Francis Meyrick

A Blip on the Radar (Part 24 D)

Part 24 D: “I’m good. I don’t need your help. Can’t you see that, numb nuts??”

As we readied ourselves for another Tuna Boat take-off, I watched my… (student?)(candidate?)(ward?) carefully. My hands were very close to the controls. I knew, in my heart, that I didn’t trust him. I wanted to, but bitter experience had placed me on guard. More and more, I found the thought of his flying alone off another Tuna Boat utterly frightening. I knew I had an uphill battle on my hands. My Boss was totally determined to have this fine fellow summarily checked out, and dispatched asap to the next available open slot on a Tuna Boat. That could come any day. Our pilot turnover was high. People burned out, or got into arguments with crew and captains.
The average stay out in the Tuna Fields was measured in months, not years. Frequently, it just didn’t work out.

He wound the throttle up to full RPM. The machine quivered in excitement, as if it sensed imminent Freedom from the steel deck. She wanted to fly…
But did I? With him?
Now it was time to ease up the collective. Just ‘ease’. The machine was becoming light. She was almost flying…
Steady… steady…
All he needed now was to maintain a position over the same spot on the helideck, and continue to ease up on the collective lever.
But it wasn’t to be…
The machine started to slither backwards, and instantly, as I had seen him do so many times before, he snatched in more collective. It would have been a LOT more collective, and it would have resulted in a lot more yaw, but for the fact that steadying hands came on the controls.
My hands…
I sighed inwardly. The Law of Primacy was in evidence again. What you learn first, especially bad habits, allowed by an indifferent instructor, can be the very devil to correct. I’ve seen it many, many times, in a host of different manifestations. A helicopter pilot MUST, at the critical moment, when he is really light on the skids, about to lift off, be shown by a good instructor how to correct for an unexpected drift sideways or backwards.
DO NOT… snatch at the controls. DO NOT… continue the take off and ‘fight it’.
Dude, just ease down a fraction on the collective lever. Re-attach the bird to the deck. Re-position the controls slightly, and try again.
It sounds simple, because it is. But a pilot who has NOT been shown this from the very beginning, will often develop a mindset which says: “FIGHT IT”. The result is a tense take off. And the very fact that he is anticipating a “fight” makes him tense up, which in itself is more likely to cause… a sideways or backward drift. The relaxed student, on the other hand, who has been shown this little trick from the outset, applies it instinctively. He ends up being a far better pilot, much more relaxed, and inclined to not be nearly so tense…

My hands… but what would have happened if I had not been there? What would this chap get himself into if he was allowed to sail on his own boat?

We continued the take-off. It was wooden affair. If only he would relax on the controls….
A good hour later, we had flown a series of ragged approaches and landings. They were not very good. Poorly coordinated. Lumpy. Frequently out of balance. And the conditions we were flying in were borderline ideal. He should have been doing well. The ship was moored, and the wind was just a minor breeze. But I sensed great satisfaction on his part. And he was impatient with me. He had a tendency to want to ‘high hover’ in, using a lot of power. Instead of keeping the approach going smoothly, in a shallow descent. With a more moderate power setting. He was becoming strangely arrogant, the more he felt that HE was beginning to master it, and I, bloody fellow, was merely holding him back… When I did get him to fly a steeper approach, with a more pronounced descent angle, he was likely to build up a horrendous sink rate. Then, upon realizing his error, he would be inclined to haul back on the cyclic, and thus pitch the nose up, and the tail down. Now he was setting himself up for a tail rotor strike…
But of course, that was all my fault. If only I would “let him fly the helicopter”. Translated, what that really meant was:

“I’m good. I don’t need your help. Can’t you see that, numb nuts??”

More and more, I knew I was going to have to resolutely confront my Boss about this Tuna Field candidate.
And it was to this end that I was making copious written notes…
Lunch time was coming up, and I suggested we break off the practice landings, and just fly around for ten minutes, before breaking for tsuh-wann.
He nodded, and commenced a lazy orbit. This took him past some nearby Tuna boats. Below I could see some of his mates come up to the helideck, and start waving.
A big smile spread over his face.
Soon he was setting us up for a “fly by”. Silently, without a word, I watched. He was totally pre-occupied with his audience. He was waving like a Royal. Slower and slower we went. Now we were down to two hundred feet. The speed was bleeding steadily off. Fifty knots. Forty knots. Thirty… But he hadn’t looked inside for a while now. He was half hanging out the bubble. We were flying doors off, and his arm waved gaily at his best muckers below.
Still slower. I knew there was an onshore breeze of eight to ten knots. We were heading towards the shore. He was setting us up for a down wind, low, slow fly by. Alarm bells were going off in my mind.
But not in his…
I watched silently, and thought back to another student of mine. Arthur. My friend of the “over backwards autorotation”. Who I had let go as far as I had dared. Until I honestly thought I had better get involved, or he would kill us both… Another story. I’ll tell it, some day.
Twenty knots…
And still he hung out the open door, waving. A truly magnificent smile on his face. I wondered if that was how he had greeted the native villagers up in the mountains. The great Chief in the Sky, coming in his chariot, waving gloriously at the unwashed masses huddled below…
Fifteen knots…
We were experiencing the first bumps as we started losing translational lift. Surely he would look inside now…
The alarm bells in my mind were now jumbo sized claxons, with red lights flashing everywhere.
More bumps… a little jolt. A shake. A quiver. The poor little helicopter was trying to talk to its Master.
Hey Boss, I’m beginning to struggle here…
No reaction. He was totally transfixed by the figures on the helideck below. He had not looked inside since the air speed dipped below fifty knots.
Twelve knots…
The helicopter was shaking now. Surely, surely, he would realize something was amiss. I was itching to grab the controls, but aware that I should give him every opportunity to learn from this.
Ten knots…
Now it was getting to be dangerous. We had a breeze from our six o’clock, and he was holding two hundred feet. The aircraft was trading speed off to maintain height. But he didn’t know…
Eight knots… seven… five….
The airspeed was bleeding off to zero. I was silently coiled like a spring. The machine was now clearly sending signals that something was horribly wrong. She was shaking her head, trembling, struggling…
And STILL he waved the Royal Wave out the door.
Unbelievable. No clue. Absolutely no clue…
We were now seconds away from losing all airspeed. What was going to happen now was a “partial unknown”.
For sure, the machine was so far above HOGE capabilities, that there was “no way, Jose” that we could maintain a hover. But the result would be interesting. No machine quietly and gently sinks downwards when it can’t hover anymore. It would be nice if that were to be the case. If we knew that a helicopter merely maintains its heading, and gently sinks, when it loses HOGE capability. If that were the case, then many hundreds of deceased helicopter pilots (and their passengers) would be alive today. A pilot could then afford to ignore HOGE considerations, knowing that all he had to do was recover from the gentle, steady descent. It would be nice…
The truth is that loss of airspeed above HOGE can transform a hitherto gentle beast of burden into a raging, demented, wildly gyrating Chamber of Death. There is no Rule Book anymore. Nobody can tell you exactly what is going to happen. But we can give you an approximation… I stared at the airspeed indicator, now trembling towards zero, and thought back…

Memories of the past. Faces from the past. Accident reports from the past…

There was my Commercial License student who told me how he had crashed in the Swiss Alps, at an altitude of twelve thousand feet. In a Robinson R-22. With his Swiss instructor. There was still a haunting fear in his eyes, as he relived his story. He told me how they had been glorying in the mind blowing beauty of the mountains, and taking pictures. The little Robinson had been purring along quite happily, docile and obedient. Never a worry. Somehow, they had allowed themselves to become distracted. Somehow they had not realized they were flying downwind. Trying to get that perfect angle for the shot, they had unintentionally entered the Forbidden Zone. Trying to hover way (way!) above HOGE capability. With a tailwind. Ooh-la-la….
It had happened in an instant. Normality had exploded. Mind numbing terror had spun the machine around like a top. They had swopped ends multiple times, in a crazy, headlong, death defying, dizzying descent. He told me how he had been frozen in terror, unable to move a muscle, or spark a neuron. His brain was stalled. His mind mushed. He had seen the glacier coming up at them at a crazy angle, through the side window. The instructor had been fighting on the controls. Screaming in sudden terror. They had impacted heavily into the snow, which had miraculously cushioned the crash. With the helicopter lying on its side, the machine had beaten itself noisily to death…
He showed me the photos of the crash site. They were lucky. Very, very lucky to be alive. He knew it. He told me quietly that his instructor had stopped flying from that day on. Never again…

And there was the unspeakable Law Enforcement tragedy. A newly minted Commercial Helicopter Pilot, young, inexperienced, caught up in the flurry and excitement of his very first Law Enforcement “mission”. Two fatals. Slowing down. Slowing down. At night. Trying to hover… ?
Pre-occupied with aiming a spotlight at a house. In a little Enstrom… Ooh-la-la…
And there was my bold buddy… in his little Hughes 300…. Taking photos over a lake….
Meeting Death when he least expected it. Along with his passenger. Same cause. Same, innocent, young pilot mistake.
Ooh-la-la…
Not good. Preventable. But easily done. Easily….

I stared at the airspeed indicator, now trembling towards zero…
The machine was already fish tailing gently, ready to swop ends and dive-spin-pirouette crazily for the hungry waves below.
And still he waved at his buddies below… and smiled…

and smiled…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

(to be continued)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on May 6, 2015, 3:48 pm

A Blip on the Radar (Part 24 C)

Part 24 C: “A local jolly over the Rain Forest”

Needless to say, armed with my increasingly lengthy notes on my young friend’s “problem areas”, I started asking more and more theory questions. Especially aerodynamic theory. Why?
Because these are Good Questions that have Good Answers. Which, if you truly understand them, might just save your little life. Such as:
1) What really makes a helicopter fly?
2) How do we keep the pesky sucker happily in the air?
3) What warning signs and symptoms should we as helicopter pilots be clued in to?

He of course wasn’t happy about it. Damn the theory. He just wanted to go and fly.
His knowledge was rudimentary at best, quite inadequate for sure, but there was something else worrying me: I had this funny feeling that there was fundamental dis-connect going on in his brain. He could muster no enthusiasm for aerodynamic theory at all. It was a chore, an unpleasant task to wade through, something to be completed as quickly as possible, books closed, and forget about it. Try as I might, I couldn’t seem to sense a single spark of “awareness” in his eyes that “knowledge is power” and that in helicopters, it’s “the little shit that will hurt or kill you.”
If I asked questions a certain way, he knew the answers. Like a robot. But I sensed it was case of learning by rote. And not a case of understanding. Because if I twisted the question around, to where there was a need to apply the knowledge in a practical manner, he was lost. No clue.

“So what is HOGE?”
“Hover out of ground effect”.
“Good. What is translational lift?”
“When you go faster on the take-off and you get more lift”
“Ye-es. There is a bit more to it than that. But that will work for now. Why is this crucially important stuff to a tuna helicopter pilot? Or any helicopter pilot for that matter?”
“Duh… Well… I don’t know…”
“Okay, I’ll give you a clue. Do we have unlimited power in our engines?”
“No.”
“Right, so what does that mean, that limited power. Can we do anything we like?”
“Oh, no, we can only go so fast and so high…”
“Yes… so how high can we hover in our little Bell 47 with the Lycoming O435A engine?”
“About ten to fifteen feet…”
“Is that always the same? “
“Yes. “
“Okay… so, are you saying if I load five people in our helicopter,three hundred pounds of beer, two kangaroos and a friendly Polar Bear, we will still hover at fifteen feet? “
“Errr….No. “
“Very good. How high do you think we would hover in that scenario?”
“Errrr… maybe five feet. “
“Personally, I don’t think we would hover at all. But let’s kick them all out, except you and me and full fuel. How high will we hover? “
“Ten to Fifteen feet. “
“And that never changes? “
“No. “
“Okay, it’s a freezing cold day in Alaska, and some poor Eskimo Pilot is getting ready to hover in a Bell 47, with the exact same weight as we have here in the Tropics, close to the equator. Will he be able to hover at the same height as us? “
“Errrr… no. “
“Would he be able to hover higher or can he only manage a lower hover? “
Errrr…. Lower.
“Okay, now it’s blowing a howling gale in Alaska, as well as it being cold. (Poor bastard. He’s gonna freeze his little Eskimo nuts off) Will that make any difference? “
“Errrr… no. “
“All right then, what do you know about ‘air density’? Is that something we take into consideration? “
“Errr….. yes. “
“How?”
Errr….

Needless to say, this was scary stuff. His “add on” Commercial Helicopter rating was becoming more and more suspect. We didn’t just have some slight technical gaps in his knowledge. We had great gaping chasms and deep plunging ravines. When I took out the Pilot Operating Handbook, the revered (yes?) “POH” with all its graphs… that all just clearly dumbfounded him. He acted as if he was seeing many of the charts for the first time. I suspected that was probably the case… The thought of him going “solo” for a few minutes under my watchful gaze in the pattern at the local airport was scary. The idea of him going “solo” for months on end on his own Tuna boat… Well, that was positively terrifying. I made lots of notes for my Boss. Lots. And lots of notes.

There was nothing else for it. We had to do some serious groundwork. His enthusiasm was… less than inspiring.
After several hours’ worth of Ground Theory, I thought I had personally done a really good job. I might have had to drag him by the hair, but I had indeed succeeded in explaining a whole bunch of stuff to him. I even sent him off solo in the pattern for a little while. Operating to and from a smooth runway, he managed to only terrify me a little bit. There was hope. Or so I thought. We were going to have to work on his slope landings, and we’d hardly touched autorotations yet. His tuna boat take-offs and landings were works of some Suidical Art form, but we’d get around to those… I was hopeful.
The next morning, we went onshore to do some shopping. We split up, agreeing to meet back at the ship independently. I was busy examining some fancy tribal carvings for sale, when I heard a helicopter approaching.
As helicopter pilots are prone to do, I glanced casually up. It was a Bell 47. I eyed it. Nice bird. Same paint scheme as ours.

Duh… IT IS OURS!! What the fu-fu-fu….!!??

I stared in disbelief. There went our helicopter, low over the town of Wewak. I could see there were two people on board. I was shocked. What in hell’s name was going on? I was less than happy. I had very little confidence in my student, and I could just about cope with a carefully supervised solo session to and from smooth runways. Where on earth did he think he was going now, without permission? One thing was for sure: he was not heading to the airfield. He was heading away, in entirely the wrong direction, towards the distant mountains…
I hurried back to the ship, worrying big time. When I arrived there, the mystery merely deepened. It appeared our hero had arrived back on board the ship with a newly minted friend. A Papuan local. He had taken this worthy up to the helideck, and then, without my permission, and without the captain’s permission, he had simply taken off with his companion. Nobody knew where he was going. I jumped on the radio, and called him.
No reply. I called him over and over again. Silence…
Soon I was pacing up and down. I had no idea what was going on. When the fuel endurance time passed, I knew he was either dead or down. The mystery was now taking on ominous proportions. Wewak is surrounded by dense tropical rain forest. The tree canopy is over a hundred feet high. When a helicopter crashes through that canopy, the branches simply close over the entry point. You can fly right over the accident site, and not see a thing. Ask any pilot who has experience flying over tropical rain forests. He will tell you horror stories. Pilots have survived crashes, only to discover they were unable to penetrate the incredible tangle of growth. Even armed with a machete, a man in good health may only advance mere yards per hour. You are simply NOT going to walk out.
In addition to that, the authorities in Papua New Guinea impose strict requirements. One of these is the presence on board of a HF (High Frequency) radio. And another is the filing of a flight plan. You can’t just sail into port, and start swanning around Papua New Guinea. We had already been through this with another Tuna pilot, who had disappeared over the horizon with a fistful of money and a loaded revolver. Off on a Fool’s Dream, looking to buy cheap gold from bemused local villagers. At that time, the authorities had come unglued. And threatened us all with a blanket flight prohibition. Period. Not even to and from the local airfield.

It had taken a lot of sweet talking from a number of people, including myself, to defuse that mess. And now, we were right back into the proverbial soup again. I paced the deck, searching the sky. No helicopter. I was worried sick. In my mind I saw a broken helicopter lying in the jungle. With two injured occupants. I knew that without a flight plan, we had zero chance of finding them. Over and over again, I tried to figure it all out. It didn’t make any sense. Where in heck were they?
Time went by, and now I was contemplating placing the phone calls. Local authorities. My boss. Search and Rescue.
Oh boy…

When I finally, finally, heard the distant noise of a helicopter approaching, my eyes were out on sticks. Was it him? There was no way of telling. The tiny dot circled the town of Wewak, then seemed to be heading over to some other boats moored some distance off. It circled those boats at low altitude, and I thought I recognized the colors. I flew to the radio, and called him up. To my surprise I received an amazingly cheerful answer. It was him all right, seemingly having a high old time. I was less than pleasant, but it didn’t seem to phase him at all. He landed a few minutes later, and I was waiting, foot tapping. My blood pressure was way up, and the expression on my face I imagine was ugly. They shut down, and the black passenger (who turned out to be a joyrider), took one look at me, hurriedly said goodbye, and then scarpered. After that, it was him and me.
First he tried to argue. He said that as the helicopter mechanic, he didn’t need my permission to go and fly. He could do that “anytime he felt like it “. And if he wanted to take somebody he just met to a trip to his inland village, then that was his perfect right.

Good try…

But pretty soon, he started to rethink his escapade. Perhaps the white piranha teeth flashing two inches in front of his face had something to do with it. Accompanied by beacoup decibels, and the impressive spectacle of a furiously angry Irishman really, REALLY winding up into a first class hissy fit. Eventually, it cowed him into silence. The more I discovered what they had been up to, the more I ran out of suitable phrases to fully express my consternation. Him and his newly minted bosom pal from Papua New Guinea had just decided to go on a local jolly, landing at several inland villages. I was later to see some photos they took, taken from the helicopter, blades still turning, tail rotor still churning away, surrounded by HUNDREDS of wildly excited local tribesmen. It just baffled my mind that he could:

1) go off flying like that,landing God knows where, knowing he had some serious “issues” going on.
Such as slope landings…
(Or was he willing to even admit that to himself?)
2) take a passenger
3) go swanning around the countryside, over dense and totally impassable rain forest.
4) land in an area with hundreds of milling locals, most of whom had probably no idea of the dangers of the tail and main rotor blades

And, best of all
5) have the unspeakable gall to apparently assume I would applaud his foolishness.

In my mind, even more alarm bells were going off on the subject of his powers of “judgment”.
That he was a seriously “challenged” helicopter pilot I already knew. But now I was more and more convinced that despite his obvious intellectual abilities (he was no dummy), he had a serious lack of imagination.
No fear. No respect. No awareness of danger. In short, a helicopter accident waiting for a suitable moment in Space and Time to spontaneously happen.

The next day I was still cross, and I refused point blank to fly with him. He knew better than to try and repeat his little stunt, and the machine sat idle. However, the following day, I took pity on him, suitably crestfallen as he was, and we went flying again. I was weary now, merely wondering what his next stunt would be.

In the event, I did not have long to wait…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

(to be continued…)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on May 6, 2015, 3:42 pm

A Blip on the Radar

Part 24(B): “What I mean is that some people do stupid shit…”

My new plan, formulated in all sincerity, was to postpone further flights until we got into port.
I reasoned that perhaps he was getting so stressed up because he was (literally) at sea. I thought that if we put him back in a more familiar land flying environment, that this pilot would fly better. He was after all, a qualified Commercial Helicopter Pilot. It should be possible -so I thought- to get him back up to Commercial Standards of flying first, and THEN get him checked out on landing on a Tuna Boat. It sounds simple, when you say it like that. Accordingly, I put my Master Plan to him the next day.
“Just relax, and we’ll get you sorted out when we hit Wewak, in Papua New Guineau. We should be there end of next week…”
He was not overjoyed at the delay, frowned a bit, but in the end he acquiesced in my decision.
Little did I know that a whole lot more adventures awaited us…

We moored in the harbor at Wewak with a full load of fish later the next week. We would be there for at least 3 to 4 days. Which is the time required to transship the catch to a refrigerated cargo vessel.
He was jumping up and down to go flying. We flew another wobbly, “wooden stick” departure from our boat, and headed to Wewak Airfield, less than five minutes away.
But if I had hoped for a more relaxed performance, I was to be disappointed. We flew pattern after pattern, and still he applied the Death Grip from Hell. You could feel his peculiarly lumpy inputs throughout the whole Airframe. The slip ball seemed to be an irritant to him, flying in balance a frivolous irrelevancy, and every other approach to the ground was terminated with a horrible nose up attitude. He was determined to flare as if he was flying a Piper Cub tail dragger aircraft. And I learned that his flight time included six hundred hours fixed wing, of which a respectable proportion was indeed on a tail dragger fixed winger. I wasn’t surprised when he told me. As a dual rated Flight Instructor, I could already tell. His sense of balance was terrible, and many times I pitied our poor tail boom. There were stresses being applied there that were really testing the design.
Round and round we went, and his stress levels were rising. His mood was also deteriorating. He was getting ratty, and snarly. I called for a halt, a long break, and after lunch we went at it again. This time I thought we would do some slope landings. That involves some very basic helicopter handling, which is taught from the early days of flight training on. I typically would not solo a basic student (somebody going for his first Private Pilot’s License) until I felt there was a good basic understanding of the risks associated with improper techniques applied on a sloping surface. In a nut shell: you can roll the entire helicopter over in a heart beat. I’ve seen a student get killed in a Bell 206 doing precisely that. By the time a pilot goes through his Commercial Course, I expect a high standard of proficiency.
I therefore picked an intermediate slope for him to demonstrate his skills to me.
Well….
He nearly rolled it over so many times, and I had to come on the controls so frequently, that it was the worst slope landing session I can recall ever being involved with. I don’t remember having one of my former Private Pilot students ever make quite such a regurgitated dog’s dinner of trying to land on a slope. The worst of it all was that he was “intermittent” at best at reliably handing over the controls. I had to over power him several times with sheer, brute force.
“I HAVE CONTROL!”
“DUDE! GET OFF THE CONTROLS! JESUS!”
And so on and so forth.
He was capable of saying “you have control!” and STILL hanging on like Grim Death.

What do you do? If there is one trick I have learned as a Flight Instructor, then it is to never scold a student. When things are really bad, I mean “really bad”, I mean “shockingly bad”, then the best thing a Flight Instructor can do is to take the student quietly aside, and ask HIM the question: “Well, my friend, how do YOU feel you did? Tell me about what YOU think?”
In most cases, the student will beat himself up much worse than you would. And what you’re looking for there, is to see if he is aware himself as to what is going on. Very often, as a Flight Instructor, you will listen to a remarkably intelligent self analysis. That’s great. Now you know HE knows. And now it becomes easy. All you have to say is: “Good! I’m glad to see you have a very good awareness of what is going on. That is really helpful. And actually, it’s not as bad as you think. I see some real positives here…..” In a sense, you let the student beat himself down a bit, and then you build him back up. Mostly, it works very well. Mostly.
I tried it with our friend. Quietly, sympathetically, I put the question to him.
“Well, my friend, how do YOU feel you did? Tell me about what YOU think?”
There was a pause. A silence. He weighed it all up carefully.
I held my breath.
“Well”, he said eventually. “I guess…”
He was looking resigned.
“I guess I knew I was going to be in trouble when you said we were going to do slope landings…”
Why was that, I asked him.
“Well, because… you see… I’ve NEVER DONE THEM BEFORE…”
???????
I was lost for words. I tried hard to formulate my sentence:
“You mean.. you mean you have a COMMERCIAL HELICOPTER License and you have NEVER been shown how to perform slope landings…??”
He shook his head.
“No.”

And if you find that somewhat… stunning…(I know I did)…consider this pilot was positively hell bent on being employed ASAP as a Pilot on a ‘rock and rolling’ Tuna Boat. Not exactly the most stable of platforms!
Factor in our mutual boss, equally hell bent on getting him working ASAP on his own, as a pilot-mechanic, unsupervised, on his own boat…
And only yours truly, the Check Airman as it were, standing in between!

How is this possible? And what lessons might we learn about the suitability (or otherwise) of helicopter pilots for tuna boat work? Just because a fellow has a “Commercial Helicopter License” in his wallet, does that mean he “automatically” possesses the skills AND THE KNOWLEDGE to do the job safely??
I make a big deal out of this, because I have visited (many times) with tuna boat helicopter companies with a long history of fatal accidents and serious injuries. It was (and is) a common attitude (frequently expressed) that:

“If you have a Commercial, and you get killed, well, it’s your risk, your fault, tough cheddar, hard cheese, so long Amigo.”

I’ve stood by one time, during a heated argument at the Hansen Helicopters hangar on the island of Guam. I took no part in it, but just quietly witnessed a Hansen maintenance employee, (a grizzly old mechanic, not a pilot) really, really getting into it with two pilots. Ranged on one side was a sneering, condescending attitude. Namely that any guy who gets killed out there, is just an incompetent idiot. That anybody with a Commercial Helicopter Pilot’s License should be able to hack it with “no problem”. The implication was that it was “easy flying”. On the other side, were two angry pilots, an Aussie and a Kiwi, who were furiously disagreeing. It got heated and nasty. And loud. I wondered if there were going to be blows.

How can you NOT view tuna helicopter flying as “serious shit”? I have a whole section elsewhere on likely tuna helicopter accident scenarios, and I firmly believe a safety education and safety awareness program is a vital, critical ingredient. You can be a well meaning, sincere, safety orientated pilot, you can be an experienced helicopter pilot elsewhere, and in the Tuna Fields, bad Juju can sneak up on you, and in a heart beat, if you’re not really clued up, kill you deader than a cold Tuna lying on the working deck. I have some faces floating before me, looking down on me, nodding a quiet assent, believe me. They belong to dead friends, who ranged from relative novices to a 10,000 hour veteran with -however- little tuna flying experience. I firmly believe 98% of accidents out there are avoidable, with training, knowledge, good maintenance, and a good safety program supported by the Tuna Helicopter Employers…

The case I describe above is not unique. The gaps in knowledge and training, the lack of awareness… I came across that many times.

But let me tweak your brain in another direction for a moment. Put it another way. As of this writing, October 2010, my current employer (of seven years standing) here in the Gulf of Mexico is exhorting us all to strive for “Destination Zero”. A ZERO accident rate. Awesome. Now factor in a fleet of over 270 helicopters, flying in all weathers, ranging from Bell 206, Bell 407, through EC135, up to Sikorsky 76 and Sikorsky S-92. With a total annual flight time of well over 150,000 helicopter hours. Now contemplate the fact that the slightest incident, however seemingly trivial, (never mind a full blown accident) attracts immediate attention. It gets documented, dissected, scrutinized with a microscope. And an errant pilot can find himself facing a board of enquiry very quickly. Yes, the stakes are that high. Insurance, litigation, liability is part of it. But also, the competitive strength of a helicopter company is so often based on its reputation for safety. Hence the drive for ZERO accidents. And today, October 24th 2010, we are still holding to that record this year. There is a healthy Safety Bonus in it for all of us if we can keep the clean score sheet for the rest of this year… Fingers crossed. Toes crossed. Legs crossed. Controls even crossed. Remember the prayer of the Helicopter Pilot:

Please Lord,
Help me not screw up today.
But if I DO so screw up,
Make it so nobody notices but me.
And if they DO so notice,
Probably because I re-designed the helicopter in a novel manner,
(not approved by the manufacturer)
Can you make it that they have a good sense of humor?
Please? Thank you…!

Now let’s take the Tuna Helicopter Industry Safety record. Worldwide, I would guesstimate the total flight hours also well over 150,000 flight hours a year.
How about the accident rate? How about a Tuna “Destination Zero” program?
Hmmmm….

Here’s an email from a Tuna Pilot buddy of mine. He read the Tuna Manual before he went fishing. According to him (and others), more and more pilots out there end up armed with knowledge they have gained from their Tuna Manual studies. But there is still a small minority of (loud) dissenters, who positively hate the Manual, who have not read it, can’t be bothered to read it, and anyway, “don’t need no stinkin’ manual”.
Here’s the email. I’ve shortened it slightly to protect his I.D.
I laughed when I read it.

Hey Moggy,
to reply to your above message, I agree, it would be good to have a more active Tuna employer participation in what you started.
Since I’ve been out here, just over 8 months now, 9 helicopters have gone down, in which they where all damaged. Its also true that a very few people have hostile views toward your manual, without reading it.
To me, it seems some of the pilots out here have extra inflated ego’s and are probably threatened by someone taking a reasonable, neutral, guiding stance.
What I mean is that some people do stupid shit, think they are the best and don’t like when they read or hear something that makes them question their activities.
Anyway, O well. I do have a couple of questions, if you don’t mind….
If you have any advice for where to go after here I would love to hear it. I will have about 1500 hrs when I’m done.
I hope all is well for you back in the States.

No comment from me….!

You may be inclined to believe that it is “impossible” for a pilot to obtain a US Commercial Helicopter Pilot’s License without being exposed to slope landings. I know it’s hard to believe. In this case, our friend had gone to a school with an in house FAA examiner. Meaning that his Flight Instructor did both his Private and his Commercial training. AND… subsequently “examined” him.
I know. It’s criminal. It’s just a cynical money machine. But… hold on here now! What other knowledge gaps existed in our friend’s experience? If YOU had experienced what I had, would YOU be digging further if you were the Check Airman? And did I find more ‘stuff’? Well….
But before I get to that later, Here’s another email from a reader of mine. Again, I have changed the email a little bit to protect I.D.
I respect this young man for his very mature recognition of his own failures. But don’t you feel for him as well? See what you think of HIS employer…!

Hi Francis,

No comment from me….

Francis Meyrick
(c)

(to be continued…)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on May 6, 2015, 3:41 pm

A Blip on the Radar (see also www.tunaboathelicopters.org)

Part 24 A: “I have CONTROL!…JESUS! “

Given a choice, I can’t imagine a Tuna helicopter company not much preferring a 5,000 hour pilot over a 500 hour pilot. Or a 2,000 hour pilot over a 200 hour pilot. I hired a few real high timers, 8,000 hours plus, and some had Tuna Time into the bargain. I always had a stack of pilot resumes.
In this respect, it has always amazed me the way you will see so many advertisements put out online by Helicopter Flight Schools. These lurid promises are designed to attract the novices (with deep pockets, or massive student loans) and often enough seem to say, or at least imply:

*** We are THE GREATEST!***
(Well, yeah, what else can they say…)
*** Our students graduate from us, and find time building jobs easily in such diverse fields as (blah-blah-blah) and (more blah-blah-blah) and TUNA HELICOPTER FLYING. ***

Hmmmm…..!!

And maybe they will have a photo of some brave soul standing beside a banged up old Tuna Bird, on some Godforsaken rust bucket somewhere, smiling cheesily into the camera.
And if you’re a career cynic like me, you wonder:
1) Did he really graduate from that school, or is it a picture they cobbled up from something online?
2) Is he smiling because he’s so deliriously happy to actually be there, or
3) Is he smiling because he’s about to get the hell off it, and go home…?

Pardon my mischievous humor, but I wish to alert anybody about to mortgage his house, his wife, his three kids, and his beloved pet Poodle, (in order to get his 65,000 smackeroonis to go and get his prized 200 hours of ‘Rough Robbie’ Sex), that things are not quite that simple. Or that easy.
Helicopters… are wonderful. Flying helicopters… is the greatest privilege you can imagine. For all Life’s weird card shuffling I’ve seen (and experienced, believe me) I don’t ever regret having become a pilot. But the caution I want to make here for you dreamers… is that some of that ‘easy road to riches’ simply ain’t no ‘easy road’.
Don’t believe everything you hear and read…

1) Tuna helicopter flying is…. wild. An incredible adventure. Beautiful. Absolutely. One of Life’s Ultimate Adventures. But, my friend, it can kill you in a heart beat if you’re not very, very careful. And prepared. It has needlessly killed, injured and maimed hundreds of people over the years…

2) Whatever that smiling snake oil sales man will tell you at that fabuloso helicopter “Academy “, it’s not the case that dozens and dozens of desperate Tuna Helicopter Companies are lined up and waiting -breathlessly- for you to achieve your 200 hour Commercial. Nor is it the case that they will trample down your front door, slam a fat cigar in between your jaws, offer you their bright pink Cadillac as a down payment, all the while waving a big, fat contract under your nose.

Yes…. you will hear stories of 200 hour pilots getting onto tuna boats. But it’s not common. It’s rather un-common, in fact. There is no way that it’s as easy as the ‘Jerry Airola Snake Oil’ salesmen will pitch it.
A 200 hour pilot is way, way, way, at the bottom of the list.
Last resort.
Should 200 hour low time pilots even be on Tuna Boats? That’s a question I will let you answer for yourself.
But this I believe with a passion:

No 200 hour or low time pilot should ever be allowed to go off on his own on a tuna boat, first time around.

I don’t believe the Insurance Industry should allow it. I don’t believe responsible Tuna helicopter Operators should allow it.
Let me explain a number of reasons why…

A few times I got asked by different bosses to take out a new Tuna pilot, on a sea trip to check them out.
A month or two on the Ocean.
These were low helicopter time pilots. Anchovy Heads. One I really remember was a mechanic, anxious to be taken on as Pilot- mechanic. He wanted the big bucks. He had a decent amount of fixed wing time, 700 or 800 I seem to remember, but only 200 hours on helicopters. Another worrysome character had 900 hours.
The idea -an excellent one- was to give them a chance to practice take-offs and landings at sea, and do some dual flying and solo work, all under the supervision and guidance of an approved Old Phart Pilot. In the event, for me, this was to prove to be both a rewarding experience, with a sense of really promoting safety, but also a somewhat alarming, eye opening experience.
I have some insights to offer perhaps, drawn from personal observation, and I respectfully suggest that any low time pilot considering Tuna helicopter flying might pause for some honest thought here…

I’m actually really, really puzzled why Tuna helicopter companies don’t do a lot more of this kind of progressive training. Many pilots are so eager (borderline desperate) to promote their careers, they would jump at the chance to go out and ‘fly for free’. Mention a Hughes 500? Turbine time?
Wow-eeee….
All you would have to do is flaming well feed these low timers, give them a sleeping bag and some basic shelter, and none would even ask for pay. Or expect it. Give them some pocket money, pay their air fare… and the chances are you would have a very willing, eager student, a vastly reduced Tuna Helicopter accident rate, lower insurance premiums (especially if you followed a written curriculum, which I would gladly design and write up, for free), and a much more professional image for the tuna helicopter industry. As it stands now, so often it seems to be a case of fighting fires. Crisis management.

It’s a plaintive wail
“We dare not fail,
Gotta get a pilot, gotta get a pilot,
the boat’s about to sail! “,
the previous pilot
just got fired
there’s nobody hired,
We gotta get a pilot…!

But that way you solve one problem, only to run a huge risk of tripping smack-bang-whallop into a much bigger doggy-doo….!!

* * * * * *

He was a really nice fellow. Everybody liked him.
And he had already established a reputation as a dependable wrench. All he needed now was a flight check out on a Bell 47 G3. A month or two on my boat, and then, all going well, my boss would put him on another boat on his own, as pilot-mechanic. Great.

Trouble was…
He couldn’t fly for toffee. I knew that within the first few minutes.
I’ve got quite a few thousand hours flight instruction given under my belt, and I don’t get nervous easily.
But this fine lad…
Our very first tuna boat take-off, from the ship, underway, in relatively benign conditions, was a white knuckled, grossly-out-of-balance, hop-skip-and-stagger affair. And pray. Holy…
I started making mental notes. Little did I know that I was going to end up with over two pages worth of detailed listings of areas requiring serious remedial training.
It started with “the death grip from hell “. You could throw a copper coin between two Scotsmen, and announce:

“That’s your penny! “

…and you couldn’t possibly get a tighter grip. (That’s how they make copper wire in Scotland, by the way)
From “the death grip from hell “, which he was very loth to relinquish under any circumstances, (including near crashing), we graduated to a peculiarly wooden style of flying. He never ‘went with’ the helicopter. He never rode it like a Master on his pony. He just tried to overpower the girl with brute force, manifested by gritted teeth and furious, scowling concentration. My entreaties to “relax! ” were met by complete non-comprehension.
His sense of depth perception was so skewered, that we would be on short finals at two hundred feet above the helideck, whereupon he would just lower full collective…. and the very next time around, we would be coming in level with the helideck, far too low, in a borderline HOGE struggling high hover-taxy.
I tried everything.
Demos.
“Relax now, I have control, yes, I have control…… yes, just let go of the controls…
(LET GO!!)… (thank you!)… just watch the way I do it, and get a sense of the approach angle… “
Encouragement.
“That was really MUCH better. Good. Now then, let’s try it again, eh? “
Lies.
“Oh, don’t worry, that was nothing. (Heh-heh-heh….) ” (wipes away beads of perspiration).
Bribery.
“Okay, just one more, and if you don’t yank back on the cyclic this time, I’ll give you a Mars Bar… “
Silent prayer.
“Dear Lord, if you would kindly intervene here, I’d sure appreciate it, because I’m running out of ideas… “
Not-so-silent prayer…
“JESUS!…I HAVE CONTROL!!!…LET GO!!! “

Nothing worked. In addition, he was now getting so stressed, he was going backwards. He had this fixed wing tail dragger habit of hauling back on the stick to slow down. As if he was flaring a Piper Cub or an Aeronca Champion. In a helicopter, that is a sure-fire recipe for a tail rotor/tail boom strike. Combine that reflex action ( a beautiful example of the Law of Primacy, by the way. What you learn first stays with you.) with his flawed depth perception, and as a flight instructor, you were in for an in-ter-es-ting ride. We might manage two remotely reasonable approaches to the helideck, but as sure as eggs isn’t always hard boiled eggs, on the next one he’d come in too fast, too low, and HAUL back on the cyclic. I would HAVE to intervene, to prevent catastrophe, and then he would sulk that I was upsetting him. Why couldn’t I just ‘let him fly the helicopter’?
Dude…. I’m trying… (silent thought: “but I’m frightened you’re gonna kill me… “)
I tried everything.
“Okay, matey… “
(all jolly voice)
“you’re doing so well now…. “
(a thundering big lie)
“Let’s do an experiment…. “
(as if we hadn’t already pushed the very outer boundaries of the flight envelope)
“We’ll go up this afternoon, and I’m going to say as little as I possibly can. You’ve heard it all before, and I want you to fly the helicopter, and not my mouth… so just relax, and enjoy it… Okay?….Heh-heh…. “
(Ho-bloody-ho…)
It all came to a near crashing end, time and time again, and each time I would have to yelp:
“I HAVE CONTROL!….LET GO!!…. “

It became obvious this wasn’t working, and I thought the next best step was to try a radically different approach…

(to be continued)

Francis Meyrick

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on May 6, 2015, 3:38 pm