Night Cross-Country Solo - a.k.a Heaven & Hell

Flight #: 125 Commercial VFR61
Aircraft: Robinson R22
Aircraft ID: N2223p
Duration, as PIC: 3.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 157.4hrs

First of all, I love night flying. On a clear night you can see incredible distances and you get to see amazing views of the city, towns and roads. Purely awe inspiring.

There are, obviously, negatives to night flight:

• emergency landing spots - hard to see good ones... simple as that.
• clouds / mist - again, hard to see them.
• obstacles - yet again, can't to see them in time.
  
• distance estimation - at night, your depth perception is off... so it is hard to judge distances and altitudes. Coming in to land is rather tricky as you can't really tell where the ground is. All you get to see is two hyper-bright spots where your headlights meet the ground. I happen to come in to a high hover each time. Practice.
• weird wind patterns - as the earth cools down, you get some changes in wind... and as I found out on this flight... it can be a really big deal.
  

So, lets talk about the flight... in general a really good flight. The flight down had great visibility, a little bit of turbulence in the known spot where 26E meets 217S, but nothing to write home about. Kept the helicopter controls loose and under 60kias, went right on through just fine.

On the way down I decided to make a quick approach at Aurora (KUAO) airport. I've had a few approaches here in the past, but this was my first at night, so I felt relatively comfortable with the layout of the airfield.

I have to mention one of my favorite things about night flights... pilot controlled lighting. Basically, airport landing lights are just for aircraft landing at that local airport. No other reason for them. So, when there are no aircraft, no point for them to be on. Most airports will power down their lighting systems after XX minutes of innactivity on the radio. Basically, everything goes dark. (Except the airport beacon... you can see that flashing white-green from miles away.)

So, at night, on a speficic communications frequency, you can click your mic and turn on/off the airport lights. 3-clicks within 5 seconds = low intensity. 5 clicks within 5 seconds = medium intensity. 7 clicks within 5 seconds = high intensity.

There is something incredibly cool to be flying along... know the general location of the airport (from the rotating beacon), clicking your mic 7 times, then all of a sudden a full airport lighting system comes on to welcome you. Obviously the bigger the airport, the cooler it is... but still, even at a little airport like Aurora... it is cool.

So, as long as nobody is near the airport with me... I will put the lights on full for an approach. After I turn downwind, put them on low (or off), then put them back on high as I turn base. Kind of childish, I suppose. But it is really cool to turn final and click on the lights and see it just jump up out of nowhere.

Cheap date.

After departure, I headed down to Salem (KSLE). Salem is a Class-Delta airspace, so you are required to get permission to enter their airspace. It is good practice to enter these airspace from time to time. Luckily, Hillsboro is also a Delta airspace, so I'm used to the back and forth communications. On the way in they had me come in rather close to the runway and I obliged. They then told me that if I could make it, I was able to do a quick / hard right turn... followed by a hard left to make a direct in approach to the runway. Being a helicopter, this was no issue. I did a few approaches, and then headed down to Albany (KSLE)

This is where the fun began. Another Hillsboro student / CFI were doing their first night cross country flight here, and I could recognize their voices. I joined the pattern and made a few appraoches, but also noticed that there was another helicopter on the ground, in front of the 24 hr, self-serve fuel pump. No big deal... happens all the time. I'd just wait my turn.

Well, as it turns out, this person happened to have an overspeed. A serious overspeed during the run-up after getting fuel and could not fly the helicopter from that point on. Why? Well, lemme tell you. Pull up a chair, sit back...

The main rotor blades are mounted to the mast via a series of bearings and hinges. The outward force, directed along the length of the blade, is proportional to the speed at which the blades rotate around the central hub. The faster the rotation, the more force there is trying to pull the blades out of the hub. To allow the pilot to still be able to conrol the pitch of the rotor blades with the cyclic, there have to be bearings at that rotor/hub junction. Apply too much force at that joint, you could have blade seperation (rare) or serious damage to the bearing itself (common). This damage is called Brinelling. Think of it as the internal hub bearings being stressed to the point where they either crush, or dent the inner/outer surfaces of the bearing itself. Basically... bad. Real bad thing to have happen to you.

If you get an overspeed with 100% - 104% rotor RPM, things are egenerally fine. The helcopter (Robinson R22) can take it... and you don't have much to be concerned about. 104% - 110%, you need to shut down, and have the helicopter inspected. >110%... is really bad. Basically, the aircraft it completly torn down, and sometimes requires that the ship be sent back to the factory for an overhaul. At that speed, they have to check, not only the rotor blades, bearings and hub, but they have to check every bit of the drive train as well. Everything has to be going over-max speed to get the rotors going that fast.

Lets just say, you do not want an overspeed of any kind. Definitely not one >110%. This one was "well above 110%". The result of all of this... that helicopter was not going to be moving from the spot that it was in... directly in front of the refueling station. Which meant... I was not going to be refueling the helicopter at Albany as planned.

So, I headed back to Salem to refuel. Certain Delta airports close down at certain times... Salem shuts down, converts to Echo airspace, at 10:30pm. The first time I was here, it was a Delta airspace, now it was Echo. Basically, no tower to help me find the fuel pump.

So, being a helicopter, it really is not that big of a deal... you just go searching. Off in the distance I found a nice, bit BP sign and headed that way. As it turns out, this is a mega-self-service pump with multiple hoses, and the other student/CFI who I saw in Albany were there doing the same thing. We chatted a bit, stretched and refueled.

By the way, the seats in the R22 suck. After about 90 minutes, your ass is numb. But, you are flying a helicopter... so things could be worse.

I finished up first, and headed out... back to Hillsboro. Back with the pilot controlled lighting. But, this time, I was at a big airport, with real lights and approach lighting systems. So, 7-clicks, and the world just lit up. Taxiway lights, approach lighting systems, all kinds of cool stuff. Thrills!

Headed north, as usual. Now, as I mentioned before, wind gets a little weird at night around here. I expected to run into a few bumps on my way back when I hit the 217N & I5N intersection. And boy did I.

I am, in general, not a motion sick kind of person. I have been on plenty of boats, car rides, airplane rides to know what turbulence is... how you just have to take your knocks... and move on. This was different. I was sick as a dog - this was horrible. I can honestly say, I have never been in such a bad batch of turbulence in my life... let along behind the stick at the time. After the fact I checked the wind in the area (local airports had minimal wind), but right at that spot... 20knot gusts. PDX, after I landed, had 30 knot gusts. Now, that kind of wind sucks in general... let alone in a tiny R22.

I swear I was getting knocked around like I was in a inflatable raft on the open ocean. I would yaw 30º in either direction. +50 feet, -50 feet in altitude. My speed would jump from 60kias to 40kias in a second.... then jump up to 75kias. Really, sucked. About halfway in, I had to make a real decision about what I was going to do. Would I make an emergency landing? What if I puked? Finally I decided to pick out two points of decent spot for an emergency landing. If I made it to the first, I would pick one just on the other side of the second and limp my way along. If I puked... I would just do it right in my own lap, and clean up afterwards. Twice I thought... "Ok, this is it... I'm going to boot."

Now, everyone knows that fresh air helps when you are nauseous. What about 2º air at approximately 60 knots? Sure, it helps, but you freeze too. So, I opted for uncontrollable shivering rather than puking on myself. Nice choices.

Anyway, I made it back to the airport safe... which, in the end, is all that matters. But, it sucked.

I landed, post-flighted the helicopter, and stuffed the helicopter log-book into a door slot and went home. Sandy greeted me at the door and said I looked "really green, are you OK?".

As Sandy pointed out, there is a good thing as a result of the last 15 minutes of flight... "You know your limit now... you can do it again if you had to, and you know the outcome." She is absolutely right.

I would certainly never intentionally go through that again, but if circumstances forced me there again, I'd make it through. Puke / Emergency free.












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Long cross-country to the coast...

Flight #: 116 [Commercial VFR61]
CFI: Kristie E.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N779SH
Duration, as PIC: 4.1hrs
Cumulative Time: 142.0hrs

I'm going to do this blog post with minimal text. Just three words to describe it:

IT
WAS
AWESOME

Leg 1 of 3: Hillsboro (KHIO) to Tillamook (KTMK)

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Leg 2 of 3: Tillamook (KTMK) to Independence (7S5)

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Leg 3 of 3: Independence (7S5) to Hillsboro (KHIO)
Sadly, the battery in my iPhone died. Have to fake it a bit.

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I own the night...

Flight #: 56
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N2223P
Duration: 3.0hrs Night
Cumulative Time: 65.5.hrs

Last night was my first real night flight. Kristie actually took me out for a night-ish run into Portland as a "tour". But, I was really a passenger only, as that was my 2nd flight.

This was all me, and it was breathtaking. No other word for the experience. Not only am I flying a helicopter... I'm flying it at night, and looking at some fantastic scenery at the same time. Kristie had mentioned that night flying was cool, and the navigation was pretty simple when over populated areas... "you just follow roads".

And she was right. The image above is not mine, and it is not from this flight - it was just ripped from the web, but this is exactly what it looked like. Roads are very visible from the air. Street lights, yes... but the car lights are perfect. Red, they are going away from you. White, headed your direction. Kind of obvious, but it lets you know exactly what side of the road you are on.

Towns show up as pretty well defined clusters of light. Airports and other aircraft are very visible. Just a great experience.

There were three distinct parts to this journey:

Part 1: South - Hillsboro (KHIO) to Albany, OR (S12)
We left Hillsboro at 8:13pm (end of civil twilight), which when a night flight officially can start. Wind was calm and traffic was pretty light. We headed north to Rt. 26 and followed that East. I had completed a flight plan, and that had me flying all the way east to I-5, which we would then follow south to Albany, but, as we crossed 217 South Kristie diverted me down 217. Not a problem, they both meet up, and I knew that.

It was incredibly cool to follow the traffic like that. Roads were very visible and it was obvious where we were headed. I had chose to fly at 1500ft for the trip, mainly cause I thought it would have been easier to see features, lights, etc... but I could have been at 5000ft and not missed a thing. I stuck to 1500ft anyway. It was amazing what I could see... a few cops busting people for speeding, etc. No wonder they use aircraft to catch speeders... EASY, and and they never know you are there.

Radio communication as perfect this flight for me... no flubs at all.

As we passed Aurora (KUAO) we got to try out the pilot activated lighting system. This is feature of may airports that allows the pilot to tune to the common traffic frequency and then turn on/off/up/down the runway lights. All you have to do is to toggle your mic on/off.

3 clicks in 5 seconds = Lights on Low
5 clicks in 5 seconds = Lights on Medium
7 clicks in 5 seconds = Lights on High

It is pretty cool to flying along and then click you mic 7 times and have a runway appear out of nowhere. Chasing "rabbit" lights and all.

Did a few patterns on Albany on the way in. Night certainly messes with your depth perception, I came in too high for two approaches. Finally figured it out, but took me two go-arounds.



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Part 2: Refueling in Albany, OR (S12)

Don't know why I thought this was so cool, but I do. Self service helicopter refueling. Albany, shown here, has their own self-service fuel service.

You just follow the blue signs that say "Fuel" and land in front of the pump, shut down and head on over with your credit card.

It asks you to first ground the helicopter, then to verify the fuel type. Once you verify this, you enter the # of gallons you want, and you are off to the races. Pretty much the same as a standard gas pump, except you have a 75 foot hose to use.

When you are done with the fill-up, you press a button to retract the heavy spool of hose, hang up the nozzle, and then unhook the grounding wire. That's it. Simple, fast... and fun.









Part 3: North - Albany, OR (S12) to Portland Downtown Heliport (61J) to Hillsboro (KHIO)

The flight back was pretty uneventful. Straight and level for most of the flight, until we got to the edge of downtown Portland. You need a 3 hour night flight for your certification, and we would have made it back in about 2.6hrs... so Kristie diverted me to the downtown heliport. Flying over the city at night is about 50x more impressive than flying over towns. Plus Portland has the river and 5 bridges to look at.

The approach to the heliport is a little tricky as it is located on the roof of a paring garage. So, it's not like you have 2000ft to pick your spot. You have a 50ft circle you need to land in.

I came in too high... surprise, and we did a go around. It is a little different in downtown Portland, since you don't want to be over the river, and you want to avoid buildings and cranes. So, it took a little distance for us to get in the right setup again. But, I did, and we landed nicely.

Takeoff was also different. Kind of feels like you are jumping off a cliff... the heliport disappears from underneath you after about 2 seconds. So, we did a max-performance takeoff and headed back to Hillsboro.

Ride back was quiet and simple. Straight in to runway 20, and hover taxi over Alpha taxiway to parking. Very quiet at the airport... nobody home. We were the only ones there. It was 11:20 after all.


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Night flying is absolutely amazing. Coolest thing I've done in a helicopter to date.

Have to knock out another 1.2 hrs of ramp-solo flying soon. That is going to be boring after all the cool stuff in the past few flights.

Double Block

Flight #: 025
CFI: Kristie H.
Aircraft: Robinson R22 Beta II
Aircraft ID: N8340S
Duration: 2.4hrs
Cumulative Time: 27.0hrs

We had a double block (2 x 2hr) of flights today. That affords you so much more time to practice and enjoy yourself. So, we flew on up to Scapoose, OR and did our patterns there. Was great since it was a 7am flight and we were the only people in Scapoose until about 9am.

Got in another first today. Refueling away from home. Sounds silly and trivial, but it was a milestone for me. Felt like getting gas on a long road trip. Get to stretch your legs, check out new scenery.

Just a fun day.