Helicopter Pilot, will travel

Heligypsy — Mon, 17 May 2010 02:20:25 +0000

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
– Helen Keller.

Holding the Line Revisited

Heligypsy — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:41:27 +0000

Recently a friend had asked me if fighting fires with the Helitanker was different from country to country? It is different for the obvious reasons, in the same way that Italy is different from Australia or Greece or Canada. Our flying methods and procedures are solidly set and most aviators will tell you that getting creative is a post flight item for discussion. Nobody wants to be with a pilot, who during some hectic firefighting, says,”well I’ve never tried this before, but”….
We stick pretty close to S.O.P. and nothing is done in the cockpit without telling the other pilot and/or crew person.However, each country has differences that cause you as the P.I.C.’s to modify your plans.Australia has a largely volunteer firefighting force who are trained and eager. Greece has a trained and dedicated firefighting force and a sometimes huge amount of citizenry on the fire line . Professional actions are usually predictable but with people defending their own property anything can happen. The following is a previous post about what firefighting with a Helitanker in Athens Greece is all about.

Summertime and the living isn’t always easy, here in Greece. My assignment is firefighting with an Erickson Air Crane based in Athens. The flying we do with this impressive aircraft is called I.A. or initial attack. It is a simple program, get to the fire as quickly as possible and put it out.

You may think that this is the case for firefighting aircraft and personnel everywhere but I assure you it is not. It has been a very busy season protecting the City, the Attica region and the Cyclades Islands. By some accounts it has been a failure.

Our critics have been screaming on television for a couple of weeks now about the Hellenic Fire Brigade’ s inability to stop a wildfire that burned much of Parnitha, a National Park and Mountain overlooking Athens to the North West. I can take some satisfaction in knowing that I did some of my best flying on that fire and other fires in the area. The talking heads on the T.V. and so called experts can analyze, criticize and belittle the efforts of the firefighters on the ground and in the air. It is their democratic right and in a election year I would expect no less.

It is probably a good thing that I can not understand most of what is being said on television. In more than 20 years of aerial firefighting in 6 countries I have seen a lot of firefighting operations but none more aggressive than the Greeks. The following is a recent example of a fire in Athens. To say that Athens is a concrete jungle with just a few green islands in the city is no exaggeration.

Athens looking North

An afternoon dispatch call comes in for a fire in the south east side of Athens. We could see the smoke as we quickly got our flight suits on and jumped in the Crane. Our usual crew of two pilots and a pilot/interpreter in the back. The pilot/interpreter has the unenviable task of sorting out calls from three radios in two languages from numerous ground personnel, 6 other aircraft and cell phone calls from SKED our controlling agency.

The fire was quickly running through a tree covered hillside within a residential neighborhood of primarily apartment buildings. In the 15 minutes since we had launched, the ground forces had begun their defense with numerous pumper trucks and more personnel on the ground than we could possibly keep track of down in the tress.

We would have to make our drops with enough force to be effective on the crowning fire in the trees but not get a direct hit on any personnel. In Greece that is an even bigger challenge than elsewhere in the world. Along with keeping track of 4 Canadair water bombers, A Mil 26 with a 200′ line and bucket and another SkyCrane sent to help just minutes behind us we also had the citizens of this Athens community pitching in on the fire line. It is a common sight to see local residents with wet towels and T shirts pummeling the flames on the flanks and even the head of the fire in some cases. We hit the fire and the residual spray wets down the people and their fire towels and they run back into the fire line. I have never seen that any where else in the world. Its both impressive and frightening. We carry about 6 tonnes of water for each drop, the Canadair water bombers are about the same, the Mil 26 is a bit more. At any rate its enough water to flatten a car let alone a citizen in a pair of shorts and a soot blackened T-shirt. On this day the locals were working on the flanks of the fire only. The Fire Brigade was fighting the head of the fire and we were doing our best to get under the column of smoke, clear the numerous wires and drop on the fast advancing front. It was not going good and the Fire Brigade had been forced to back away from one road to another as the fire jumped each successive road. The fire was on the lee side of a hill crowning in the tree tops with 20′ to 30 ‘ flame heights. The Hellenic Fire Brigade had leap frogged their trucks and personnel to the last fire break before the apartment buildings. The line had been drawn. It was a little 14′ wide dirt road at the bottom of the hill. Behind the fire crew and their trucks stood about 100 people between the tree line and their apartments. Many people stood with dripping towels over their arms and I could tell by their hand gestures that they were shouting down to the Fire Brigade below. If you think for a second they were shouting encouragement to the fire crews, you don’t understand Athenians. They were probably shouting, stop that fire *#*^+# or we will be beating out more than just the fire!

Time for one more drop along the front then back to the sea for another load of water. Our return time would be about 9 minutes. The Fire Brigade stood along the road wetting down the close vegetation and waiting for the flames. The other aircraft were also heading to the sea for water and I said to the other pilot that I thought we would be fighting the new fire line at the apartments. The fire brigade would stand their ground but I was fairly certain the fire would spot over them or burn over them. I thought about what it would be like to see that flame front coming at you as you stood with a water hose and waited.

It occurred to me as we returned with our load of water that some of these people on the fire line may have had ancestors that had fought at places like Marathonas. Back in about 490 B.C. a hugely overwhelming force of Persians had landed on the plains of Marathon prepared to kick some Athenian ass. They did. The Persians killed almost 200 Athenians and lost about 6400 Persians doing it. That took the fight right out the world conquering Persians and they sailed for home.

We got over the fire a couple of minutes later. A black line stopped cleanly at the little dirt road and no fire spotted over the line. People at the apartments were waving towels and blankets, a few citizens on the fire flanks were waving their shirts. The fire Brigade was picking up tools and hoses and moving away. The job wasn’t over yet and there would be areas to mop up and wet down.

We spent another two hours flying the fire perimeter putting out flare ups and keeping things cool. Mission accomplished and back to our base. At the base we sat in front of the t.v. with a cold drink watching the news channel and listening to the experts scream at each other about the fires.

“What are they mostly saying?” I asked the interpreter. He just waved his hand in the universal back hand of dismissal. More bull shit.

The talking heads can have their say. I have been flying on fires for a lot of years and I’ll fight fires with these folks any day.

Just for fun.

Heligypsy — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 23:29:22 +0000

Make a Smilebox slideshow



Firefighting in the city
Heligypsy — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 16:59:31 +0000
Athens, Hellas and the wildfire that had travelled cross country for about 15 miles, was now reaching the city.
The fire was running through the upscale neighborhood about as fast as a person could run. There were in fact a lot people doing just that and if we didn’t get the fire spread slowed down it looked like a few people might lose more than their properties.

Firefighting with a Helitanker in urban areas means people, vehicles, animals and other aircraft running around in the smoke and flames. It can get chaotic.
The primary goal is to do no harm and the primary thing not to harm is you.
Wildfires in urban settings get priority over wildfires where people and property are not in immediate danger. When the smoke reduces visibility it becomes very important to separate yourself visually and especially physically from the other aircraft trying to do the same job.
We had about 8 large helicopters and perhaps twenty fixed wing air tankers. Five of the large helicopters were our own Erickson Air Crane Helitankers
Fire was leaping indiscriminately down tree lined streets and blazing through parkland filled neighborhoods and so far all of our efforts were being directed towards structure protection.
It can be immensely satisfying to save houses, structures and barns but when a fire really gets ripping you can’t save everything and just as often you may get directed to places where the need doesn’t seem as great as the homes you had been protecting.
We had spent the last 15 minutes in some heavy smoke and nasty turbulence to stop a series of spot fires in houses where some where a man was trapped in a house. I had punched a pretty good hole in the roof of one small house to cool the contents and while the damage was considerable the fire would not be spreading to the neighbor’s house.
It’s never an easy choice to drop on a house. If the fire is just on the house periphery or has only began to burn the porch or roof you can use a lighter coverage level of water or retardant and get the flames under control.
On some fires where structures are in close proximity to each other it becomes essential to put the house fire out so it doesn’t get other houses involved.
We make drops through roofs, front windows, knock porches off the back of houses and  often have to flatten houses that are doing nothing more than being a good ignition source for the next door neighbors house.
The good and bad of carrying up to 16,000 pounds of water is that you can do a lot of good and if needed you can use that mass of water to get the water or retardant inside a building. You had better be darn sure there is nobody inside the building and in some cases I have dropped through barn doors and roofs  knowing that the animals inside could be harmed with the drop but burning to death is a much worse option .
The main difference I see with fires in urban areas in Europe versus North America is that in Europe we make most of our own calls on where to drop and we are often the only firefighting asset available.
On big fires like we had in Athens, with gale force wind ,smoke and poor visibility we  have only seconds to decide in the smoke where and what to drop on.  Get it wrong and its all on you.

         


There is more
Heligypsy — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:01:31 +0000
Hello Readers. I was just checking my stats and I noticed that many of you are reading the same posts on the first page of my blog I am happy that you are enjoying my blogs but I wanted to point out that those blogs are just ten of the 154 blogs that I have written or created.
At the bottom of the first page is a line that says older posts and you can scroll back through the other 140 or more blogs and maybe see something that interests you..or not.
Thanks for following me and commenting even if you all don’t always like what I have written,  
Keith

         


Flight, Duty, Safety and Profit
Heligypsy — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:40:30 +0000
When I first started flying helicopters commercially in about 1975, my boss told me that he could use all the helicopters he could get for about 5 months of the year. After that, he said “I wish you could all go away for about 6 months.” It startled me to realize that I was just another commodity or tool to be used to operate his company. I accept and even appreciate that early lesson in business and I suffer no delusions about my value to any employer these days.
I have nothing to offer but my labor to any employer and my employer owes me nothing more than to compensate me for those labors and provide as safe a work environment as is realistic.  We have blurred the lines a little over the years in the employee/employer relationship and while I certainly recognize the benefits of team work and goal setting I remember that team owners fire coaches and players with equal enthusiasm.
I currently have a great job with one of, if not the best helicopter operations in the world. Having worked for too many helicopter operators to list including my own companies I can speak with some authority on company comparisons. Like most companies the down turn in the economy has had its negative effects but all things considered we as a company, are doing well.
I was talking to one of our management folks the other day and mentioned that, while part of our operation is supplying services to resource based industries, we also do a lot of business based on disasters – flood, hurricanes, fires and you name it. I am always careful not to bemoan a slow start to the fire season. Its bad JuJu, Karma or what ever you may believe to wish for something that will occur soon enough.
All this gets me back to what my first employer told me and the problems that arise when I as a pilot, go from slow times to full tilt for about 5 months of the year. My company does particularly well at spreading our business eggs around the globe but I do mostly firefighting for the company and as such I coast for about 4 months, go balls to the wall for 3 months , lay back for a month, coast for 2 months and go full tilt for another 2 months. Sometimes. Some years its more, some years its less.
My company needs me to be able to work the long days and short nights when the need is there. A long day in my line of work is about 15 hours long. Do a week of that and you get to work 105 hours that week. Is it safe to fly on fires for a week putting in 105 hours of duty and perhaps as much as 70 hours of flying ? The fact is, that there is no way of answering that question. There are so many factors that go into a week of firefighting that what can look like a ridiculously tough week may be turn out to be the best week of duty that whole year.
After 34 years of flying helicopters and much of it firefighting I have learned to pace myself, eat properly, drink seldom or in moderation and get rest when ever the circumstance allows. I know myself and that means both my strengths and weaknesses. Can anyone legislate a flight and duty time that works for all circumstances. No, not ever. We do the best we can as pilots, or we should, to be there at a 100% when  our employer needs us  but our employer has the more difficult task of balancing the need for safety and profit.
A tired pilot makes mistakes but so does a barely current pilot. On a recent week long fire event I mentioned to the crew that morning that we were in the most dangerous phase of our operation. Mop up or wind down. When the risks are high and everyone is fresh we all tend to work at full capacity and ability. When the adrenaline flow has ebbed and we are a bit tired and the duty has become mundane, that is when we are at our greatest risk.
We all agreed and then proceeded to make a small error. No harm done and our senses and focus were back with confirmation proven that we could not tolerate any distraction from the task at hand.
I had flown about 60 hours in the past week and all of it except this mornings efforts were on fairly intense firefighting operations. Could we have lessened our risk by not working a 105 hour work week? Yes. Could the company have provided enough relief crews to support the possibility of a  short term fire event ? No.
Can companies afford to crew aircraft for every possibility and still remain competitive? No.  My boss was right 34 years ago and not too much has changed in our industry as far as the feast or famine nature of our business.
In the past we have operated three pilot operations for most remote firefighting contracts and if I was to make a suggestion it would be to return to that format. When you work two days on and one off you get a rest day and when the major fire events occur its all hands on deck if possible and the duty goes as well as can be expected.
I have been a chief pilot, general manager, owner and line pilot and it is in that last capacity that I hope to remain for the duration of my career. I don’t envy managers the decisions that they have to make but I am confident that I work for one of the best operated helicopter companies in the world. They will get it right.

         


I seem to have hit a nerve
Heligypsy — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 04:40:37 +0000
I wrote a blog a while ago about some firefighting I did in Northern Saskatchewan . I worked in many small towns and villages and most of them were pleasant experiences. A few towns were less than pleasant and one of them was Buffalo Narrows.
http://heligypsy.wordpress.com/2008/07/23/same-tribe-different-town
I referred to Buffalo Narrows as the shithead capitol of Northern Saskatchewan. That is how I perceived the place in 1989. I find that my perception of places is colored not so much by what I see, but from the people I meet in the place I am visiting.
Buffalo Narrows has no doubt changed over the years and perhaps for the better. I received several invitations to visit Buffalo Narrows to reacquaint myself with the area or to receive the beating I deserved for maligning the town.
To the few people who offered to show me around and allow me to view the town they love, Thank You. If I am ever back your way I’ll do just that.
To the vast majority of you who cursed me, threatened me, questioned my sobriety and my inability to date native women and accused me of using an alias, well what can I say. You are still very much like most of the foul mouthed drunks I met walking the streets of your sad little town.
Keith Gill

         


The Start and Finish
Heligypsy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 13:07:01 +0000
Our S-64 Air Crane had been checked and made ready for the first fire call of the day, if it was ever to come. Time now, to get into the books, flight manuals, study guides, or maybe less demanding pursuits.  Standing by for fires is an activity where you get out of it what you put in. You can do as much or as little as you want with the 12 hours you spend living one minute away from your helicopter.
This morning I was reading a helicopter magazine and the author of this particular article was talking about low time pilot jobs. He correctly mentioned that agricultural flying was sometimes an option for low time pilots and then went on to incorrectly identify that type of flying as easy and basic. I laughed out loud, reading his assessment of ag. flying, as easy.
The other Captain on our three or four person flight crew heard me and asked what I had found so amusing?
This other Captain has a similar aviation background to my own. We both flew crop spraying helicopters in the early days of our careers. Although we both have flown a lot of  different types of helicopters all over the world in a wide variety of missions we both agree that some of our ag. flying was and still is flying, that is anything but easy. Between the two of us we have well over 30,000 hours in helicopters and several thousand hours of ag. time.
“This guy, has obviously never flown any ag” the other Captain laughed, referring to the author and calling him something I will not write here.
I mentioned that this was not the first time I had read or heard somebody describing crop spraying as an easy low time pilot’s job.
Let me tell you that the only thing easy about crop spraying is that it is easy to get yourself killed at the start of your career. I talked to a young lady this year whose husband, a low time pilot, was contemplating taking a job spraying seed and sweet corn in Illinois for the summer.
I tempered my comments with the knowledge that she would be the person waiting each night for her husband’s return. I hope the young man finds a good mentor in the company he is off to fly for this summer.
I had a great mentor on my second crop spraying job, back when I had about five hundred hours. My boss was funny, crude as hell and a veteran of years of crop spraying .He told you something only once, demonstrated the flying , if he thought it merited the time and money and then cut you loose with the same unnecessary warning I have heard many times.
“Try not to kill yourself”
When the time came for my old boss to call it a career in the ag business he walked away from flying and never looked back or so he said and so we all believed. In actual fact he been dropping back into the ag business in the summer and doing some spraying for a company that had contracts on seed and sweet corn.
My old mentor missed seeing a wire in a field of corn in Illinois. He crashed and died.
It might not be the same company but it will certainly be the same level of risk for this young pilot. I didn’t need to tell the lady, that piece of information and if her husband took the job I hope he gets as good a teacher as the one I had. The same man, who for whatever reason could not heed his own advice about “walking away and not looking back.”

         


Following Along
Heligypsy — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 19:38:12 +0000
The G.P.S. unit installed in our S-61 helicopter was state of the art. The company had spent a lot of money to make sure that we would always know where we were and for good reason. The mission was in the high Arctic and we would be flying our helicopter to dozens of remote fuel caches dotted over the Arctic Islands. In the Arctic, airports are very few and far between and we would be flying for much of the time with only sporadic HF radio contact and a satellite phone.

My first tours of the Arctic back in the early 70’s had been with HF radio coverage as well but navigation was mostly pilotage and believe it or not a sextant! I always consider my years spent flying off charts only, to be a bonus. When you rely on GPS almost solely for your navigation information, you can find yourself in a world of hurt when the GPS fails.
On this particular day we had a very long leg to fly from Resolute Bay to a fuel cache on an island about 320 miles to the North. It was Arctic spring weather with a ceiling of about 300 feet and a temperature dew point spread that had to be pretty close. Forward visibility was about 2 miles in light wet snow and we found ourselves diverting around foggy patches across the ice flows and open water. Our island fuel cache was about 50 miles ahead and we had used a bit more fuel than planned.
The  GPS decided to quit. Resetting and cycling the GPS was of no use. Continuing on the same heading should have us arriving on the shoreline of the island but if we got a wind shift missing the island would be bad news. A compass is useless in the Arctic so a heading for us meant not diverting too much from the direction we had been pointing when the GPS failed. Diverting for low weather was going to be tricky. The chart was no use because the Arctic Ocean was a featureless expanse of nothing. As we approached where the island should be, ice rifts kept popping into view that had us thinking the island shore line was just ahead. White on white makes ice and land look pretty much the same. I had a small hand held GPS back in my helmet bag minus the “AA” batteries that I should have purchased back in civilization. The crew chief was rifling through spares boxes as we flew along and in a few minutes he had found the batteries. The shoreline was in view and the chart was in my hand. I handed over flight control to the other pilot and studied the chart and shoreline.
” Right turn” I said over the intercom.
“Are you sure”?, the other pilot answered. I was and as we moved eastward along the shoreline I knew what the other pilot was concerned about. We didn’t really have enough fuel remaining to be going the wrong way. My backup GPS was now working and naturally it was taking some time to acquire itself. The last time my little GPS had been turned on it, was 3000 miles south of our present position.  I looked up ahead and told the other pilot that the bay coming into view was where our fuel cache of jet fuel drums sat waiting. As we turned into the bay the spot marked on the chart revealed no fuel drums in sight. The look from the other pilot said it all. I was staring at the shoreline and quickly inputting the coordinates for the fuel cache on my back up GPS at the same time. The GPS confirmed that I had indeed navigated us to the right spot, but it was looking like cold comfort as we stared down at the snow and ice still sitting deep on the shore of the bay.
“There”! , the mechanic shouted as he looked out one of the side windows of the S-61. “I can see barrels just barely sticking of the snow.
”  It was going to take a lot of digging and ice chipping to get the barrels free but with all the adrenaline surging through our veins we would have all the energy we needed to get the drums out. A couple of hours later with the 61 refueled we were on our way. The fancy GPS never worked again but my little hand held, taped to the top of the instrument panel, worked like a charm. We flew for the next three weeks all over the Arctic working some long days and man handling a lot of fuel drums. The fuel caches were always where the GPS said they would be. I noticed however, that whenever the other pilot was not on the flight controls, he was definitely following our flight path on the chart as a backup to the GPS. Always a good idea, I think.

         


A few problems with the hydraulics
Heligypsy — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 20:21:20 +0000
I wrote a blog previously about hydraulic failures. The blog was technical and hypothetical in nature. It can make for dull reading and many helicopter pilots still regard hydraulic failures as a minor problem in some aircraft. Certain helicopters will fly perfectly fine with hydraulic failures and malfunctions that can be easily isolated. This blog is about some failures that were anything but dull and in a couple of the emergencies I am fortunate to be here to tell the story.
Quite a number of years back when I flew a Bell 47 mosquito spraying, the local residents of the city had become pretty used to my early morning flights over the parks and ravines. We were spraying a mist of a mosquito adulticide that has since been banned. Spraying the material now would probably get me about 30 days in the electric chair but it was effective and  that was what mattered.
This particular morning I had blown a hydraulic line while spraying and the high pressure hydraulic leak was squirting directly onto the Bell’s red hot turbo charger with spectacular effect. I had detected the problem in a turn and radioed the control tower that I was returning to base. The tower spotted me and asked me if I was aware that I was on fire.
“Well I am not on fire yet “I responded,” but I would appreciate a straight in without delay to my base for landing” “The tower wondered if I might be inclined to declare an emergency and request crash rescue ? I told the tower that I would soon be out of hydraulic fluid and as long I kept my speed up I was pretty sure I wouldn’t start burning. I should have availed myself of the emergency services and back then as a fledgling pilot I was probably more afraid of explaining to my boss about the declared emergency than I was  about burning up.
It all worked out OK and my chief pilot commented on seeing my little air show on his way into work that morning. He had a few other comments as well but nothing that I can write here.
A few years later another hydraulic failure in an S-55,(Sikorsky) required no emergency call either.  It started and ended in about 3 seconds and this time my youth was an asset. I had just passed over the power lines on a descent into a field to finish my last pass on the headlands of a corn field. The trees of the headland were on my right and I was just about to boom on when the cyclic pulled out of my hand and slammed against my left knee. I was pulling collective, rolling in throttle, pulling on the cyclic and switching to auxiliary hydraulics at a speed that only adrenaline and youth can perform. The cyclic that I was pulling on with who knows how many pounds force snapped free and I almost snap rolled the old S-55 into the trees on my right side. Good thing for me that the S-55 rotor system is slow or I would have topped the trees on my way out of the field.
The S-55’s don’t fly around much anymore but a turbine version almost got me with a hydraulic failure a year later. I had an uncommanded series of inputs while water bucketing on a fire. Isolating the primary hydraulics got me flying back straight and level and after consultation with maintenance we decided that since neither hydraulic system was acting up currently, perhaps I could fly the hundred miles plus back to the main hangar. It was a dumbass decision and my finger hovered over the hydraulics switch all the way to the base.
Maintenance could simulate a less spectacular hydraulic spasm with the hydraulic mule hooked up to the helicopter as it sat on the hangar floor. Several parts were replaced and the helicopter was returned to service with the mandatory test flight and sign off to be performed by the same dumbass that had flown the ship back the day before.
I asked for a mechanic to accompany me on the flight and the director of maintenance cast a glance around the hangar at the rest of the mechanics who were looking intensely busy. Since I only needed someone to watch a couple of gauges the D.O.M sent our most junior and I suspect expendable apprentice.
The helicopter was rolled to the fuel pumps in front of the office and with nothing but fear and suspicion to stop us we started the helicopter.
Almost immediately I could feel a feedback in the flight controls that while not severe, was definitely not right. The mechanic, who was in addition,  a low time helicopter pilot, asked for the controls to see what I was sensing. He thought what we had was just air in the system and wanted to do a short flight. I thought that his desire to get some stick time was overriding his better judgment and told him so.
We agreed on a run up to 100% to see if the feedback would became more or less pronounced. I felt about the same level of feedback and the young mechanic, pilot, was now manipulating the cyclic  and trying to negotiate for a check flight about the time the cyclic slammed hard over to the right .
The cyclic returned to center as quickly as it had gone hard over and we shut the helicopter down a millisecond later. Had we elected to lift off we probably would have ended up in the front office of the hangar.
The helicopter was successfully returned to service a couple of days later but I never ever relaxed in the S-55T.
A few years later I had another hydraulic failure in the S-55T . Add to that,a  couple of engine failures in the same type S-55T and I finally convinced myself to stop flying the type. I have had several more hydraulic failures in Bell products and others including two in the always challenging A-Star or Squirrel but that’s stories for other blogs.