Category: Auto-biographical (tuna helicopters)

A Blip on the Radar Part 38 B: The Fisherman’s Legacy I posted a link to what turned out to be only the first part of this story on Facebook. I belong to the two groups, “Tuna Pilots” and “Tuna Spotter Pilots”, and I usually post a link to any new story there. I also…

A Blip on the Radar Part 38: The Missing Fisherman As you grow older, you inevitably witness tragedies. It’s part of the Great Learning we experience on this little, blue, pipsqueak planet of ours, lost in the Immense Universe. We are small, tiny in fact, short-lived, but we matter. Our lives matter. Our kindness matters.…

A Blip on the Radar (Part 37) THE PILOT WHO HATED ME Truth is stranger than fiction. Much. Stranger. I look back, many, many years now, decades in fact, and I still see the incandescent, glowing red hot fury in the eyes of a fellow pilot. I see the angry fists, and I feel the…

A Blip on the Radar (Part 36) “All Our Mother “ Light in the Darkness, perhaps When it comes to scuba diving, one of the cardinal rules is: never dive alone. Always have a dive buddy along with you. You never know what you might encounter. If you train with any accredited dive training organization,…

A Blip on the Radar Part 33: Fly quietly, for our Friends lie there Truth, many say, is stranger than fiction. For sure. I wholly concur. As an obsessive scribbler, I seldom worry about inventing a plot. I just try and describe what I see and feel. But I would add this: Looking back on…

A Blip on the Radar Part 32: An Unusual Passenger I am indebted for a description of what happened on this particular night, to a friend of mine, a long time Hansen Pilot. It is through his patient description, the next day (when I had sobered up a bit) that most of my memory exists.…

Photo: K.Mark Demon A Blip on the Radar Part 31: A Strange Premonition Let’s be honest: we tend to refrain from writing about fellow pilots who… die. It makes us uncomfortable. There is also the fear that we may come across as judgmental, or unkind, insensitive, arrogantly superior, gushingly sentimental or downright maudlin. It’s easier…

A Blip on the Radar Part 30: The Grease Monkey A tale of a Grease Monkey, a drive shaft, and a gibbering idiot For most of my aviation career, I have been a dual rated fixed wing and helicopter commercial pilot. But I do hold an A+P license, obtained via a tortuous thirteen month full…

A Blip on the Radar Part 28: The Immarsat Problem I worked on different fishing boats, for varying periods of time. The longest straight run was one year, the shortest was a holiday relief for two. Some Fish Masters I really liked, one or two were hard to get along with. The odd one was…