Monthly Archives: March 2009

Finding a Legal Landing Zone

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It’s not as easy as it seems sometimes.

At Lake Pateros
My R44, parked on the side lawn at the Lake Pateros Inn in Washington State. Sadly, heat from my engine browned the grass.

One of the benefits of operating a helicopter is that you can land it almost anywhere. One of the drawbacks of this, however, is that not all landing zones are legal.

The other day, I was asked by a client to find a pickup location for him that was closer to where he was staying than Scottsdale Airport. He suggested two possibilities that I knew I couldn’t use:

  • A private helipad at the resort where he’s staying. That helipad is owned by another helicopter operator who gets three times what I do per hour of flight time. They do not allow others to use their helipad.
  • A private, residential airport near the resort where he’s staying. They have a strict “no helicopter” policy.

I went through the motions and called the managers of both facilities. I was told what I expected to be told: that I could not use them.

What Do the FARs Say?

Around this time, I commented on Twitter that I was conducting a search. Another pilot, who flies airplanes, wanted to know how I was searching and where legal landing zones were covered in the FARs (Federal Aviation Regulations).

The truth is, they’re not. There’s no FAR that clearly states where you’re allowed to land a helicopter.

Instead, the Aeronautical Information Manual (AIM) offers some clear guidance on where you’re not allowed to land any aircraft. 7-4-6 Flights Over Charted U.S. Wildlife Refuges, Parks, and Forest Service Areas states, in part:

The landing of aircraft is prohibited on lands or waters administered by the National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, or U.S. Forest Service without authorization from the respective agency. Exceptions include:

1. When forced to land due to an emergency beyond the control of the operator;
2. At officially designated landing sites; or
3. An approved official business of the Federal Government.

I assume this is in the FARs somewhere — the AIM is generally a plain English translation of most FARs, better organized and easier to read — but I can’t track it down.

So Where Can You Land?

A Heli Outing
This heli-outing brought three helicopters, including my old R22, out in the desert near the Swansea Townsite.

When I first started flying helicopters, knowing where you were allowed to land in a non-emergency situation was a big deal. Everyone dreams of landing on their best friend’s driveway or backyard. Was it legal? How about showing up at your kid’s soccer game? Dropping off a friend at work in an office park? Stopping in at Krispy Creme for a donut and coffee? Landing along the lakeshore for a quick afternoon swim?

Is any of this legal?

My answer: it depends.

Before you read any farther, understand that I am not a lawyer. I cannot advise you on these matters. If you get in trouble for landing somewhere and use what you read here as a legal defense, you are an idiot and deserve to lose your license. I’m just sharing what I’ve learned through experience. I don’t know all the answers and certainly cannot advise you in your specific situations.

Landing in the Middle of Nowhere

R22 in Riverbed
A blast from the past: My old R22 sitting in a wash south of Alamo Lake about a day after it flowed. Hard sand makes a good landing surface.

Keep in mind that I live on the edge of nowhere. Wickenburg is on the northwest end of Maricopa County. There’s not much other than empty desert in most directions. Go southeast and you’ll get to the Phoenix metro area within 30 minutes, but go in almost any other direction and you’ll be driving (or flying) for a while before you get anywhere else.

That said, friends and I have landed our helicopters at many remote patches of desert, both privately owned and owned by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

I discovered through telephone calls, an exchange of mail, and a $270 fine that I’m allowed to land on BLM land that’s not Wilderness area as long as I don’t do it with paying passengers on board. Commercial flights must have permits for landing on BLM land. And trust me: BLM will drag its collective butt in getting you a permit once you apply for one. It took 18 months for me to get permission to land at the Swansea Townsite and costs $90/year to maintain that permit. (I’ve landed there once with paying passengers in the past three years; do you think I should renew?)

But land on private land just footsteps away from government-owned land and you’re okay — as long as other factors don’t come into play.

Permissions and Local Ordinances

At the Big Sandy Shoot
Parked at the semi-annual Big Sandy Shoot. The event is held on a mile-square parcel of privately-owned land northwest of Phoenix.

What are the other factors?

Well, you need to have permission of the property owner. After all, it is his property. It doesn’t have to be written permission, but if you don’t have permission, you could be prosecuted for trespassing.

You also need to be aware of any local ordinances against landing. Wickenburg has one of these ordinances, although they only seem interested in enforcing it when it’s convenient to them. (This is the case with many of Wickenburg’s rules, especially those regarding zoning.) Scottsdale also has an ordinance.

Moab, UT didn’t have an ordinance until after I landed at a friend’s 2-1/2 acre property there. The cops rolled by and I thought I’d get in trouble, but they just wanted to see the helicopter. A week later, the ordinance came out and was on the front page of the local newspaper. Oh, well.

There are two ways to find out if a locality has an ordinance against helicopters landing within town limits:

  • Land there and see if you get in trouble. I don’t recommend this approach, but it can be effective, especially in remote areas where you might not even be seen by anyone on the ground.
  • Call ahead and ask. In most cases, they won’t know. You can make a lot of calls and get nowhere. Then you can try the above approach and see where it gets you. Hopefully, not in jail.
Helicopter at HouseParked in the desert north of Phoenix. Photo by Jon Davison.

Of course, this refers to towns and cities. Within those are subdivisions that may be controlled by written rules (such as that private airport that won’t allow helicopters). And everything is inside a county, which may have its own rules.

Sounds like a pain in the butt? It is. But if you don’t do your homework before you land off-airport, you’re liable to get in deep trouble with the local authorities and FAA. You could have your pilot certificate suspended or even revoked. I don’t know about you, but I have enough time and money invested in my helicopter pilot certificate, aircraft, and business to act wisely. If I can’t find a legal landing zone where I think I need one, I won’t land there.

Please Read This

Tristan's R44
Before buying my own R44 in 2005, I leased a friend’s. This shot was taken in Congress, AZ, where I attempted to sell helicopter rides a few times.

If you’re landing off-airport, whether you have permission to land at an official helicopter landing zone or you’re just taking a risk landing where you might or might not be allowed to, please, for the sake of all of the helicopter pilots out there, keep these things in mind:

  • Only land where its safe. This applies to the terrain of the landing zone itself, as well as your approach and departure routes. Wouldn’t you be embarrassed if you had a dynamic rollover in your buddy’s backyard?
  • Land at the edge of activity — or farther away, if possible. I used to do rides at the Mohave County Fair. My landing zone was at the far end of the event, beyond the carnival rides. There were many people at the event who didn’t even know there was a helicopter around. I’ve also landed at remote restaurants far enough away that no one even heard me approach.
  • Only land where you can secure the landing zone while the helicopter is running. I’ll land places where there may be people on the ground if I have a second person on board with me to get out and keep the landing zone clear of curious bystanders. But if I’m alone, I wouldn’t even think of landing where someone might approach the helicopter while it’s running. Do you really think it would be a good idea to land at your kid’s soccer game? What if a bunch of those kids ran toward you from behind and ducked under the tailcone? Do I have to paint a bloody picture for you?
  • Do not overfly people, vehicles, animals, or buildings at low-level. This is for courtesy and safety. Engine failure on approach or departure means a possibly messy crash into whatever’s below you. Crashing into an empty parking lot is very different from crashing into a crowded soccer field or county fair arcade. (By the same token, anyone who buys a home within a mile of the approach/departure end of any airport runway should have his/her head examined.)
  • Be courteous to people on the ground. Don’t spend more time than necessary circling the landing zone at low level. Once you know your approach and departure routes, get it on the ground. Don’t give bystanders a reason to complain. That’s why localities make these ordinances. Because some jackass pilot annoyed just the right number of people to get the ordinance voted in.
  • Do not draw attention to yourself. Sure, it’s cool to land off-airport and yeah, everyone will be jealous. But aren’t you above all that? If you can land and depart in such a way that no one even knows how you arrived, that’s even cooler.
  • Do not walk away from the aircraft with the engine running and blades spinning. I can’t believe I have to include this no-brainer on a list, but here it is, for the folks who have no brain and actually leave a running helicopter unattended.
  • If asked to leave, do so quickly and without argument. Be apologetic. Be nice. Don’t be an asshole.

The rest of us are depending on you to act wisely so the FAA doesn’t add a rule that prevents us from landing off airport.

My Advice

Mansion Landing
Parked at the house of some friends just outside Wickenburg town limits. They cleared a small helipad up there for me to use. Photo by Jon Davison.

My advice is that you don’t land anywhere where safety or legality may be an issue. Do your homework and get the information you need to establish whether your landing zone is legal.

Or simply land at the nearest airport. That’s what I’ll be doing for my upcoming charter flight.

Weight & Balance Woes

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Or why I had to turn down a potentially lucrative charter flight.

One of the things I’ve said again and again is that it’s nearly impossible to load a Robinson R44 helicopter out of CG. Nearly, but not completely.

What is CG?

For those of you unfamiliar with the term CG, it stands for center of gravity. All aircraft have a specific center of gravity or point at which they could (theoretically) be lifted and hung level. While an aircraft doesn’t need to be in exact balance to fly, there are limitations to which it can be loaded out of balance. These limitations form an envelope of acceptable loading and if you’re loaded within this envelope, you’re said to be within CG or simply in balance. The aircraft controls are rigged with this in mind.

If you load an aircraft out of CG, you’re asking for trouble. For example, if I load my helicopter too heavy on one side, I could run into trouble in a turn by not being able to move the cyclic enough in the opposite direction to come out of the turn. After all, all controls have limits, normally defined by a physical stop. Running out of right cyclic while trying to come out of a left turn would be very scary indeed. Of course, I probably wouldn’t get to that point because I’d feel the problem as soon as I pulled up into a hover — I simply wouldn’t be able to keep the aircraft from drifting left.

[Note to all you flight instructors out there; if I completely mangled this description -- since I'm not a CFI -- feel free to step in to clarify in the Comments. This is my understanding after 10 years and 2,000+ flying hours, but I never had to teach it to anyone.]

Pilots are required to have an aircraft Weight and Balance (W&B) calculation on board for every flight. This is part of the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) in the U.S. In non-commercial flight, it’s usually enough to have the W&B for the empty aircraft. But in commercial flight, there are usually requirements for an individual W&B to be calculated for each flight with the given load.

So yes, when you fly on a commercial airliner, there’s a computer program somewhere that’s spitting out a W&B calculation for your flight. Your pilot has it in his possession in the cockpit.

Now you might say, “Hey, wait a minute. How do they know what I weigh?” They don’t. They’re allowed to use estimates. It all depends on the airline’s Operating Specifications (Ops Specs), which are established with the FAA.

I have Ops Specs, too, but I’m not allowed to estimate for my Part 135 Charter work. That’s why I ask for the name and weight of each passenger when I book a flight.

Four Fatties is Too Many

When I asked for names and weights yesterday while booking what was supposed to be a 2-hour aerial survey charter, I got three weights that I knew would be trouble:

A: 240 lbs
B: 220 lbs
C: 195 lbs

That’s 655 pounds of passengers alone.

Add the pilot (who is trying hard not to reveal her weight; don’t do the math, guys!) and you could only put on about an hour and 20 minutes worth of fuel to stay below the 2500 lbs max gross weight — the absolute maximum weight of the aircraft at takeoff time — limitation of my Robinson R44 Raven II.

Of course, the situation gets worse when you factor in the simple fact that all passengers lie about their weight. Every single one of them. If I put a scale out and made them stand on it, I guarantee anyone over 200 lbs. has shaved at least 10 pounds off their weight when reporting it. They either don’t figure the weight of their clothes or they’re in denial about their weight or they’re afraid that I’ll say they weigh too much. Even folks under 200 lbs are guilty of this. So I routinely add 10 pounds for each passenger. That 30 pounds corresponds to 5 gallons of 100LL fuel or 15-20 minutes of cruise flight.

Since I’m really supposed to have 20 minutes more fuel on board than I expect to need — per FAA reserve requirements — I was really sunk. Apparently, I’d be able to load up my passengers and just enough fuel to take us on a brief flight around the departure airport.

This is just the weight portion of the equation, which is easy enough to do. Add empty aircraft weight to passenger, baggage, and pilot weight. Then add the weight of required fuel. If the number exceeds 2500 lbs, something’s got to come off the aircraft. It can’t be the pilot and it can’t be the fuel required to complete the mission. Simple as that.

How the CG Stacks Up

While I could have done the math in my head, I did it as part of a complete CG calculation. It’s a pain in the butt do to one of those manually, but I have a spreadsheet solution that I worked up to do it for me. I punch in the weights and amounts of fuel and it draws the CG envelope with points for takeoff weight and empty fuel weight. So while manually doing this task would likely take 15-20 minutes of calculator punching, I can do it in about 30 seconds. I can also easily play “what if” by changing fuel quantities and moving the passengers into different seats.

Here’s what I got for the proposed flight and 2 hours of fuel on board:

Weight and Balance Example

Note that both points (square and triangle) are outside the boundaries of the CG envelope. The red line indicates the rotor mast. The points clearly indicate that the CG is way forward. In other words, I’m front-heavy. If I pick up to a hover, I’m likely to start drifting forward immediately. I may hit the back stop of the cyclic when I try to stop that forward motion. In other words, I won’t be able to stop.

Of course, the aircraft is also 100 lbs over weight.

Just for grins, I moved the passengers around in a what-if scenario. I’d put the biggest guy up front, since that’s where the leg room is. After all, maybe he’s not fat. Maybe he’s a former professional basketball player. It doesn’t matter for my calculation how tall a person is — all I care about is weight. But if he’s got long legs, he’s likely to be miserable in the back seat.

So I put the light guy up front and got something like this:

Weight and Balance Sample

A little better, but not safe or legal. But I kept playing. I really wanted to do this flight. The only thing left to fiddle with was the fuel, so I started off-loading fuel on my worksheet until I got within weight limitations. I needed to drop 99 pounds to get down to 2500 takeoff weight. That’s 16.5 gallons or about an hour’s worth of fuel. This what-if scenario would produce be for a short flight, with only 56 minutes of fuel on board:

Weight and Balance Example

And this is where the sad truth of the matter emerged. It didn’t matter how little fuel I had on board — we would always be out of CG for this flight. Too many fatties on board. Both points remain outside the envelope.

I called the client back and told him the problem. I said that together, we weighed too much. I gave him two options: leave one of the passengers behind or fly with a company that had larger aircraft. I suggested a company based in Scottsdale. He wasn’t happy, but he understood.

I’ll be interesting to see if the big fatty (A in my list above) gets left behind. If he does, we’ll be good to go — with full tanks, as you can see here:

Weight and Balance Example

10 Reasons Why I Won’t Follow You on Twitter

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My own list.

Twitter logoAs most folks who follow me have discovered (if they’ve bothered to look), I don’t automatically reciprocate follows. I check out new followers before I follow them. I also attempt to keep the number of people I follow down to a manageable count of 100 or so. That’s because I actually read the tweets that the people I follow post. And I interact with them.

I take Twitter seriously and have been doing so for the past 2 years. And with all the media attention it’s been getting lately, it bugs the hell out of me that people are trying to use Twitter as a meaningless chat room where the only thing that matters is how many people follow them.

Sheesh.

So I’ve come up with my own list of reasons why I won’t follow people on Twitter. If you’ve recently started following me and I haven’t followed you back, here’s why.

  • You’ve posted less than 5 tweets and/or your bio is incomplete. How am I supposed to get an idea of what you’re all about if I can’t see your tweet stream? And who are you? Unless I know a little more about you, I’m not likely to follow you.
  • You’ve posted less than 10 tweets and more than half of them are links to your own content on the Web. You might think that Twitter is a good place to toot your own horn and it could be — if your content is worth reading. I’ll follow @NYTimes and @NPRNews, which consistently tweet just links to their own content. But unless your content is as good as theirs, don’t expect me to follow you.
  • Your tweets add absolutely nothing of value to my day. Make me laugh or smile or see similarities between your life and mine. Teach me something. Show me something I’ve never seen. Give me a link to some content of real value. Help me understand the world. Be an engaging friend that can do more than use @replies to offer words of wisdom like “That’s cool!” or “Gr8!” or “LOL!”
  • You follow more than five times the number of people who follow you. First of all, I don’t believe you actually read the tweets of all those people. Second, the only people who follow like crazy and get only a handful of reciprocal followers are either spammers or complete losers. Why would I follow either one?
  • You consistently refuse to use standard spelling in short tweets. No, the letter b is not an acceptable alternative to the word be and the word sounds is not spelled sounz. Yes, I understand these are txt message abbreviations, but I see no reason for it in a tweet shorter than 100 characters when there’s plenty of room to spell it out, in English. I don’t think it’s funny or cute. I think it’s immature and a sad statement on our education system.
  • You end 75% or more of your tweets with an exclamation point. Are you really that excited about the sandwich you’re eating? Or the episode of Heroes/Lost/24/American Idol/fill-in-the-blank that you’re watching on television? If so, I’m sorry to hear that. There’s life beyond your tweet and the rest of us don’t find every one of your tweeted utterances exciting enough to warrant this particular type of punctuation. (See above comment re: education system.)
  • You consistently tweet very long stories by posting 4 or more consecutive tweets, each ending in “…” to indicate that there’s more to come. Unless the story has immediate value to your followers, save it for your blog. Twitter is microblogging. That’s 140 characters.
  • More than 50% of your tweets are about your follower count or tweet count or Twitter stats as calculated by yet another Twitter-based Web service. Does it really matter how many people follow you on Twitter? Do you really think all of them are actually reading every tweet you send out? Get a grip — and a life. And read this.
  • You are apparently stalking me. That’s how it looks, anyway. You use @replies to make mindless comments about my tweets that really don’t start or add anything to a discussion. And you do it all the time. Stop it. It’s freaking me out. If you keep it up, I’ll likely block you.
  • I’ve followed you and you’ve sent me an automated direct message or @reply. That’s an immediate unfollow in my book. It’ll also get you reported as a spammer to the folks who run Twitter.

Back in January, I linked to an article on Mashable titled, “FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter.” On reviewing the Mashable piece after I wrote the above, I realized that many of my gripes are the same as Atherton Bartelby‘s. I’m just apparently a lot pickier and more sarcastic about the way I present them. Still, I hope you’ll go read his take on this when you’re finished here.

And one more thing…don’t be offended if I don’t follow you or if I stop following you. It’s [usually] nothing personal. I only have so many hours in a day and a lot of that is taken up with work. Remember, I can only follow around 100 or so Twitter users before being overwhelmed.

I want my Twitter experience to be high-quality. I want it to build relationships. I want to learn from it. Just because I don’t follow you doesn’t mean I don’t like you. It just means you’re not making the “Top 100″ on my Twitter user list. That doesn’t mean you’re not on the top of someone else’s Twitter user list. You’re just not on mine.

And let’s face it: does it really matter anyway?

THIS is Why I Left New York

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Well, one reason, anyway.

In the winter of 1994 (I believe), I was living in suburban New Jersey. I’d been in my house nearly ten years and had lived my entire 30+ year life in the New York City metro area. Although, like most people, I think snow is pretty, I never did like cold weather. And on one particular morning, I woke to 20 inches of the white stuff on my doorstep.

I couldn’t get the front “storm door” open.

If you live in Buffalo or Minnesota or Alaska or some other place where snow is a major part of your winter life, you might be thinking, “Twenty inches? Big deal.”

Well, it was a big deal to us. New York City rarely gets that kind of snowfall. And I decided that I’d had enough of it.

The following winter, I lived in Arizona for three months. The winter after that, I stayed in New Jersey, on the urging of my now husband. We had another tough winter. I vowed to move. The following winter, we had half our furniture put on a moving truck and shipped it out to Arizona. On January 1, I clearly remember shopping in the Peoria area wearing a t-shirt and jeans. No coat.

Today is a Prime Example

Not every winter in New York is brutally cold or snowy. But here’s today’s forecast for New York, courtesy of the National Weather Service:

Today…Snow. Areas of blowing snow. Total snow accumulation of 6 to 10 inches. Windy. Near steady temperature in the mid 20s. North winds 15 to 25 mph with gusts up to 40 mph. Chance of snow near 100 percent.

Tonight…Mostly cloudy. A slight chance of snow showers in the evening. Windy with lows around 14. Northwest winds 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 20 percent. Wind chill values as low as 2 below.

2°F below 0? That’s nothing. I remember mornings in New Jersey when the thermometer registered -7°F without a wind chill factor.

Is that not enough for you? Well, there’s more. There’s also a Hazardous Weather Outlook, Short Term Forecast, Special Weather Statement, and Winter Storm Warning. They all warn about snow, cold temperatures, and wind.

Contrast that with what I’m expecting in Wickenburg, northwest of Phoenix today:

Today…Partly sunny. Highs 86 to 91. East wind 5 to 10 mph in the morning…becoming south in the afternoon.

Tonight…Partly cloudy and warmer. Lows 54 to 64. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph in the evening…becoming northwest around 5 mph after midnight.

We’ve got a Special Weather Statement, too. It warns us that due to a high pressure system, we’re likely to break record high temperatures of 90°F in Phoenix today.

All I know is that at 7:00 AM local time, we’ve got clear blue skies and a temperature climbing steadily through 48°F. Will we break a record here in Wickenburg? Probably not, but I’m thinking about wearing shorts while I do my errands.

Weather Changes Travel Plans

Of course, we do have some house guests staying with us. Mike’s mom and her friend. They’re in their 80s and not exactly what I’d call flexible travelers. They were supposed to go back to New York this morning. But yesterday, when we heard the forecast, we started working the phones. I could envision two possible outcomes if they didn’t change their travel plans:

  • Waiting hours at Sky Harbor Airport for their delayed flight to depart, only to be told that it was cancelled. Mass confusion as they deal with getting new tickets for another flight, claiming their luggage, and arranging for a ride back to our house.
  • Departing Sky Harbor Airport (probably late) and being forced to divert to Atlanta or Pittsburgh or some other inconvenient place, followed by mass confusion as they deal with making arrangements for the flight’s continuation, finding their luggage, getting transportation to a hotel, getting transportation back in the morning, re-checking their luggage, etc. This would be enough of a nightmare for me, a middle-aged, relatively fit person who never travels with more luggage than she can handle on her own. But for these two women, both of whom travel airports via wheelchair and have enough luggage to set up a home wherever they arrive, it would be impossible.

So we worked the phones. It took only two calls to USAirways to change their flight to the same flight on Tuesday. The sympathetic person who answered the second call made the change without an additional fee. When my mother-in-law wanted us to make sure she’d be sitting with her friend, my husband rolled his eyes and I said, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” They have middle seats in Row 20.

JFK Weather
Current Weather at JFK.
Can you say whiteout?

But at least they won’t be stuck at an airport somewhere, waiting for the storm in New York to subside.

We can only assume this was a good decision — at least for them. Their flight was scheduled to leave Phoenix at 10 AM and it’s too early to get flight status information. But there is a travel advisory to New York right now and I’m willing to bet that their flight, which was due to arrive in NYC at 4:47 PM, will be cancelled.

Back to Arizona

Going back to the main topic of conversation here: weather in New York vs. weather in Arizona. You might be thinking, “Well, if it might get up to 90°F today — in the winter — how hot does it get in the summer. The answer is brutally hot. Think 110°F +. Think frying eggs on pavement.

So I’ve apparently changed one near-extreme (I can’t consider New York’s winter weather a real extreme) for another extreme (Arizona’s summer weather is definitely extreme). What’s the benefit of that?

The main benefit is that with the money I saved from moving out of a really expensive place to live (the other reason I moved) and coming here, I’m able to get out of town for the summer. And that’s what I’ve been doing for the past few years.

Is there are perfect place to live? I’m starting to think there isn’t. But I will keep looking and report back if I find it.