Getting Closer

My apologies for not posting in a while. I've been really busy with school and alumni weekend in NY. Last weekend I drove to Crown King, AZ to pick up my friend to catch a flight back to NY. I would have said this was the worst trip I've ever taken but I'd be lying because the trip to take Mike back was actually the worst trip of my life. Crown King is a town of about 50 people on the top of a mountain about 100 miles north of Phoenix. It takes 3 hours to drive there and half of that you're on a dirt road where you can't drive over 15mph. The majority of the road is one lane with steep cliffs throughout. The drive up to pick him up wasn't too bad just long and extremely boring. The drive back up to drop him off however is a different story. It was about 1am and at the bottom of the mountain the fog was so thick you couldn't see 5 feet in front of you. At the top of the mountain it was snowing like crazy and there was about 4 inches of snow already on the ground. Mind you, both Mike and I are exhausted from a long sleepless weekend which only made things worse. I was so tired I couldn't drive back down the mountain without a little sleep. So, I stayed on his couch for 2 hours where I then woke up at 4:30am and proceeded down the mountain. The conditions were the same as coming up except more snow on the ground and rain at the bottom. I would have just stayed the night and drove back Monday but I had a 9am flight that I couldn't cancel. So that's my alumni weekend story. Needless to say, it was quite a time and I didn't tell you about the stories while at Bonaventure!

Finally on to the flying updates. My last post was about my stage check where I've progressed to the final stage of my private license. This requires learning a few new maneuvers and cross country flights. I've also started my solo flying which consisted of 3 supervised solo flights and 1 unsupervised solo flight. The supervised flights are approximately 30 minutes long where I drop the instructor off on the side of the airport and he sits in a lawn chair with a portable radio and watches me perform landings. The unsupervised solo was me taking off from the ramp all on my own and flying around the airport for 1.5 hours. The first supervised solo went well except it was a little hectic because right in the middle of it, the tower announced a runway change. This is where I have to perform a 180 and make traffic in the opposite direction. It may not sound like a big deal but when you're up there all alone for the first time and have never done this before, it's a lot going on at once. My unsupervised solo also went well except towards the end when another helicopter decided to almost hit me! I was flying in what we call the pattern which is a circular motion around the airport for the taxiway. This helicopter was approaching from the north and the tower cleared him for a direct landing at the helipad. This is all normal and fine as long as each aircraft stay in pattern they are supposed to fly. So I'm in my downwind pattern and he's entering his final approach for the helipad but ends up overshooting his path and coming into mine. He was almost directly in front of me coming at me at one point but I had been watching him the whole time and I just shifted to the left and notified the tower that I had him in sight. All was well and it wasn't too big of a deal other than he just made a mistake. It's important to remember though, even the littlest mistake in the air can be fatal. He ended up getting scolded by the tower as he was shutting down.

As far as my upcoming training, well pretty much all I have left is flight planning which is pretty familiar to me since it's almost identical to airplanes. After that, I do some cross country flights to other airports in the area, touch up on my recent maneuvers that I've learned and then take my test. Some of these maneuvers include steep approaches, running landings, slope operations, and hover auto-rotations. If all goes well, I should have my private pilot's license for helicopters in a couple of weeks. It may take a little longer as I'm going to Anaheim, CA with a friend to a helicopter convention this weekend. I'll post as I keep progressing but so far all is well. I filled up my second page in my logbook totaling just over 40 flight hours.

Stage Check

I've been really busy lately which is why I haven't been blogging. The reason I've been so busy is because I had my first stage check today. The stage check is a mock test that another instructor gives me so I can prove that I am proficient enough to fly the helicopter solo. It's also a good check to make sure my training is going as it should be and to evaluate any further topics I may need refreshing on.

The ground portion went pretty well. It's all a learning process so there were some things that I was unclear about and some things that I just simply forgot. It's nice that you do the stage check with a different instructor so that you get some tips and tricks from another vantage point. Same goes for the flight, although it's pretty straight forward. I have certain maneuvers I have to perform and standards they must be within. The flight was a little more hectic as it was the windiest day I've ever flown in and I haven't had a lot of practice in windy conditions. Even straight and level flight was all over the place so it only got harder as I performed some emergency procedures.

I'll spare you the details but the instructor said I did well and that he didn't see any reason I shouldn't pass. His notes get reviewed by the Chief Flight Instructor who then determines whether or not I can progress to the next stage. The plan for now, unless I find out otherwise is to move on to the next ground stage tomorrow and a flight in the afternoon.

I've arranged to go to the Heliexpo in Anaheim, CA in a couple of weeks with another student. We're going to drive out there and stay for a few days. Simply put, the heliexpo is basically a giant helicopter convention. It's a great opportunity to network(not that it will help much now but it's never too early) and also a great way to see pretty much every different helicopter on the market today. If nothing else, it will be a fun road trip...I hope.

As far as PHX goes, well I still love it and I have some news that will make you northerners feel a little better. I actually had to pull out my sleeping bag and use it for additional heat at night! I guess the three other blankets weren't enough. Don't get me wrong, the nights are still beautiful here, I just tend to be on the colder side. I've also managed to check out my hot tub for the first time and boy is it hot. I think they could save the complex hundreds of dollars if they just turned the heat down to a comfortable level! I shouldn't complain, after all it is a "hot tub" right?

I almost forgot....The Super Bowl was quite a let down for Arizona. Although it was a great game, myself and thousands of others wished the Cardinals could have brought the title home. The football scene has died considerably since the loss. The weeks leading up to the big game were pretty intense. People here had plans for the big day immediately after they beat the Eagles. There's always another season...Go Bills! Oh and Nascar starts up real soon so that should be exciting.

Settling In

I'm settling in quite nicely here. I've managed to befriend my neighbor downstairs and do some home repairs for her. She had to kick in her bedroom door and for some reason she thought she could use a metallic putty epoxy to put it back together. Mind you this door is not metal, it's wood! Nevertheless, this is how she did it and given that it was a putty, it made for a very bumpy and rough finish. Thus I had to grind the putty down as smooth as I could and use some drywall plaster to touch it up where I then sanded it smooth. In return for my kindness I was rewarded with a Salisbury steak dinner and blueberry/peach cobbler for dessert. It was by far the best cobbler I've ever had and the dinner was delicious as well.

Last night I went out for a couple of drinks and trivia with my roommate and some of his friends. I've heard of bar trivia but I've never had the pleasure of playing and I've got to tell you, it's a lot of fun. We had approximately 15 people playing and it would get pretty intense. After that, I hung out with my neighbor and one of her friends, Chris, where we watched some stand up comedy. Friday night I'm going to watch Chris perform as well as some others at a local comedy club. It should be a good time.

As far as flying goes, well so far this week I learned some new procedures and maneuvers all while practicing much of what I've already learned. Some of the new procedures I learned were Vortex Ring State(settling with power) and low rotor RPM with blade stall. Both are fairly complicated in what they fully entail but I'll give a brief description of what they are and why they're bad. A Vortex Ring State simply put is a vertical descent into your own rotorwash where the air is 'dirty' and doesn't produce sufficient lift for you to remain at your desired altitude. This is caused by tip vortices which are a circular upward motion of air around the tip of your rotor blades. Since the air is being recirculated up around the tip and sucked back down in it cannot produce the downward thrust necessary to provide sufficient lift. This is bad because it can cause a very rapid vertical descent far above normal which can be very difficult or impossible to recover from even at maximum power. Hence why it's also called settling with power. A low rotor RPM is very bad if it is not recognized and corrected quickly. Basically it's where your main rotor RPM's drop to a speed that is not sufficient to produce the required lift. This problem compunds very quickly and if not properly corrected will most likely lead to a fatal crash. A common mistake with low rotor RPM's is trying to increase the pitch of the blades to create more lift. This is extremely bad because since the blades are already spinning at a low RPM it creates more drag instead of lift causing the problem to worsen. Once your RPM's drop below a certain speed and the blades are stalled it's virtually impossible to recover at this point and almost a certain death.

Now that I've shared only two of the many critical procedures and their possible outcomes, I'm sure you're all thinking I'm crazy for pursuing this career. I think it's only fair to say that although there are some considerable risks involved in flying, we are trained on these procedures so that we never encounter them. If for some reason we end up in one of these situations we then know how to safely recover from them.(Hopefully!)

With that said I'll let that sink in and save the other dangerous procedures for another day! On a positive note, today was an monumental day as I've managed to fill the first page of my logbook totaling 18.6 flight hours. As trivial as it sounds, to a new pilot it's pretty exciting!




Random Sidebar: It's recently been brought to my attention that something called "Feline HIV" actually exists. This is news to me but apparently it is real, and similar to Human HIV. I don't know anymore details right now but will report upon further investigation!

Progress

I decided to give blogging a break for a few days since I was posting quite frequently before. I've also been somewhat busy with school and studying. I've also had to finish up some things from home and get settled in a bit more.

Anyway, my flying is progressing pretty well. I can actually hover and taxi all on my own. It's not a flawless maneuver but it's much more controlled and the instructor doesn't even hold the controls anymore. Two parts of it that I still struggle with a bit are pedal turns and set downs. Pedal turns are where you keep the aircraft in one spot but turn 360 degrees to check for traffic and other things. Set downs are where you transition from a 3 foot hover to setting the aircraft on the ground. These are hard because your hover movements have to be very small and precise so you set the aircraft down level without moving in any direction.

Recently I've been practicing a lot of autorotations and pattern approaches. An autorotation is an emergency procedure where if you lose engine power you use your altitude and forward airspeed to keep the blades spinning and creating lift so you descend to the ground in a quick but controlled way. Basically so you don't fall out of the sky since you don't have wings like a plane. These aren't terribly difficult but they take a lot of practice to get the correct feeling of how much input to put into each of the controls to keep the aircraft steady and under control. This entire process happens very very quickly and there are steps that have to be followed exactly or you could end up in a fatal accident. So, I've got it down but I just need to continue to practice them so that my control inputs are more automatic and precise.

Other than that, I've pretty much just been practicing everything else and learning the radio communications. You wouldn't think that radio communications would be difficult but they can be, especially when you're trying to concentrate so much on flying the aircraft at the same time. It's a whole new language and the air traffic controllers talk so quickly it's sometimes hard to understand them. Much of the learning process is just learning the maneuver and then practice, practice, practice! Today we flew to an uncontrolled airport where we practiced our pattern work and autorations as to not interfere with other traffic at the busier airport. It's just a little easier to learn this way because it allows you to focus on other things more than constant radio communication and other traffic. In due time this will be no problem at all and should be second nature but during this large learning curve it's easier this way.

I guess that's it for now. I've got to do some grocery shopping and pay some other bills. Then I get to study and watch Burn Notice. If you don't know what that is, I'd recommend checking it out. I don't watch a lot of TV and I don't know many shows but this is one of, if not my favorite show. The season premier is tonight 10/9C. Check out the website: http://www.usanetwork.com/series/burnnotice/

Early day tomorrow. Ground training at 7 and a flight at 9. At least I won't be woken up by the children next door!!!


G'Day

NFC Champs

Obviously I'm a Bills fan all the way but I didn't have much of a choice this post season given my circumstances. Not having a preference either way as to who wins, it wasn't hard to root for the Cardinals today. It's a bit tough not to root for them when you're surrounded by fans. Anyway, I ended up watching the game with some of Jeff's friends at one of their houses on the biggest flat screen TV I've ever seen in a home. The game was pretty intense during the second half but it turned out well for the Cardinals so I'm sure the Superbowl will be huge around here. I'll be sure to schedule my flights for the afternoon on Monday. After the game, I came home where I grilled some chicken wearing shorts and a t-shirt! I'm sorry to rub it in for all of you northern folks but it's just so nice here I can't help it!

Yesterday's flight went pretty well. The main focus was hovering which I'll add is by far the hardest thing I've had to do thus far. It may very well be the hardest thing I'll ever have to do but from what I'm told, it takes a lot of practice. I don't know if I can explain why it's so hard but I'll try to give you a description of what's going on as a pilot while you're hovering. First you start by choosing a stationary object somewhere a good distance in front of you and then you concentrate on keeping that in the same spot all the time as best you can all while staying about 3 feet off the ground. In order to this you have your anti-torque pedals that keep that object from moving left and right which are controlled by your feet. You also have the cyclic or a joystick like device between your legs that you have to constantly keep moving with your right hand in the necessary direction to keep the ship level. These movements are very minute and should be no more than the radius of a quarter or so. The trick is to rest the cyclic on your leg and not think about what which way it needs to move but to just do it. All while you're doing this your left hand is on a lever that you pull up or push down to keep the ship at a constant distance from the ground. To complicate the whole process you sometimes have to compensate for winds and other things like when you pull up on the collective you have to give a little left pedal. That probably doesn't even come close to describing how difficult it really is but hopefully it gives you a better idea.

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to fly 4 hours. Two 2 hour blocks with a break in between. Our focus tomorrow will be a bit of review, loss of tail rotor effectiveness and autorotations. Should make for a very exciting day! I'll keep you posted.

On a side note, my computer is slowly dying. Last summer the buttons stopped working that changed the volume and paused music. Also, I had to disable one of the fans inside because it was dying and making a horrible noise that was driving me nuts. Last November a mysterious vertical green line appeared on the right side of my screen. Just before I left for AZ all of my USB ports stopped working and finally today I now have a vertical blue line on the left side of my screen! It's only a matter of time but hopefully it lasts me until I'm an instructor and have a job because I won't have the money to buy a new one until at least then. Wish me luck!

The Beginning

Wow is the the word that comes to mind after today. This morning started out again bright and early with the screaming children next door. I have a feeling I'm not going to need an alarm clock and should schedule my training lessons for the morning!

I arrived at Quantum where I met my instructor, Joel Nelsen. Joel is probably my age or a year or two older born and raised here in Arizona. He's a new flight instructor and I actually remember when I was here finding a place to stay he passed his CFI check-ride that day I visited. I'm kind of glad that he's a new instructor because he's very understanding of new pilots and he does a great job at teaching according to his student's learning ability. He's very personable and made me feel comfortable from the moment I met him. This is very important because it allows me to concentrate on learning rather than feeling stupid if I make a mistake or if I ask an obvious question.

We first went over the orientation stuff which entailed all my books, syllabus, and a general orientation. After that, we quickly moved onto the basics of helicopters and their components. Some of the components we covered today were the main rotor systems, anti-torque systems, landing gear, and powerplant. We delved into each component but I'll spare you the details.

After the two hour ground training session we finally moved onto the flight training. It all starts with an extremely thorough pre-flight inspection which I couldn't even begin to describe. Once the pre-flight is complete we move inside the aircraft and continue the pre-flight/engine warm-up. Once we're up to temperature and have clearance from the tower we're off. We start out by establishing a pitch attitude for straight and level flight at 75 knots. Once we've done this we practice straight and level flight which is one of my better performances since it's slightly similar to an airplane. From here we move on to turns while maintaining our desired pitch attitude. After practicing this for a while we then moved on to turns. Once I got a feel for that we moved on the constant speed descents and ascents. Basically all of the maneuvers require you to maintain your pitch attitude by focusing on a point inside the cockpit and lining it up with the horizon. From here we did some pattern work which simply put is a normal landing on a taxiway. All very exciting and skillful maneuvers that will take much more practice! It may sound easy as you read but believe me, it's very difficult and takes very minute movements in the controls. This is very different from airplanes because the controls in a plane aren't as sensitive and take a considerable amount of movement in the controls.

To give you an idea of how difficult and tense the experience is, I'll give you an analogy that you may be able to relate to. Have you ever been on a dark back road in the dead of night concentrating on the road looking for deer and maybe fighting the snow? You know how your body becomes tense and you feel muscles in your body that you didn't even know you had? Well if so, take that feeling and multiply it by 10 and that's how I felt for 1.2 hours today! Of course this will ease up as I become more comfortable with the controls and the general operations of a helicopter.

Well I guess that will do it for tonight as I need to get studying for tomorrow's training and flight. Tomorrow I learn and practice hovering which is said to be the hardest maneuver in a helicopter. Based on my limited experience, I must agree because it is extremely sensitive to movements in the controls and takes a very steady hand to hover.

Another beautiful day in sunny PHX today with a temperature around 75. I must admit though, this summer is going to be difficult for me because I was already sweating pretty good in the ship today. There is not air conditioning and only a small vent in the door. Luckily in the summer we fly with the doors off so hopefully that will help tremendously!


G'Day

Cross Country

It all started Monday after I finished my practical exam for my fixed wing pilot's license. The practical exam is two parts, an oral exam and a check-ride. I was able to complete the nearly 3 hour oral exam Sunday because the weather was not suitable to fly. That luckily changed Monday morning where I flew to Ithaca and began my 2 hour check-ride. Once I completed that I flew back to painted post and drove home where I threw the stuff I had packed the night before into the back of my truck and headed for Akron, OH. The trip to Akron was uneventful and I arrived at my friend Chris' house around 10pm where I stayed the night.

Bright and early at 7am I left Chris' house for what I knew was going to be a long day. It's been a number of years since I actually saw the sun come up but that was all about to change! The drive was pretty uneventful until just after St. Louis. I had been fighting a really strong headwind the entire time. It was so strong I actually watched a bird fly directly into it and not move an inch! Albeit a small bird, it was still strange to watch this little guy frantically flap his wings and not move. Anyway, I underestimated the impact the headwind would have on my fuel consumption and ended up running out on the west side of St. Louis. Luckily I had just passed a gas station so I didn't have to walk too far. The reason I didn't stop was because I wanted to get outside of the city a little bit to miss some traffic. Well, I guess that wasn't one of my better ideas! So I walked back to a Quick Trip and bought a little 1 gallon gas can and began to walk back to my truck. A nice gentleman, Scott, pulled over and told me to hop in so I didn't have to walk in the bitter cold. I then put the gas in my truck and drove to a gas station where I filled up and grabbed a drink.

A full tank of gas and a clean windshield I began my long journey again. I made it all the way to El Reno, TX where I bought a Super 8 hotel room for the night. I arrived around 11:30pm CST and if you do the math it was a total of about 17.5 hours of driving including the gas incident for about 1,100 miles. I was using a combination of google directions and the VZ navigator on my phone so I only got thrown off once but it wasn't too bad.

Another early morning but not really by choice. I would've preferred to sleep in until 7 but the nice construction men who parked outside my room decided they needed to fire up their trucks at 6:30 and warm them up. At this point I couldn't sleep anymore and it was close enough to 7 that I just decided to get up and head out. Another uneventful day which is probably a good thing but given my unique life and luck I guess I would have expected something to happen. I did take a shortcut from I-40 between Albuquerque and Flagstaff. I was glad I did because I found a couple nice little towns, Heber and Overgaard. The elevation is quite high there so there's a lot of pine trees, forests, and snow. They had about 2 feet of snow on the ground and it reminded me a lot of Allegany State Park. I guess Arizona has it all but I'll stick to the desert for now! I arrived in Mesa at about 7:30 where I unpacked some of my things and then grabbed a bite to eat at In-N-Out Burger. Hands down the best burger joint I've ever been to. My roommate Jeff is up near the aforementioned towns working ski patrol until Friday night.

This morning I don't know why but I couldn't sleep in so I was up at 7:30. I'm not sure if it's because I'm screwed up on the time change or if it's because I live next to a daycare and could hear little kids screaming at the top of their lungs as they played on the playground. Either way it gave me more time to unpack the rest of my stuff and get all settled in. So, here I sit with my room all situated and everything put away. Here are some pictures of my new living quarters.

Bedroom


Living Room


Pool



It's a nice place and so far I love it here. 75 degrees today and all week! It reminds me a lot of San Diego and if it weren't for the silhouette's of the mountains I may not know the difference, other than no ocean of course.

Training starts tomorrow at 9 and I'm extremely excited. I can't wait to get started and start flying again. I'm sure I'll have another post tomorrow evening but I promise to make it shorter! Forgive me if I give too much detail or things don't flow as smoothly as other blogs. This is my first and I'm learning as I go. I'm not sure how often I'll post but I'll try to keep them as regular as I can.


G'Day