Hurlburt Field, where the hush-hush “Special Ops” squadrons are based. Further down the coast is Eglin Air Force Base. And just to our northeast in Dothan, Alabama is the U.S. Army’s Fort Rucker helicopter training base.

So there are always a lot of military aircraft flying around. And there is a lot of what we call “Special Use Airspace” we have to know about. The military uses big chunks of the sky here. There are different categories of airspace. Some of it we are prohibited from ever entering; these usually surround “sensitive” military ground installations. Some of it is restricted pretty much all the time. Others are just “Military Operating Areas” or “Alert Areas," where we know to be on the lookout for military planes and helicopters.

Enroute Charts at SkyVector.com

If you right-click on the little snippet of map above, it'll open up a portion of the FAA aeronautical ("Sectional") chart we pilot use. You can scroll in and out. You'll see a bunch of odd-shaped boxes bordered in either blue or magenta. These are all the special-use airspaces. By zooming out a bit, you can see that northwest Florida and south Alabama are just about covered with them.

As you can see, the different airspaces are "clearly" depicted on our aviation charts. But here, where so many different types of airspaces often overlap, it’s sometimes difficult to tell which is which and what type of airspace you’re in, and whether or not you should be there. It can be a challenge. It takes some diligent studying of the chart to make sure you don’t go astray. Communication with ATC is vital. The military doesn’t take incursions into “their” airspace lightly.

Destin, Florida is a popular vacation spot. Its little airport gets lots of traffic. Unfortunately, it sits smack-dab in the middle of the Eglin Restricted Areas. Graciously, the military has given us a couple of corridors through which to get there. We can get in and out, but we must talk to Eglin Approach and we must have a clearance in advance.

The north-south corridor takes us over an old training airport called Field 2. It's a big place. There’s not much going on now, although I imagine that it was hopping back during the Viet Nam days. Perhaps it dates back to the Korean War or earlier? On the ground is an old Lockheed C-130 Hercules that probably should be in a museum somewhere. Also there are two old F-4 Phantoms. These airplanes seem to be in an almost-flyable condition. However the runways are not maintained so it would be pretty tough to fly them out. I don’t think they ever will.



It's not a great picture, but I don't like flying too low over these facilities, especially if they are still in use, as Field 2 seems to be - although for what, I have no idea. (The curved thingee in the lower-left corner of the picture is the defogger vent of my helicopter.)

When you fly low, as we helicopters do, you can miss seeing the big picture. I'd flown up and down the corridor a couple of times before noticing something odd. Just south of Field 2 is a site that is now used as a gunnery range for tanks. However, it is a little unusual.



As you can see, it is very clearly in the shape of an arrow, and it must have been cut that way deliberately. It even shows up well Google Maps.


View Larger Map

I suspect that the field was originally made and used during WWII. (The buildings at the point of the arrow are fairly recent.) I have no idea where it might have been leading Air Force pilots. It does not seem to point “at” anything. The city of and airport at Crestview, Florida are well to the left of the point.

Of course, maybe it is just a gunnery or some sort of bombing range that just happens to have been carved out of the trees in the shape of an arrow. Maybe somebody knows.

Christmas

The weather people had issued dire warnings about this morning. Heavy rain by morning, they said. So of course, I headed out to Walmart at 7 a.m. to buy some groceries. Gene is in town, and Matt and Alisha are coming down on Saturday. Shouldn’t be too crowded early on a Saturday morning, right? Under nasty-looking skies, I wondered if I should have parked closer to the door instead of my usual spot way out on the end of the lane. But the parking lot was packed with others who obviously had the same idea as me. I didn’t really have much choice.

Although crowded, the atmosphere inside the store was mellow. People were smiling and being of good cheer, as you’d hope. I like that. Why can’t we be in this mood all year long? Also, there was a tangible sense of relief. “It’s almost over.”

Oddly, when I got to the front of the store (I shop from back to front, which is the wrong way because I don’t use a list and if I’ve forgotten anything I have to back-track) I saw a long row of empty cashiers! I walked right up to one just as the guy ahead of me was pulling away. Suh-weeet! As I left, I smiled and wished her a merry Christmas; she wished me a merry Christmas back. If anyone thinks that companies are discouraging their employees from saying “Merry Christmas,” I have not seen evidence of it happening in practice. Everywhere I go, people have been saying, “Merry Christmas!” like they mean it.

So my little Walmart experience went well this morning.

It’s been a crazy holiday season though. I see traffic accidents all over the place. Some have been pretty serious, not just your typical rear-enders. People seem to be in such a rush, so impatient, so distracted. It’s almost as if, for some people, the holiday season is just getting in the way of their lives. You see evidence of this all over. People are curt with each other, brusque even. It’s a form of expediency, I guess…our subconscious attempt to Keep the line moving. Don’t get in the way. Let’s just get out of here.

My own philosophy in times like these is to just go slow. Go extra-slow, in fact. Lines are going to be long, yes? Parking lots are going to be crowded, yes? The mall will be jammed, yes? Traffic is going to be bad, of course. So I take it down a notch. I understand that people are frazzled and stressed. So, I…me…the only one I can control…I make an effort to chill out. You wanna cut in front of me in line? Okay, go ahead if you’re in that much of a hurry. I’m not. When traffic gets backed up, I don’t get angry. I expect traffic to be bad.

Generally, I always take the time to greet people I’m about to interact with, but especially so this time of year. Look ‘em in the eye, smile and say good morning (or whatever). Make contact. Ask about their lives – not deep philosophical questions requiring long, involved answers – but just a sincere, “How’s it going in your life on this day?” kind of thing. When I leave, I don’t just walk off. I make sure I tell them good-bye, and lately, wish them a merry Christmas. I want people to see that…well…I don’t know what I want people to do. I just want to put a little human-ness back into our existence here.

People seem to like this, they respond well to it. They smile at me, sometimes when they certainly were not smiling before. That right there is worth getting out of bed for. The sad thing is that I see this not happening a lot. I see so many instances where an encounter between two people might as well have been between two machines, with neither party acknowledging the other’s humanity. It should not be this way – at any time of the year.

Slow down, take it easy. Deep breath. Life's too short. No reason to get all stressed-out. Let’s forget about everything else and focus on why we celebrate this holiday in the first place.

Peace On Earth

Good Will Toward Men

Merry Christmas!

And to you, whoever and wherever you are, I thank you for visiting with me on this blog. I wish for you nothing but the best...good fortune and joy every day of your life. You deserve it.