Part Two

We had the Hughes 269 for a taxi cab sort of thing and we used it as a
currency ship. Those of us who were airplane rated but who were
scientists were routinely checked out in the 269. These were all Army
machines. Many times I did autorotations in that piece of crap until
I was drenched in sweat. It was a pile of **** machine but management
wanted all the backup pilots they could muster in the front of the
Huey's "just in case." So, that was sort of the philosophy about all
of it. If you could fly, you did. There was always a government
rated PIC in the right seat, unconscious or not, he was there and he
was responsible. But, if you proved yourself early on, and you
weren't a prick (I fooled them, I was a prick then too), you got to do
all the flying you could stand. The pilots were so busy chasing pussy
all night long, they were more than pleased to hand the stick over to
someone they could trust and nod off a bit.

So, this is the way it went for three years. Although I wasn't there
all the time, I cycled in and cycled out. The stories I could write
about many of the flights are as clear to me today as the days we flew
them...coming home in the evenings in Iowa over the corn fields at 50
feet and 50 knots. I'd try to sit in back on those evenings and open
the sliding door. I'd put my legs out on the top of a float and just
sort of sit there in the air at slow speed like a humming bird looking
at the scenery. We'd fly through people's back yards while they were
eating on picnic tables and wave at them. We'd fly by the farmers
still hard at work cutting hay or picking corn late in the evenings.
They were ecstatic to see this giant machine plowing through the air
behind their homes and over their fields. The farm people were
friendly as hell. Just nice people. These are the same people who
today love NASA, the Air and Space Museum and pay their huge taxes to
support technology although they can't participate in it...only
vicariously.

There were lots of times when we were late because of mechanical
problems. The team would fly an A&P out to the field and he'd work on
the machine until it ran right. I remember one night I was flying
back to Westover AFB from fresh water lakes in Maine. It was about
22:00. We'd had mechanical problems and just didn't get that mutha in
the air until after sun down. I had a sleeping pilot in the right
seat (PIC seat) and three sleeping in the back (two mechanics and a
scientist). I'd been working since 05-hundred myself and was just
nothing but a body that felt like it was entirely on Novocain. I
couldn't see ****, was on an airway IFR at the MEA and trying to focus
on the CDI, my heading and keep the damn altitude on the button. We
didn't even have an HSI or anything like we have today. It was all
needle, ball and airspeed. I don't even think I had an attitude
indicator (artificial horizon) on the copilot side...can't remember.
And a helicopter flies exactly like an airplane when it's up to speed,
other than it's twitchy. So, you just use your airplane instrument
skills and keep it straight on course and altitude.

At some point I got a goofy feeling in my groin. I reached down to
scratch it and it was all numb. I mean there was no feeling in my
crotch at all. I felt my thighs all the way to my knees before I
could feel anything. In that God damn Huey, the bouncing you did on
that canvas woven seat would make you go numb in an hour or two. I
got to thinking that I might lose my sex organs if I didn't get some
blood-circulation back into that area, but I was belted and bolted
into that son-of-a-bitch so tight there was almost nothing I could do.

I jockeyed for some space. I loosened up my belts and tried to lift
my ass off the seat a bit to get some blood flow. I could feel the
flow coming into my legs, the tingling and the shear weight of my
flesh from the deadened nerves. I sat back down and reached over to
the middle consul for the "forced trim" switch. There was no
autopilot, but we did have this thing called "forced trim." If you
got the Huey going exactly where you wanted it to go and flipped that
switch, it took a bit of the effort out of flying it. Those of you who
know anything about helicopters know that if you let go of the stick,
the machine simply departs on you. It will simply just roll inverted
or pitch straight down, up, sideways, or whatever. You have to fly
the son-of-a-bitch all the time or it "Departs." Well, forced-trim
helps a bit. It's like tightening the friction knobs nowadays on the
controls. So, I flipped the switch to stabilize the thing while I
lifted my ass up off the seat one more time. Now, also in a
helicopter, the pedals are not spring loaded like an airplane. So
when you set them for a given power setting, you can pretty much take
your feet off them and they stay. The way I was lifting myself was to
put my feet on the floor in front of my seat, about half way from my
seat to the pedals, then put a lot of pressure on my feet to lift my
ass.

I did this one more time and just as I did it, my right foot slipped!
It went forward with 200 pounds of man behind it. It jammed the
right anti-torque pedal to the stop. The Huey sprang to the right and
crammed everybody to the left as it lost speed in a tremendous slip.
As it did this, it tried to roll to the left, but I cranked in right
stick to keep it flat. It was like taking a corner at 100 knots with
full right steering. You get crammed into the left door real fast at
about 2 g's.

Everybody instantly woke up and the PIC read me the riot act.
"You-son-of-a-bitch, I've never seen such an asshole move in my
****ing life. If you were tired of flying then why didn't you wake me
up and tell me to take it? You didn't have to scare the **** out of
everybody on board you son-of-a-bitch...especially when we're IFR. I
told him it was an accident, but he didn't give a damn. He'd been
killing people for two years in Viet Nam and he was a nasty cranky old
asshole, even though he was only 25 or so. Yes, he'd been a Warrant
officer on his first tour, but loved killing strangers so much that he
re-upped for another tour just to kill people. He was a great guy to
have on your wrong side.

Anyway, there are a hundred more stories I remember just like this one
where I screwed something up a little bit and they went ape-**** on
me. But, I learned to fly helicopters from this project and I learned
to fly them well. In fact, I just plain learned to fly...anything,!

Screw it, it's all the same. With helicopters I just never had the
money to ever pursue it from a civilian point of view until just
recently. Now, I've done it. I have the ratings and I'm sort of
bored with it to tell the truth. Like any goal, once you achieve it,
you've done it. Time to move on to something else...like building a
Lancair IVP or a Legacy.

There was another mission I was on in Los Angeles that over lapped
this one called the Los Angeles Reactive Pollutant Project LARPP. I
flew Bell-212's everyday in MVFR conditions for about a year out of a
Nike Missile base in El Monte, California. I've got a few stories I
could tell about that one too if I got primed up.

I'll just tell one thing at this point to give you a flavor of that
activity of a couple hundred missions.

We leased the helicopters from PAI. The PIC I flew with regularly was
named Jim Ballard. He's long dead now, but he was one great guy. He
was a recovering "whatever", a southern Baptist, and carried a tiny
bible with him on every mission. I'd be flying over Los Angeles in ½
mile visibility and he'd key up his mic, "Heathen Bill---can you hear
me? I have a passage I need to read to you."

I'd say, "Leave me alone Jimmy, I don't believe all that bible ****."

He'd say, "Nope, you have to hear this passage. It will improve your
life."

Then I'd come back, "Jimmy, my life is fine. I don't need that stuff.
I need more money and good looking women. That's it. Now leave me
the hell alone. Damn it Jimmy, I can't see ****. We are supposed to
be in formation with Rich in the other Huey and I just lost them. ATC
is screaming at us on 133.95 to shut down for the day because the wx
has gone to **** , and you are harping about God to me on the
intercom. I'm going to Isolate. Sorry Jimmy. If you don't like it,
YOU FLY!"

Jimmy would say, "Just let me read you this one little passage in the
bible Heathen-Bill. It will change your life."

I had no choice. I'd have to listen. If I flipped the isolate switch
on the old Collins audio panel, he'd reach up and switch it back. It
didn't matter if I was shooting an ILS to minimums, he had to ****
with me. He had to read me the ****ing passage to save me from going
to hell when he killed all of us in the process.

I'd give up, he'd read his passage to me and then leave me alone while
I shot the approach or eeked my way through tons of **** to find our
way back home. We didn't have GPS in them thar days. It was all
contact flying after you canceled IFR. You young guys don't get it.
It was dangerous.

There's a hundred more stories like this. Over the years, I flew with
the crankiest, gnarliest old *******s on Earth. Most of the time I
was uncomfortable, in turbulence, in a hot cockpit, had a parachute on
and was synched down so only my arms and feet could move, ****ed off,
hurting, numb in places that worried me, in severe noise conditions
with inappropriate ear protection, had to pee, had to poop, needed
water, food, love, understanding and the like...or needed to be shot
and put out of my misery.

So, that's the way I look at flying. If you don't do it right, then
don't ****ing do it at all. Just give up in the beginning. To be a
real professional, you have to pay years of dues. It takes thousands
of hours of building things that go into airplanes, building
airplanes-helcopters-balloons-hang gliders-ultralights-gliders...
themselves, flying them when they want to go inverted on you, or burn
you alive, and dealing with weather conditions that would scare God.

So, goes the life of a professional Pilot. How romantic eh?

A buddy of mine who is the Director of Operations of a 135, 141 and
121 operation called me today and told me they were looking for a
pilot to fly a Cessna Citation Jet and he wondered if I wanted a hack
at it.

Ha Ha. No thanks. Not in a million years!

Just ****ing leave me alone. I've survived all this **** for some
strange reason and I just want to fly my own stuff when I want, how I
want, on my own time schedule, in nice wx, at my pace, at my
convienience. No more "Professional Pilot" **** for me. I'd rather
go fly a Piper Cub than a God damn jet all over the ****ing place.
They can give that job to some kid who still thinks being a
professional pilot is romantic.

Just my humble opinion.

Best Wishes,

BWB