Our Fire (ahem) Engine

Every industry has its own jargon and lingo, eh? Did you know that there's a difference between a fire truck and a fire engine? Evidently any four year-old would but I did not. A fire engine is typically a tanker truck with the intended purpose of putting fires out. A fire truck is typically the equipment hauler (e.g. ladders, etc.) that is used for entry into a burning building and the rescue of its occupants.

Now, firefighting technology has advanced greatly over the years, and things are not as simple as in 1968 when our fire engine was built. (Earlier reports had us thinking that this truck was from the 1950's but we found a data plate that revealed its true date of manufacture. It's not as old as I am, it just looks it.)

We did get a proper mechanic to come look at the truck, which you'll recall that Paul and I were not able to get started. Mr. real mechanic pulled the drain plug on the carburetor, drained out all of the bad gas, ran some good gas through it and immediately had the engine running. Made me feel like an idiot, because: a) I suspected that's what was wrong; and b) I could have done exactly that had I been so inclined. Which I was not.

Which is strange, because I usually like working on stuff and dont' mind getting my hands dirty. But the prospect of tackling the fire engine engine just seemed too daunting. I mean, what if it hadn't been something simple like bad gas in the carb? Then I would've been up the proverbial creek without a manual. And although I like canoeing, that's not a place I prefer to be.

Another company came and took the truck to their shop to work on the brakes and give it a general cleanup. Couple of days later they returned it to our office, not quite as good as new but close enough. The mechanic showed me how to get the pump working and water to come out of the hoses under pressure. Yeah, like I'll remember. To be safe, I had him also show someone who would. Interestingly, our pumper can use its own 1,000 gallon supply of water, or it can hook up to a city hydrant. It can also draw from a lake, river or pool, or hook to another tanker truck as a source. Very versatile.

Bossman was making noises about me driving it up to the hunting camp. I strongly demurred. Back in elementary school, when asked to draw pictures of what we wanted to be when we grew up, some kids drew fire trucks. I drew airplanes.

This is a truck from another era - a bad era. For one thing, it's HUGE. The steering wheel is as big around as the tires on my mountain bike. There is a power steering pump on the engine, but the wheel still takes two strong arms to turn. Which is okay, because the clutch takes two feet to depress. The "throw" on the shifter is so long (I kid you not) that the lever actually hits the dash when pushed forward, and hits the seat when pulled back. The brakes provide only mild retardation of speed. A person would have to be mildly retarded to drive it on public roads. The guys who actually drove these things to fires back in the day must have been cavemen, or pumped up on enough steroids to make Roger Clemens look like a one-time user.

Okay, so we've got our fire engine. I'm sure our camp residents will feel somewhat safer...unless they see me driving it toward their burning house. As a fireman, I make a pretty decent pilot.

Nuts and Bolts

Back a million years ago when I was in radio, the owner of our station decreed that we never let the audience know what was going on "behind he scenes." We were to never describe the technical aspects of what we did. When there was a glitch of some sort, and there often were, we were not to explain it - just move on with the show. It was all supposed to be theatre-of-the-mind, and the less the listener knew about How It Worked the better.

In the helicopter, I similarly do not like to explain the nuts-and-bolts of what I'm doing, even to those, like my boss, who have some familiarity with flying. I see the looks on the faces of my passengers as they watch me go about my business. I prefer for them to think that flying is magic or something...that making the helicopter fly from here to there "just happens" by me moving these sticks around in some mysterious ways. It's dumb, I know.

As for blogging, the posts obviously don't just appear on the screen. They take some work. I know some bloggers who write very quickly, who post every day. That's not me. I labor over each post - believe it or not - until it conveys just the right thought and has the right "sound" when I read it in my head. I usually compose in Word. Then, when all of the spelling/grammar mistakes have been handled, I'll paste it onto the blogger program, format the text into this stupid Trebuchet font, insert any pictures, then send it on its way.

But yesterday morning something strange happened. I was composing that piece on going to the drag show, but I was editing it directly in Blogger, not MSWord. I knew I was going to have to go flying (and be gone for the whole week), and wanted to speed the process up a bit. The Boss called, and moved our departure time up. This meant I'd have to leave for the airport right then, and I wasn't even packed. So I closed the laptop, figuring Blogger would just save the rough draft of the post for later. Wrong - it published it! Way prematurely, I might add.

Last evening I got to the hotel here in Birmingham and settled in. Job Number One: Check email, of course. Imagine my shock to see an echoed response to the unintentionally posted Emerald City deal! Dang it, that wasn't supposed to happen. So I went in, deleted the post, finished it offline and the posted it again.

There. I've violated my own rule about not letting people behind the scenes. But it kind of ticked me off, and I felt the need to explain.

Emerald City and Our Big Gay Night Out

There is a dance club called Emerald City in Pensacola. It is a gay club, but on Sunday nights they have a special called "Drink & Drown." Pay one price ($8.00) to get in and drink for free until one a.m. Also on Sunday night is a drag show. Supposedly, a lot of straight people go there on Sunday night. My friends Matt and Alisha have been threatening to take me there for some time. We merely needed a Sunday with a holiday to follow. Yesterday was one of them, today being President’s Day.

Now, let me say up front that I am not a big fan of drag shows. I don't understand them...don't "get" them. Guys dressing up as girls and lip-synching to Diana Ross songs? Not my cup of Earl Gray. It’s like karaoke, only worse, if that is possible.

Apparently though, many straight guys are enamored with drag queens. (Isn't there even a very popular one in Las Vegas?) Me, I'll never understand the attraction from either angle. First of all, I cannot fathom why any guy would want to dress up as a woman. I throw on a pair of boxers, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and some sneakers and I'm out the door. Women's clothing (not to mention makeup!) is...complicated...at least, as executed by high-fashion divas. I guess you could say I'm a typical guy: Too lazy to be a woman.

So anyway...we get there around 10:30 and the place was empty. Not a good sign. We ordered some Rum and Cokes and received the worst example I've ever tasted. Not exactly your top-shelf brands there. I believe it was some sort of synthetic rum and possibly some generic Coke-wannabe or Mr. Pibb. Dreadful. But did we stop drinking them? Hell, no, they were "free!"

The first drag show began promptly at 11:30. There were, maybe, 50 people in the audience. Three or four performers, all aging and heavyset, with big hair and bigger boobs. One had the name of Anna Rexia and she/he certainly wasn't...anorexic, that is. The first did the requisite Diana Ross number (and gay anthem, evidently), "I'm Coming Out." How original. Straight(?) guys crowded the stage, stuffing dollar bills into her faux-cleavage. And I kept thinking to myself, “Hey guys, it’s a MAN!”

The last performer was wearing a sequined backless dress, a little number that nicely accentuated her back muscles that would put any construction worker to shame. Not very ladylike!

By the start of the second show at one a.m., the place had become quite crowded. However, due to the copious consumption of the aforementioned “rum and cokes” we were too drunk to determine the makeup of the crowd. Maybe too drunk to care. But there sure didn’t seem to be all that many straight couples that came for the drag show.

The “ladies” took the stage again, but by this time we’d lost whatever fleeting interest we had. We didn’t meet or see anyone we knew, and the “party” atmosphere just wasn’t making it. The joint wasn’t jumpin’, in other words. Or maybe it was and we weren’t. Funny how that works sometimes. The it’s a goof thing wears off very quickly. “They” say that it’s more fun in the summer, when there are more tourists in town and the place is jam-packed. Maybe. I’ll have to take “their” word on that.

So we did the only thing we could do at that point: we followed the time-honored southern tradition and went to a nearby Waffle House to sober up before driving home. The Waffle House is where all the cool drunks go after partying! In fact, Matt observed that in Pensacola, if they outlawed booze the Waffle House chain might go bankrupt from the lack of after-hours business. (I just had coffee. I don’t know how people can eat those big, greasy meals at that hour of the morning.)

Anyway, that was our big gay night out. Obviously, there’s an aspect of this that eludes me.

This afternoon I flew the Boss up here to Birmingham, Alabama where he has to be for a couple of days. I’m stuck in a motel, bored, nothing to do, a rental car at my disposal and the company credit card in my wallet. I think I’ll go out and see what kind of Monday nightlife Birmingham has to offer. Full report to follow…just don’t expect any more drag queen stories. I’ve had my fill, thank you.

The Fire Truck

The caretaker of our little airport had a bad stroke recently. Alan is his name. He's a British guy, a nice guy too, with no relatives in this country. He's also self-employed, and I doubt he has the insurance coverage that will provide for the long-term care that a bad stroke requires. So he's selling off some of his stuff. Turns out Alan is quite the pack-rat and collector of things. Oh boy, does he have things!

I was on my way up to the airport today when the Boss called. "Bob, I'm buying Alan's fire truck," he said. I didn't even know Alan owned a fire truck, but I wasn't the least bit surprised.

"It's sitting in a hangar...has been for some time, I guess. Could you get the battery charged up, get it running and get it cleaned up so we can bring it up to the hunting camp?"

That's actually not a bad idea. There are a dozen or so homes at the camp, and they're all a long way from civilization. If any one of them caught fire they'd burn to the ground. Our ability to put them out would depend entirely on how much beer we'd collectively drank up to that point.

Needless to say the truck would not start despite my best efforts, which consisted of me standing around with my hands in my pockets watching Alan's friend Paul Merritt crank and crank the engine. After a while, the hangar filled up with the unmistakable smell of seriously rotten gasoline. I thought to myself, "This would make a dandy explosion if someone were to so much as, oh, flip a light switch." And what delicious irony that would be: an explosion and fire in a hangar occupied by a fire truck that was incapable of putting itself out.

My expert opinion was that the carburetor is probably gummed up. I had actually come to this opinion while I was still on my way to the airport. Gasoline goes bad, turns to varnish if you leave it long enough. Machines need to be run more than once every three years or so.

The Boss arrived to survey his new purchase. What is it about fire trucks that brings out the kid in grown men? He was acting like it was Christmas morning...excitedly flipping switches and pulling levers, climbed up into the driver's seat and of course we had to blow the siren...the loud siren...in the hangar. Oh wasn't that a treat! (We have a proper mechanic coming to get the truck running.)

Since Alan is out of commission, his friends have been filling in for him, keeping the place running. Mostly Paul. A couple others. It pays to have good friends. Young people sometimes minimize this. "I don't need anybody," they'll proclaim sourly. Oh yes you do, man, yes you do. Or you will.

Our airport normally has a lot of Navy T-34 trainers in the traffic pattern, and today, being beautiful, they were out in force. Dofin Fritts was up in his gyrocopter doing training. Two Beechcraft twin-engine airplanes, a Baron and a King Air arrived simultaneously and disgorged their passengers. Shortly after lunch a woman flying powerline patrol in a Cessna 172 stopped in for fuel. Then a brand spanking-new Robinson R-44 helicopter landed. The two guys flying it were on the last leg of the delivery flight from the factory in Torrance (Los Angeles), California to St. Augustine, Florida (over in the very northeast corner of our state). Then a Piper Cub landed! Our sleepy little Alabama airport had turned into Grand Central Station.

I volunteered my services as "line boy" and gassed-up those who needed gassing-up. Funny, it's where I started in aviation, and it's probably where I'll end up again some day...an airport geezer with stories of back in the day when *I* used to fly those choppers, by cracky... "Yessiree, I used to fly one down in Honduras, an FH1100, I think it was..." And I'll pretend to not notice the glazed-over eyes of my captive audience who'll probably be thinking, "Jeez gramps, will you just pump my goddam fuel and stop with all the yakking?" Ah the young - no respect for age, I tell ya.

We're all hoping and praying that Alan makes a full recovery and returns to work soon. Although things had not been too promising early on, one month later he is up and walking around. The wonderful staff at the West Florida Medical Center have been pushing him hard. Knowing Alan, he's pushing himself just as hard. The human spirit is a wonderful thing.

In the meantime, I don't mind helping out where I can. Especially if it means that I'll get to crank up the fire engine and take it for a "test drive" around the airport runways. With the lights and siren blaring, of course. You know that nobody...and I mean nobody is a bigger kid at heart than I am.

Autogyros, Gyroplanes and Gyrocopters

Letters...I do get letters...

"Kman" from Long Island, New York asked: "Was that a gyroplane used in the Bond movie,"You Only Live Twice?"

Yepper! It sure was. In fact, it was a relatively famous (in aviation circles, anyway) ship called "Little Nelly," built and flown by a guy named Ken Wallis. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

In the beginning, and by that I mean back in the 1920's, a guy named Juan de la Cierva was experimenting with the concept of the autogyro in Spain. His pioneering work in the field of rotor dynamics lead directly to the gyroplanes and helicopters of today.

One of Cierva's early autogyros - half airplane/half helicopter

In the U.S., the "father" of the gyrocopter is Dr. Igor Bensen. In the mid-1950's he began experimenting with autogyros. Eventually he designed his own single-seat aircraft and coined the term "gyrocopter." You may have seen the ads for the "Bensen Gyrocopter" in various magazines back in the 1960's and '70s.

In Europe, Bensen's counterpart is Wing Commander Ken Wallis, who looked at the Bensen designs and in the early 1960's began modifying them as he saw fit. (Some of Wallis's designs are quite clever.)

Gyrocopters fascinate me. On one hand I'd love to own and fly one; on the other hand I think they're goofy and impractical. But before being consigned to aviation's bin of discarded wierd designs, let's take a closer look at these unusual machines.

I could write a whole bunch of words about gyrocopters, but I'd rather let you see the video. In this case, it's another YouTube video which is really a short clip from a progrm on The History Channel. It's only seven minutes long, and it's really interesting. Enjoy!

Dreams That Come True

Aviation is strange. But it's what I love about it.

I've been off most of this week. Just no flying to be done, although the Boss promises that next week is going to be, as the kids say, "hella busy." (Or maybe they don't anymore, who knows?) As for the flying, I say bring it on, baby! It's not like I'm overworked here - not that I'm complaining, mind you.

The weather hasn't been all that great. But today was crystal clear and not too cold. Even the wind died down. I went up to the airport to hang out. I swept out the hangar and (re)organized our supplies and tools. Then I cleaned the ship, and took a good, close look at it just in case we need to fly early Monday morning. I was sorely tempted to pull it out of the hangar and do an "ops check flight"...not that it needed one, but you know...[ahem]...just to make sure.

We share our hangar with a guy who builds and teaches in gyroplanes. More commonly called a "gyrocopter," this aircraft is sort of like a helicopter in that it has a rotor overhead. But this rotor is not powered, it just "freewheels." The gyro also has an engine, similar to a fixed-wing airplane. It is the engine that propels the gyrocopter forward. As it does, air passing through the rotor causes it to rotate. It is a curiosity of physics that this air passing through a rotor not only causes it to spin, but that this spinning can create enough lift to raise the craft into the air. But that is exactly how a gyroplane works.

My friend Jim Logan flying his RAF 2000 gyroplane

The technical term for the phenomenon is "autorotation." It is what allows my helicopter to make a safe landing if the engine should ever fail. In that event, my rotor will also freewheel. As the helicopter descends, air flowing upward through the rotor keeps it spinning at its normal operating rpm. I can perform all flight manuevers except one: I cannot go back up; I am committed to landing.

A gyroplane can be just as maneuverable as a helicopter, although the gyro lacks the ability to come to a complete dead-stop hover in the air like I can, heh-heh. However, gyros don't go very fast, and if the wind is strong, a gyroplane can come to a virtual standstill by facing right into it. Like a helicopter, if the gyro's engine fails, it simply descends to earth under complete control.

Anyway, there were a bunch of "gyro guys" hanging around. Two had built their own machines and were getting checked out. One, an older gentleman from Key West, Florida, had a lot of flight time in airplanes and was finding the gyro to be quite a challenge. One of his helper-buddies happened to be a helicopter pilot. As we talked, it coincidentally turned out that he had a bunch of time in the FH1100 helicopter back in the 1970s. I pointed out to him that not only was the current FH1100 factory located only about 15 miles away, but I also had quite a bit of time in that ship. Small world indeed!

So I hung around chatting with these guys, listening to their interesting stories, letting them do the talking. I've been involved in aviation for a long time, and it's neat to talk with people who've been in it a *lot* longer than me.

Then my phone rang, as usual. But it wasn't the Boss, it was a mechanic friend I've known for a long time.

"What are you doing on Monday?" he asked. "I've got a ship that needs a maintenance test flight, and..."

I told him that I might have to fly on Monday, but asked if it was possible to do the flights today? He said it would, so I hopped in the Jeep and headed over, breaking most speed limits in the process.

The ship in question was a very nice Bell 206B. Some maintenance had been done to it and the ship was freshly painted. It was about the same as our own 206B - maybe a little more plush, and a lot heavier - like, 250 pounds heavier! In helicopters, lightness is next to Godliness. 250 pounds is either one huge passenger or a whole bunch of jet fuel. With just my mechanic friend and me onboard and 90 gallons of gas, we were only slightly under the maximum allowable weight. We could've taken a box of Kleenex along. Maybe two.

I'm not exactly crazy about the paint job, but the owner picked it, so...

After a very thorough preflight inspection and run-up, my friend and I took it up for a quick "around the patch" flight. I brought her back in and set down. Satisfied that all was well, we went up again, this time on a longer flight to check the various items that needed checking. With one minor exception, everything was in good working order. The ship flew very, very nicely!

I have to admit a certain bias for Bell 206B JetRangers. I love 'em. And I especially love 'em when they're as nicely outfitted and set-up as this one. I've flown...oh, thirty or so different Bell 206's in my career. Some were nice, some were...um...not. Like any piece of machinery, a helicopter can get ragged as it ages and lose its luster. Some of the JetRangers I flew in the Gulf of Mexico were the aerial equivalent of pickup trucks. They were serviceable and safe, just not very pretty. This November Thirty-Six Mike Kilo is going to make its owner one very pleased man when he picks it up.

So all in all, a great day! I got to hang around an airport (and be slightly productive), talk to some interesting pilots, watch some gyros and airplanes (Navy T-34's) fly, then got to go flying myself. For someone who's wanted to be a pilot ever since he could remember, days don't get much better than this. And it is days like these that remind me of the boy I used to be, hanging around airports and dreaming about the day I'd grow up to be...well, me.

Night Time Is The Right Time - Not

This past Monday the Boss and I left home base shortly before sunset for the 45-minute flight up to the hunting camp. I've sort of gotten used to landing there after dark, although I still don't like it. We have an agreement: I won't land or takeoff from the camp at night if it's overcast. I only do it if it's a clear night.

Enroute, he turns to me and says he'd like to land first at a friend's camp which is nearby and which, luckily, I'd flown over. Once. These hunting camps all have big flat fields, and they make perfect places to land helicopters, if you have one. "Okay," says I, "if we can find it before it gets too dark..."

Flying helicopters is all visual. These crazy machines have no sense of up and down of their own. Unlike an easy-to-fly airplane, helicopters are notoriously unstable. I must be able to see to control the ship. It is easy - very easy to get "spatial disorientation" (i.e. vertigo) when you can't see outside. The movements of the helicopter mess with your head. Yes, I do have gauges that tell me which way is up and which way I'm headed, but I still need outside references to fly the helicopter upright. And sometimes, flying at night is like being inside of a very dark closet with the door closed.

Try this experiment: Turn off the light in your room and close your eyes tightly. Now push your computer chair away from the desk and spin yourself around - it doesn't even have to be that fast. Nod your head a couple of times. When the chair stops, stand up. The sensation of dizziness will be startling. What happens is that the fluid in those little circular canals in our inner ear gets moving, giving us a false sense of right-side up. The fluid in our inner ear is what gives us our equilibrium.

If this happens in the aircraft (which is constantly moving in three dimensions), your body can send you erroneous messages that conflict with what the gauges are telling you. These messages can be so strong that pilots will disbelieve the gauges and crash.

I've been there, a long time ago in a helicopter that was unintentionally inside a cloud due to my own stupidity. The gauges showed me in a steady right turn, but my body was telling me we were in an extremely steep left turn! I literally froze on the controls, panicked. Somehow...don't ask me how...grace of God or something...I did not crash. We eventually emerged from the cloud in a steady right turn. I was able to regain control of the ship, my composure, and continue the flight. My passenger in the back seat never looked up from his Wall Street Journal, none the wiser as to how close he'd just come to death.

Anyway, we did find the friend's camp and managed to squeak in there while I still had enough light to see. The six hunters staying there were all still out hunting, which pretty much ends when it gets too dark to see through a rifle scope. I shut down and got out, enjoying a crisp, clear, moonless January evening as far from civilization as you can get around here. They eventually all came straggling in and we had a nice visit, with them telling stories of all the deer they saw but did not for some reason shoot. Hunters are a lot like fishermen in that way, I guess.

Finally the Boss decided to leave to go to our camp. It was 6:45 by then and was dark, dark, dark. The field we'd landed in was big, but had trees all around the perimeter, which I now could not see. However I had made a mental note of where a good, big open spot between them was and decided that I'd take off in that direction. When it was time to go, I did just that. Six hunters, all standing around watching my departure. Dear God, please don't let me f*** this up. End result: We didn't hit anything.

This part of south-central Alabama is all hunting land. Consequently, houses are few and far between. I leveled off about 800 feet above the trees for the five mile flight to our camp. Below us was a just spooky sea of blackness. It's really quite unnerving.

"Oh my God, it's dark down there!" the Boss said with just a touch of nervousness in his voice.

"Yup," I shrugged, doing my best Gary Coooper, trying to act casual. "But remember something - if you can't see, that means I can't see. This is why I need a clear night to do this." If he wasn't before, he's convinced now.

A week or so earlier, an air ambulance helicopter was out at three a.m. searching for a lost hunter a little further to the north in the state. Although the crew managed to locate him, the helicopter crashed and killed all three onboard. We don't know what happened yet and speculation runs rampant. But I do know one thing: whatever did happen, the flight over that unlit, featureless terrain did not make things any easier for the pilot and may have in fact compounded his problems.

Finding our camp was not a problem for us Monday night. The GPS pinpoints it with accuracy and it happens to be the only lights around for miles. I descended to 500 feet above the trees and slowed the ship way down. The trick is to keep the visible lights on my side of the aircraft; you never want to turn away from the lights, which could put you into that dark closet I mentioned before. Once I had intercepted the proper approach angle and path, the rest was easy...relatively. (Don't get me wrong, it's still a challenge.)

I wish small helicopters had some form of artificial stability that would right the thing and allow me to get my bearings if I became disoriented. (Have I whined about this before? It seems that I have.) But they do not. Why not? It's a long story - too long for this blog. Basically, there are just too few helicopters out there to make it economically feasible.

Hunting season is over as of today, thankfully, so we won't be going up to the camp nearly as much. Flying at night can be beautiful, and a lot of fun in the right conditions. I appreciate the amount of night time flying I've been able to do, but I won't be sorry to see it end. For now.