Francis Meyrick

Of Helicopters and Humans

Part 22: “Sounds like a stupid thing to do “

With a sigh I left someone dear
and floated off into the mist and fog
with oars bent for Loyang
and Kuangling’s bells and treeline fading
this morning when we said goodbye
we wondered where we would next meet
in a world like a boat on the waves
rising and falling with no shore in sight

Wei Ying-wu Chinese poet A.D. 769

A group of pilots were talking about a bad helicopter accident.
The pilot, the sole occupant, one of our brothers, had been killed. Everybody was shocked. I wanted to go to the funeral, but it was held as a private service. A shattered family.
The essential nub of the issue was that he had hit his rotor disc off a solid object. The side of a drilling rig. That’s a whole lot of steel. The helicopter had rotated violently into the water. And sunk almost immediately. Floats were not deployed. His body was later found still strapped in to his harness. Poor fellow.

It was hard to figure out what had led up to the catastrophe. It often is. There was a lot of speculation. A lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed to some kind of distraction. Mental overload. Too much.
And it was about this accident that the little group was talking. I was listening, but not saying much. There was quite a bit of head shaking going on. Nobody seemed to be able to get a handle on it.
“Sounds like a stupid thing to do…”, somebody said. He didn’t mean it unkindly. It was more an expression of frustration. A perplexed inability to even begin to understand what had led up to the momentary rotor-to-steel coupling.
I had known the young fellow involved. He wasn’t stupid. Far from it. And with a young family, of which he was extremely proud, I knew full well that in his short life, he had already amassed much to care deeply about. I found myself thinking back. Day dreaming. I searched my memory banks. Long gone, but still around, shadows waved at me. I smiled and nodded. I remembered only too well…

* * * * *

There was the time I called up one of my aerobatic buddies. I loved flying fixed wing aeros. I owned a biplane, A Stolp Starduster, and I was slowly becoming a world beating Flying Ace. I had already learned loops and rolls, hammerheads and Cuban eights. I flew a mean barrel roll, and my hesitation rolls were pretty crisp. I couldn’t snap roll worth a cuss, and each attempt was a pot luck shot, but I was convinced I would soon be World Champion. Well, I was young and invincible. Hey, girl! Never mind his stupid etchings.
You wanna see my Lomcevak?
(Smack!) (ouch!) (What!?)

Now I knew this guy who I really admired. Good pilot. He had been a crop duster for years, and was way better than I was at aerobatics. I’d seen him slam a Pitts Special around the sky, and I wanted to be like him. One day. I decided to call him one evening, to see if he would like to meet up for some aeros the next day. We were both practicing for an upcoming Aerobatics Competition. His wife answered the phone. Nice lady.
“Hey! It’s Francis!”, I bellowed, in my usual cheerful, somewhat boisterous manner. “What’s the Old Devil up to, and can I talk to him?”
In answer she burst into tears. I was shocked.
“He’s dead”, she sobbed, “He was killed yesterday…”
Aerobatics… That one had me flabbergasted. I had seen him fly. Smooth. I looked up to him. He was way ahead of me in knowledge and expertise. Yet somehow, something, some sneaky gremlin, had caught up on him. I spent a long time thinking about that. Questions floated through my mind incessantly. What had happened? What could have caught such a seasoned pilot? Such a calm, disciplined, steady hand? The question that bugged me the most however, was a simple one.

“Francis… what do you think that YOU know… that HE didn’t…?”

It was really disconcerting for me. I knew that he had known much more than I did at that stage of learning. So by conclusion, how was I to know that I was safe? What concealed land mines, lying around, was I unwittingly hop-skipping past? Secure only in my innocence? Was I deluding myself?

I think that event set me off in a particular direction. I was deeply shocked. I started reading. Everything I could lay my hands on. Every book on Aerobatics. I really enjoyed the books by Neil Williams. Both his descriptions of how to fly aerobatics, safely, and his many short stories. Neil Williams left an indelible impression on my emerging aviator’s mind. Yet he too, had died in an aeroplane crash. With all HIS experience. That also had me thinking for a long time. What… were these causes of aviation accidents, that caught even the best and the brightest? And how could I, with my seven or eight hundred hours, avoid a similar fate? It wasn’t good enough to simply say, like my colleague “Sounds like a stupid thing to do” because I knew full well these were not stupid people. So… what? What the heck? How….?
To some degree, I’ve never changed in a certain regard. I’ve never lost the sheer joy of flying. The sheer love of smelling Jet A fumes in the morning. The tendency to want to giggle in mischievous delight, as the wheels or skids leave the ground first thing in the morning. Or better still, first take-off after a week off.
But I’ve also never changed in that other respect: I’ve personally known or met so many good pilots who subsequently crashed, or died, or bent metal in a manner embarrassing and humiliating. Dozens and dozens and dozens. Hundreds. Seriously. And I have this funny feeling, all the time, that there is this quiet conspiracy going on around me. Every day I fly a helicopter, it’s as if there be Gremlins out there. Muttering darkly amongst themselves:

“It’s high time we nail that Irish guy. Him with the Big Mouth. He should be ripe for the taking. He’s getting old and cocky. He’s been lucky, but we’ll get him yet…”

There are times I wonder. How would the little Gremlin Bastards manage to catch me? Under what circumstance, in what scenario, would they out-think the old thinker? Out-fox Papa Foxtrot? That’s hard to answer, ‘cos after all, I’m a real good pilot. Forty-four years since I went solo. Borderline brilliant. Or? Maybe not? Just average? Slightly… below… average? Complacent, even?

* * * * *

It’s been a long day in the Gulf of Mexico.
I don’t want to admit it, but I’m hot and sticky. Getting tired. Maybe a little grumpy.

Five and half hours flying already. Forty seven take-offs. And forty seven landings. It’s going to be a seven plus hour flying day. And it’s the additional, unexpected hassle that gets to you. My Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) has been acting up like crazy. They are great assets when they work, and a real pain in the nether exhaust regions when they don’t. And we’ve been going to new, unfamiliar platforms. Our regular customer has bought another smaller Oil and Gas exploration company out, lock, stock and barrel. Unfortunately, they work on a different FM frequency, so I’m having to switch back and forth between them, and our own, regular Dispatcher. The FM radio, ergonomically speaking, is over to the far left, in front of the front seat passenger, and no less than five different buttons have to be selected, in exactly the right sequence, in order to achieve this frequency change. You have to lean over in an awkward manner, still flying the cyclic, and when the sun shines in at exactly the wrong angle, it’s hard to see the digits. Real hard. Sometimes you miss, and then you have to start all over again. I also don’t know the new platforms very well. I’m heading to one right now. When I get closer, I’m dismayed to see a large lift boat hard up against the platform. A very large crane is close to the helideck. Supporting wire line operations. I fly a careful orbit. There is adequate clearance, but only a fraction over just enough. On my final approach, I will be heading into wind, and right at the big crane. It will loom high over me. On the left, there are smaller cranes, locked down, so they say, but still presenting obstacles to a go-around. There is also a lower working deck, with machinery everywhere. I would not want to over fly it if I could avoid it. On the right… the radio goes off, and now they are changing the plan again. Not again… Daylight is becoming an issue, and so is fuel. They are asking if I can pick up a man with an injured finger. The Dispatcher, sitting behind a comfortable desk, with platform numbers on a sheet of paper, rattles off information. And throws in passenger weights and bag weights. It’s like somebody throwing ten long distance telephone numbers at you, in staccato monotone. It’s as if everybody assumes that the single pilot has a photographic memory of the Gulf of Mexico WAC chart in his mind’s eye. And can instantly perform mathematical calculations involving weight, and fuel, and Time, and daylight, in a nano second, whilst flying an approach to a platform with a large crane looming overhead. I do my best.

I land on the deck, aware of the size of the crane looming overhead. I roll the throttle to idle, and give the passengers permission to exit. I am now handed a new manifest, for the departing crew. Five passengers. I will be doing quite a bit of typing for the next few minutes. And planning. Calculating. I could have done without that medical flight. We’re pushing both daylight and fuel. And if only that damn EFB would quit acting up. I’m having to tap three or four times before a letter actually appears. I have a lot of letters and numbers to add in, and this is going to take forever. I still have to plan, and make sure of my itinerary. And daylight. Oh, and that front is moving in from the West. I don’t like the look of that either. The first drops of heavy rain are beginning to fall. Now the platform calls me. He says the Dispatcher wants to talk to me, urgently. I have to lean across and change FM frequency, again. The passenger getting in the front is a very large gentleman. He has trouble worming his way in, and nearly grabs the collective. My happiness factor is spiraling downwards. Mostly I enjoy my flying, but (his right elbow accidentally cops me firmly in the side of the head) (he is looking for his shoulder strap) this is one of those afternoon/evenings that I kind of wish… aw, shit! The EFB just tripped offline! What the heck…? Hold it.

A few minutes later, I have briefed the passengers, including the one who has dumped a large Pelican case on the rear cabin floor. And won’t secure it. He’s looking out the window pretending he can’t hear me when I address him over the public address. It needs to be secure, by law, in case we are upside down under water. We don’t want to have loose objects impeding emergency underwater egress. I’m trying to enforce the rules which are designed for his own protection. For my reward, he cops an attitude. I cop one too. I’m polite, but this helicopter isn’t going anywhere until little darling does as I say. Sweetheart. He complies, eventually, with a show of bad grace. Now, wearily, back to the show. I file my flight plan, or try to, and wait for it to go through. It takes for ages. It tries 5 times. Then it tells me the plan did not go through. Do I want it to try again? Yes or no? I select “No”, and now I add to my memory cells the requirement that I must file a flight plan once airborne. In this area, our company comm center won’t pick me up until I’m above 600 feet or so. I must not forget. How about daylight? Downtime? Can I get all this done…?
I’m in a hurry now. Damn EFB. Damn moron passenger in the back with his damn attitude. I am glad to be pulling pitch off this damn platform. Holy damn anyway.

I pull pitch for a side step take-off, like I have done a thousand times. We are heavy. I watch the torque carefully. The helicopter responds and we move up, and then sideways. Routine normality…

I have a split second sight of the flare boom rising from below to meet me. I pull collective frantically. It’s too late. I feel the right skid contact violently. In a nano second, we roll over sideways. Sea and sky exchange places. Everything is wrong. A voice is screaming in my head. ALARM! ALARM! I’m confused and disorientated. Three terrifying seconds later, I am dead. Massive head trauma. And so are my five passengers.
I have become a statistic. THE END.

* * * * *

A group of pilots were talking about a bad helicopter accident.
The pilot, an old guy, and five passengers, had been killed. The essential nub of the issue was that he had hit his right skid off a solid object. The flare boom. That’s a whole lot of steel. The helicopter had rotated violently into the water. And sunk almost immediately. Floats were not deployed. The bodies were later found still strapped in their harnesses.
Poor fellows.
It was hard to figure out what had led up to the catastrophe. It often is. There was a lot of speculation. A lot of circumstantial evidence that pointed to some kind of distraction. Mental overload. Too much.

And it was about my accident that a certain little group was talking. I was listening, but not saying anything. My new circumstances did not permit such. There was quite a bit of head shaking going on. Nobody seemed to be able to get a handle on it.
“Sounds like a stupid thing to do…”, somebody said. He didn’t mean it unkindly. It was more an expression of frustration. A perplexed inability to even begin to understand what had led up to the momentary, but cataclysmic, skid-to-steel coupling.
I, a disembodied spirit, was hanging around, contemplating a great many things. I had places to go, things to do, other spirits to see. But I wasn’t quite ready to move on yet. I was still in a degree of shock. Stunned.
I was also wondering, and worrying, if they would ever figure it out. Probably not. The essential accident factor was fatigue, coupled with haste. Hurrying. And the fact that the flare boom was coincidentally neatly hidden by the window and door pillar. I had been in a rush, and never twisted in my seat to look around that stupid cockpit door pillar. Blind spot in the cockpit. They are there.
Simple. But it had killed me. And my passengers.

I was very regretful, but there was nothing I could do about it now. I was hoping that somebody would figure it out. And maybe warn other pilots about it. And remind people of how easy it is. It wasn’t really a “stupid thing to do”. It was a human thing. Very human. And if that door/window pillar could neatly hide a flare stack, imagine how easy it could hide a mast or an antenna. Which could also tip you over. In a heartbeat. Also hard to see, at certain times of the day, with the sun just-so.

I wished I had been a better pilot. More humble. Maybe not so judgmental. Not so complacent. I wished I had realized, whenever I heard about accidents, the truth of the old saying.

I wished… I had understood that saying better, during my little life.

“There but for the Grace of God, go I… “

Francis Meyrick

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 17, 2014, 10:26 pm

Of Helicopters and Humans

Part 21: “People who fly in glass helicopters, shouldn’t fly low “

This bird of the immortals born for the wind
With turquoise lapels and robe of green
Regards my feathers as peculiar
as I twitter away thinking I can sing

(Wei Ying-Wu, Chinese poet, AD 773)

A foggy morning in the Gulf. No flying just now. Coffee, (t)witticisms, banter and bullsh…
The boys are all huddled en masse, like obedient little puppies, around the Gogglebox, laughing hysterically at some TV comedy. Funny enough, but entirely predictable. Same old gags. Boy meets girl. In the shower. And then…? Oops! (Oh well, to each his own). The advertisements come on (volume automatically kicks up) and, meekly, like brain washed automatons, they watch the advertisements as well. On cue. Funny.

I’m trying vainly to place my stamp of defiant individuality on my brief little Existence, sailing elliptically around the Sun, by refusing to watch. My intellectual level (in the mud) strives (again, vainly) to reach higher. How many hours a day on average does an American spend watching the Box? Some survey said SIX hours?? (No wonder you guys haven’t figured out that the Earth revolves around the Sun). I, the Irish rebel, am surfing the InterGlob. It ticks me off that fifty powerful, arrogant (and greedy) men in America decide what three hundred million other Americans are going to watch. And believe. The Thought Police. The Morality Men. THEY decide what’s good for YOU? And that’s okay? Weird. How about the sheer power you ‘low information guys’ meekly surrender to that shadowy, back room, cigar smoking, elitist clique? Spooky. How about a B-O-O-K ?? (Shut up, Francis. Well, just saying…!)

Unfortunately… I have long since discovered that the Internet browsers (some? All?) are ALSO being manipulated. It’s all about the money. The dosh. The filthy lucre. You pay, your website (regardless of content) (could be six lines of irrelevant shite about the sex drive of Chrysanthemums) shoots up the search rankings. You don’t, you stay invisible. When I do a search, I’m amazed to find “chopper stories” is # 1 on Google, out of 14.2 million results. And I never paid a red cent. But entirely IN-visible on Yahoo and Bing. Strange. From the very beginning, I could type in the new domain names (www.chopperstories.com and www.helicopterstories.com) on Google, and go straight to the website. After all this time, over 1 million hits, (who are you weird people?) I STILL can’t do that on Yahoo and Bing. But of course, I never paid. I’m a Pariah. My little dyslexic, Anarchistic blog deserves what it gets. Nothing. Thank you, Yahoo and Bing. You keep me humble. The delusions of Grandeur and Revolution are scary. Keep me in the dark. I’m comfortable there.

I’m in a funky forum now. Discussion groups. There’s a guy here who has left rude remarks about MTM and me. Kind of denigrating. I gather he is a former tuna helicopter jockey, and he knows (and says) I’m an idiot. So? Half the world knows that. I happily admit to it. What’s your point? I read his posts, and I see he is now a “corporate helicopter pilot”. That sounds important. He implies he is a shot hot. ‘Scuse me. I mean, a “hot shot”. At least, he dispenses pearls of wisdom about rotary flying. And other people’s accidents and mishaps. I sense a judgmental, haughty streak. I wonder if I can get his autograph? This guy is good. He can’t ever have screwed up. Not when you talk and write like that. Very much the exalted One. Looking down on the world of us ugly, unwashed masses below. The Untouchables.

Hmm… Something tells me I must know this guy. Maybe I WILL be able to collect his autograph. I mull his first name over. I do some quick searches. Finally, his Facebook photo.

HOLY MACKEREL…! It’s HIM!

I sit back in astonishment, as memories come flooding back. Well, I’ll be… whooped hard with liquorice candy.

I go off and grab a coffee. The power of the Interglob. Yep… it’s him. I sit back, and dream back, what, eighteen years? No, about twenty, I think. Boy, that’s a long time for him to be carrying a grudge, but he’s been dragging that Monkey stubbornly along.

What happened, way back then? Well, we’d been flying Tuna Helicopters and fishing like crazy. There was an ongoing safety initiative amongst some of us (resulting eventually in Moggy’s Tuna Manual, short MTM). It was always the same, same, same, same stuff. For instance, Tie-down accidents. To this DAY, people STILL try and take off with one tie-down still attached. And not just off tuna boats. The results are very, very often fatal. I have a whole chapter dedicated to it in MTM. Scary stuff. Another really, really popular pastime was sticking your tail rotor into a wave whilst “herding“ (chasing fish into the net, or trying to keep them there). It was almost always the result of the same faulty technique. Way too fast, way too low, way too cocky, HAUL back on the stick to slow down or stop, and a complete mechanical failure -between the ears- to realize just how LOW that tail rotor goes. People do it in non-tuna helicopter environments as well. Constantly. Pilots have seen their careers radically affected by dragging their tail rotors (literally) through the “fences” on offshore Oil Platforms. Pilots do it when practicing auto rotations. Flare too hard, drift too low. It’s amazing how low that tail rotor will go. You haven’t lived if you haven’t watched it happen to somebody. Helplessly watching, you “suck air through teeth” as you see that stinger drift lower… and lower… and…
I need to go and write up a true, self incriminating story about a student and me, practicing autos. I’ll call it “How far back over CAN you go? “.

In the Tuna Fields, it was (and is) a constant cause of accidents. And it’s hard to confess. It’s not easy to hold your hand up, and say: “Yeah, fukkit, I did it.” Very often, pilots claimed a “tail rotor failure”, which has become almost a Swansong. I had a “tail-rotah-fail-yah”. Yeah, right. Yes, you did. AFTER you came hot-rodding in like a tipsy Banshee, and AFTER you stuck the damn thing in the WAVE. (Fence. Hedge. Wall. Tree. Tarmac. Grass…)

Well… We had been talking about “scrubbing”. I describe it in MTM. It’s just a different technique. You kick the tail out hard, horizontally, scrubbing your speed off in a hurry, without dipping your tail at all. Some of us used it quite a bit, and it certainly served the purpose of focusing attention on the dangling tail rotor issue. But our above mentioned hero of the immaculate conception… mocked this. Several of us had warned him that he was pushing it awfully hard. Mind that tail rotor, brother… He had dismissed us all. He basically implied he knew what he was doing, and would we please mind our own business. He was also not a fan, or a contributor, to our nascent drafts of MTM. His privilege. No sweat.

Word goes around the Tuna Fields pretty fast (triple light speed) when somebody splashes in. I’d heard somebody had gone down (and got out) but I didn’t know who. My ship sailed into port, and, as it happened, the accident ship was also berthed there, with a very bedraggled, wet and extremely bent looking Hughes 500 dumped sadly (by crane) on the helideck. As happens in the Tuna Fields, we all met in the local watering hole. Our friend, chastened, mad as hell, was there. From what I heard, he had already tried the “tail-rotah-fail-yah” line, and had been roundly laughed at. The last person he wanted to see was ME. I didn’t get much of a welcome, put it that way. I said a polite “hello”, and I got that sense (maybe his bloodshot, brooding eyes) that he was braced for a “WE TOLD YOU SO”. Wisely (for once) I said nothing. His anger at the world was palpable. I probably felt sorry for him. I’m surprised though that he would bother to carry that grudge for almost two decades though. Dude… chill.

I read his posts again. I’m amused. It doesn’t take much. He’s wittering on about different failures, with an air of the Grand Guru. The Great Lord Pooh-ba. Boy, I hope I never come across like that. Smack me hard if I do.

The devil on my left shoulder, the funny, cocky dude in the Black Bomber jacket, is whispering. “I know just the right comment here…”, he offers.
I fantasize about it.

“As you would have learned from that time you meshed your tail rotor with a passing Pacific Ocean wave, and had a nice chance to practice your underwater escape technique, a tail rotor failure is not always what it seems. Some are indeed mechanical. But others are only mechanical in the second instant. The prime causal factor not being mechanical, but the result of sticking your Hughes 500 tail rotor into the water as a result of a hard, low flare. THEN… you had a tail rotor failure…”

It would be payback. Satisfying. But not nice.
The Boring Dude in shiny White, with his stupid harp, and the absurd skirt-toga thing, standing on my right shoulder, HE is talking now. I already know what Boring Heart is going to say. He’s going to moralize, and witter on, and be sickeningly nice.
I sigh. It was a grand fantasy. But, this time, I’ll have to side with the Boring Dude.
It’s not right to lower yourself to the same mind set. After all, am I perfect? Bullet proof? Without rotary sin? May I cast stones? Hell, I wish… Far from it. I think of the ancient Chinese proverb, I heard a long time ago, that I just made up:

People who live in glass helicopters, shouldn’t throw stones.
Nah. Not quite right.
People who fly in glass helicopters, shouldn’t throw bones.
Nah. Too convoluted.
People who fly in glass helicopters, shouldn’t fly low.
Better? Maybe.

I chuckle to myself, and, as you can do in the great arena of the InterGlob, I exit the page without commenting.

And then, greatly amused,

I softly browse away…

Francis Meyrick

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 11, 2014, 11:43 am

I love the view from my office…

Of Helicopters and Humans

Part 20: Ring Around the Roses, One Time, Darling

(why bother to fly one time around the platform??)

Crew room talk. As opposed to bar room talk. Same passion, without the booze.
And without Dotty Lotty, the Bar Maid. The luscious one, with the big boo…. heart. I’m engrossed writing a scribble. I think it’s important. I have no idea why. But I’m totally in my own little world, contented, not listening to the multiple conversations going on in the crowded room. And the TV blaring away, complete with regular advertisements, cynically cranked up in volume. A decision orchestrated by some marketing sadist somewhere, on the ritzy twenty-seventh floor of a Sky Scraper no doubt. May he burn slowly in Hell. And suffer premature and chronic, agonizing erectile dysfeeeee issues.

Gradually, some snippets of conversation insist on impinging on the relative tranquility of my mind. Rats. A group of five pilots are having an increasingly heated discussion. Three against two. The three are basically saying that they have no idea why you would orbit a platform before you land. Why bother? Waste of time. You can tell the wind from the waves. The other two are saying, yes, you should. It’s a recommended procedure, says one. No, says the other, it’s mandatory. Mandatory? Yes, he says, it’s in the Operations Manual. What, for light ships?
I’m thinking hard now. My creative bubble has burst. Thoughts being massaged messily into dubious prose, evaporate into ephemeral, soapy bubbles. And go ‘plop!’ Against the ceiling of Reality. I stop assaulting my defenseless keyboard with my staccato two-fingered so-called typing. Dammit, I know orbiting is recommended. But is it mandatory for light ships?
I sure didn’t think so, but I should know. For sure. Damn. Now those guys have got me thinking.
I make a mental note to check.

One guy, loud talker, bullet proof, is saying that, apart from the crane, why bother to orbit? And he seems to be implying that if the platform tells you over the radio that the crane is in the cradle, and you can SEE the crane is in the cradle from far away, then what the F#@K? Why waste time orbiting? He says it with a degree of know-it-all superior smugness that disturbs my instinctive bent towards Pacifism. I have a slight, nascent urge to kick him undiplomatically in the nether regions. I know why. Memories come back, and I find myself mentally shuddering at some of my less-than-stellar moments. I’d need a whole gaggle of fingers to count them all up…

1) There was that time…
(Cringe) Not good. Landed on this floating derrick barge. Not a big deck, anyway. With a huge, impinging obstacle on one corner. Big Old Radar Dome thingie. What you can term the Ideal “Helicopter Swatter”. Here-it-is. Right on the corner of the helideck. Designed by an engineer. Don’t you know it?

I KNOW (I swear) I looked at it very, very carefully from the air. Windy, blustery day. Planned my approach. Slid in. Real careful. Concentrating. Did good. Shut down. Performed a routine after landing walk-around. Like I always do. Ho-hum…

YIKES…!

There, right beside my tail rotor, at the other end of the deck, was a thin, white, whip antenna. Inches away. Fastened neatly to the edge of the helideck. I had completely missed it. And I had flown two orbits. I stared at it in horror. The natural thought occurred to me, the coward, to not say a word. Perform a take-off, get out of there, and forget it. Put it down to(my)experience.
It wouldn’t do. I might get into trouble, but this was a real hazard, and if they were going to yell at me, then so be it. I took some photographs, and emailed them to my base. Then I exercised my Stop Work Authority, and respectfully pointed out to the Barge Master that this would not do. He wasn’t very nice.
“What’s your problem? We’ve had helicopters coming in and out all day for a week!”

A week? I called my base, and passed on the Barge Master’s comments. I wondered how to answer the inevitable question I was expecting. “Why did you land there, you certifiable Clod-Hoof?” I knew I was just going to have to say: “I was really, really concentrating on that Radar Dome thingie, and that was an awfully thin, white whip antenna. And I’m really sorry but I just missed the bloody thing…”
That question never came. Instead, I was told I did absolutely the right thing, thank you very much for ‘fessing up honestly, now we can FIX IT. And, oh-by-the-way, the Big Bosses want to know HOW COME OUR HELICOPTERS HAVE BEEN GOING IN THERE FOR DAYS, and nobody said nuthink. Nada. The Bosses are wondering if people are doing their post flight walk around or what!?
(Phew!)

2) That time in Africa.
Oh, man. (Cringe) Talk about a Hoo-ha. I was told I had some VERY IMPORTANT people to take out. I remember the local Boss specifically wagging a finger at me, and telling me to CAN the dirty jokes. Best behavior! Yes, Boss, I had muttered, attempting to look meek and submissive. He had rolled his eyes, knowing well my penchant for disrespectful witticisms. No target too sacred. Maybe he had heard the one about the big breasted, red nippled Mermaid. He sure gave me a stern look. So I had been very good. Flying these somewhat serious, humorless, unsmiling, very important scarecrows around and about. All had gone just tickety-booh. I was polite, and respectful, and I flew as smooth as I could. Hummm… Nice day.
And then. Oh, boy. And girl. Mama Mia! (Papa Luigi! Nino Carlitos!) I could have invoked them all, but it wouldn’t have done me any good. The cluster fu-fu- fricasso to beat ’em all.
We arrived at this big, new, multi-multi-multi million dollar oil platform. The pride of the pack. The VIP ogres were all hanging out the window, ooh-ing and aah-ing. I normally flew a 300 feet fly by, nice and noisy, with a bit of bank and loud blade slap thrown in for good measure, making double sure everybody knew I was ah-coming. But with these awfully important Head Honcho Grand Inquisitors coldly witnessing my every move, I had felt constrained to perform a very mellow 500 feet fly by. Very docile. Downwind, base and finals if you like. Prim and very proper. Well… I had asked for, and gotten, an instant “Green deck” from a very nice African Gentleman who promptly answered the Radio. Trouble was, our good buddy had vocalized the correct words (to me), as per the book, but omitted the minor step of actually carrying out the required action. To wit, talk to the other very nice African Gentleman. The one sitting importantly in the humongous, Dinosaurus sized CRANE. So there we were, sliding down on short finals, a model of harmonious in-balance by-the-book flying, (maybe), only to find Tyrannosaurus Rex swinging hard out in front of us. Due to size and obstacle and proximity, I had time for a silent (“YOU ARE KIDDING ME!!”) (“Papa Luigi!”) and then I was forced to honk her over in a hard evasive turn. 45 degree angle of bank. No style, no finesse, just good old “way-hay” here we bloody well go…

The intercom exploded. You know it. These are career defining moments. But the Ogre in the front was sticking up for me, and telling the two Honchos, busy squealing in the rear cabin, what had transpired. We went around, re-established contact, re-did the whole attempt without the “way-hay” thing. And the squeals. The moment we had landed, and I had cleared them to exit, three Exocet missiles erupted from my helicopter. Awesome. Not bothering with bags. Just teeth-on-legs, moving down the stairs like a formation of starving, really rabid Pitbulls. I shut down, and walked down with some of their bags. I never saw the Three Ogres again, but I sure HEARD them. I think the whole platform could hear them. Boy, was somebody getting a new orifice, free of charge.

3) That other time in Africa.
Not me this time. But it could have been. Easily. Two of my good buddies. Bell 412. We had this ongoing issue with passengers leaving bags and boxes and stuff on the helideck. Often hard to see. Lying on top of the safety fence, half tucked against the edge of the platform. We were told to refuse the landing and go around if we saw such items. Another real good reason for a reconnoitering orbit. Well, I could have easily visualized cardboard boxes flying around the place. Maybe even the local African Queen’s leopard skin handbag. I’d once contrived to flip over a metal maintenance stand. Not just once. Over and over and over. A very large 19 passenger helicopter, taxying past me, whilst I was innocently walking along, showed THEIR disdain for mere low-life, unwashed Bell 407 jockeys by picking up and expertly hurling an (empty) beer cooler at my head. I remember the look of horror on the Captain’s face. Which expression was NUTHINK, believe me, with the expression on mine.
But my buddies took the biscuit. Try casually explaining away a BRIGHT RED, METAL TOOL KIT, blown right off the helideck. Which fell a hundred feet, landing with a clattering crash between several ex-pats working below. Pain-ful. Lots of pa-per work…

4) And of course, there all those million other valid reasons to do a careful fly by.
Wind direction. Strength. Turbulence? Maybe swirling wind, gusting, sweeping around obstacles. You haven’t lived until you look down and see TWO wind socks flying off the same platform, pointing in starkly different directions. It turns out (when you ask) that you are supposed to gaze into your crystal ball and KNOW that when the wind is from a certain quadrant, compressor gases mess up one of the wind socks. So rather than re-locate it, they have mounted a second wind sock, and you, you rotary dimwit, you can pick which ever one you prefer. And what’s your problem?

Plastic sheeting. Commonly used offshore for sand blasting operations. Commonly used everywhere else near LZ’s for all sorts of brilliant purposes. Ever wondered what might happen to your lift if you had a piece of six by eight foot plastic wrap itself unexpectedly around one rotor blade? It might just give “inflow roll” a whole new dimension. I was told a horrible story (by an eye witness) about a Gazelle with four on board that rolled inverted on short finals due some kind of rotor versus flying plastic sheet entanglement. The witness told me it went from routine normality to burning catastrophe in two seconds.

Flares. I stayed for a long time on a Gas Condensate Platform off the coast of Angola. At least it was meant to be a condensate platform. Trouble was, the system kept breaking down. So then they just flared it off. For hours, maybe days, you would see this respectable flare, maybe thirty to fifty feet of flame, with ugly, black, half burned smoke and gases trailing beyond it. And you might be forgiven for thinking that THAT was it. Nope. What you were looking at there was merely the PILOT LIGHT. In the sense of “Starter Light”. (I hope you get the double entendre, there, eh?) (double meaning, you SchmorgasBord). If the system decided to REALLY flare… You were looking at a veritable two to three hundred feet PLUS eruption. The Operator’s chance of cooking up a delicacy. Instant Fried Chopper Jockey.

Sand. Always a lot of sand blasting going on. When it’s a calm day, the sand just lies there. And here comes Captain Bloggsy, not paying attention. With his nice, shiny, very expensive turbine powerplants. First you whip it up, and then… you suck it up. Expensive. Just like… (oh, never mind).

THIS was designed by the other f@#!!kn Engineer…

Unseen gases. What’s lurking down there, being vented, but hard to see? Compressor discharge gases? Unburned gases? I can tell you about a really neat twenty foot gouge I saw, torn in the steel of an offshore platform. How did they get that ugly looking gouge there? They used a helicopter. Caught in compressor gases on short finals. Heavy.

Low Obstacles just beside the helideck. Ideal trip-over candidates. Hook your skid and see a different world. From upside-down. Lights. Prime candidates. They get smashed (by helicopter skids) fairly regularly. But, not to worry, some design engineer will always come along and FIX that pesky problem. Solution? Put a welded, immovable, solid CAGE around the precious $10 light fixture. I’m serious. Yep. You gotta believe it.
(Damn helicopters… That’ll fix ’em!

High Obstacles
Insidious stuff. Sneaks up on you. I’m serious. It’s amazing what will contrive to hide neatly behind your window/door pillar. Out of sight, unless you squirm to look around that door pillar. This has killed people. Typically, it will happen at the end of a long, tiring day. You’ve landed on a platform with a Lift Boat (Big Mama)(Big Crane) dead ahead. On the left, multiple obstacles. Your right side looks clear for a side-step take off. Right? But, hang on. Didn’t you notice something when you did your orbit? Wasn’t there a flare or something there? You squirm around the window/door pillar, and sure enough (!), neatly hidden was a FLARE STACK. Or a tall, thin, ANTENNA. Just waiting, patiently, for the tired or busy helicopter pilot…

Unexpected, Weird, Spooky, Funky Stuff
Here’s just merely one picture of Spooky. There’s always some-thing that will really get your attention. (I COULD have been a librarian… I could have) (Shhhh….)

Etc, etc… As the rotor… strikes.

* * * * *

Their conversation was still going on. Still arguing. I tried hard to shake myself out of my reverie.

“Errrr… Guys?” Faces turned inquiringly towards me.
I sighed. I didn’t want to appear some kind of self opinionated know-it-all.

(Because I really don’t know it all. Just ask my wife…)

“Not to interrupt… But just to interrupt… Can I just pitch something in, here…Please?”

Francis Meyrick

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on March 11, 2014, 7:18 pm