The National Lake Eutrophication Survey 1971-1973

The following is to the best of my recollection. I haven't even
changed the name of a buddy I was with during these events. I may be
wrong about some of the statistics, like the number of divorces and
number of hot babes in the restaurants, but I'm close. Almost none of
this is an exageration from what I remember, although it might be
flawed in some of the fine detail. I only hope that most of the
people who participated in this activity will find the humor in my
telling it and won't take offense. If any of you pilots out there
find that I've said anything wrong here, the I will be happy to
recant. This is a multi part story and I'm not telling this to ****
anyone off, I'm just trying to make some notes on what I think I saw
and the way I interpreted it.

This is MY recollection and it may be incorrect. It's not intended to
offend or degrade anyone's name, profession or contribution to this
great project. You were all heros in many ways and you all worked
your butts off to make this mission happen. You were also all rewared
by the United States Environmental Protection Agency's highest honor,
the Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement. So, I want to take
nothing away from you or your honor. All of us flew in adverse
conditions, many hundreds of times to benefit our nation on this
project. If I have insulted anyone by telling this true story then I
am sorry and I will be happy to stand corrected. We all flew in
marginal conditions and bent the rules to make the job work. It is
what is expected of a pilot, all of us.

Bill Phillips


Part One


In 1971 Richard Millhouse Nixon was the President of the United States
of America. He was a person who was steeped in the bull **** of
Washington and a crook to boot. He was so deceitful that his nickname
was "Tricky Dicky." He was serving his first term in office and was
up for reelection in 1972. Well, I went farther than that calling him
Tricky Dicky and concocted a little quip that I wrote on **** house
walls. We young guys ( I was 22) hated this war monger and wanted his
ass out of the White House because he was in the pockets of big
industry and they were the ones who were driving the war in Viet Nam.
There was no reason to be in Viet Nam other than to support war
industry in this country. We had a lot of old bombs and bullets we
needed to use up and the War Machine which was Big Industry needed
lucrative contracts to replace them. It was a rip roarin' time for
the economy. War always is.

Anyway the little quip I wrote on bathroom walls was this:

Don't pull the Dick out,
In the middle of the screw!
Vote for Nixon in "72"

I loved this. I wrote this everywhere, then drew a swastika next to
it. My buddies were coming home in droves to be buried in cemeteries
around my home valley. I had enlisted in the Air Farce and taken all
the exams for OTS then flight training school and was scheduled to go
to Lackland AFB to start training in July 1971. Then something really
goofy happened. I was at the induction center ONE day after I
graduated from college. Yes, I was on a bus the next morning at
06-hundred hours headed for Phoenix for my physical. They asked me if
I had any major dislocating joints and I had to tell them that my
shoulder popped out of socket sometimes. I didn't think anything
about it, because I could always get it back in. But, I got the red
stamp and they kicked me out of the induction center. This ****ed me
off to no avail, but I was screwed. Should have kept my big ****ing
mouth shut. No flight school, no Air Farce, no nuttin'…"get yo' white
ass on that thar bus and go home white boy," some black sergeant
screamed at me.

Well, that was that. I was screwed. I went back home and started
looking for a job. I couldn't find one because anyone who knew
anything in those days would have known that someone with a B.S. in
physics was about as employable as an 8th grade graduate or someone
with another useless degree like one in Polly Sci or Philosophy. So,
being born a poor Black, Chinese, Jewish Scott, with no money, I
needed a job and I needed one fast. I had $220 in the bank, my
parents were poor and couldn't do anything to help me if they wanted
to. So, I got a job in the Physics Dept. at UNLV teaching labs that
summer for $1500 bucks (my salary for all summer). That fall as a
teaching assistant, I went back to grad school, not because I liked
school, but because I was so ****ing poor that was the only way I
could eat. I taught intro physics courses to the wantabee doctors at
the freshman level to stay alive. I doubled up on the course work and
finished almost all the classes I needed for my master's degree in
astrophysics by the spring of 1972. That was when the fun began.

I went to work at the EPA lab (on campus) on a Monday sometime in June
1972. They stuck me on some laser particulate sensor that they
couldn't calibrate. It was an air pollution device to detect
visibility. Now, as I was saying, I was just a poo Black, Jewish,
Chinaman whose ancestors came from Nova Scotia or Scotland and they
saved every nickel so we never traveled farther than Cortez Colorado
in my entire life. On Tuesday I went to work and my boss says to me,
"can you be ready to leave for New York in two hours?" I just about
fainted. I ran home which was about 5 minutes away and packed
everything I could find. Everything I owned fit in one suitcase (did
I mention that I was dirt poor). I got my boss to come and pick me up
and I was on an airliner, a DC-8 headed for Newark an hour later.
From there I flew north to Rome (or Utica), New York (Griffis AFB) and
joined a team of crazy son's a bitches with three Huey helicopters, a
Hughes 269 and a single engine Otter on Amphibious floats.

Well, since I had a commercial airplane license, my boss figured me a
natural to join up with this scruffy team of card carrying crazies on
the National Lake Eutrophication Survey (NLES). The real deal was
this: Nixon was so scared about environmental issues and his lack of
addressing them, someone in his staff concocted this three year survey
to make the President look visible on environmental issues. They
impounded three UH-1H Army Huey's (one with bullet holes all over it),
they painted them white and put the big EPA flower (insignia) on the
side of them. Then they figured a way to fly the **** out of them for
three years to every state in the union sampling fresh water lakes
4-times each year at each location.

They started with lakes in the New England states and that's why I met
up with them in upstate New York. They had just started the survey
there at lake Utica or Oneida or something like that. They had to
sample each lake in the spring, summer, autumn and winter. Then we'd
move on to a different sector of the U.S. the next year. The third
year we ended up in the West...Tahoe, Crater lake, Seattle area, what
a ball.

For you pencil necked science geeks out there, we landed on the lake
on floats and dropped a probe. That probe measured dissolved oxygen
(DO), turbidity (visibility), conductivity (salt content) and
temperature with depth. We'd drop the probe until we got below the
inversion layer and the DO went to zero. We pumped up samples and put
them into polyethylene bottles along with an iodine stain called
"Lugol." Those were sent to the field lab trailer that evening for
algae species identification by the biologists. Some were sent back
to Vegas for more complex analysis that was all done by O'ring Seals
who was the water chemist for the entire project.

We essentially went from Air Farce base to Air farce base because we
got cheap food, had BX privileges and we got all the fuel there real
cheap…or for free, hell I don't know. We started at a U-2 base in
Rome New York (Griffis) and worked our way all across the country from
AFB to AFB. I saw the U-2 launch out of Griffis many times. For a
kid, this project was a boon.

We never slept on the AFB's. We always stayed in town in a motel or
hotel. When we were in Oshkosh, Wi for instance we stayed at the
Pioneer Inn on lake Winnebago . Every evening we'd land the Hueys on
the green grassy knoll in front of the place right on the lake. At
Lake Geneva where the Playboy club is, we stayed close, but I can't
remember where. I know that we bought all our Jet-A there and had
lunch there...many times.

A typical day went like this: Get up 04-hundred. Drive 5 miles to
Westover AFB in Mass. Be in the cockpit at 05-hundred. Spool up and
depart from Springfield and scud-run through the pass to Albany, NY
then turn north to New Hampshire and sample lakes all day until we
crapped out about noon. The Amphibious Otter would bring a new crew
in to take the helicopter for the rest of the day and we'd fly that
piece of **** (we called it the leapin' goose) back to base. Then we
were off. So, it was about a 10 hour day for two crews on each Huey.
That was six man-days, or flight days we got each day in the summers.
Winters didn't work that way, but for a good 9 months out of the year
it worked like that.

The Leapin' Goose was a colossal piece of crap. It was fine
mechanically but it had this yaw to it that would even make the Pope
puke. If you didn't set right under the wing, you were one sick mutha
by the time you got home. I flew it a lot since I was airplane
rated. The cockpit seemed fine to me and didn't make me sick. But
when I flew it NOBODY got sick. I crammed the **** out of the power
on it to do that. Most of the pilots were working for an asshole and
he made them run it way below normal power settings to try and
conserve the engine, the fuel, the whatever. When I flew that piece
of ****, I held 85% power all the time. It seemed to take this to
keep the tail from wagging if I had a full load of people. I could
write for hours about the illiterate pricks who were in command of
this operation from the flight end of things and the crap they put the
professional pilots through, but then I'd get ****ed and it would ruin
my story.

There were normally 21 people on the team. There were only two of us
who were not married, Jeff Van Ee and me. We were just little then,
you know, like real young. Jeff was an engineer and he and I sort of
"hung" together. We were thrown in with these guys who had just come
from Viet Nam, were ****ed, and actually sort of scary to Jeff and I.
What happened was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw. We would
move to a new place for the first time and fly the missions. At night
the pilots, mechanics, other engineers and scientists would find out
where all the pussy hung out and they'd chase them. The first visit
to a new place wasn't all that revealing because it was just
reconnaissance. The local girls would find out about us and the team
would find the best watering holes. As I said, we started this in the
spring. In the summer on our second pass though a place all hell
would break loose. They treated us like astronauts. We could do no
wrong. We started landing the helicopters at the motels when the
second shift team would come home and we'd spool up from the motel in
the morning. Those big ships and all the noise made us heroes. We
soon became sex objects by all the horny and single women in each
region.

At lunch we'd simply land at a drive in. We'd spool down, then get
out with all this florescent orange floatation gear all over us, wires
hanging from our headsets, helmets, etc. I'd walk up to the ordering
window and say, "Can I have a hamburger and a malt...o go?" The young
women went nuts.

I am going to say this once and it's the absolute truth. Jeff and I
were not into chasing the women. Yes, in three years, some things
happened...more toward the end when we got a couple more years of
adulthood under our belts. But we were both pretty straight. And we
were the only single guys that I can remember being on the team (there
might have been more but I dont' think so). I might be wrong about
this too, but if I recall correctly, there were 19 divorces among the
other team members over the term of the project. Jeff and I were just
pencil necked science geeks. God...youth is wasted on the wrong
people. If I had it to do over, I would have made Trojan rubber
company rich.

This was the typical winter mission op:

In the morning about 07-hundred we'd all go to breakfast in the motel
restaurant, all 21 to 25 of us (we always had a few visiting guys).
Now, the deal was to bring whomever you slept with, over that night,
to breakfast with you so the whole gang could see them. But, the poor
girl you were with had no idea that everybody in that café was part of
the helicopter team. We all dressed differently and we were of all
ages. It was impossible to tell. We looked like tourists to any of
them. We were tourists! But, what you saw was the most incredible
thing I ever saw, and that was: Married men coming to breakfast with
absolute foxy women they'd just spent the night with. It was
hilarious in many ways. Many times there was no one else in the damn
place but crew, not a SINGLE person. There were times when in a
restaurant, WE were having breakfast, and it was populated by 15
women, all of whom had spent the entire night with whomever they were
with there at breakfast. It was the biggest joke we had and no one
ever ratted out anyone. I'll go to my grave with the names of the
guys I saw pulling this.

To me, raised by a dad and a mom who loved one another and would have
never cheated no matter what, I had never even thought that grown,
"married" men would act this way. But, they did. It was part of a
maturation process to see this.

Part II of this is the first of a few parts on the flying that we did.

If you liked this, I'll continue. If you don't like it then I may
just forget it. You tell me. But, this is real life stuff. If you
want to read it I'll write more. It's your choice RAH.

I've already written a lot of the flying stuff and I can just cut and
paste it. But, I really don't want any guff from anyone over any of
it. It all happened. It's my memory of it and it might not be
completely accurate in a court of law. But it's to the best of my
recollection.

I'm going to use some other (real) names in it if I post it, because
these pilots were instrumental in me learning to be a good
PROFESSIONAL pilot. If you all feel that I'm a piece of **** (you
know the drill, haven't built anything, don't know anything, blaa blaa
blaa) and you don't want to read any of this, then tell me and I won't
waste my time. I'll just put it in a book I'm writing sell it someday
and make money off it.

It's your choice RAH. I can back all of it. It's all true and it's
only a miniscule event in the history of my flying career. If you
jealous people who have never built anything and never flown hard
missions can't sit through it because you are invious, then tell me
now before I post it.


BWB

Saved - for a good laugh when ever I need one...




Richard

Go ahead with Part 2, even the blowhards would have to admit it's a
good read.

Besides, when did you ever let annoying people get in the way of
saying something? (You can read the emphasis there two ways, and they
both work. :-)


Mike Patterson
Please remove the spamtrap to email me.
"I always wanted to be somebody. I should have been more specific..."

Bill, the last three paragrahps need to be ommitted. Other than that
it's a great read and had me smiling the whole way. No need to let
anonymous cheap shot artists diminish the flavor. Just my armchair
aviator opinion.

This is so close to my 22 yr old experience thrust into the adult
world it's uncanny. Surrounded by married guys who had the radar on
at every stop was a shocker. Please continue with part II of "Looking
for Badwater." (not a bad name,eh?)

pac

(Badwater Bill) wrote in message ...
The following is to the best of my recollection. I haven't even
changed the name of a buddy I was with during these events. I may be
wrong about some of the statistics, like the number of divorces and
number of hot babes in the restaurants, but I'm close. Almost none of
this is an exageration from what I remember, although it might be
flawed in some of the fine detail. I only hope that most of the
people who participated in this activity will find the humor in my
telling it and won't take offense. If any of you pilots out there
find that I've said anything wrong here, the I will be happy to
recant. This is a multi part story and I'm not telling this to ****
anyone off, I'm just trying to make some notes on what I think I saw
and the way I interpreted it.

This is MY recollection and it may be incorrect. It's not intended to
offend or degrade anyone's name, profession or contribution to this
great project. You were all heros in many ways and you all worked
your butts off to make this mission happen. You were also all rewared
by the United States Environmental Protection Agency's highest honor,
the Gold Medal for Outstanding Achievement. So, I want to take
nothing away from you or your honor. All of us flew in adverse
conditions, many hundreds of times to benefit our nation on this
project. If I have insulted anyone by telling this true story then I
am sorry and I will be happy to stand corrected. We all flew in
marginal conditions and bent the rules to make the job work. It is
what is expected of a pilot, all of us.

Bill Phillips


Part One


In 1971 Richard Millhouse Nixon was the President of the United States
of America. He was a person who was steeped in the bull **** of
Washington and a crook to boot. He was so deceitful that his nickname
was "Tricky Dicky." He was serving his first term in office and was
up for reelection in 1972. Well, I went farther than that calling him
Tricky Dicky and concocted a little quip that I wrote on **** house
walls. We young guys ( I was 22) hated this war monger and wanted his
ass out of the White House because he was in the pockets of big
industry and they were the ones who were driving the war in Viet Nam.
There was no reason to be in Viet Nam other than to support war
industry in this country. We had a lot of old bombs and bullets we
needed to use up and the War Machine which was Big Industry needed
lucrative contracts to replace them. It was a rip roarin' time for
the economy. War always is.

Anyway the little quip I wrote on bathroom walls was this:

Don't pull the Dick out,
In the middle of the screw!
Vote for Nixon in "72"

I loved this. I wrote this everywhere, then drew a swastika next to
it. My buddies were coming home in droves to be buried in cemeteries
around my home valley. I had enlisted in the Air Farce and taken all
the exams for OTS then flight training school and was scheduled to go
to Lackland AFB to start training in July 1971. Then something really
goofy happened. I was at the induction center ONE day after I
graduated from college. Yes, I was on a bus the next morning at
06-hundred hours headed for Phoenix for my physical. They asked me if
I had any major dislocating joints and I had to tell them that my
shoulder popped out of socket sometimes. I didn't think anything
about it, because I could always get it back in. But, I got the red
stamp and they kicked me out of the induction center. This ****ed me
off to no avail, but I was screwed. Should have kept my big ****ing
mouth shut. No flight school, no Air Farce, no nuttin'?"get yo' white
ass on that thar bus and go home white boy," some black sergeant
screamed at me.

Well, that was that. I was screwed. I went back home and started
looking for a job. I couldn't find one because anyone who knew
anything in those days would have known that someone with a B.S. in
physics was about as employable as an 8th grade graduate or someone
with another useless degree like one in Polly Sci or Philosophy. So,
being born a poor Black, Chinese, Jewish Scott, with no money, I
needed a job and I needed one fast. I had $220 in the bank, my
parents were poor and couldn't do anything to help me if they wanted
to. So, I got a job in the Physics Dept. at UNLV teaching labs that
summer for $1500 bucks (my salary for all summer). That fall as a
teaching assistant, I went back to grad school, not because I liked
school, but because I was so ****ing poor that was the only way I
could eat. I taught intro physics courses to the wantabee doctors at
the freshman level to stay alive. I doubled up on the course work and
finished almost all the classes I needed for my master's degree in
astrophysics by the spring of 1972. That was when the fun began.

I went to work at the EPA lab (on campus) on a Monday sometime in June
1972. They stuck me on some laser particulate sensor that they
couldn't calibrate. It was an air pollution device to detect
visibility. Now, as I was saying, I was just a poo Black, Jewish,
Chinaman whose ancestors came from Nova Scotia or Scotland and they
saved every nickel so we never traveled farther than Cortez Colorado
in my entire life. On Tuesday I went to work and my boss says to me,
"can you be ready to leave for New York in two hours?" I just about
fainted. I ran home which was about 5 minutes away and packed
everything I could find. Everything I owned fit in one suitcase (did
I mention that I was dirt poor). I got my boss to come and pick me up
and I was on an airliner, a DC-8 headed for Newark an hour later.
From there I flew north to Rome (or Utica), New York (Griffis AFB) and
joined a team of crazy son's a bitches with three Huey helicopters, a
Hughes 269 and a single engine Otter on Amphibious floats.

Well, since I had a commercial airplane license, my boss figured me a
natural to join up with this scruffy team of card carrying crazies on
the National Lake Eutrophication Survey (NLES). The real deal was
this: Nixon was so scared about environmental issues and his lack of
addressing them, someone in his staff concocted this three year survey
to make the President look visible on environmental issues. They
impounded three UH-1H Army Huey's (one with bullet holes all over it),
they painted them white and put the big EPA flower (insignia) on the
side of them. Then they figured a way to fly the **** out of them for
three years to every state in the union sampling fresh water lakes
4-times each year at each location.

They started with lakes in the New England states and that's why I met
up with them in upstate New York. They had just started the survey
there at lake Utica or Oneida or something like that. They had to
sample each lake in the spring, summer, autumn and winter. Then we'd
move on to a different sector of the U.S. the next year. The third
year we ended up in the West...Tahoe, Crater lake, Seattle area, what
a ball.

For you pencil necked science geeks out there, we landed on the lake
on floats and dropped a probe. That probe measured dissolved oxygen
(DO), turbidity (visibility), conductivity (salt content) and
temperature with depth. We'd drop the probe until we got below the
inversion layer and the DO went to zero. We pumped up samples and put
them into polyethylene bottles along with an iodine stain called
"Lugol." Those were sent to the field lab trailer that evening for
algae species identification by the biologists. Some were sent back
to Vegas for more complex analysis that was all done by O'ring Seals
who was the water chemist for the entire project.

We essentially went from Air Farce base to Air farce base because we
got cheap food, had BX privileges and we got all the fuel there real
cheap?or for free, hell I don't know. We started at a U-2 base in
Rome New York (Griffis) and worked our way all across the country from
AFB to AFB. I saw the U-2 launch out of Griffis many times. For a
kid, this project was a boon.

We never slept on the AFB's. We always stayed in town in a motel or
hotel. When we were in Oshkosh, Wi for instance we stayed at the
Pioneer Inn on lake Winnebago . Every evening we'd land the Hueys on
the green grassy knoll in front of the place right on the lake. At
Lake Geneva where the Playboy club is, we stayed close, but I can't
remember where. I know that we bought all our Jet-A there and had
lunch there...many times.

A typical day went like this: Get up 04-hundred. Drive 5 miles to
Westover AFB in Mass. Be in the cockpit at 05-hundred. Spool up and
depart from Springfield and scud-run through the pass to Albany, NY
then turn north to New Hampshire and sample lakes all day until we
crapped out about noon. The Amphibious Otter would bring a new crew
in to take the helicopter for the rest of the day and we'd fly that
piece of **** (we called it the leapin' goose) back to base. Then we
were off. So, it was about a 10 hour day for two crews on each Huey.
That was six man-days, or flight days we got each day in the summers.
Winters didn't work that way, but for a good 9 months out of the year
it worked like that.

The Leapin' Goose was a colossal piece of crap. It was fine
mechanically but it had this yaw to it that would even make the Pope
puke. If you didn't set right under the wing, you were one sick mutha
by the time you got home. I flew it a lot since I was airplane
rated. The cockpit seemed fine to me and didn't make me sick. But
when I flew it NOBODY got sick. I crammed the **** out of the power
on it to do that. Most of the pilots were working for an asshole and
he made them run it way below normal power settings to try and
conserve the engine, the fuel, the whatever. When I flew that piece
of ****, I held 85% power all the time. It seemed to take this to
keep the tail from wagging if I had a full load of people. I could
write for hours about the illiterate pricks who were in command of
this operation from the flight end of things and the crap they put the
professional pilots through, but then I'd get ****ed and it would ruin
my story.

There were normally 21 people on the team. There were only two of us
who were not married, Jeff Van Ee and me. We were just little then,
you know, like real young. Jeff was an engineer and he and I sort of
"hung" together. We were thrown in with these guys who had just come
from Viet Nam, were ****ed, and actually sort of scary to Jeff and I.
What happened was the most unbelievable thing I ever saw. We would
move to a new place for the first time and fly the missions. At night
the pilots, mechanics, other engineers and scientists would find out
where all the pussy hung out and they'd chase them. The first visit
to a new place wasn't all that revealing because it was just
reconnaissance. The local girls would find out about us and the team
would find the best watering holes. As I said, we started this in the
spring. In the summer on our second pass though a place all hell
would break loose. They treated us like astronauts. We could do no
wrong. We started landing the helicopters at the motels when the
second shift team would come home and we'd spool up from the motel in
the morning. Those big ships and all the noise made us heroes. We
soon became sex objects by all the horny and single women in each
region.

At lunch we'd simply land at a drive in. We'd spool down, then get
out with all this florescent orange floatation gear all over us, wires
hanging from our headsets, helmets, etc. I'd walk up to the ordering
window and say, "Can I have a hamburger and a malt...o go?" The young
women went nuts.

I am going to say this once and it's the absolute truth. Jeff and I
were not into chasing the women. Yes, in three years, some things
happened...more toward the end when we got a couple more years of
adulthood under our belts. But we were both pretty straight. And we
were the only single guys that I can remember being on the team (there
might have been more but I dont' think so). I might be wrong about
this too, but if I recall correctly, there were 19 divorces among the
other team members over the term of the project. Jeff and I were just
pencil necked science geeks. God...youth is wasted on the wrong
people. If I had it to do over, I would have made Trojan rubber
company rich.

This was the typical winter mission op:

In the morning about 07-hundred we'd all go to breakfast in the motel
restaurant, all 21 to 25 of us (we always had a few visiting guys).
Now, the deal was to bring whomever you slept with, over that night,
to breakfast with you so the whole gang could see them. But, the poor
girl you were with had no idea that everybody in that café was part of
the helicopter team. We all dressed differently and we were of all
ages. It was impossible to tell. We looked like tourists to any of
them. We were tourists! But, what you saw was the most incredible
thing I ever saw, and that was: Married men coming to breakfast with
absolute foxy women they'd just spent the night with. It was
hilarious in many ways. Many times there was no one else in the damn
place but crew, not a SINGLE person. There were times when in a
restaurant, WE were having breakfast, and it was populated by 15
women, all of whom had spent the entire night with whomever they were
with there at breakfast. It was the biggest joke we had and no one
ever ratted out anyone. I'll go to my grave with the names of the
guys I saw pulling this.

To me, raised by a dad and a mom who loved one another and would have
never cheated no matter what, I had never even thought that grown,
"married" men would act this way. But, they did. It was part of a
maturation process to see this.

Part II of this is the first of a few parts on the flying that we did.

If you liked this, I'll continue. If you don't like it then I may
just forget it. You tell me. But, this is real life stuff. If you
want to read it I'll write more. It's your choice RAH.


snip irritation of peckwoods here


BWB

(Badwater Bill) writes:


God...youth is wasted on the wrong
people.

"Youth is wasted on the young."
George Bernard Shaw

Give us part II and quit worrying about ****-ant readers.

On 07 Jun 2004 17:54:52 -0700, Bob Fry
wrote:

(Badwater Bill) writes:


God...youth is wasted on the wrong
people.

"Youth is wasted on the young."
George Bernard Shaw

Give us part II and quit worrying about ****-ant readers.

Yeah, you're right my man. I don't what came over me.

I'll do that.

BWB

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

Bill,
When you write your book, I'll buy the first copy.

Come visit Australia sometime. Same goes for the rest of you grumpy old
beggers.

Rgds,
Brett

Love it. More.

On Tue, 8 Jun 2004 19:29:50 +1000, "BRO"
wrote:

Bill,
When you write your book, I'll buy the first copy.

Come visit Australia sometime. Same goes for the rest of you grumpy old
beggers.

Rgds,
Brett


I'm going to. I'll be in Melbourne in September this year. Where are
you?

BWB