Arm Yourself

In July 1999, in keeping with my migrant helicopter worker tradition, I moved to Reno Nevada. I left a Fox TV news helicopter job in Houston Texas for an upgrade to my first multi-engine helicopter opportunity. For an extra $250 a month, I moved on to bigger and better things. The job would have me flying the MD-900 NOTAR helicopter, and the AS-355 Twin Star, in support of the REMSA Careflight program based at a couple of local Reno hospitals. Initially I flew the twin Star, later the 900.

Careflight N901CF Helicopter at Washoe Medical Center Helipad

I liked my job flying helicopters in Houston. I loved the machine, a B2 A-Star. I loved the young CFI's that worked there as part of a flight school, training international students. To this day, those CFI's remain some of my best friends in the whole world. I even enjoyed the incredible naivete of the Japanese students attending the flight school. Almost nightly, the now deceased owner of the company, a Scotsman from Aberdeen named Robin, treated us to a few rounds of drinks at Molly's Irish pub. Robin always had a huge tumbler of gin poured for him by the attentive staff. Usually, we could drink as much as we liked until he finished his second tumbler. Then he would close out his tab and we were on our own. 

Don't be such a pussy

Unfortunately there was one person there who I did not like. For all the positives, there ALWAYS has to be an equal and opposite negative. Like Newtons 5th Law or something. Shawn, the D-bag morning news pilot, was the worst example of piloting, and I dare say, humanity, I have ever seen. After a lengthy discussion in which I confronted him about some issues we were having, I considered punching him in the throat. Actually, I should have followed through with the blow, but when you see a grown man run into the corner and cower like a bunny rabbit, you realize that you would be somehow diminished if you kicked his ass. Kind of like abusing a mentally challenged person, or a fixed wing pilot. Yeah you'd kick their butt, but you'd feel dirty afterwards. My decision was made. I will not work in this environment, so I moved on.

Upon arriving in Reno, "The Biggest Little City in the World," I promptly began my training in the Twin Star. After some hair-raising night training using the Night Sun external light, in some of the darkest terrain I have ever seen, I was signed off for EMS operations. 

Early on, during my fist day of duty, the pager goes off. We have a scene flight to a highway accident location on I-80, east of Reno. During the short flight to the location, the crew advises me there are a lot of accidents at this particular spot. For a very long distance, way east of Reno, maybe 100 miles, I-80 runs due west, straight as an arrow. Then, not far from town, the highway makes a significant curve to the south. Apparently, people fall asleep after the long, long straightaway and run off the curve, causing a rollover accident.

a random helicopter scene landing

I land in the center of the eastbound lane, facing west due to the winds, my tail pointed at the scene. Numerous law enforcement, EMS, and fire units are on scene with many people gathered around the '80's model car, laying upside down in the ditch. My crew advises me it will be a prolonged extraction of the sole female occupant. I decide to shut down the aircraft and walk over to assist my crew. I no sooner exit the helicopter, walk past the tail, when I am met by two fire fighters. They ask me if I have a cooler. A what? A cooler? No. why? How bout ice, they ask? No. What for? The second fire fighter hands me an object wrapped in a garbage bag. For some reason my natural tendency to reach out to what he is handing me is suppressed. I ask, "What is that?" "It's an arm," the fire fighter says. I stand there for what seemed like a minute. I have no idea what my face looked like, but I am sure it registered shock, and awe. I held up a finger, took a knee, and fished a pair of rubber gloves out of my lower flight suit pocket, a trick I learned while in Harlingen Texas, flying EMS. (Always carry gloves!! and a TB mask!!)

I accept the arm. It feels stiff and somewhat cool, not very heavy. I stand there like a moron holding an arm, at arms length. Now my brain is processing, and processing.......hmmm, what do I do with this? After mentally querying my training program, I realize I have no data on where to store severed limbs, so I elect to put it in the aft cargo bay, because it has a really good lock on on it. I reasoned it would be in the way in the cabin, and the other two baggage compartments sometimes pop open in flight. Losing an arm out the cargo door would probably be inappropriate.

The crew, and the attending first responder entourage, arrive and load the patient into the helicopter. During the short flight to Washoe Medical Center, my thoughts drifted back to that arm back in the cargo compartment:

Is it going to spoil?

Will the door pop open allowing the arm to fly out?

If it flies out, will it hit the tail rotor?

I hope it's ok???

I then allow myself to look over the patient. My crew advises me her arm was pinned between the roof of the car and the highway, as it rolled over and slid hundreds of feet into the ditch. My brain goes into MS Windows "safe mode" as I try to imagine what that must've felt like. I look at her face. She's looking at me. She says hello. Oh, how nice. She's awake, with a bandaged stub where her arm used to be, and she has enough courtesy to say hello. She's not complaining, nor is she begging for morphine, she is just quietly enduring her pain, like some Buddhist monk from Tibet.

Even the jaded medical crew was amazed at her demeanor. They remarked how quiet she was and how tough she must have been. Later, after they returned from the ER, I asked about her chances of having the arm reattached. They said oh, the surgeon said it was hamburger, and threw it away.

Side note: Later, during the next 7 years in EMS, I would believe women could endure pain better than men. That is until I picked up an old cowboy, who had is thumb torn off while roping horses. He had a horse roped from his saddle and his thumb got caught against the pommel as the horse reared, pulling his thumb from the socke,t and most of the way off his hand. After hours waiting for his helicopter flight, I then flew this cowboy for over an hour to the Missoula hospital, he never complained once. 

The Stupidest Thing I Have Ever Done

This is not THE stupidest thing I have ever done. Actually, the list is too long to enumerate. This is merely ONE of the stupidest things I have ever done, but I wanted to catch your attention with a flashy headline.



Dateline: Kentucky, 1991.
6th Battalion of the 101st Aviation Regiment was riding high after the stunning success of the Gulf War. Our unit in particular, participated in many historic and record breaking feats during the conflict. Notable among our achievements was the largest helicopter-borne air assault in history. In the first day of the gulf war, our battalion, and the entire aviation brigade, flew over 5000 troops more than 90 miles inside Iraq before 11 am. I was lucky enough to be the flight leader of our company's 9 ship assault formation. By the end of the day, elements of the 101 Airborne Division were looking at the Euphrates River and the main highway from Kuwait to Baghdad, more that 180 miles inside enemy territory. (My oldest son was born 2 days later. I would not receive word of his birth for 7 more days. On the day he was born, we were grounded for a massive sandstorm.)

(News outlet photo)

Our A Company Calling Card

Never in human history has an Army moved so far, under it's own power, in a day. As we encountered enemy resistance, it was crushed with a level of one-sided violence, I had never imagined possible. While our enemy initially put up a fight, the coordinated hell that rained down on them, quickly rendered them combat ineffective. By noon that day, every enemy soldier I saw was either crispy-critter dead or captured.  

My unit was in Iraq and Saudi Arabia from September 1990 to April 1991. Upon returning home we were granted 30 days leave. I spent my leave towing a pop-up camper all over the mountain west, seeing such sights as Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone and Rocky Mountain National Parks. My first born son accompanied me on that trip, he was 4 months old.

(Park File Photo)

After everyone had returned from leave, a process that took months, our unit was back up to full strength. My first assignment was a 2 helicopter deployment to the Kentucky National Guard, assisting their state in its drug interdiction program. We would be temporarily attached to the national guard and placed under the direction of the Kentucky State Police, and various local law enforcement agencies.

With door guns mounted and loaded, we would land at various LZ's, pick up the state troopers and sometimes, national guard troops. We spent the next two weeks performing an aerial search, based on intelligence, trying to locate marijuana plots. We became very good at spotting pot plants from the air. Upon locating such a field, we would either land nearby, or rappel in the troops to begin their seizure of the plants, arresting anyone nearby. My aircraft alone was responsible for harvesting over 5000 plants. Really nice plants.

One day I had to tell my copilot to look out for that B-52. No shit. A B-52 came over a ridge, at tree top level, right at our 12 o'clock. I never thought I'd ever say, "Look out for that B-52."

At one marijuana plot location, the terrain was too steep to land, and we were not rigged for rappelling. Over dense brush and shrubs, I hovered as close as I could to the steep slope. I occupied the left seat and  had a clear view out my window of the uphill side. I lowered the helicopter as much as possible. So low in fact, the massive Huey rotor blades were trimming a shrub to within two feet of the ground. The slope was so steep the landing gear on that side were still 7' off the ground! I informed the troops to exit on the left side and to NOT go uphill due to the rotor being so close to the ground. All but one followed my directions. 3 troops on the left side slid out of the door, onto the skid tube, and hanging from it, they let go and fell the 4-5' to the ground. One trooper, however, elected to exit out of the right door. My faithful and trusty combat copilot that day, John Clements, advised me the last thing he saw was the guys backpack disappearing, as he fell into the brush, far below the right hand side. Hahahaha, dumb-ass.

The troops would then carefully enter the plot, taking great care to watch out for booby traps, and using machetes, they would chop down the crop. Other cops would encircle the plot on ATV's, trying to catch the growers in the area. Our door guns were manned during these assaults, in the event we had to return fire. The troopers would bundle up the plants and we would haul it away as a sling load to collection point, where it was usually destroyed.

Don't smoke pot...see what it does...

One day, after dropping the last load at the collection point, we elected to shut down and chat with the state troopers. Presiding over a massive burn pit, a state trooper with a long marijuana stalk, prodded and poked the fire, ensuring it was all consumed. Walking up to the guy, he regales us saying, "HEY GUYSSSSSS HOW'S IT GOINGGGGGG?" Wait, what? Holy shit. This cop is stoned out of his gourd. Looking closer, he was grinning from ear to ear, with bloodshot eyes. Us pilots stood there quietly snickering at this wasted cop. After about 30 minutes at the fire pit, we were all laughing and goofing off.

A wire strike accident

We remounted our helicopter and prepared for departure. I had the brilliant idea that we should take off and return to do a fly-by down the highway. 90 knots should suffice. Having flown about a mile away, we turned around, dropped down to low level over the highway, and proceeded at maximum speed to buzz the cops at the LZ. Yeehaaa..... they are waving and grinning.....great success!!.....wow, we are soooo awesomely cool. Still grinning, I turned my head to look back out the front windscreen and was startled to find high-tension power lines, stretched across the the highway at eye level, way, way too close to the helicopter. I begin a massive cyclic climb, still at 90 knots plus. I was even more startled to find a 2nd set of wires above the first.  With the cyclic at the aft stop, the helicopter near vertical now, I spy the 3rd set of wires above the rest. We cleared them by about four feet.

My copilot that day, a fresh young WO1, said, "Wow, that was really cool." I looked at him him for a long time, like a giant squid was growing out of his head. The realization dawning on me that this guy had no clue we almost died, not less than 5 seconds ago. I calmly said, "You have the controls." I then sat on my hands for the next 30 minutes till they stopped shaking. (No Joke)

Places I've been

Ok, this should be fun....

I've been to all 50 US States. (the last one was Vermont in 2009)
Canada
Mexico
Honduras
El Salvador
Belgium
Saudi Arabia
Iraq
Germany
Azore Islands (Portugal)
England
Austria
Switzerland
Panama
Dubai
Oman
Afghanistan

Pringles in the Desert

By late summer of 1990 we knew we would be going to war with Iraq. Less than a year with my unit, 6/101 aviation battalion, with the 101st Airborne Division, orders were received to begin preparations for Operation Desert Shield. We spent almost no time training up for the deployment. We mostly received classified briefings on the total awesomeness of the Iraqi Army. Much time was spent (wasted) on the fearsome Republican Guard and the fact they spent ten years in a war of attrition with the Iranian Republic. We knew they had utilized chemical weapons in that war and had experienced leadership. The buildup to deployment left us feeling we were facing a tough enemy, one that had rolled over Kuwait in a day and was poised to enter Saudi Arabia at any moment.

We flew our helicopters to Camp Blanding, Florida. A skeleton crew remained there to fly them to the Port of Jacksonville, for the long sea journey to the Saudi Arabian port city of Dammam. We returned to Fort Campbell, Kentucky via Greyhound buses. Somehow, civilians got wind of of the troop movements and began posting themselves on interstate highway overpasses, cheering on the troops. I had never seen anything like the support of the American people for their troops. At one location, we stopped our bus and got off. People mobbed us, shaking our hands, patting us on the back, completely spontaneous. It would become even more overwhelming later.

We boarded our chartered Boeing 747 for the middle east. First stop Bangor, Maine. We weren't allowed off the plane. They opened the doors and we sat on the ramp for an hour or two while more service members boarded and then we were on our way. The great circle route took us way over the North Atlantic, not far from Greenland and Iceland. We flew over the lights of Dublin, which looked like a night scene right out of J. R. R. Tolkein, with it's street lights radiating out from the city like spokes of a wagon wheel. The flight continued on into Brussels, Belgium for another fuel stop. My first trip across the Atlantic, my first look at Europe. My face was glued to the window. Taking it all in, I was very impressed and mentally recording it all.

No one was allowed off the plane in Brussels, much to our dismay. We had hoped to gulp down a few pints of whatever beer they would sell us. Almost as soon as we were airborne, we had a glimpse of Paris and then the Alps as the sun rose on the 2nd day of our journey. The next few hours of the flight, I will never forget. We flew right down the boot-like eastern cost of Italy, past Rome and across the Mediterranean and onto the African continent. We flew directly over the Nile Delta, right down the Nile River, making a slow bank to the Red Sea. We crossed the Red Sea and entered the Arabian Peninsula. After flying over an endless sea of sand, we finally reached our final destination, King Fahd International Airport (KFIA).

King Fahd Intl. Airport. The parking garage is in the foreground

Nothing could have prepared me for what waited outside the main cabin door of the aircraft. Imagine the blast of heat you get when you open the door to an oven, then you start to get a sense of the heat of the Saudi Arabian desert in August. We recorded temperatures as high as 55 degrees Celsius. That's 133 degrees Fahrenheit!!! As soon as we marched off the plane, we were handed a bottle of water, and placed on a bus for the quick ride to our new accommodations, the 5 level parking garage at KFIA. Myself and Paul Abbott, a fellow Warrant Officer from Seaside, Oregon, shared a parking spot on the ground level, 25 meters from the outer wall.

Port of Dahran

No sooner than we had arrived there, I came down with dysentery. Imagine 2 weeks of diarrhea and a high fever, in 130 degree heat. I spent two weeks laying in my concrete parking spot on a poncho liner, delirious. It was probably due to the three-hole plywood toilets, with no water or way to wash your hands, that gave me the illness. Three men would be sitting inches from each other, defecating into a half sized steel barrel with hundreds of flies buzzing around your eyes and mouth, hungrily awaiting their next meal below. To this day, they were the most horrendous conditions I have ever experienced.  

After numerous immunizations, familiarization flights, and a huge range of experiences, we finally were ordered to the field. The 30 UH-1H helicopters of our battalion, after surviving several Iraqi scud missile attacks, were sent to a position very close to the Iraq border. For the next 5 months we would live in the desert, in tents, usually outside on a cot, sleeping under the glorious stars. We would take cold showers, eating only MRE's, poop in holes we dug in the ground and entertain ourselves with mail and care packages from home.

A camo net system we used

There were other forms of entertainment as well. Since this was our first time out in the great sandy desert, we set out to explore the environment. We had received numerous briefings on desert survival with special attention paid to the various vipers, scorpions and camel spiders. When I saw my first camel spider, I ran back to the camp and never went in that sector again. Scorpions were less scary to me and we took to catching them and placing them in a plastic bucket. They ranged in size from tiny to about 5 inches long. Some were jet black in color and others were a translucent green. Of course later we gathered around the bucket, 5 or 6 of us, poking and prodding the scorpions, encouraging them to fight. They seemed to shy away from each other. We finally determined they needed food to fight over. So we dropped a small lizard into the bucket and yep, sure enough, they did fight over the food, with the dominant scorpion killing and eating the lizard.

During the lizard fight, I took a sharp thorn I had found nearby, and poked John Clements, my copilot for the entire war, in the calf. He jumped and let out a terrified whimper......we almost died laughing. Notably missing from our gladiatorial scorpion fest, was Sgt Newby. Our young Texas crew chief was out on guard duty so we decided he was due for a practical joke.


Our 3 man hex tents were arranged in a circle, with a common area in between. We had built tables and chairs from debris and discarded building materials we had found in Dammam. A large camo net was suspended over our entire camp. Newby, or "Newb" as we called him, came back in the camp and threw off his protective gear. Sitting on the table in the common area, was his particular care package from home. We all received cookies and sundry items from our mothers, or snacks or Gameboys from our sweethearts; you name it. Everyone lived for these little comforts from home. We always shared these items amongst each other. In Newb's case, we had helped ourselves to his tall can of regular Pringles potato chips. Feeling bad for eating the whole can, we replaced what we had eaten with a large, live lizard. As he walked to the table, the first thing Newby picked up was the can of Pringles. He shook it and said, "You fuckers! You ate all my Pringles!" We said no we didn't, there's still some left. In the dusky light of the setting sun, Newby took the lid off and poured the lizard right into his palm. All his muscles locked in total fear, the lizard laying squarely in his palm. Staring at the lizard with his eyes bugging out, he screamed like a little girl. After what seemed like the longest and loudest scream ever, he flung the lizard into the air. We all literally fell down, holding our stomachs laughing to the point of crying.

Dashboard Femur (Warning--Halloween Edition)

Upon my voluntary departure from the Army in July, 1997 I sought the challenges in civilian aviation I thought awaited me. Challenge being the key word. Naturally, I assumed my membership in the elite Nightstalkers guaranteed me a seat in any civilian helicopter in the world. I was wrong. The big problem was making a military resume translate to civilian qualifications which can be understood by a civil aircraft operator. Who understands skill sets that allow you to fly to a target with only a map, stopwatch and compass, arriving over your objective within 30 seconds of your planned time on target, while in formation, under NVG's at night?? Who understands phased fast-rope approaches to an urban target and can apply them to TV news helicopter ops? LOL....it was maddening. I had 1,998 hours at the time.

Radio Shack TRS-80 Computer like we used in my 7th Grade computer programming class

My first problem was even locating civilian flying jobs. I had no contacts, references, or websites help me. In 1997 the World Wide Web was useful, but somewhat slow and cludgy, and usually paired up with a company like AOL. You spent minutes with your telephone line plugged into the back of your computer, just waiting for your computer to connect to the internet. Eventually, I found a handful of helicopter companies and I was able to fax and mail them resumes. The responses ranged from mild interest to none whatsoever. I was willing to move anywhere for an actual job.

The second problem was pay scales. As a CW3 army aviator, I was earning, with all benefits included, about $50,000 a year. A Grand Canyon tour operator offered me about $30,000. A couple of companies in Texas were batting around numbers approaching $40,000. Wait. What? I thought all the big money was to be made in the civil sector, not the military. The negative implications of leaving the Army were just beginning to dawn on me. Later, I would eventually admit leaving the Army was a big mistake.

A random off-shore drilling rig (Google image)

Since Texas seemed to have a lot of helicopter operators, I bought a plane ticket and flew to Houston. My first stop was Houston Helicopters, and operator serving the off-shore oil and gas industry. After meeting with the chief pilot, a Viet Nam veteran and decent guy, we toured the hangar. I saw they were flying S-76's and various Bell products, but of great concern to me was every bird I saw was either sitting on blocks or completely disassembled. He recognized my skills would be of use them in the Gulf of Mexico and presented my resume to the owner. Even with the chief pilot as my advocate, the owner was not interested in me. (Note: I later discovered no operator in the gulf had a worse safety record or a worse reputation in general. I had just dodged a bullet) Sometimes things don't work out the way you want but they do work out the way they were supposed to. A theme that would repeat itself in my career, over and over.

Valley Air Care A-Star (Valley Aircare website photo)

Next stop, Tex-Air Helicopters out of Hobby Airport. yet another off-shore operator flying something I had never seen before, Eurocopter products. (A-Stars initially had a bad reputation off-shore because in order to allow import of these French designed helicopters, the government demanded they be outfitted with American made engines. Sadly, those Lycoming engines in particular were poorly designed, and many fatal engine failures resulted. Once replaced with the European Turbomecca engines, they again became extremely reliable) Outside the hangar, various A-Stars and Twin Stars were scattered around the ramp, all flyable and all being used daily. The chief pilot, a former active duty AH-64 pilot and current National Guard member, completely understood my skill set and interviewed me for an emergency medical service (EMS) position they had in Harlingen, Texas. After the interview we took a familiarization flight in an A Star. Besides the fact the rotor spins the opposite direction of what I was used to, and despite its highly touchy hydraulics, and despite the fact they call it "Le Squirrel" for a reason, and despite the fact I put it into ground resonance at least twice, the flight was a success. HAHAHAHA! Amazing.

So I packed up the house and moved to the Rio Grande valley.....commonly called, "The Valley." I found a house in McAllen, about 60 minutes from where I would be based. Citrus groves and terrible Mexican drivers dotted the landscape. The EMS program was based out of an ambulance garage, about a mile from the local hospital. To this day, I have never worked at an EMS program with such a large percentage of trauma flights. Gunshot wounds streaming blood down the side of the helicopter in flight, heavy machinery accidents, stabbing and assault victims, and you guessed it, car accidents.. Dozens and dozens of them.

Two of my all-time, top-five memorable car accident scene flights happened while working here. On this particular night, around 1am, we were awakened and paged out for a flight towards South Padre Island. In the air from a dead sleep, within 10 minutes, were we rocketing towards an accident scene, about 15 minutes flying time away. As soon as I reached 500' above ground level (AGL), I had established contact with first responders. The landing zone would be on the highway, directly in front of the scene. (I had become wary of first responders in the Valley after one night being cleared to land at an LZ, only to discover high tension power lines directly overhead, while on short final. A last minute evasive maneuver prevented a catastrophe)

A night landing (Google image)

I landed successfully, always a good thing at night, and kept the aircraft running for the on-loading of our patient. Bad news. Once again a drunk driver had killed an innocent person. The single mom, driving a minivan, was killed instantly in the head on collision. The Hispanic drunk driver, operating a large older model Chevrolet, had survived the collisio,n but was unconscious. (Almost always, the drunk driver survives...why? Because you can't kill stupid)

(Demotivational poster)

In an A-Star, the patient is loaded right next to the pilot. The copilot controls and seat are removed and sometimes, maybe, a short plexi-glas puke shield is installed between you and the patient. The pilot is in NO WAY insulated from all the bodily fluids, smells and visuals associated with trauma helicopter ops. As the patient is loaded, I am not paying much attention to him. At this point my attention is focused on the numerous people gathered around, assisting in the loading process. It's my job to make sure no one raises anything over their head, i.e. and IV bag or some other object, and to make sure they don't damage the aircraft or themselves.

Once we are off the scene and cruising to the hospital, I take a moment to look over the patient. Unconscious still, I recognize the now familiar scent of alcohol and human trauma.(Yes, Trauma has a distinct smell all its own. I would describe as a smell like the taste of blood in your mouth, combined with the smell of not quite fresh meat) Whoa! This is new. Initially I see that he looks pretty good; the typical dirt and blood smears on his face with a mixture of automobile glass, juxtaposed against the clean, fresh, warm blankets swaddling him. Unfortunately though, his left knee is gone and where his kneecap should be, the end of his femur bone, the part that should be connected to his knee, is projecting out a good 5 inches. What really caught my eye was the bits and pieces of dashboard and glas,s stuck all over the end of the bone. I spent more then a few seconds staring at this wound. Continuing my assessment, I also see his left humorous bone is broken at the midpoint, projecting 3 inches through the middle of his bicep.

A femur and knee joint x-ray (Google image)

People who are drunk and kill innocent people are not popular with EMS professionals. Pain medicine is sometimes withheld, citing the fact the have an unknown amount of alcohol in their system. Also, kindness and mercy are often also missing. Personally, I don't agree with that attitude, but I have seen people treat killers differently than other patients. Needless to say, this guy was not getting any special treatment tonight. I assisted the crew in bringing him into the ER. As a pilot, I have nothing to do once inside but stand by and hug the wall, waiting for my crew. I noticed this guy was still unconscious, but not for long. The ER staff decided to catheterize him by inserting a large bore tube up his manhood. This woke him up. Standing against the wall I was fascinated. The pain of the catheter caused him to cry out, raising his good arm and leg off the bed. On his left side, with both his arm and leg being non-functional, I saw his femur and humorous bones rise up at a 45 degree angle and begin squiggling in the air, in concert with his good arm and leg. To this day, I have never seen anything like that.

Camping out in El Salvador

My first duty assignment after flight school was with the 101st Airborne Division at Ft Campbell, Ky. As a UH-1H pilot, I was assigned Alpha Company 6th Battalion of the 101st Aviation Regiment. Apparently, I was lucky not to be assigned to B Company....they were derogatorily entitled the Cincinnati Flying Club by my company commander, for reasons that would become apparent later.

No sooner than I had arrived there, we received orders to deploy to Honduras for 4 months, in support of Joint Task Force Bravo. JTF-B was a continuous nation building exercise performing such tasks as building roads, schools, providing medical and dental aid, and assisting the Honduran government where needed. The day I boarded the C-5 transport, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck San Francisco.

(Newspaper image of quake damage)

Helicopters were already placed there for us, and we took over control of them from the previous unit, which was rotating home. After some local area orientation, we were mission ready and began operations. A typical mission would be to pick up some dentists from the national guard, fly them to some remote village, and watch them pull bad teeth all day. Sometimes we would haul people in civilian clothes, with heavy duffel bags, to locations very near the Nicaraguan border, doing what, we didn't ask. However, my favorite op was called the Batman flight. You would take off at sunset and fly circles around the Soto Cano Airfield, all night, with loaded door guns, patrolling for some rare and elusive rebel force which had maybe once, a long time ago, lobbed a mortar at the airfield. We were more likely to see an Ocelot than these rebels.

CW3 Steve Timmons and SGT Lance Newby (There will be an entire post about him later, lol) nearly shot me through the foot one night, before one of those patrols. Somehow Sgt Newby had jammed the gun while loading it, and Steve walked over to show him how to unjam it. The weapon was stowed on the door gun mount, its barrel pointing straight down. All three of us were gathered around the weapon, with both Steve and Newby jacking on the charging handle. I noticed the barrel was pointed right at my foot. A voice told me to take a step back (probably my dad's, courtesy of his excessive weapons safety lectures) I no sooner took a step back then BAM!! Steve had released the charging handle. Note: the weapon fires from the open bolt position and allowing it to run forward, allows it to fire. A nice clean hole, 7.62mm in diameter, appeared in the steel landing deck, where my foot had been 1 second earlier. 5 minutes later, breathless MP's had us all face down on the decking.

Another, less known mission, was in support of the US Embassy in San Salvador, El Salvador. The flights to and from El Sal were considered combat flights, due to the US taking sides with the Salvadoran government, in their battle with rebel forces. We flew at high altitude to avoid the small arms threat posed by the rebels.  (Apparently not high enough because our aircraft took a 5.56mm round right through the cabin, missing the main fuel valve by an inch). El Salvador is one of the most beautiful places I had ever seen. Massive conical volcanoes dotting the coastline, beautiful sandy beaches defending against shark infested waters.

San Salvador's primary airport is named Ilopango, after the dormant volcano in whose caldera it resides. Most of the caldera is occupied by a large and beautiful blue lake. Upon landing there, our crews were whisked away to the safe house where we resided during our time there. A ride through any third would country in a minivan is exactly what you would expect. Think NASCAR, but slower, and with bullet proof glass. Trading paint is normal, and nobody stops to exchange insurance information.

The safe house was a very nice hacienda. A small pool sat outside, several large palm trees arranged around it. The most important element of the safe house was the large and defensible wall ringing the entire complex. Anytime a threat was detected everyone would run to the wall with their weapons (Shotguns, M-16's, M-60's, grenades...etc) and prepare to fight off an attack. It never came, but several car bombs were detonated by rebels in front of nearby businesses. The house was incredibly stuffy, and it always seemed much cooler outside. After another false alarm, with everyone running to the wall, a decision was made to sleep outside by the pool. No white light was allowed outside so everyone used flashlights, with tactical red lenses covering the bulb. One enterprising crew chief erected a hammock between two of the palm trees, next to the pool. Everyone else slept on the ground.

Late in the middle of the night, with everyone asleep, a blood curdling scream pierced the night air. Instantly alert, everyone jumped to their feet, weapons charged. Red flash lights out, we discover the hammock mounted crew chief clamping his hand to his neck, blood and goo running down between his fingers. As we peeled his hand off his jugular, we discovered a Tarantula, about the size of a dinner plate, squashed onto his neck. Apparently the spider decided the hammock was a nice transition from the palm tree, to a warm place to sleep. After uproarious laughter, I eased away from the crowd, shook out my sleeping bag, rolled it up and went inside.No way would I EVER, sleep out there again.

OMG I can't even look at this image.

"Salmons in Your Chin Bubble"

During the summer of 1996, I was a student at the US Army Aviation Center and School at Fort Rucker, Alabama. Birthplace for all new army aviators, it is the home of flight training. It is the busiest patch of sky in the world. On any given day hundreds of helicopters launch out, on every conceivable type of military flight training. I spent 6 weeks enrolled in the Warrant Officer Advanced Course, a requirement for CW2's being promoted to CW3. The course's main goal was to add at least a modicum of civility and polish to the Warrant Officer corps otherwise gritty and somewhat colorful image. And teach us fractions. And teach us not to write in the third person.

Night Stalkers doing urban infils

During my attendance at the Advanced Course, I was member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment. A member since 1994, I was recently granted FMQ status as a PIC in the MH-6 "Little Bird" helicopter. A process that took over 18 months and many, many demanding evaluations with brutal after action reviews. Reaching that status, to me, was the pinnacle of my military career. Being FMQ meant I was qualified as a night vision goggle, pilot in command, in all environments and techniques necessary to be a pilot in the Regiment. Any aviator in that position requires a great deal of training, and recency of flight experience, to maintain the skill sets needed to operate at the required level. I had 1700 hours.

Little Bird

I graduated from the advanced course, somewhat ahead of my usual middle of the pack class standing I dutifully maintained through flight school. Upon returning to Ft Campbell, I was tasked to participate in an over water operation, somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Over water has a different meaning to Night Stalkers. Without disclosing tactics, techniques or procedures, lets just say extremely tight formations are flown very low over the water, at night. This somewhat routine operation had hundreds of participants, from a wide range of services, connected to JSOC. Sea state that night was briefed as a 12 foot swell with winds from the South at 30 knots.

Tonight, I was literally the tip of the spear. Our element was the eyes of the op, and made first contact. Approaching from the south, with a 30 knot tailwind, we began our decel at a VERY low altitude. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware I had a 30 knot tailwind. But with the pressure of an immense assault force behind me, and numerous tasks demanding awareness, the least of which was flying NVG's watching a target that was barely visible, I continued my deceleration to an out of ground effect hover. As soon as I had dropped below effective translational lift speed, (15 knots +/-) I had to rapidly apply full left pedal. By full left, I mean to the stops. My foot would remain planted there for the next several minutes, or hours, I'm still not sure how long.

At this point the helicopter begins to spin, and spin and spin. Clear right? Yep. Now, normally you would lower the collective, follow it around with cyclic, and maybe lower the nose for some airspeed to reacquire tail rotor effectiveness. A maneuver that requires some altitude to accomplish, under the best of conditions. Tonight I did not have the luxury of altitude. Something I do today, 5200 flight hours later, without even barely thinking about.

At that moment I instantly knew I'd never get out of this aircraft alive. With my large size, 215 lbs at the time, all the gear I had on; vest, flight suit, helmet, water wings, heeds bottle, knee boards and it being night, I was not going to have a successful water egress. But also, at that same instant, I knew I did not want to die....I decided right then I wasn't going to die here, not tonight.

I did the only thing left at this point, I pulled power to gain some height above the water. This increased the spin to the point where my eyes were bugging out, but they were still focused on the radar altimeter. After about 4 1/2 revolutions I saw 70' on the digital altitude readout. I started the recovery maneuver with my foot still jammed in full left pedal, and my copilot Dana Jones faithfully jamming his foot in for good measure. Together, I felt him on the controls too, we lowered the collective and dropped the nose. The helicopter spin started to slow but the water was coming up fast. As pedal authority was recovered, into the wind miraculously, we applied collective to stop the descent. I saw a huge spray of water, my eyes dove to the radar altimeter. 11 feet. It said 11 feet. Wait, the seas were 12' so......Holy Shit, we're in a wave trough.

The PIC of a sister ship nearby, began to key his mic to request SAR. He saw the huge could of spray and assumed we went in. But then, he said, "like a phoenix rising from the ashes, I saw your bird rise up out of the spray and and fly out of it." All of our instruments were spinning wildly and we were totally disoriented. It took a few moments to avoid the rest of the package, and reacquire the target. We had a rather terse exchange with the flight leader, and we knew, I knew, it would be a hard debrief back at the flight line.

I was right. Sitting alone  in the corner, on my footlocker of shame and embarrassment, I had committed a cardinal sin. A violation of the First Rule. Not looking cool in front of the customer. Returning everyone home alive was a successful outcome, I thought. Being shunned was my penance for that night. Our first sergeant, a rather gruff and slightly humorous man we called Top said, "Well Mr. Tappe, you just about had Salmons swimming in your chin bubble." The plural of Salmon is Salmon, not Salmons I thought. Weird what you think of at a time like that. NSDQ

Aviation Inspiration

I always knew I was born to fly.

(NASA Photo)

I grew up during the advent of the space age. The REAL space age. A time when we left this planet and reached for the stars, using nothing more than a slide rule and black coffee. One of my very first memories is of laying on the floor watching TV. (All kids had to lay on the floor to watch TV back then. We weren't allowed on the furniture till we were in high school) We lay in a semi-circle, kids on their stomachs, resting their heads in their hands, with elbows supporting them. On the small black and white screen, we had been watching days of replays of the launch of the Saturn V rocket. (To this day, the most powerful rocket ever built by man). Numerous spokespersons demonstrated to Walter Cronkite how the rendezvous and landings were to occur, using ridiculous animations and really neat scale models. Finally the hour approached, all the adults were smoking heavily, the floor offering the kids the best view through the haze. My dad turned to me and said this is the most important thing that has ever happened and to remember it always. I was 3 years, 8 months and 20 days old. Slobbering nearby, my brother pooped his diaper and cried for his Binky, the import of the moment obviously lost on him.

(NASA Photo)

(NASA Photo)

All through my childhood we lived with the space race, the arms race, and the cold war. TV images, now in Magnavox living color, showed UH-1 helicopters landing in 7' tall elephant grass, in some weird place called Viet Nam. Amazing huge silver bombers left crystal clear contrails across the bitter cold Iowa winter sky, as they traveled between Strategic Air Command bases, across the northern great plains. On a schedule I will never understand, a gleaming silver bird with the word Ozark on the fuselage, flew dangerously low over our house with gear extended. Its two huge propellers drowning out all other sound, its engines visibly leaving a trail of black smoke. Every time I heard its approach, I had to run outside and look up; interestingly, my father was always looking up too. I built many models of bombers and airplanes.....my brother built a model of a naked woman so he could see her boobies.

Dad was always a huge fan of high technology, science fiction, and aviation, just to name a few. One day he came home with a bunch of official looking text books, which he seemed to indicate held great value, a value I daresay approaching the status of the Bible in our home. He hunched over them like a monk in a cell, sitting at the kitchen table for hours. He spread out great maps with crazy symbols all over them, looking like something an alien space ship dropped off. As hard as I tried, I could not make any sense of any of it....I would just look at the pictures in the tomes and try to infer what they meant.

One spring day, while attending Corpus Christi catholic elementary school, my dad shows up at the school. WTH? Why is dad here....? He has a surprise for us, he says. Ok great, I was not having so much fun in the 4th grade because I was new to the school, and some red-headed, Howdy Doody look alike named Shawn was having a field day, teasing me with the famous Tapioca taunt (A play on my last name). Dad drives us to the airport, loads us into a Cessna 172 and proceeds to fly us to town and we literally circle the school from a low altitude, as the kids are dismissed for the day. I had no idea he actually knew how to fly this thing! That was one of the coolest things ever, and greatly improved my standing at the school. But I still didn't understand fractions. My sister was born later that year.

From there, I never looked back. I devoured all things space and aviation. I couldn't get enough and I knew what I wanted to be. An Astronaut. But to be an astronaut, you have to pass 7th grade algebra class with that lesbian troll, who doesn't want to acknowledge she's gay, and hates little boys. Crap! There goes my shot at Mars.

Like a bird on a wire......

A little more about me. Since 2005 I've been flying MD-500's for a company which contracts for power companies across the country. In that capacity I have conducted numerous types of jobs which require different and increasingly demanding skill sets. This company offers services to the large utilities which provide the extreme high voltage (EHV) high tension, electrical transmission lines. Power transmission lines begin at 69,000 volts (69kv) and increase to 765,000 volts (765kv).

Your home is energized from the local distribution grid which has voltages from 440 volts to about 34,500 volts. The power pole outside your house probably has a transformer which is dropping voltage from the 1, 2 or 3 phases of a 13,500 volt line running down your street. Those local distribution lines connect to progressively larger voltage substations, fed by progressively larger power transmission lines.

Huge substations and line taps literally connect the entire United States power distribution grid into a single system. All power added to the grid, by any type of generation system, is basically available instantly throughout the entire system, at the speed of light, minus resistance and adjustments made at substations, which maintain constant voltage and prevent surges and blackouts.

The country is crisscrossed by power line structures which hold the massive 3 phase conductors safely off the ground, away from each other, and other nearby lines.The phases may never contact each other, or the ground, or there will be a failure. Every power line has a minimum distance that can be encroached upon before it will literally arc, and go to ground. 115,000 volt lines must have 3' of clearance. 14' of clearance is needed for 765,000 volt lines.

So, if a tree falls on the line, or if an insulator failed and the wires broke those clearances between themselves or each other, a massive thermal explosion will result. Anyone in the electrical path of any transmission line that has gone phase to ground will be literally blown up by the energy. Anyone nearby will be vaporized by the thermal energy of the flash alone. Anyone not vaporized will be severely burned beyond recovery, etc, etc.

These structures also have the ability to ground lightning, and to ground potential energy induced into them by the very wires they are insulting from the ground. Two parallel wires, called static, (or shield) wires run well above the conductors, and are not insulted. They are connected directly to the structure and the structure is grounded. So, the structure itself is the ground. The earth produces a magnetic field which can induce voltage into any insulated system. Solar flares from sunspots, and coronal mass ejections from the sun, can do the same. That's why they talk about solar weather and its impact on power grids and satellites.

A new pilot may conduct a forestry patrol in the helicopter. He would fly along at 40 knots or so while a forester makes notes of vegetation. Later he may progress to detailed visual inspection work in which he hovers 50-100' from every structure, for a few minutes,, while a crew on board conducts a recon of the structure hardware and condition.

After acquiring a few skills, and greater proficiency with the helicopter, the pilot will progress to actual transmission line maintenance. A helicopter can be used to drop lineman off at the top of a structure. It can be used to conduct work upon the structure, and it can be used to work on the power line itself. Wait, what? Really? How is that possible, you ask? There are two distinct and different techniques for this.

The helicopter can be bonded directly to the structure, by grounding it to the structure. You would think that because the structure is already grounded that no bonding is necessary. You'd be wrong. The helicopter carries a potential voltage just by flying through air, essentially insulated from the ground. Ask any ground man who had received a long line hook from a helicopter, and been knocked to his knees, whether or not a helicopter can pick up static electricity. The structure also carries massive potential voltages induced upon it by the wires it carries, so binding is required. These voltages are not lethal but could cause burns and if the crewman was not wearing his steel mesh suit, its possible to create a path which could stop the human heart.

The helicopter can also bond directly to the energized wires, with a couple of major caveats. One; no part of the helicopter may break electrical clearance to another phase or the ground (or structure) Two; everyone on board must wear the steel mesh suit, to ensure the potential energy flows around your body, and not through it. Tests have been conducted where a running helicopter has been energized to 1 million volts. So, essentially, after equalizing potential with the wires, the helicopter has become energized to the same voltage as wires and can be considered an extension of them. So the helicopter can never become the path to the ground or another phase. Instant death and the destruction of the helicopter is the result of breaking clearances.

From time to time I will post pictures of this type of work. I will also write a few stories about things that have happened that I find quite humorous, but required a bit of a tutorial about how this all works and why. So, I apologize for the text book explanation but it helps you get the good stuff later.

See the Youtube link for some interesting power line stuff.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_1T2_l43Xo
The video is my former company doing a movie...The guy on the platform is a dude named Spider. There are many you tube videos about some of the things I talked about here.....

Why I am here...

I have thought about writing a book for a long time. Probably since 2003-04 while enrolled as a student at Carroll College in Helena, Montana. A professor there, a man who studied at Cambridge, who I greatly admire, suggested I may have some inkling of writing talent. As I explored this idea, I talked to a well known local writer who gave me some great tips about getting published. But beyond that, what I really took from the conversation, was his urging to least BEGIN writing something.

I entitled my blog "Life in the Air" to play upon both the busy reality of my life and fact I am a life long pilot. The purpose here is to ramble on endlessly about the varied and many humorous anecdotes I have had the pleasure of experiencing in my flying career. As I recall things I will write about them. I also will share new experiences as they happen and they may not all be funny, but they may prove interesting to the non-piloting audience. I hope you enjoy hearing these stories as much as have enjoyed living them.