Francis Meyrick

Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual

Section 4. GPS Systems and Offshore Navigation Issues

4-4 Limitations and Failures

1) Limitations

You need to consider carefully that a ship can move quite a distance in the two hours you are away. Some purse seiners can cruise at 18 knots. That’s 36 nautical miles! If you are in a Hughes 500, you can still cover that fairly quickly, but in a slower Bell 47 that can really worry you. And be aware it may be a matter of a lot more than 36 miles for you. The problem can become compounded. You have to allow for flying perhaps to the wrong spot, realizing the error, sorting it all out, and then flying another leg back to the right location, during which delay the boat has moved yet further perhaps, and so….
Added to this is the problem that there is a limited range on the Ross DSC 500. Beyond this range, you simply will not be able to pickup the ship and get its latest position. You’ll get ‘no response’ every time.
The point at which you actually lose the ship varies with height, but also seemingly with equipment set up and especially aerial installations, and weather. Most guys fly somewhere between 800 and 1000 feet. I do when I’m spotting tuna. Some days you will lose the ship at 24 to 28 miles. Other days you will keep it much further. I’ve had a perfect ‘connect’ at 42 miles. On a calm day.
In a Bell 47, speed and fuel considerations make 30 miles from the ship a long, long way. On the way back to the ship you will be expecting to get an update on the ship’s position pretty quickly.
So (if it’s not an automatic update) you will be hitting ENT a few times until you get “Deedle-deedle-dee… “.
There’s always a feeling of relief when it comes through, and the ship’s range is within the expected numbers!
The WORST thing a ship can do,is launch you one way, head off 180 degrees the other way, and not tell you.
Oh yeah… it happened to me one day…

I was in a Bell 47, new and raw in the Tuna Fields, and I’ll give you one guess which way the wind was blowing! Smack into my face on the way back, 20 plus knots! And that, in a Bell 47, is bad news! We struggled on back, and I was trying to get a manual lock on the ship. I kept getting ‘no response’. Until such time as you get a new (updated) position, the old position will be available, (depending on equipment) and you navigate towards that, hoping to get a lock on the new position.
As we went through the 20 miles point (from the old ship position), I started to get really worried. Little did I know what had happened! My observer spoke little English, and didn’t understand when I asked him if he knew where the ship had gone. Onwards I struggled, against the 20 knot headwind, becoming more and more worried. When eventually the Ross does give you the ‘Deedle-deedle-dee….’ and you suddenly find the ship is 26 miles further away from you… you sweat! In a Bell 47, with 20 knots against you, you’re looking at running on vapor! The communication with my observer at that time was so poor, I never could get the ship to turn around. It is really frustrating seeing the ship, struggling towards it, desperately low on fuel, whilst all the time the ship is steaming full speed away from you.
Needless to say, I had a big pow-wow sitdown with the captain, a meeting of the minds, (he was a real good guy), and it never happened again.

What I learned to do from that, is that I check after 30 minutes or so, (in a Bell 47) before I go out of range,and I update the ship’s latest position right then. So I don’t wait two hours. I try and keep the ship’s position loaded into GPS as accurate as possible as long as I can. Of course, in the Hughes 500, speed is so much higher, and it’s also easy to climb quickly for a better signal.

Okay, here’s a little quiz for you. To test your knowledge.

Quiz 1: You take off the ship, in a Bell 47, from this position:

(I’ve put you somewhere North of Papua New Guinea, south of Truk Island, and West of Micronesia)

5 45.00 North (degrees/minutes/seconds)
151 56.00 East

You fly heading 300 degrees. (West North West).
After 30 minutes, you check on the ship’s new position.

It comes up as:

5 40.00 North (degrees/minutes/seconds)
152 02.00 East

Question 1: how do you represent those positions in decimals?

Question 2: Is there anything to worry about?

A) No, the ship has not moved much
B) No, on the contrary, the ship has kindly moved in the same direction as you are going.
C) Oh yeah! She’s moving away at warp speed….

Question 3: Roughly, what speed is she steaming at?

A) 8 knots
B) 15 knots
C) 4 knots
D) 44 miles an hour (it’s a jetfoil)

The answers are at the bottom of this chapter!

2) failures

Some guys carry a spare GPS for back up. I generally didn’t bother, but that’s always good thinking. The good news is that the Ross DSC 500 units are very reliable. I’ve had a total electrical failure, which was interesting. The only thing left working was the stop watch and the TigerShark GPS. (it has a battery back up). Needless to say, we couldn’t hear or answer radio calls, and there were apparently some anxious moments back on the bridge. They called and called and called. NO reply! Have they crashed!???? Then they spotted us on radar. A dim, intermittent little blip. Struggling home.
“They’re still flying! ”

I’ve also had a minor argument with two mini waterfalls pouring into the cockpit, through both open doors, which involved copious amounts of water washing all over the radio stack. All the lights flickered alarmingly several times, ON-OFF-ON-OFF…. but it still got me home. That was another story, and you’ll find it described under this title:
A Blip on the Radar (Part 2) “Running the Gauntlet “.
I don’t recommend that experience at all.

Just about every helicopter carries at least a basic transponder. You may not have encoding capability, but as long as you can deliver a nice healthy ‘blob’ on the ship’s radar screen, and as long as you are within radio range, the ship can give you “radar vectors ” IF ( a big “IF “) they are clued up on this. That is a big, and very important “IF “! One of my captains did it, just like a pro ATC approach controller, and I describe that interesting experience in the next chapter, “Sunset “.

Remember you can always climb for better radio reception. This is an area we talk about again under ‘cockpit communication’ later on in this manual. It really is a safety issue that somehow language hurdles can be bridged so you can make the observer understand when you need radar vectors! Be aware that, without a transponder, the captain may not be able to see you if there is a lot of weather clutter on his screen. I’ve been up with an observer who I know would never, ever have understood radar vectors. All he wanted to do was go asleep. More on this later. You suddenly feel naked! You sure hope your Ross system doesn’t pack up.

Corrosion is your relentless enemy in the Tuna Fields. If you’re like me, you will use a lot of fresh water, turtle wax, Triflow, WD40 and elbow grease. Some of the photos of my little bird will show you the shine! Despite all this, it’s possible your antenna may fail. Usually at the connections. If your GPS fails, and you don’t have a spare, or the spare’s battery then decides to go “bye-bye, sucker…! “ at exactly that most inopportune moment, then there is one more neat little trick I will share with you. I’d heard about in a Tuna Pilot Dosshouse cum Bar somewhere, tucked it away in a decaying memory cell, and, guess what, one day... I got to try it for real. I remember the weather was pretty rough as well, and I was actually fervently hoping it would work. What you do is you reach up, and with one hand you can unscrew the aerial coax connection. Now you have disconnected the AIRFRAME aerial, and you are going on to the GPS unit’s INTERNAL antenna. It actually worked, and took us home.
I’ll be darned…
The observer was real impressed, and secretly, so was I. Had I been a smart fellow, I would have tried it one time for practice, before I suddenly needed it for real…
But it sure was interesting watching a blank GPS screen, unscrewing the exterior antenna coax cable, and then seeing the screen jump back into life again.

Normally I have my transponder on “standbye “. It’s warmed up, ready if I need it, but normally it doesn’t get used. Why not? Because you give the game away to other captains! They also have bird radar! If you start circling and spending a lot of time in one area, they might come checking. If you disappear off the screen, and then pop back up after a couple of minutes, well, it’s a reasonable bet you’ve been down to drop a radio buoy!
Aha! Ach so…. die Leute haben etwas gefunden…!
(Pigeon German for: “Aha!!…. ze deveels have founded some zing…! “)
I have often stood with my favorite captain, the great Alan Lai, watching another helicopter, doing just that!
“Hmmmmmmm! “, we said. “Let’s take the chopper and go take a look! “
We did, we found a bunch of foamers, we called the ship in, and we caught a bunch of fish! That night we had some beers, raised our glasses, and solemnly toasted the hard working rival pilot concerned!

All’s fair in love, war, and Tuna!

The answers to my quiz above:

5 45.00 North = 5.7500 North
151 56.00 East = 151.9333 East

5 40.00 North = 5.6666 North
152 02.00 East = 152.0333 East
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I included this because I’ve seen people get confused. Heck, I get confused. It doesn’t take much.

And to further confuse you, if you’ve never seen it before, some equipment will show you degrees/minutes/(thousands of a minute).
Example: 151 56.923 (151 degrees, 56 minutes, 923/1000 of 1 minute)
That is actually what we use here in the Gulf of Mexico, and it is of course way more accurate than just degrees/minutes/seconds.
You need to be able to understand the differences, and quickly convert from one to the other.

Now for the question 2). This is an urgent, real-life scenario, and, sooner or later, you WILL encounter this. I’m hoping you understand that this is where you need to have a mental ‘picture’ of what’s going on. You can’t just endlessly play the SINR and plug in numbers. And see what the magic GPS box tells you to go and do. YOU are the master, not that silly little plastic box. Mass produced by the lowest bidder in a back alley in Taiwan…

The answer is….C) !!!

Question 3) B (and it’s doing that AWAY from you…!!)

There are many more exercises for you to do to develop a mental picture of your true position vis-a-vis your moving boat. Including other little tricks of the trade. I’m working on a chapter to include later on…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on April 13, 2010, 4:25 pm

Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual

Section 4. GPS Systems and Offshore Navigation Issues

4-3 Digital Select Calling, the Ross DSC500, and other clever stuff

Okay, we’ve given you some anecdotes, to wet your appetite, now for some clever ‘technical schtuff’…
To recap, these days just about everybody uses GPS systems. There are a few purists left, amateurs flying open cockpit biplanes perhaps, gaily flaunting silk scarves, determined to buck the trend. But the rest of us have succumbed. They are reliable, easy to buy, and make for much more relaxed flying. Maybe they are TOO damn reliable. When they fail, as any man made device surely will, one day, and if you are sixty miles from the ship when it happens… it can surprise you.

Coming out to the ‘tuna fields’ you absolutely must have a good understanding of Latitude, Longitude, meridians and parallels. You must be much more than just a ‘blind number plugger’ who only is capable of plugging in numbers into his GPS, and blindly following them, like a little puppy behind its master. Just typing in numbers, and then meekly following those numbers, makes you a SINR. (situationally ignorant number runner) It is going to bite you. Sooner or later. You will get away with it hundreds of times. To the point where you think you’re actually an ace. Then, one day…

Let me just mention that it’s all too easy to get into this habit, and forget even the basic stuff. On one of the ships I worked on, the captain told me he had to explain meridians and parallels to his pilot. He showed me -in some disgust- the drawings he used. Some real, real basic stuff. This pilot (he got fired) was a prime example of a SINR. Oh, and he got lost as well, and had to land on the water, on several occasions…

Technology marches on, and new stuff comes on the market all the time. I’ll describe to you the ‘Ross DSC 500’ set up, which I used 1996 to 2000, simply because it illustrates the principles. You may see one, or you may never see one. But if you get the general idea, it will help you master whatever clever gizmo system is fitted to your helicopter.

The Ross DSC 500

‘DSC’ stands for ‘Digital Select Calling’. There is no substitute for studying the manual, but just to give you a nibble at the pie, here are some bare basics. These ‘basics’ do not in anyway presume to supplant careful study of the manual….!
1) Bottom right hand corner, you will see a button labeled FNC. (Function)
Press it.
2) Middle bottom, you will see a button with above it the label DSC. (Digital Select calling)
Press it.
3) There’s a ‘left arrow’ and a ‘right arrow’. Press the ‘right arrow’ three times.
You will go to ‘request position’. (via ‘DSC calling’ and ‘send position’)
4) Press ENT (Enter)

What you are now doing is requesting the ship to pass you its position. Assuming they have the corresponding Ross Radio unit on the bridge switched on (one dozy old navigator I had repeatedly either forgot, or switched it off during the flight), you will, after a few seconds, hear an annoying ‘deedle-deedle-dee’, after which the ship’s latitude and longitude will flash up on the screen.
Poof! Magic! Just like that!
If your ship is out of range, or if your dopey navigator has accidentally switched the ‘twin’ Ross Radio unit on the bridge off, you will get a cryptic ‘no response’. If you want to, you can try again. This time though, you don’t have to go through all that palaver again. Just press ENT (Enter). Sometimes the buttons are a bit funny, and you have to press smoothly but firmly.

One other function useful to know: pressing EMERG (Emergency) for FIVE seconds, as I understand it, will broadcast a MAYDAY to any station fitted with a Ross. Even if they are not on Channel 16, their radios will automatically flip to ’16’ and display a message:

“DISTRESS CALL RECEIVED FROM HELO N490MH “

…with your position in latitude and longitude. Comforting, and nice to know, eh? There is also an earsplitting warbling screech that wakes everybody up!

So now…. we at least know where the ship is. This information is not worth a tinker’s curse (Irish panhandler/beggar/philosopher type) unless you know where the helicopter is. This is where your GPS comes in. I’m tempted to assume everybody knows the next bit, but just in case of a student who does not, bear with me while I spell it all out.

To set up the GPS you need to know whether or not your GPS has a clue which Ocean you are in. That may sound laconic, but you must know that the first time a GPS hand held unit has to figure out where it is, may take a long time. Technology advances in leaps and bounds, and millions and millions of calculations can now be done blazingly fast. In 1996, 1997, 1998, I was using units which took a long time to initialize. Up to thirty five minutes or so. After that, it’s quicker, maybe two minutes or so.
What I did then with my GPS (in those days, a ‘Trimble Transpak II’) is this:

1) after start, after the helicopter generator comes on line, and after that nasty initial current surge has settled back down, I switch the avionics on, and the GPS I select “STS “. (STATUS)
This step is not necessary. You can skip it. I do it, because it’s fun. I still do the equivalent today, April 2010, here in the Gulf of Mexico on my Bell 407 Garmin GPS.
2) We are interested to see if the beast has managed to ‘capture’ any ‘space vehicles’. Satellites to you and me.
Depending on what unit you are using, it may tell (or visually show) you something like this.

tracking 0 space vehs.

After a while,it will track 1, then 2, then 3. Ultimately, it may track 8 or so really strongly. On the Garmin, the vertical green pulsating bars give you acquisition strength information. My simple pilot mind finds it fascinating, even after all these years. Imagine, somewhere out there in cold space, these man made contraptions, that cost millions of dollars to build and get there, are at my beck and call. Little moi. They are bouncing signals back and forth to my little GPS. All for my personal convenience. It’s a magnificent trick, undreamed of only a few decades back. I watch the satellite acquisition process with a strange awe. It seems a shame many pilots so quickly get blase and bored with this.
It’s magic…
Once you’ve got three captured, you’re pretty well in business. This may take a few minutes. I don’t mind taking off with only 1 or 2 captured,because I know the rest will follow soon. I wouldn’t take off with ‘zero’ captured, because after several minutes that might mean something is wrong. Corrosion in that environment is an ongoing problem, and many a time we have traced GPS reception problems, not to the actual GPS unit itself, but to helicopter antenna mount corrosion, and poor ground connections due to corrosion.
Same here in the Gulf. A frequent giveaway is when you have intermittent GPS problems. It works fine, and then it messes up, and then (usually when a mechanic come out to look at it) the cursed contraption decides to behave impeccably.
fuk’n intermittent @!!# !! gremlins…

I have learned from long, bitter experience to start strongly suspecting antenna connection and grounding problems when I see this sort of intermittent ‘schtuff’ beginning to annoy the living heck out of me…
3) We know from the ‘Ross’ (or its equivalent today) what the position of the ship is. Sometimes the ‘Ross’ will kindly tell the GPS automatically for you. That’s nice. All we have to do now is select NAV (navigation) and it will tell us our magnetic heading to the ship, our range in nautical miles, groundspeed, and the time it will take us to get there. Yes, it’s that easy.
4) If the ‘Ross’ (or its equivalent) does not update the GPS, either because it’s improperly set up, or because something has gone and broke, it’s easy to perform this update manually. Go to WPT (Waypoint). You can call your ship any number you like. (or use letters). We want to update, say, number 27. Go to ‘Edit’. Using the ‘left-right’ toggle. Once the cursor is flashing over ‘Edit’, press the vertical toggle ‘up’. The cursor goes back to the position. Enter the lat and long. There are only two ‘toggles’ and if you experiment you’ll soon get the hang of it. And there’s always the M-A-N-U-A-L. Right?
It will ask if you want to ‘save’ it. Yes, we do, so ‘up toggle’, and now waypoint 27 (The ship’s position) is saved. Click back to NAV (Navigation) and make sure you are looking at the correct waypoint (top left hand corner). If that says ’25’ or ’99’ then you need to use the toggles to select ’27’. This is important, or things could become very embarrassing. If you have carefully entered the ship’s lat and long under ’27’ and then you click to ‘Nav’ and start following directions to waypoint ’25’ or ’99’…
Go back to the bottom of the class.
Should you want to know your position righ there and then, because you are over a foamer or a log for instance, then select POS (Position).
Magic…

I’ll leave my super shortened explanation of Tuna Field GPS operation there for right now, and I apologize to all the outraged purists. (Oh, heck, why should I? Knickers, if you don’t like it.) Remember… there is NO substitute for reading the M-A-N-U-A-L. But at least this will maybe give you a rough idea.
Remember also this: The Ross DSC 500 (or its equivalent) tells you where the ship is. (and it tells the ship where you are). Your onboard GPS tells you where the helicopter is, and gives you magnetic heading TO the ship, range, groundspeed and time.

I try and check everything is working, whilst I am still running up on the helideck. You should get a reading off the GPS giving you a very short distance to the ship (you’re sitting on it!)

After take-off, as I climb out to 900 feet, I want to know toute-suite if the GPS is giving me a sensible heading and distance to the ship. If not, why not?

Periodically, during the flight, I will also check this. I want to keep a mental picture of where I am in relation to the ship. If the GPS fails suddenly, I want to know. Some pilots have a little cardboard compass rose with a pointer, which they manually set to point to the ship. That’s okay, as long as you remember to set it.
I keep the ‘picture’ in my head, and I will explain later on the various ways you can achieve just that.

More than anything else, avoid the Big Trap. Getting way, way too comfortable with your fancy-dancy onboard electronics, and starting to totally 100% RELY on it. You MUST be able to be NOT surprised when the electronic gremlins strike. If you have to fall back on dead reckoning (time-distance-heading), then so be it.
It will happen. Sooner or later. Imagine if you have a Hamlet Cigar moment like I had one day, forty odd miles away from the ship:

thick white smoke pouring out of the radio stack.
Strong, biting smell of electrical burning. Followed by…..
POOF!
lights out.
Hmmmm……

I knew where I was, and we just turned around and went home. (Well, we cursed a bit, him in Canton Chinese, and me in Paddy Irish) The ship freaked out a bit as well, because the Ross didn’t give them a position for us anymore, but we were quite happy really.
In your heart and soul, if you are flying along, twisting and turning, popping down to look at this log and that foamer….and if you know damn well inside your own head, that you don’t have a CLUE where the ship is unless you look at the GPS… then you are setting yourself up for a fall one day. Don’t be a SINR.

More on this… later!

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on April 13, 2010, 4:21 pm

Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual

Section 4. GPS Systems and Offshore Navigation Issues

4-2 Hey Moggy, I can’t find my boat and I’m almost outta gas…!

It was a pretty horrible day.
When there’s lots of wind, and therefore a rough old sea state, and lots of low, scudding cloud into the bargain, it’s a lot tougher to find fish. It may just not be worth the effort, and the risk. If you had a problem, and the sea state is such that you’re unlikely to float very successfully, then maybe it’s a rest day for the pilot and the observer.
On this particular day in June 1997, I was lying on my bunk, reading a good book. The ship was rockin’ and rollin’ pretty good, and it was decidedly noisy outside. I was perfectly happy not be flying.
Next thing, there came a loud knock on my door, followed by the door bursting open, followed by an excited Taiwanese sailor.
His face showed consternation.
“Moggy! Captain say you come to bridge! “
With a mental “Now bloody what? “, I headed up to see what was going on.
It was a helicopter, a Hughes 500, hovering by the bow, fish tailing unsteadily in the blustery wind.
I grabbed the radio, and made contact.
“Hey dude, it’s Moggy! What’s up? “
The answer came breathless, and clearly conveyed stress, emotion.
” Hey Moggy, I can’t find my boat and I’m almost outta gas…! “

In short order, I established the name of his boat, a Korean ship.
The captain was also on the bridge, and I looked questioningly at him. Typically, captains will know pretty well who is in the area. They make it their business to. Friend or foe.
But this time, the captain just shook his head, looking puzzled. That ship was nowhere near us. I looked on the radar, and in fact couldn’t see anything anywhere near us.
“Hey guy, how much fuel have you actually got? “
The panicked reply indicated he had maybe twenty minutes left. Not good.
I asked the captain to call the Korean ship. He wasn’t pleased. It was obvious that they were not friends. Contrary to common belief, that all Korean boats hate all Taiwanese boats, and vice versa, the truth is that there are some really good friendships as well. It just depends. But not this particular Korean.
No friend of the captain’s…
Nonetheless, our Taiwanese captain, to his credit, started hailing the Korean vessel, on different frequencies. It took a while. Eventually, a somewhat haughty reply came. Not friendly. I winced. The captain, again to his credit, remained professional, and merely stated:
“We have your helicopter at my ship! Low on fuel! He ask for your position! “
Now, all of a sudden, the Korean captain adopted a rather more agreeable radio voice.
Yeah, right…
I jotted down the lat and long, and did some quick mental calculations.
Oh, dear…
I passed the lat/long to the Hughes. Back came the immediate reply:
“Errr…. Moggy, I’m not very good with this GPS. Can you give me a rough idea? “
Oh, dear…
Not good. My GPS was in the helicopter, but a quick mental calculation told me about 120 degrees, and 70 or 80 miles. I passed that information, knowing already what he was going to say. Off mike, I was already asking for my deck helper to be sent for to go up and unstrap my bird.
“Jeez, Moggy, I don’t have fuel for that…. “
I already knew that. He didn’t have much day light for it either. A thought that had not yet occurred to him obviously…
By the time I had lifted off, and he had landed to refuel, his panic had risen to a serious level. I actually started wondering if he was going to refuse to take off my ship. He sounded more and more seriously freaked out. He was having trouble, it seemed, loading his GPS. And he asked me several times what the bearing and range was to his ship. I was now able to tell him exactly, as I was in my bird with my own GPS. He seemed to be getting a different result. It also seemed that he was arguing furiously with his observer.
In the end, I offered to guide him part of the way. With my Taiwanese captain’s kind blessing. He had long since picked up on the panic in the pilot’s voice.
I flew with him some 40 miles, made sure he was heading in the right direction, and departed back for my boat in the twilight. I got back at about the time he would have been landing, and it was getting pretty dark.
There are a number of lessons here, and further on down in this section, we will spell them all out, one by one.

But first, yet another illustrative anecdote.
This time, it was yours truly, who was beginning to seriously, seriously sweat his fuel. What happened was that we criss-crossed all over the place. Many newbies think there is such a thing as a regular, formal ‘search pattern’. A rectangle, or a circle around the boat, an oval, or a regular four leaf clover shape.
(I’m kidding…)
Dream on. In truth, the search often goes all over the place. The captain will be watching his bird radar, and if he sees birds gathering somewhere, he will likely call you up and send you to investigate. Where there are birds, there may be fish… You may start off West of the ship. Then go South. Then suddenly East. Then reverse course. Then do a…no, hang on…. over there…. no….go back there.…. oh, what’s that?….. errrr.… let’s head South now……etc, etc.
Meanwhile, the ship, your only landing base, is ALSO often enough zig-zagging. Occasionally they will stay on a steady “zig “ heading, but even that may suddenly change. I always asked what their “zag “ plans were, but I knew to never rely totally on what they told me.

Now, hear this: Even if you have a good understanding of latitude and longitude, even if you can visualize where you are in relation to the boat’s position, it is easy to get a little confuddled. The number one trick here is to NOT rely 100% on your GPS! And that of course, is what people do. Yes, many boats have an “auto update system “, where you can in effect inquire electronically off the boat what it’s position is. But it may fall out. For several reasons. Line-of-sight being one. More on this later. You will frequently be 50 miles away from the boat. Occasionally, rarely, on a calm day, I’d go up to 60 or 70 miles. If you are one of those pilots who refuses to go out of sight of the boat, you will get fired. They don’t want you that close. They want you to go and find fish. I was mostly using the ‘Ross DSC 500’ system, (more on this later) and some days it worked like a charm. Other days, it would reliably fall out once you had gone more than 30 miles from the ship. Then you could call the ship, and ask for the ship’s position. And of course, once in a while, nobody would answer. Annoying. But imagine what happens when a junior Chinese sailor gives you the WRONG latitude and/or longitude! That is exactly what happened to me.

On this day, the ship had told me they would be steaming steadily on a particular heading. That much I knew. We passed 30 to 35 miles from the ship, and the Ross DSC500 could no longer automatically update the ship’s position. That left me with a shrewd idea of where the ship was, and where it was going, but not an accurate lat/long. Well, we did the old zig-zag here-a-bit and there-a-bit and every-where-a-bit of searching, and then it was time to go home. My observer called for the ship’s position. Silence. No reply. Not unusual. So I set up an approximate heading. I wasn’t worried. Sooner or later, somebody would reply, or we would get close enough to where the Ross DSC500 would automatically update the ship’s position for us. Or I could climb a bit. We flew along, fuel going down, no biggie, and then we finally got a reply. The observer jotted the ship’s position down, and loaded it in the GPS.
Whoa… problem…
The ship was nowhere near where I was expecting. It would require a significant heading change. I was alarmed. It didn’t make sense. I asked the observer to check with the ship again.
Ship give wrong position. You check. Not possible…
He did, and we got the same answer. I ran the maths. It didn’t make sense. The ship could only do 12 to 14 knots. The purported new latitude and longitude would have meant that they had figured out a way to do more like 35 to 40 knots.
I asked the observer to check for a third time.
Not possible… wrong position…
Now he got mad with me. He checked again, angrily. Same answer. I asked if the ship was indeed maintaining the previously mentioned heading. They said it was.
I shook my head, and refused to obey the GPS indicated heading. Instead, I steered a guess-timated course, to where I calculated the ship had to be. It was significantly different from where the GPS was telling us to go, with the position that my observer had loaded. Based on what he had been told by the ship.
Of course, with my observer’s limited English, he could not understand why I was, in his mind, “refusing to fly to the ship “. He became really angry, and was shouting in alarm. I just gritted my teeth, shook my head, and flew my guess-timated heading. But I would lie to you if I told you I wasn’t sweating bricks. Doubts assailed me. I kept re-running the same mathematics in my head. I kept ending up with the same conclusion: the ship could not have possibly got to that position. But then I would feel the need to re-run the calculations.
Over and over again. Meanwhile, I grimly ignored the GPS purported indicated heading to the ship, despite the loud protests (plus abuse) from beside me. Stress…
You can only imagine my relief, when, at thirty miles range, all of a sudden the Ross DSC500 locked on to the ship’s position, and now we suddenly had a solid lock, pretty damn close to my guess-timated heading! What made it even more beautiful, was the reaction of my observer. He literally shook, his eyes bulged at the screen, and then he turned to me.
“How you know?? “
I smiled sweetly, and tapped my head.
“I have big head! “
It was one of my favorite jokes, a twist on the usual meaning. The Taiwanese thought it meant “Really smart dude “.
The Taiwanese’s face went through relief to anger.
“Ship pass wrong position? “, he asked.
I nodded.
He said something in Chinese, it sure sounded like a really bad cussword, and spent the rest of the trip back screaming abuse over the radio at the poor unfortunate sailor. He was still yelling when we landed.

Now, I never did understand what actually happened. If it was an honest error, equipment unfamiliarity, or otherwise. But I think that the Longitude was wrong, and ’19 minutes’ accidentally became ’59 minutes’.
Forty miles…
But I was given assurances it would never happen again, and it didn’t.
The moral I think though is interesting, right? Yep, it could have been ugly. Running the calculations on board ship, I was pretty soon clear on one thing: I would not have had sufficient fuel to go to the bogus position, realize the error, and then fly to the correct position. It just wouldn’t have been possible in terms of fuel.

I quote these examples to you as a sort of taster, before we dive into the theory in the next chapter. The theory can be a bit dry, and heavy, but I hope you will see the point I am trying to make: it’s super important stuff. Not just in the Tuna Fields. Anywhere, you use GPS.

“Don’t be one of those GPS slaves who always meekly fly down the long, dark tunnel “

and hopes…

that there is indeed, light… (your planned destination)….at the end of that tunnel.

There may NOT be. And then, with your fuel reserves seriously depleted, now what are you gonna do…?

Bad boy, bad boy,
what ya gonna do?
What you gonna do
when the sharks come for you?

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on April 13, 2010, 6:43 pm

Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual

Section 4. GPS Systems and Offshore Navigation issues

4-1 The long, dark tunnel

Before we delve into tuna helicopter specific GPS systems, first a general warning about GPS and the over reliance many pilots place on it. In two short sentences:

“Don’t be one of those GPS slaves who always meekly fly down the long, dark tunnel “

“You can’t just fly little numbers – you have GOT to develop a mental picture and a situational awareness “

Duh. So what do I mean by that?
I mean the failure of many guys, who stare intently at that little screen, flying with child like innocence and trust, where ever the indication takes them, without question, and without suspicion. Who, frankly, don’t have the foggiest clue what lies on either side of their track. They are in effect, flying down a long, dark tunnel. Their situational awareness is limited at best, maybe even non-existent. They just hope to reach that little, distant light at the end of that tunnel, their destination. Whether they admit it or not, (and most will not), they are vulnerable. Yes, they may get away with it hundreds of times. But as sure as eggs can become real noisy baby chicks, sooner or later, that light at the end of the tunnel will go out, or mislead you, and now you start running fuel critical. Oops…
On at least two occasions, when I was flying off tuna boats, a lack of suspicion on my part would have caused embarrassment. On one of those occasions, I would, for sure, have landed in the drink.
I describe that story later.

A few examples maybe to illustrate.
I was instructing helicopters for a while at a little airfield in the UK, and the Chief Instructor, who had an unexpected engagement, asked me to fill in and take one of his students. The gentleman, who owned his own helicopter, was about to do his General Flight test for his Private Helicopter License.
All I had to do was ride with him, and give him any fine tuning pointers. I was introduced to the gentleman, and he frowned his instant dislike. He was not pleased to be flying with me, and he didn’t care if it showed. I formed the impression of a bit of a ‘Hooray Henry’, somewhat over dressed, blue blazer, breast pocket hankerchief, pressed slacks, polished suede shoes, and a superior, upper class colonial British Empire accent. And the bearing to go with it. The gentleman was obviously wealthy, with his own spanky new helicopter. I never could figure out if he really talked like that, or if he had secretly gone to upper class elocution lessons. I for my part, Irish, grubby jeans, beard, devil-may-care attitude towards the British Empire, was not the best match. But he was the customer, and I resolved to be nice. No rude jokes about Colonial Brits. So instead I just quietly hummed the old music hall song about “who goes out walking in the blazing hot, midday, Indian sun? ”
(Mad dogs and Englishmen…).
We were flying along on our cross country, and it soon became obvious he was not looking out the window.
Instead, he was fiddling with a TigerShark GPS. Constantly.
Well…. I’m ah-thinking you are about to have a GPS failure, Hooray my boy…
And I reached across and switched it off. Then I sat back, with a smug instructor smile, as he threw a look of withering disgust at me. What I meant was: “Hey Hooray, how about some old fashioned time-distance-heading basic navigation skills? “
I think many instructors would have done the same. Part of the perks of the job, I reckon. Tormenting students.
Well, guess what… Old Hooray reached across and switched it back on!
What!?
And then bade me -sternly- to keep my mitts off it. He told me in no uncertain circumstances that it was HIS helicopter, and he would use whatever equipment HE deemed fit.
That, admittedly, was a new one on me. I had never, ever, had a student pull that little stunt. I pondered my options. I could switch it off again. Pull the circuit breaker. Throw the bloody thing out the window. Or…
I watched our destination airfield appear over the horizon. Hooray was fiddling with his GPS again. He obviously had no clue where he was, and was determined not to waste time looking out the window.
Okay, Sahib, you want to play it that way…
So I sat there, quietly, pretending I was fully cowed into obedience. Yes, Master. I won’t touch anything, Master. Whatever you say, Mister Hooray…
I watched the destination get closer and closer. Run-ways…. Lots of little aero-plane thingies parked outside hangar thingies. But Hooray was too busy to look out. He was busy paging through different pages of the TigerShark. Our destination grew closer and closer. I never said a word, or moved a muscle. This was getting to be fun. He flew right over the top of it. And kept right on going. I figured, surely, after a few minutes, he’d start copping on something was amiss.
Hell, no. Just fiddling with his damn GPS again…
Five minutes went by. Ten minutes. Still we flew on the same heading. Now we were going away from our destination. Occasionally he would glance out the window. Just for form, I think. The rest of the time, he was either fiddling with, or studying his GPS intently. My silent entertainment level was now growing higher with the second. The beauty of it was that we were heading straight for the Gatwick Control Zone. London’s other Big International Airport. Another ten minutes, he would be marching straight into it, with never such a pesky thing as an ATC clearance. This was getting really good.
Onwards we marched, and I was still playing the role of the subjugated peon. Not allowed to touch nothing. Just sit there and be quiet.
Yes, Massa…
It got even better. Now in the distance, I could see the unmistakable shape of Concorde taking off.
Wonderful, and Old Hooray here is just about to violate their airspace…
I knew even then, that Air Traffic Controllers would be watching our rapidly approaching transponder blip closely. I let it go as long as I possibly could.
“I HAVE CONTROL! “
And the worm turned…
Paddy committed mutiny, and took the controls away from the British Empire! Despite the steep one-eighty about turn, he still had the composure to yell at me as to what in hell I thought I was doing. I told him. In no uncertain circumstances.
“Saving your ugly butt from violating Gatwick Control Zone! And what do you think THAT is…? “
I said, pointing to a now very large Concorde not too far away, climbing though our altitude.
He looked, saw, and quaked.
“Oh… that’s Concorde! “, he squeaked, very alarmed.
Having been very patient, under some provocation, I indulged in a rare (for me) instructor to student sarcasm.
I felt I had earned it.
Oh, wow… Isn’t it frickin’ am-mazing what you can see when you look out the WINDOW….!!!!

Lest you think that this does not happen to Commercial Pilots, here in the Gulf of Mexico, I have had plenty of experiences that are smudged on the same messy blotter.
You’re flying along, with passengers, and you see, slowly converging from your left, miles away, another helicopter. Same altitude. You keep an eye on him. You remark to your front seat passenger:
“See that helicopter? Don’t worry, I’ve seen him. I do have the right of way, but I’m not sure he’s seen me. “
A few minutes go by. Visibility twenty miles. Sunny. Beautiful day.
We converge.
I let it go for a while.
“Hm. I don’t think he’s seen us. I’m going to do a slight climb here… “
I climb 300 feet or so. The other machine just keeps right on going, passes right under us, and continues on his way. No rock, no bank, no deviation. Usually, when a pilot in another machine is watching you, you can tell. Slight banking, as he maneuvers to keep you in sight. Past his windscreen pillars, etc.
But no. Zero. Nada. Zip. Just sailing quietly on…
Head inside cockpit…

One day I was in Africa, and I had a green deck to land on a platform. Suddenly I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. Looked to my right. There was another machine, overtaking me to my right. He had come up behind me, and a few hundred yards to my right. Slowly we started to converge. As I was descending towards the platform where I had received a green deck, he was descending with me. I could see his head, staring straight ahead. It never turned. I broke off the approach, and watched in amazement as this machine continued its approach, and landed right on the platform on which I had received clearance to land!
That was embarrassing, as I had some VIP’s on board. All our passengers are VIP’s really, because that’s what pays our mortgages. But these were VIP VIP’s. Double whammy Vips…
What it turned out to be was one of my buddies having a really off day. He had landed on my platform, talking to another platform! And fiddling with his GPS, loading it for the next leg. Wrong platform, and he admitted he had never seen me! Despite coming up behind me.
Head inside cockpit…

On another occasion, I was watching a higher helicopter converge with me in a descending turn, and I wondered if he had seen me. Then he turned steeper, so his belly was towards me! That was a dead give away. No pilot, who has seen another helicopter close by, is going to deliberately turn his belly to the other machine, and leave himself unsighted. Another buddy, as it turned out, fiddling with his GPS…
Head inside cockpit, to the detriment of awareness.
Of course, I don’t doubt for a second I’ve done the exact same thing myself. And some other professional fellow pilot, in making allowances for MY blundering, has gotten out of MY way, muttering murderously under his breath:
“Dozy bastard…! Get your eyes out of the window! “

Final two examples. And two important ones. I once got a phone call from an old customer foreman, who I had flown with on a contract for a year. Nice old boy. He said he had a problem, and could I help. Apparently, he had a new pilot, and this is what had transpired.
Firstly, once they were all strapped in the bird, the pilot had been unable to program the Trimble GPS. He was not used to that model. So everybody had to disembark, whilst the pilot fetched a mechanic to come and explain the GPS to him. Then, after that delay, everybody got back in again.
Now the track for the destination was about 210 degrees magnetic. Which would take the machine pretty quickly offshore, and then over a whole lotta water. After ten minutes or so, the foreman was concerned, because they were firmly established on a westerly heading, traveling over land. There was no way they were going to get to the platform on this heading. According to the foreman, he pointed this out to the pilot, and waved his arm in a generally southerly direction.
Pilot: “Well, no, this is the way the GPS is telling us to go… “
(A classic, eh?)
Foreman-customer: “Son, I’ve been flying this route for thirty five years. You are not going to get there on this heading. Look, we’re still flying overland. You’re gonna take us to Galveston at this rate… “

The pilot made some adjustments, fiddled some more. Ten minutes after that, they were heading on a due EASTERLY heading. Again, the foreman waved a hand in the direction of south.
The pilot argued…
To cut a long story short, the flight that I routinely used to perform in about 1 hour and 5 minutes, took 2 hours and 10. That’s not good. But it gets worse.
“Did he stop for fuel on the way? ” I asked, alarmed.
No, he didn’t.
That was really scary. There was no fuel at the destination. Apart from the fact that the pilot would have flown past four to five refueling platforms on the way there, here was where the rub came in ‘hard and scratchy’:
I knew the nearest fuel platform from where he landed was a minimum of 7 minutes flying time away. A full tank holds 835 pounds of fuel, and a burn of 360 pounds an hour, you can do the mathematics.
Yep, running on vapor…
I make that 828 pounds used. Factor in the company requirement that a machine must always land with a minimum of 30 minutes fuel (45 minutes of winds greater than 20 knots), and it is clear there were some real issues going on here…

You see where the ‘long, dark tunnel’ came in here? Our hero flew past 4 to 5 possible refueling stops on the way, all within easy reach. That’s what I call a long, dark, stressful ride, with likely very poor situational awareness. I doubt if he had any clue he was passing up fuel on the way. It was just a case of fixating on the ‘light’ (destination) at the end of that dark tunnel. After that… oh, yes, I guess I need some fuel. Hmmm…..

Last example. I was at a company that did some hand outs. On one of those hand outs, a simple clerical typing error meant that the lat/long coordinates for a coastal base were incorrect. The base was maybe half a mile inland, no more. Our hero plugged the wrong coordinates into his GPS. And flew on. And on. And on. Eventually, he got himself into trouble with low fuel, way inland. Like seventy miles inland.
He was so far away from the coast, looking for a known coastal base, that he was later asked the obvious question. Why did he fly inland, on and on, until he was running low on fuel? How about basic map reading skills, situational awareness?
And here comes the really interesting rub of that story: Our hero abdicated any and all responsibility! Indignantly, I might add. As far as he was concerned, it was all the fault of that stupid handout.
This is where you start feeling sorry for Helicopter Companies, Chief Pilots, and Owners. Remember, these are very, very nice people (a trifle delusional, often enough) who have the childish idea that they can make lots of money out of owning helicopters, and employing pilots like you and me. I’m glad they suffer from this delusion, because it means you and I get to play with these nice shiny toys. They fix ’em when they are broken, wash ’em, wax and put fuel in them. We don’t have to pay a cent, and we get to have all the fun, while they suffer all the worry and stress. Heck, they even give us pocket money to fly the things. What’s wrong with that deal, eh? It follows that you really have to help them delude themselves that it’s a really good business idea.
Last thing you want to do is give them a hard time, or make them hate pilots anymore than most of them do soon enough anyway…
This guy… well, what can you say.
Head inside cockpit. Or maybe, in this case, UP another long dark tunnel…

Alright, so being top of the class, now you’re gonna ask me:

“Do tuna helicopter pilots ever mess up with their GPS? Run out of gas? Get lost? Land ‘silently’ in the water?… “

Good question. Take a bow. Now you’re thinking ahead.
Answers?
How about: Yes. Yes. Yes. And, OH YEAH.

Which brings me neatly to my next Tuna Tales story…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on April 12, 2010, 6:38 pm

Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual

Too much ‘doom and gloom’?

4/6/2010

I’m enjoying the feedback I get from pilots, usually total strangers, who kindly drop me an email from time to time.
I had one today, and it just brought a smile to my face.

I have to thank you for the time you spent assembling the manual. I
am Pilot/Mechanic investigating the possibility of flying the Tuna
fields. This is a HUGE help in understanding the way the business is
run and pitfalls Pilots can run into.
Eric Wolfe

Dude! You made my day!
This leads me on to something I find hard to express.
It is an odd feature about humans: they are quick to mock what they don’t understand. Certainly, there is some serious justification for the cynics who lump all psychic or ‘second sight’ manifestations under the headings of quacks, fakes, loooooonatics and bah-humbug. Too many con-artists have scammed too many people. Anxious relatives, hurt and grieving parents, and over eager believers have proven to be easy victims for the unscrupulous, the deluded, and the rusty old seized ‘nut cases’. The loopy-loos who don’t just have a screw loose. They have a whole bunch of the pesky suckers missing.
There is a problem here though. As so often is the case in the affairs of humans, we risk throwing out the baby with the bath water. All we see is gubby old soap scum and stains on the bath. We don’t see the tiny baby hiding behind that big yellow plastic duck. The one with the idiotic, permanently frozen, ever happy grin. The duck I’m talking about.
If we flush all that lot down the plug hole, we’ll be sorry later, if and when we ever find out.

Many moons ago, when I was young and innocent, (well…. maybe rather randy), my first real girl friend was a soft spoken Irish lassy by the name of Roisin. She was a University Social Sciences student, and I was an Arts student, taking Economics and History. We went out for eighteen months or so, and I still remember her quiet, steadfast seriousness. She was an orphan, and had a reservoir of sadness inside her, which she kept hidden away from those surrounding her. She was kind, infinitely patient, thoughtful, and everybody liked her. Looking back, I can’t ever remember her ever having a quarrel with anybody. If you said something sharp or cutting to Roisin, her eyes would go sad, but she would keep her peace. The quiet sadness would make you feel bad, and, unless you were a total blackguard, you had to back off.
I was a hopeless case, wild, and into fast motorbikes. Sky-diving. Poetry. I read, I scribbled, and I would roar off over the mountains for days on end. We ended our romantic relationship, without the slightest quarrel, and remained good friends. It was more of a case where she knew that whatever I was looking for, it wasn’t her. I kind of knew that as well.
Well, here’s the point of that story. I liked Roisin. We were close. Not in the romantic sense, but just as two friends. We talked for hours. Life, Death and the Universe. University students tend to do that. It’s mostly a good thing. It’s what makes our society free, as opposed to tens of thousands of young people, wearing the same uniform, waving the same little red book in the air, praising the somewhat dull thoughts of a fat little Chinaman, invading the houses of the rich, and smashing up ancient artifacts. A “Great Leap Forwards ” tends to be the clarion call of many a populist Big Government politician, today as before. From Chairman Mao to Comrade Barack. But does it work? I doubt it.
I enjoyed the discussions. I can still remember sitting around the fire at night, maybe ten of us. Talking. Arguing, discussing, debating, hoping… And I can still remember Roisin. Quiet, thoughtful, attentive, listening.
Wise. Wise way beyond her years.
I moved into a small apartment on my own. At 42 Rathgar Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin. I no longer wished to share. I wanted time and space to myself. To read. To scribble. To think. To be. Roisin moved in with four other girls. In Rathmines. All Social Science students. Once in a while, every few weeks or so, I would decide to go and visit. No phone call. Just a spur of the moment, uninvited, decision to go and see Roisin. Sometimes a month would go by. Her place and mine were about a mile apart. It was an easy walk. Half way along the journey, there was an alleyway. Brick walls on both sides. It was maybe a hundred yards long or so.
“Hello Roisin! “, I would call out, as I met her, half way down that alley.
“Hello! “, she would wave, laughing, as she walked to meet me.
It didn’t just happen ONCE. Remember, no phone calls. No pre-arrangement. Just -purely- spontaneous.
It happened many, many times. No matter if we hadn’t seen each other for two months, we would meet…. spontaneously, half way down that alley. We had both decided, just like that, to go and see the other.
Who was the psychic? Who was picking up the other’s thoughts? Or were we both inclined that way? Or was there some other process at work here? One we don’t understand?

Years later, I remember that particular air show well. I was performing in a Starduster Too open cockpit biplane.
He… was performing in a souped up monoplane. He liked doing super low level loops. One after the other. I remember looking at his wings. I could see, or was it sense, his wings approaching an aerodynamic stall. Struggling to fly. Struggling to pass smoothly through the air. Despite the actions of the pilot, who was hauling back on the stick. Approaching the bottom of the loop, with the ground rushing up. He would pull through at fifty feet. Air show smoke billowing out. The crowd would gasp. Cheer. And he would go back and do it again. And again. A dozen times.
I hated it. I knew it was WAY too close. I flew my loops much higher. I knew a thing or to about things going wrong. Like the day the map flew out of it’s pocket, and unfolded across my face, while I was doing an inverted ‘fly by’ in a Christen Eagle biplane..
“Interesting maneuver that last one? “, the onlookers said to me afterwards.
And I thought:
“You bet it was. Nothing like being upside down at thirty feet and doing one hundred and forty knots and not knowing where the sky ends and the ground begins… “
And I said: “Oh, that? Nothing much. Just a hiccup! “
And they smiled, a little puzzled, and I thought:
“Fuxsake Francis… fly the next one a bit higher! “

So I talked to my friend. Him of the super low level air show loops. One time, we were standing in the air show tent, and we had a quiet moment, just him and I. For once, a brief moment, the crowds of admirers were elsewhere, the groupies, the pretty women, the hangers on. I looked at him, seriously, and worried about his jocular, dismissive reply to my concerns. He implied that I was “past it “, and that if flying air shows bothered me so much, I shouldn’t be doing it.
I remember I sensed -suddenly- an awful, screaming falsity behind his too easy smile. An awful, awful, deep, hopeless despair. I knew he was lying. But I didn’t know why. Helplessly, I said, softly:
“You are going to die… “
He laughed in my face, unkindly, turned, and walked away.

A few months later, he was dead.
A farmer found the remains. A smashed little airplane in his field. Two dead people. When the details slowly came out, I was shocked and horrified. We all were. From the impact evidence, it was clear the aircraft had been trying to pull out of a low level loop. Eye witnesses described the same. But this time, he had needed planet Earth to budge over a few extra inches. But there was much more to it.
He had been at a function. Where he had been presented, for some reason, with a bottle of Whiskey. He had departed from that function, with the full,new, bottle of Whiskey. In the mangled, unrecognizable wreckage, they found that bottle, strangely intact. Mocking the world of destruction around it. Half full.
From there, the awful truth slowly eeked out. He had been having affairs, with young, pretty women. His wife, heart broken, had committed suicide. Leaving a young daughter. His parents-in-law, who leaved next door, were probably a constant reminder to him of his betrayal. And this was the pilot who had put up such a facade for me. Such a show of bravado. But I know I simply sensed it. I just sensed this awful, awful thing going on, and there was nothing I could do about it. Other than to say, quietly, what I felt. Or, rather, what I knew to be true:
“You are going to die… “

As beautiful as flying can be, as wonderful a privilege it can be, to observe the world and its strange goings on from up above… somehow, this heart broken soul, tortured, bewildered, feigning only bravado and insouciance, chose that dimension to mock Life itself. The ultimate “fingers “.
Was I just sensitive, or was there more to it? I don’t know. But I do know I, who loved to fly, who simply lived to fly, was deeply shocked at what I saw, for a brief, fleeting second, behind that mask.

On another occasion, I was standing at the edge of a Big Hole, watching an A-Star taking off with a very full load of tourists. I have never seen a coning angle like that on a helicopter. I watched it take off down wind, and then perform a hard nose over, over the edge. The last thing I saw was the tail boom, sticking vertically up like a flag pole. I describe the story elsewhere, in the series “Of Helicopters and Humans “.
I was left with an awful, awful sinking feeling. Premonition? I don’t know. But I was alarmed enough to make several inquiries about the pilot.

Which brings me to flying tuna helicopters off tuna boats.
There’s something I sense at times, from the emails I get, from the articles I read elsewhere. From the forums in Cyberspace, where pilots talk pilot shop. From some of the YouTube videos, with some pilots performing wild and wonderful gyrations on take off and landing….
It’s hard for me to put it into words. But I think it’s important that I try.
Bear with me then, my friend, while I struggle to put into words what I see in my mind as shadows, flitting across the Universe. Shadows, moving over the waves, and shadows, momentarily blocking out the sun.

I absolutely loved flying tuna helicopters off tuna boats. I don’t regret the experience. I put a lot of effort into describing it in Chapter One of my -not yet finished- second novel, “The Tuna Hunter “. That chapter is called “The Empty Quarter “, and it’s on this site. (I put up a few chapters on the site, hoping people would give me a kick up the tailpipe to go and finish the bloody thing.) You can click on this link:

The Empty Quarter

I would encourage you to read this chapter now. Having done so, I hope you’ll understand that it’s not all “gloom and doom ” in what I’m trying to write about. You can spend days, weeks, months, and tragedy will not befall you, and nor will it cross your path as manifested in fellow pilot’s lives. But then, out the the steel blue, it happens…
How do we prepare ourselves for it? How do we avoid it? How… do we encourage that “small amber caution light ” that goes off in your mind? And that small inner voice, that gut feeling, that strange awareness, that says to you:

“Hang on here! This is what Moggy was talking about! Hold on here a second! I could get hurt here… “

Much depends on you. And how sensitive you are to your own feelings. I think the answer lies in drawing some kind of balance. Pilots should go out there to enjoy themselves, enjoy their lives, enrich themselves financially, emotionally and culturally. There is plenty of opportunity for all that. And many are the descriptions you will find described in “Blip on the Radar ” of the hilarity and utter nonsense Tuna Dudes get up to. From the shortcut I took to flushing out the crapper, to fish head soup, to your honorable captain physically miming – in the town’s best restaurant- exactly HOW you make love to an ugly woman.
But at the same time, as pilots, we need to have an awareness of what can go wrong, and what to do about it.
We all have to work on our own ‘psychic'(?) sensitivity…
There a million examples of where something happened to pilots, that they never -ever- thought would happen to them. Something that, when they heard about it happening to other pilots, they mocked as “how stupid “. Ranging from hitting wires, to forgetting tie-downs, to taking off in a twin engined helicopter with one engine at idle, to flying into other helicopters, to flying into the water, to….etc, etc.
Guess what…
(Oops…)

In looking back over “Moggy’s Tunaboat Helicopter Manual ” so far, and the “Blip on the Radar ” series so far, I worry a bit that maybe the “gloom and doom ” side gets a bit too much exposure. The reason for this is that it’s hard to write about when it’s going well, and nothing untoward happens. How do you write “routine ” up for page after page? It is therefore not surprising that the f… ups, the near disasters, the actual fatalities, of which there are way too many, get a lot of attention in my writing. I hope, dear reader, that this concentration on “gloom and doom ” does not spoil your reading enjoyment.
It IS a necessary ingredient of a true, honest, purposeful description of tuna helicopter flying.

Yes, flying helicopters is wonderful. I still have a blast. I still fly, almost every day when I’m “on hitch ” here in the Gulf of Mexico.. Three, four, five hours a day. I still put in for the high flying jobs. And I went solo forty years ago. You’d think I’d grow up. By the time ten thousand hours rolls by, you’d think a guy would be getting bored. But no, give me a cold morning, and the chance to wind up an even colder turbine, and my little heart races in excitement. I can’t wait to pull pitch, and get going. As I climb through thirty feet, fifty, one hundred, one thousand… all my cares fall away. I’m flying.
I’m free….
In some of the following chapters, yet to come, I go into stuff I’m not really happy writing about. I know I’ve been putting it off. Big time. But it’s crying out to be written. Quite a few readers have written to me and said that they have enjoyed the scribblings so far, and several have remarked on the “honesty “. That last comment is important to me. Very important. I worry that I will come across as a pompous, moralizing, holier-than-thou self-appointed judgmental guru, if and when I loose that tenuous link with the reader, where the reader feels I’m being totally honest. And that must (and has) (and will) include my own totally stupid screw ups. There’s been quite a few already described, and there’s a fair few more floating around, waiting to be written up in due time, in what remains of my rapidly shrinking ‘gray matter’.

The other problem has been names. Should I use real names or an alias for pilots who are now dead?
I once was furiously attacked for daring to suggest (innocently) that a pilot had flown into the water under control (CFI) in a classic case of the dreaded “Blue Out “. A concept EVERY tuna pilot MUST be familiar with. All the evidence pointed to this, as the accident cause. The attack on me was in my face, furious, and I wondered if I was about to get punched out. I had no idea I was causing such offense to this pilot, who felt I was grievously insulting a very experienced pilot, who was not around to stick up for himself. That was far from my intention, but the episode taught me a valuable lesson or two.
In the event, I have used a mix. Some of the names are real, some are not. My intent in any case is not to hurt anybody’s feelings, and least of all the emotions of surviving relatives. I’ve tried to be ‘honest’ and faithful to my purpose:
* to describe events that occurred, so other pilots may learn to
avoid those risks.
* to remind myself, and everybody else, that, truly, “Here, but for the
grace of God, go I… “
* to avoid judgment. I firmly believe good men have died, not because
they were stupid, but because things simply sneaked up on them.

Lastly, you may notice I spend quite a long time going into pilots’ “mindset “. In the sense of “attitude “.
Correct. I think that is simply crucial. I’ll let you figure out why…

Fly safe, my friend, enjoy yourself. But…

be careful…

Francis Meyrick
(c)

Last edited by Francis Meyrick on April 6, 2010, 11:10 pm