An Eclectic Mind

Two Kinds of Road Trips

Maria Langer — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:11:10 +0000

Reflections on traveling long distance by car.

This past week, I traveled with my sister as part of a convoy of vehicles moving her from New Jersey to Florida. The other vehicles included my dad in a Budget rental truck (see photo) containing the contents of my sister’s recently sold condo and my dad’s wife in an SUV. We buzzed down I-95 at highway speed, stopping only for food, fuel, and bladder demands.

If you’ve ever driven I-95 — or most freeways, for that matter — you know how mind-numbingly boring the trip can be. You’re moving at 55 to 75 miles per hour down a corridor that’s often straighter than an arrow shaft. Although there are occasional scenic vistas, they’re usually ruined by the tractor-trailer trucks you’re passing (or passing you). The main points of interest are the billboards and the variety of fast food joints and hotel chains at exits. The only excitement comes when some jackass cuts you off or something falls off the trailer in front of you.

The benefit of the interstate highway system is speed, of course. If there’s no construction or accidents or rush-hour traffic in a major metropolitan area, you can zip right along to your destination. We travelled almost exactly 1,000 miles over a day and a half. My dad routinely makes this drive to/from farther south without an overnight stop. It’s a lot of driving, though. And it just isn’t fun.

Each year, I drive from the Phoenix area to Central Washington State and back towing a travel trailer. It’s about 1,200 miles each way. Although Google Maps tries to put me on freeways for the entire trip, I don’t go that way. Instead, I take the back roads that criss-cross the western states. Last year, I was mainly on Route 93. This year, I was mainly on Route 95. These are long two-lane, so-called “blue highways” that pass through small western towns and cities. Along the way, you can get a feel for the landscape and the way folks live. There’s seldom any traffic and the speed limit is often as high as 65 mph so you can move from place to place at a reasonable pace. You can stop just about anywhere along the way and although your choices for meals and fuel and hotels might be limited, they’re not just the same chain establishments you’ll see along the freeway. It’s a whole different way to travel, a whole different experience.

What I like about the blue highways is the opportunities to stop at interesting spots along the way. Instead of pulling into a McDonald’s for lunch, I might stop in a parking area with a scenic view and have a picnic lunch there. Instead of staying overnight at a Super 8 motel adjacent to a truck stop or parking my camper in a Walmart parking lot, I might roll into a state park and camp alongside a creek. If there’s a historic site or roadside attraction, I can easily pull over to take some time there and enjoy it. I can change my route at any intersection. Best of all, I set the pace.

Back in 2005, I conducted what I like to call my “midlife crisis road trip.” I hopped into my little red Honda S2000 with some luggage and credit cards and hit the road for 16 days. I traveled almost every day, getting as far away from Arizona as Mt. St. Helens in Washington, western Montana, and Yellowstone National Park. I had a general idea of where I wanted to go, but no reservations and no need to be anywhere on any day. I slept in motels, hotels, rustic cabins, and even a yurt. I ate all kinds of meals, from crappy fast food and terrible coffee at drive-thru joints to fine dining at the foot of Mt. Shasta. I made side trips daily, visited parks, and talked to lots of strangers. I put more than 5,000 miles on my car, got two oil changes on the road, and even replaced the rear tires after wearing them out. (Z-rated tires just don’t last very long.) I had a great time — better than most vacations — and I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

While I realize that this week’s trip wasn’t for pleasure — the goal was to get my sister, her car, and her belongings from New Jersey to Florida in the minimum amount of time — it certainly did highlight the differences between my usual kind of road trip and motoring down the interstate between points A and B.

And it reminded me why I prefer the blue highways when enjoying the trip is more important than getting to the destination.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 20, 2009

Maria Langer — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 20, 2009:

Palin Booed By Book Tour Crowd – Sarah Palin's "Going Rogue" book tour just went rogue on some unhappy fans. Thanks to @jencorreia on Twitter for sharing the link. On HuffingtonPost.com.
New Right-Wing Craze Prays That Obama’s ‘Days Be Few’ – The newest far-right craze is an anti-Obama slogan that is making its way onto t-shirts, bumper stickers, mugs, and even teddy bears: “Pray for Obama: Psalm 109:8,” which reads, “Let his days be few; and let another take his office.” And they call themselves "Christians"? Thanks to @MikeTRose on Twitter for sharing the link. On Think Progress.
No, Ladies, the New Breast Cancer Guidelines Aren’t Patronizing – Before you get all worked up about guidelines, read this. On Skepchick. Thanks to @gglockner on Twitter for sharing the link.
Where Should I Eat? Fast Food Edition (Flowchart) « Eating The Road – Have you ever been driving around and couldn’t decide where to stop to fill the belly of the beast? Worry no longer my friend. With this simple to follow flowchart you will never have to decide which to listen to, your brain or your stomach. Thanks to @MikeTRose on Twitter for sharing the link.
Who’s Flying This Thing? – It's time to put to rest the idea that planes fly themselves. And who wants a pilotless jetliner anyway? On Salon.com. Thanks to @jenniferwhitley on Twitter for sharing the link.
Wordiness, Wordiness, Wordiness List – "The world has only so much space. When you write, your job is to use that space carefully. I can offer some quick tips: find the right word and use it; when in doubt, cut it out; edit your work like it was written by someone you don’t like. But in the end, the general principle is simple: if you’ve heard a phrase more than a couple of times, and it isn’t key wording, essential in carrying meaning, or a definitive phrase, try to get rid of it." Thanks to @EstherSchindler on Twitter for sharing the link.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Reuse, Recycle

Maria Langer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:06:23 +0000

And I’m not talking trash.

In this day of Internet publishing, quality content is in very high demand. Freelance writers and bloggers who can create good content can often sell it to new markets. But what’s better than writing for hire is republishing the work you have all rights to on sites looking for inexpensive content.

Recently, I was approached by a publisher who was interested in having me write for their online magazine. While many publishers these days try to get something for nothing from writers, this publisher was willing to pay. And when I offered them a choice of existing content refreshed for publication and new content at twice the price, they went for the existing content.

This is great for me. I’ve been blogging for more than six years and have over 1,900 posts on a variety of topics. One topic — “adventure flying” — has interested the publisher quite a bit. They’re paying me a reasonable amount of money for each post I brush the dust off and send to them for republication. I keep copyright; they get one-time publication rights.

So I’ve gone back to the beginning of this blog and have been pulling out old posts to polish up and send out. I call this recycling and I don’t see anything wrong with it at all. After all, I’m not trying to pass it off as new material. And I can even leave it on my blog.

Today, I spent about 45 minutes on a lounge chair with my laptop next to my mom’s pool and earned an easy $300.

I guess the point I’m trying to get across here is that if you’re a writer with some existing content that you own all rights to, you may be able to find a paying market for that material. The Internet is a big place and publishing on it is cheap. With publishers looking for quality content, why not reuse and recycle some of that old material — and make a few bucks in the process?

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 19, 2009

Maria Langer — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 19, 2009:

Green eggs & spam: a Twitter poem – This is too hysterically funny. Thanks to @PattyHankins on Twitter for sharing the link. On Beg to Differ.
RyanGarns.com – ‘Google Purchases God’ – Google Inc. (stock symbol GOOG) announced today that it has acquired God (stock symbol GOD) for an estimated $8.2 billion. On RyanGarns.com. Thanks to @DonPerreault on Twitter for sharing the link.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Two Ways NOT to Ask for a [Pilot] Job

Maria Langer — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:06:36 +0000

More real stories from my e-mail in box and blog.

I was away for four days, completely off the grid. Even my cell phone didn’t work where I was. I had a lot of catching up to do when I got home Sunday night. This included my e-mail in box and comments on my blog. Both yielded fodder for this blog post.

The post is really about job hunting and two things you shouldn’t do when trying to find a job as a pilot. In this case, it’s a helicopter pilot job, but it could be any kind of pilot job. In fact, it could be just about any kind of job at all.

Fishing with Comments

The first was a comment on one of my blog posts. The post in question was from June, 2008. That’s over a year ago. I’d written about my upcoming work drying cherries in Washington State. The post had gotten a few comments — over a year ago. But this weekend’s comment came out of the blue and had very little to do with the post content:

Do you hire any pilots of have any pilots that help you out with flying?

Knowing the number of out-of-work helicopter pilots are out there, I automatically jumped to the conclusion that this person was fishing around for job openings. I wasn’t kind to him. (I really can be a bitch sometimes.) My response was:

If this is the extent of your job-hunting capabilities — posting comments on old blog posts — you may as well give up on finding any job. Sorry to be so blunt, but you asked for it.

After posting this snippy response, I considered that maybe he wasn’t looking for a job. Maybe he was just curious to know whether I hired other pilots to help me — but didn’t necessarily want to be one of those pilots.

But my first instinct was probably right.

The One-Paragraph Resume by E-Mail

The second poor job hunting attempt arrived in my Flying M Air e-mail in box. Keep in mind that unless you have my Flying M Air e-mail address, which I no longer publish anywhere, you can only e-mail me by filling in a form on Flying M Air’s Web site. The same page that includes the form also includes my phone number. Yet this person chose to use e-mail to inquire about job openings. Here’s what he wrote; I XXXed out the identifying info to protect this guy from personal ridicule:

Maria Langer/Chief Pilot:

My name is XXX and I am a commercial helicopter pilot. I am inquiring about whether there is an available pilot position within Flying M Air. I have a little over 200 hours total time, which consist of 120 hours in the R-22, R-44 pilot in command endorsement, 70(+)hours in the Hughes 300, and the Robinson safety course in 2008. In addition, I will be receiving my Associates in Applied Science degree-Flight Technology in December 2009. If you have any questions or would like to schedule an interview I can be reached at XXX-XXX-XXXX or emailed at XXX@XXX.com.

This is wrong on so many levels:

This guy has only 200 hours. What helicopter charter company would even consider hiring a pilot with barely enough flight time to qualify for a commercial certificate?
This guy has only 10 hours of time in the aircraft my company owns and operates: an R44. (Do the math.)
How much of this guy’s flight time is solo or other PIC? (Remember, he said total time.) I’m guessing less than 25 hours solo and only 100-125 PIC.
Does this guy really think that an AS degree is worth anything to an employer looking for a pilot? (Or, with apologies to those of you who place significant value on a 2-year degree, any employer?)
Is this the extent of this guy’s resume?
Does this guy really think that an employer would call him for an interview after receiving a paragraph about him via e-mail?

Although I wanted to reply with any combinations of these thoughts that ran through my mind, I didn’t. Instead, I wrote:

Sorry, we don’t have any jobs available at this time.

Good luck.

And that brings up the real problem with this lame attempt at job-hunting: my reply e-mail bounced back. He’d entered the wrong e-mail address in the form.

FAIL.

Think of What You’re Asking For

When you ask for job, you’re asking for a responsibility.

For a pilot job, you’re responsible for your employer’s paying passengers or cargo. That means other lives or possibly valuable merchandise. Do you honestly think someone would consider hiring you when the best you can do is fish for a job online via blog comments or e-mail? When the ink is barely dry on your commercial pilot certificate? When you can’t even type in the correct e-mail address to get a response from the person you’re querying?

The helicopter job market is tight — especially for low-time pilots. The economy has tourism down — and tourism jobs are the entry level jobs most pilots wind up with. The other jobs are being filled by the out-of-work tour pilots who have just enough turbine time to give them added value to an employer. Silver State and the copycat flight schools that still exist are pumping out helicopter pilots after feeding them healthy doses of optimism and lies about the job market and taking their money — much of it acquired through loans.

The truth is, I don’t know of any employer who will hire a pilot with fewer than 500 hours of flight time. If they say they will, read the fine print. Are they really hiring and paying as a pilot? Or is it just a scam for them to get free pilots while suckers build flight time?

I get at least one contact per week from a helicopter pilot looking for a job. I’m not hiring. But I know that I wouldn’t hire the vast majority of the folks who contact me. They just don’t understand what it is that employers want and what they’re asking us to give them.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Video Flight with a Tyler Mini Gyro

Maria Langer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 13:03:18 +0000

New client, new equipment.

I got the initial call about a month ago. A videographer from the east coast had to shoot aerial video footage of two properties in the Mesa/Chandler area of Arizona. Was I available?

There was more to it. The videographer was looking for someone who could fly 20 to 40 knots sideways so he could get point of view (POV) footage out one of the rear doors (which would be off, of course). He planned to use a Tyler Mini Gyro and would likely be dangling his legs out the helicopter door while shooting. He had his own harness and had worked with R44s before. This, however, was his first experience with the Tyler mount.

I met him at Falcon Field in Mesa, AZ last Tuesday. We met at the Heliponents ramp. I knew Barry from Heliponents from a shoot he’d done at Monument Valley about two years before. He’d been flying either a JetRanger or a LongRange helicopter and they’d put a full-blown Wescam ball with counterweight on his ship. I’d been based at Monument Valley, at the Goulding’s airstrip to provide helicopter flight services for aerial photographers at the valley for a few days. We chatted briefly. I remembered him; he remembered me.

The Tyler Mini Gyro and its packing case, along with its run-up battery and the camera used with it. The mount can support much larger cameras.

Heliponents has a Tyler Mini Gyro that it leases out by the day. This $30K+ device is kind of like a monopod with a heavy duty, gyro-stabilized mount on top. There are springs in the monopod base, which is short and designed to sit on the user’s lap or between his legs in use. A large battery box provides 28 volt power. There are two adjustable handles to hold the entire thing. The camera goes on top. The two main parts — base and tripod leg– get tied off to the photographer or aircraft so it can’t fall out during flight.

I should mention here that I’ve done some work with video and gyros and wrote a lot about it here. We’d used a much smaller mount from Blue Sky Aerials called a Micro Gyro Mount. Our conclusion was that the best solution would have three gyros. This Tyler mount, although much more difficult to work with in a tight space, had three gyros. I was very interested in seeing the results.

Here’s my client, posing for a photo before we started up and took off.

Barry and my client got the system set up. Barry ran up the gyros using one battery pack but planned to send us on our way with another, fully charged pack. I pulled both back doors off the helicopter. My client climbed into his harness. We brought the equipment out to the helicopter and wedged my client into the seat behind mine with it. We secured the big battery on the floor, then tied off my client and his equipment to the helicopter. He put his seatbelt on, too. I shot this photo before climbing in to start up. A while later, we were headed southeast, toward the first of two targets. I’d prepped in advance by converting the addresses to GPS coordinates using GoogleMaps, so we didn’t waste any time looking for the spot. We were on point within minutes of taking off.

The first site was difficult, with lots of high tension power lines. We needed to get footage of a golf course and two different clubhouses. My client likes sweeping, point-of-view shots, which meant I needed to do a lot of sideways flying while he shot straight out. The area was too confined to do any fast flying, but we did the best we could. One of the better series, which we repeated several times, had me flying sideways from north to south with the late afternoon sun at our tail. I’d start relatively high, off property, and come down lower as I flew in, breaking off near the clubhouse. The whole time, I was monitoring Falcon Field’s frequency, since we were right on the edge of its airspace.

We made quite a show for the folks on the ground, which is unfortunate. The video is supposed to just show the place from the air — but not with people gawking or waving (or perhaps shaking their fists?) at the camera.

For me, it was great, challenging flying. Sure, there are challenges in the other kinds of work I do, but aerial photo flying with a professional photographer who isn’t afraid to tell me exactly what he needs me to do is the most challenging of all. It forces me to really work for my money and it gets me in “the zone” — that place where I become one with the helicopter. And there’s nothing more rewarding than doing precision flying to complete a pass and having my client complement me when I’m done.

Of course, I have to admit that it was also easy. There was very little wind — less than 5 mph — and my single passenger weighed roughly what I do. The temperature was in the 80s, so density altitude was not an issue. I had no trouble flying sideways or even maintaining a lengthy, completely motionless, out-of-ground-effect hover. I couldn’t have asked for better precision flying conditions.

After spending at least 30 minutes over that property, we broke off to do the second property, which was farther south, in Phoenix Mesa Gateway (formerly Williams Gateway) airspace. As I was making contact with the controller, my client realized that the power cord had pulled out of the camera and the gyros had spun down. We flew lazy circles around the property for a good 10 minutes, giving the gyros a chance to spin up again. Then it was back to work shooting a clubhouse and some sports facilities. I think a shuffleboard competition was going on because the courts were full. The shiny court surfaces reflected the colors of the flags that flew on poles above them. And we realized that the folks waving to us from the pool might just be good footage to meet the marketing requirements of the videos.

We left Gateway’s space, then returned to our first property to redo a bunch of footage. We weren’t quite sure when the gyros got disconnected, so we redid most of it. Then we headed back to the airport. We’d flown over an hour on the mission; I’d also be billing for about a half hour or ferry time from my base in Deer Valley. (I’d like to note here that if I were still based in Wickenburg, I probably wouldn’t have gotten the job at all; no one wants to pay more for ferry time than mission flight time.)

Back at Heliponents, my client didn’t waste any time reviewing the shots he’d taken on a small video monitor he’d brought along. Most of them were great. He was very pleased. And I felt the kind of pride I usually feel when I realize that my helicopter and I form an important part of a photography client’s equipment.

As for the Tyler Mini Gyro, it costs roughly the same as the Blue Sky Aerials Micro Gyro Mount to rent (when you factor in shipping) and has the additional benefit of being available locally. I’m not sure, but it might be easier to use, too. While I think it’s overkill for my own little HD video camera, it’s a good match for the camera this client used or even larger models. I’m hoping I have an opportunity to recommend it to clients in the future.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Book on Expedia, Get Stuck in a Middle Seat

Maria Langer — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 05:20:41 +0000

Using Expedia may save a few bucks, but it lowers your status to one step above baggage.

Just a quick whine — and a warning for people booking flights with services such as Expedia.

I booked a round trip flight more than 10 days ago. One leg was a non-stop on Continental. The other was a flight with a plane change on American.

Although Expedia allowed me to see the available seats on my Continental flight, it would not allow me to choose one. Each time I tried, it ignored my selection and said I had to get my seat when I checked in.

This evening, I checked in. Still no seat assignment.

I called the airline. Although there had been at least 10 window seats available when I booked the flight and as recently as four days ago, I was offered a choice between two middle seats. And that’s what I’m stuck with: a middle seat.

Crap.

Airline travel already sucks. Who the hell wants to be stuck on a plane for 4-1/2 hours in a middle seat? Not me.

Lesson learned: Don’t book on Expedia. Don’t buy a ticket unless you can get your seat assignment when booking.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 12, 2009

Maria Langer — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 12, 2009:

His Facebook Status Now? ‘Charges Dropped’ – I'm wondering if this is going to lead to an increase of "status" posts on social networking sites by people hoping to establish alibis. On NYTimes.com. Thanks to @Jodene for sharing the link.
500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Facts in Fiction

Maria Langer — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:00:40 +0000

Why fiction authors should get the facts straight in their writing.

The vast majority of people who want to be writers want to write fiction. While I don’t have the statistical sources to back up that claim, I don’t think anyone can deny it. There’s something about writing fiction that really appeals to people who want to write — including me. The only reason I don’t write fiction for publication is that I found that I could make a good living writing non-fiction. Making a living as a writer is more important to me than writing fiction.

With all that said, what many fiction writers don’t understand is the importance of getting their facts straight in what they write.

How Deep is Your Fictional World?

When you write fiction, you build a fictional world. The depth of your world — how similar it is to the real world — can vary.

Suppose, for example, that you’re writing a science fiction adventure that takes place on a distant planet that isn’t even very Earth-like. You’re making up the setting and all that goes with it. Is the sky on your planet pink? Are there four suns? Do the people have eyes where our mouths are and four arms instead of two? You’re making everything up. Your world may have nothing in common with the real world. You have license to make everything up as you go along.

Now suppose you’re writing a thriller that takes place in a Wall Street banking firm (if any are left). Wall Street is a real place in a real city. You’re not making any of that up. You might make up the firm and its customers. You’ll probably make up the characters and plot. But you’re still constrained by what’s real in your world. In New York, taxis are yellow and police cars are blue and white. (At least they were the last time I was there.) Wall Street is in Lower Manhattan and it’s crossed by Broadway. If you change any of these facts — or don’t get them straight — you’re making an error. (Of course, you could cheat by setting the plot in the distant future, thus adding a SciFi element to it. But do you really want to do that if it’s not part of the story?)

In many cases, you can ensure the accuracy of the facts in a piece of fiction by a lot of Googling or perhaps even a visit to Wikipedia. Other times, you need better resources — possibly even an “expert.”

I bring this up for two reasons:

I was recently asked a question by a writer about how a helicopter works. He wanted to get his facts straight.

I am repeatedly distracted by errors in facts in novels by authors who really should have the resources to get their facts straight.

Let’s take a look at some examples.

Question from a Writer

The other day, someone posted the following comment on my post titled “How Helicopters Fly“:

I am writing a novel in which a helicopter goes out of control and starts spinning. How would a pilot pull out of a spin? Gyrating.

This is a good question — kind of. It’s good because the person who asks does not understand the technical aspects of what he wants to include as a plot point. He realizes that he lacks this knowledge and he’s actively trying to get it. Great!

Unfortunately, it’s not a question that can be easily answered — even by someone who knows what the answer might be. (And I’m really not sure why he included the single word “Gyrating” at the end of his comment. What does he mean by that?) My response to him tries to get this point across:

It really depends on how the helicopter got into that spin. Normally, the rotor pedals will stop a spin, but if the tail rotor’s gone bad (or chopped off), the pedals probably won’t help. Sometimes flying straight at a high speed can keep you from spinning with a non-functioning tail rotor.

It’s not at all like an airplane. You don’t “pull out of a spin.” You prevent yourself from getting into one; if you start to spin, you use your pedals to stop it before it gets out of control.

A better way for him to approach this problem would be to sit down with a helicopter pilot or instructor and ask him/her what might cause a helicopter to start spinning and how a pilot might recover from each cause. He can then fit one of those causes into his plot and have the pilot stop the spin.

But he shouldn’t stop there. After writing the passage concerning the spin and recovery, he should pass over those manuscript pages to a pilot and let him read them. Does it ring true? Is it feasible? Are the correct terms used? Doing this will ensure that the passage is error-free.

Errors in Best-Selling Fiction

As a writer and a helicopter pilot, I’m especially sensitive to helicopter-related errors in popular fiction. A while back, I read a Lee Child book that included scenes with a helicopter. It was full of errors. Here are two that come to mind:

The helicopter was in a fuel-critical situation. The author stated that it was better to be lower than higher if the helicopter ran out of fuel. (The exact opposite is true; you want to be higher if your engine quits so you have more options for autorotative landing.)
The helicopter pilot is killed by a character breaking his neck. The author has the helicopter pilot land on dirt before he kills him so it looks like he broke his neck when the helicopter crashed-landed when it ran out of fuel. (But the helicopter didn’t crash. It landed upright on its skids. If it had been a “crash landing” — even on its skids — the skids would have been spread and the helicopter would have had other signs of a hard landing.)

These are absolutely glaring errors to a helicopter pilot. They ruined the book for me. How could I slip into the author’s world when its connections to the real world are so screwed up? If he got this stuff so wrong, what else did he get wrong?

I found more errors like this — although admittedly not as bad — in the latest Dan Brown book, The Lost Symbol. I’ll go through them in some detail in another post.

These Are Just Examples from My Real World

These are examples from my world, which includes helicopters. Maybe your world includes flying an airliner or managing an office building or designing computer security systems. Or anything that’s a lot more complex than it seems on the surface. When you read a piece of fiction and the author includes “facts” from your world as plot points — and gets them wrong — how do you feel? Doesn’t it bug you? Perhaps ruin the book for you?

The most commonly repeated advice to writers is to “Write what you know.” Although I agree with this and believe writers should start with what they know, there are often times when they have to stretch the boundaries and write a bit about what they don’t know. I believe they should make an extra effort to get the facts straight whenever they do this. And then go the final extra step in having an “expert” review the final written passages as a fact check before the book is published.

What do you think?

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 11, 2009

Maria Langer — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 11, 2009:

Why Retweet works the way it does – A complete explanation of retweeting on Twitter and the Retweet feature currently being tested. Must-read for any active Twitter user. By Evan Williams on Evhead.com. Thanks to @mdy on Twitter for sharing the link.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 10, 2009

Maria Langer — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 10, 2009:

Alien abduction flick The Fourth Kind is dangerous twaddle | Chris French | Science | guardian.co.uk – Psychologist Chris French explains why he believes The Fourth Kind is dangerously misleading twaddle. On the Guardian.co.uk. Thanks to @TheSkepticMag for sharing the link.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Interesting Links, November 9, 2009

Maria Langer — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:00:00 +0000

Here are links I found interesting on November 9, 2009:

Refusing Flu Shots? Maybe You’re A ‘Denialist’ – "Nearly 20 percent of the families in Vashon Island, Wash., aren't getting their children vaccinated against childhood diseases. At the Ocean Charter School near Marina del Rey, Calif., 40 percent of the 2008 kindergarten class received vaccination exemptions. Author Michael Specter says the parents in these upscale enclaves are prime examples of what he calls denialism." Read more on NPR.org. Thanks to @DJGrothe on Twitter for sharing the link.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Making Cockpit Management Tasks Easier

Maria Langer — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 14:39:48 +0000

Some tips for helicopter pilots (and others).

One of the disadvantages of being on the controls of a helicopter is that you pretty much always have to have at least one hand on the controls. Most helicopters do not have autopilots and, in my experience, I’ve found that releasing the cyclic while in flight is a good way to begin undesired aerobatic maneuvers that are likely prohibited by the Pilot Operating Handbook (POH).

The more you fly a helicopter, the more accustomed you are to dealing with one-handed chores like dialing in radio frequencies, adjusting the altimeter, fiddling with the GPS, and even folding maps. But for new pilots and pilots flying to, from, or through busy airspace, navigating and dealing with other cockpit management chores can be a real challenge.

The key to dealing with this gracefully is preparation. Here are some of the things I’ve come up with.

Organize in Advance

I don’t think there’s any simpler or more important tip to share. By organizing your cockpit in advance, you’ll know exactly where everything is and be able to reach it when you need it. I’m talking mostly about things like checklists, charts, pens, flight plans, and notes. But this could also include navigational aids like a handheld GPS, performance charts, and water or snacks.

My seat pocket includes charts and checklists; my passenger’s seat pocket includes marketing material and souvenir postcards.

There’s nothing that bugs me more than when an aircraft mechanic or cleaner or some other pilot moves the things I keep in the pocket under my legs in my aircraft. That’s where I should find all the charts I use regularly, my preflight briefing card (for passenger briefings), my emergency checklist, and my startup/shutdown checklists with performance charts. These are things I sometimes need to reach for in flight — I want them exactly where I expect them to be — not under the seat or in the back or in the seat pocket of the front passenger seat.

By always having things like this in the same place, I can always find them where I expect them to be. This reduces workload in flight — I don’t have to hunt around to find them when I might also need to do something else.

Use an Airport Frequency Cheat Sheet

I’ve had one of these on board since I bought my first helicopter, an R22 Beta II, back in 2000. It’s a standard letter size sheet of paper with a four-column grid on it. The columns list Airport Names, Elevations, Tower/CTAF Frequencies, and ATIS/AWOS/ASOS Frequencies. Each row is for a different airport in the areas of Arizona where I fly. The type is purposely large, so I can read it from a distance. The entire sheet is laminated so it doesn’t get beat up.

In Robinson helicopters, the floor at the pilot’s seat is carpeted but covered with a sheet of clear plastic. I slip my cheat sheet under the plastic so it’s at my feet. When I fly, I can shift one or both feet aside to get a look at the sheet to find a frequency I need. This is a lot quicker and easier than consulting a chart or fiddling with a GPS to get the same information.

Of course, if you don’t want to go all out and create one of these for everyday use, you should consider creating one for the flight you’re going to take. It can be much smaller — perhaps index card size — so you can slip it in a pocket when not in use. My husband uses sticky notes that he affixes to the yoke of his airplane. Same idea. He doesn’t fly as often as I do or to as many places, so that meets his needs.

Configure Your Charts in Advance

My cheat sheet under the plastic carpet protector and my TripTik on the Robinson-designed GPS tray I use to mount cameras and display charts.

By “configure,” I mean fold open to the area of the chart you’ll need to consult enroute. For most helicopter cross-country flights, you’ll likely use only a few panels of a single chart. But if you’re going on a long cross-country flight, you’ll likely need to fold open more than one chart — or fold the chart you need in a way that it’s easy to get to all panels you’re likely to need. Large paperclips or binder clips can come in handy to keep the chart open the way you need it.

A very smart pilot navigating through a new area will likely use a highlighter — pink and orange work best — to highlight his intended route. This makes it very easy to find the line you’re supposed to be on and keep track of landmarks you fly over as you go.

I’ve actually gone a step farther with this idea. I’ve created a “TripTik” (think AAA) by cutting old charts into pieces that I laminated and put on binder rings. I can clip this loose binder full of map segments to a platform I recently had mounted in my helicopter. As I fly, I can flip through the pages to see the segment I need. It was time consuming and tedious to create and it isn’t quite perfect yet, but it sure does make it easier to manage my charts. (You can see a video about it below.) And yes, I still do have all the up-to-date charts I need on board for every flight.

What’s that you say? You have a whiz-bang moving map GPS so you don’t need charts? Try telling that to an FAA inspector. And then think about what might happen if you didn’t have charts handy, weren’t paying much attention to where you might be, and that GPS dropped dead. That was the topic of an AOPA video I saw a long time ago and it’s stuck with me ever since. Situational awareness is vital to flight. Don’t depend on a GPS to tell you where you are. When flying in an unfamiliar area, always keep track of where you are on a chart.

One more thing about charts: make sure the one you’re carrying is the current one. Airport information and frequencies change. Having the wrong information about an airport you’re landing at or flying near can get you in trouble, as this story relates.

Punch in a Flight Plan

If you do have a GPS, make the most of it by punching in a flight plan before lifting off. This is extremely useful when doing a cross-country flight through relatively busy airspace.

For example, when I fly from Phoenix, AZ to Torrance, CA in the Los Angeles area, I fly through about two hours of wide open, empty desert, stop for fuel, and then spend another two hours threading my way though the busy airspace of Riverside and Orange Counties. This can get really intense, especially when LA’s famous smog has settled in the valleys and visibility is right around minimums. Although I mostly follow roads, I use waypoints along the way to make sure I don’t take the wrong exit (so to speak). Punching these waypoints — airports and GPS waypoints on the LA terminal area chart — into my GPS not only helps keep me on course, but it displays the upcoming waypoint and my distance from it so I can make intelligent radio calls when passing through.

While lots of pilots learn how to use the Go To feature of their GPS and stop there, learning how to enter a full flight plan is far more beneficial on a long flight. Suppose I decided to use Go To to move from one waypoint to the next. That means that as I’m passing through Fullerton’s airspace, I might be trying to punch in Long Beach’s waypoint. While keeping an eye out for other helicopter traffic in the busy 91/5 intersection area. And keeping to a restricted altitude. And dialing Long Beach’s frequency into standby. I don’t know about you, but that’s more of a workload than I want when visibility is 3-1/2 miles in smog. Using the flight plan feature to have all waypoints entered in advance significantly reduces the workload in flight.

Get a Capable Companion Involved

If you’re not flying solo, you may be able to shift some of the work to the person sitting beside you — but only if that person is willing and able to perform the tasks you need done promptly, with the minimal amount of instruction.

I’m lucky. My husband is a pilot, too. He knows how to tune in radio frequencies and use the Go To feature on my helicopter’s GPS. He can read a chart and pull off radio frequencies. He knows how to look for traffic. When we fly together, we share the workload. Since he’s got his helicopter rating, too, I usually put the duals in and he does most of the flying while I handle the cockpit chores.

Not everyone is as lucky. Some companions just can’t figure things out — even the simple things, like tuning in a radio. Entering busy airspace is not the time to teach them. Do it yourself — it’ll be quicker and safer. If you’ll be flying often with a person, give him some training when you’re just out cruising around so he’ll be ready to help you when you’re in busy airspace and can really use a hand.

And even if your companion is capable of doing things, he might not want to. As I mentioned, my husband is a pilot and can read a chart. But is he willing to monitor our progress on a chart in flight? No. He’s not a map person and simply doesn’t like using any kind of map unless he needs to.

I’m exactly the opposite. If I’m not flying, I’ve got that chart open on my knees and can tell you exactly where we are — well, to the nearest finger-width, anyway. I recently had an excursion passenger who was the same way. At the start of each leg of our trip, I’d configure a map for her and show her roughly where we were going. Although she had some trouble tracking our progress on the unfamiliar aeronautical chart format, she put in a good effort and did pretty darn well.

Plan Thoroughly

Of course, to punch in a flight plan and configure your charts, you must have a clear idea of where you’re going. That’s what flight planning is all about. Don’t just wing it (no pun intended) — plan it out completely so you know where you’re going and how you’ll get there.

I can’t stress how important this is for a long cross-country flight. You’ll need to examine the entire route on a current chart to make sure it doesn’t pass through hot MOAs or restricted areas. You’ll need to know where you can find fuel or lunch or maybe even a hotel along the way. You’ll need to learn about weather and NOTAMs and TFRs on your flight path. And you’ll need to get familiar with the layouts of the airports you’ll be landing at.

This is really part of flight planning the stuff you’re supposed to do before you crank up the engine — not cockpit management. But without a solid flight plan, you won’t be able to properly prepare as outlined above to make your cockpit management tasks easier.

Got Your Own Tips to Share?

If you’re an experienced pilot — helicopter or airplane — and have some other tips to share, please do. Use the Comments link for this post to get a discussion going.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

“I Want to Fly”

Maria Langer — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:48:12 +0000

E-mail from a reader.

I get the occasional e-mail from readers who evidently think I can perform miracles for them — or perhaps take them by the hand and lead them to the life they dream about. Like this one, which I got today:

I’m 35 no wife or kids and no ties to anything or anyone and want to learn top fly I can get the money to go to a school I just want to change careers and I have learned to live on 35k a year no matter how much income I dont mind being away from home for 14-28 days as long as there is hot showers and the internet please get back to me as I would like to find out more directly from you as to what I should be doing I have looked around for schools and filled out my FAFSA for aid

To the person who wrote this — who I won’t embarrass by mentioning any names — what the hell do you expect me to do for you?

If you’re incapable of doing your own research to find a flight school in your area, you’re likely incapable of learning to fly or getting a job as a pilot, too. Stop whining and begging for help from strangers. You’re 35 years old! Get your fucking act together and make your future happen.

And for chrissake, if you’re going to contact people by e-mail, learn how to punctuate!

Sorry, folks, but this is the end of a long week for me, I have a splitting headache, and I’m spending the night at a Super 8 Motel inhabited by loud drug addicts. Whatever patience I usually have for e-mail crap like what’s quoted above is long gone.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related:

Animals from the Air

Maria Langer — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:00:36 +0000

Wild horses, antelope, and sheep — oh, my!

I flew from Grand Canyon Airport to Page Municipal Airport (at Lake Powell) again yesterday.

Each time I make this trip, I follow pretty much the same route, hugging the southeast corner of the Grand Canyon Special Flight Rules Area (SFRA) until I get to the Little Colorado River Gorge and then heading pretty much due north. I wind up just outside the SFRA near Marble Canyon so I can show off Navajo Bridge and Lees Ferry before a quick flight past Horseshoe Bend, the Glen Canyon Dam, and Wahweap Marina. If the wind is in my favor, I can touch down at Page within an hour of departure from Grand Canyon. The same distance by car would take about 2-1/2 to 3 hours.

The terrain for most of this flight — from the Little Colorado River Gorge north, in fact — is high desert — technically the famous “Painted Desert” — and relatively barren. There are, however, some interesting features if you look hard for them. Since I’m always trying to point out interesting things for my passengers to see, I look very hard.

Ruins are relatively common. Round rock foundations are the remains of ancient hogans. (This area is on the Navajo reservation.) There are also the remains of animal enclosures, usually build with the same rock. There are complete hogans, some of which may still be occupied for at least part of the year, and ranches with hogans, sheds, outhouses, animal enclosures, and other buildings. All of these things are scattered across an immense landscape that takes more than 30 minutes to cross at 120 miles per hour.

There are also animals.

One of the questions I’m asked quite often by passengers is whether I see wildlife from the helicopter. I do, but not so often as to make it a common occurrence. It depends on where I’m flying, what time of day it is, and how hard I’m looking for wildlife.

Take antelope, for example. There are a few “prairies” north of I-40 and west of Mt. Kendricks in northern Arizona where, if I look hard enough, I can usually spot a herd of antelope. I know where to look and I remember to look. They’re hard to spot because their color matches the terrain so well. It usually takes movement to spot them. When I see them and point them out, my passengers never see them at first. I have to slow down, turn around, and drop a few hundred feet as we approach the herd. That gets them running a bit so my passengers can see them. As soon as they’re spotted — and photographed, if the passengers remember to whip out a camera — I move away. It’s not my goal to terrify the antelope population of northern arizona by buzzing them with a helicopter.

(When I flew at the Grand Canyon, I always saw at least one elk a day in the forest on one of my first or last flights for the day. My passengers never saw them and, since swooping around to show them wasn’t possible, I simply stopped pointing them out. It would be my own private treat.)

There are wild horses in numerous places throughout Arizona. I wrote a bit about them here. They’re also on the route I take from the Grand Canyon to Page. Today, my passengers and I spotted at least four herds of them — the most ever. They’re a lot easier to spot than antelope because of their size and color. But they’re also a lot easier to confuse with cattle. I look for long legs and long, thick tails.

There are domesticated sheep in various places throughout northern Arizona. We flew over a good-sized herd tended by four dogs today. They were a lot farther south than I expected — I usually see them farther north. This could be a different herd, of course. There were about 50 animals in that herd and the dogs did a pretty good job of keeping them together, even when my helicopter spooked them. (Yes, I had to do a circle for my passengers to see them; they were pretty small.)

In the past, I’ve also seen javelinas (pronounced have-a-leenas) from the air. They’re usually in herds of a dozen or more animals and I’ve only spotted them when I was alone, flying a lot lower than I do with passengers on board.

Of course, I don’t have photos of any of this. I’m flying and my hands are usually busy. My passengers never seem to remember to send me their shots. But one of these days, I’ll have some photos to share.

Possibly Related posts

The following posts share one or more tags with this one and may be related: