Sick as a dog!

Well, did not do my stage 1 check at all. Short story, I've been incredibly sick for the past 3 days. Dual ear-ache, one ruptured ear drum, sore throat and body aches that would bring down an elephant. Ugh. This sucks.

Not sure when I'm going to be able to re-schedule this... this really sucks.

61N, you are on my list!

Punk-ass 61N. No flight today because the punk wouldn't start. Totally killed the battery (which was almost dead already) trying to start it. Called line service to help jump it... and that failed too.

It sucks to be grounded by weather, but it happens and you can't do anything about it. To be grounded because the machine won't start... that just burns.

Squawk, trend, trend

While today was probably the least fulfilling flight-wise, it was interesting none the less.

I was lucky enough to get two flight slots today, and even got two patterns to top it all off.

During the run up procedures before a flight, there is a safety check for the altimeter. The reason this check is in place is that you need to accurately know your altitude throughout the flight. The field altitude of airports is generally known, but since helicopters can land almost anywhere, you can't always know how high above ground level (AGL) or above mean sea level (MSL) you actually are.

The test consists of adjusting the Kollsman knob to calibrate the device to actual air pressure, right now, and then read the altitude. In our case, the altimeter read approximately 100ft. HIO is 208ft MSL. The test just showed us that when set to the actual outside air pressure the helicopter sitting at 208ft thinks it is at 100ft. Thats pretty bad. The limit for mis-calibrated altimeter is 75ft.

Now, when our altimeter is calibrated to have less than 75ft error, we then re-calibrate it to actual field elevation... since we know that for a fact and choose to trust that more. When it is more than 100ft, well, we just don't know what is wrong. Question is... do we need our altimeter? Is is required equipment for VFR Day Flights?

Glad you asked. Yes. Like in every field, there are mnemonics and acronyms to help you remember required lists. In this case, the mneumonic for VFR Day Required Equipment is: CAMALSFOOT.

• C: Compas
• A: Altimeter
• M: Manifold Pressure Gauge
• A: Airspeed Indicator
• L: Lights, for night
• S: Safety Belt
• F: Fuel Gauge
• O: Oil Pressure
• O: Oil Temperature
• T: Tachometer

Altimeter is in that list... so if it's not working... we're not flying... and we squawked it.


Later on in the day we had another flight. During the pre-fight check I came to the clutch actuator. This is the component that tightens the V-Belt that transfers engine power to the rotors. This one was leaking grease, not just a little, but significantly. Now, there is no rule or acronym here... just common sense. If your clutch bearing is leaking grease... don't fly it.

Trend it.

Just to be a good citizen I finished out the pre-flight check... plus it had been a while since I completed one and I wanted to keep on my game. I also found that he white position light on the tail was burned out.

Trend it.


At this point, it was too late to transfer to another helicopter. So, I headed home.

Mystery Fog / Ground Training

Today was planned as a flight, but we were grounded due to very heavy fog. Odd thing is that the fog was only around the airport. The drive to the airport was beautiful... I could actually see early morning stars.

Perhaps it was the fact that we were not scheduled on 61N, perhaps just unlucky. I did get a chance to do the pre-flight tho... which is certainly helping my part-location-accuracy and efficiency getting things completed correctly.

Afterwards we grabbed about an 1.5 hrs of ground training. Topics were around aerodynamics, and emergency recovery.

We have an evening slot planned for some flights... since today looks both calm and clear.

KHIO 151722Z 00000KT 1 1/2SM -RA BR BKN003 BKN030 OVC075 11/11 A2978 RMK AO2 P0002

The VFR (Visual Flight Rules) require that we have 3SM (Statute Mile) visibility and a 1000ft cloud level before we can fly. And, well... we didn't get that this morning. If you look at the Title above, you can see a METAR for KHIO you will see:

1 1/2SM : 1.5 Statute Mile Visibility
RA BR BKN003: Rain, Mist, Broken Cloud Layer @ 300ft

Basically... no fly.

We did, however, get in 2.0 hrs of ground instruction in. While not as thrilling as flying, I need this time. Apparently it can be really ugly if all the flight training is done up front. Not only will you have to catch up with 35 hrs of ground time in a row, but you will most likely have to put in extra flight time at then end to brush up before your FAA test. So, every rainy, grey Oregon cloud has a silver lining.

In the interim, I asked my bro, Charlie to add something for me to Google's SMS toolset. You may already know that you can send SMS messages to GOOGLE (466453) with a bunch of keywords... and it will SMS you back the answer.

Since all pilots have to check the weather, how cool would it be to SMS Google with a metar khio and have it send you an SMS:
KHIO 151722Z 00000KT 1 1/2SM -RA BR BKN003 BKN030 OVC075 11/11 A2978 RMK AO2 P0002

Every pilot would use it!

Please Charlie! You OWE me.

Squawk or Trend?

S q u a w k !

For a bit of background:

A squawk is the term for a maintenance issue of significant size to effect the air worthiness of an aircraft. Think, fuel line leak or crack/dent in the tail boom. Basically, a big deal.
A trend is a maintenance issue to note that does not effect anything significant on the aircraft. A rattle in the cockpit or night-time running lights being out during daytime operation.

Anyway, today was rather messy weather-wise - lots of ground fog. The entire airport was grounded at 7am. So, while we were waiting for things to clear up, Kristie ran me through the pre-flight check procedures for a Robinson R22. This involves checking and touching every control surface for cracks and deformations, testing each and every flight control fastener, and sampling fuel at various stages in the fuel system. It also involves reviewing the maintenance folder for the helicopter. This particular helicopter had 2 trend forms attached. See if you can guess why we chose not to fly today:

Trend #1: "Cracks in main rotor belt. Felt nail underneath."

Trend #2: "Main engine gasket leaking oil. Oil spraying all over carburettor and electrical system. Possible electrical system and/or engine fire."

First of all, we noticed nothing like this in the pre-flight inspection. Not even a hint of a leak or a crack. However, someone chose to notify maintenance of this, and we were not about to fly with that type of trend. Second, and more importantly, this is clearly not a trend at all... this is a major squawk and the aircraft should not be flying. This was confirmed in 5 seconds from the maintenance crew chief after reading the records. Someone is going to get their butt chewed over this.

Anyway, I did get about 1 hour of ground training out of this. Unfortunately I did not get to fly to the PDX heliport. Hopefully tomorrow afternoon. We did get up on the big board.



I did, however, test out my new headset. It is quite obvious that the best is the best for a reason. In the off position, headset decreased ambient noise by about 75%. When I switched on the ANC (Active Noise Cancellation) circuit I might as well have been on the moon. Silence.