Letters From the Grave
the year earlier, so he’d taken the desk job, hoping to keep earning a salary for another seven years before claiming Social Security. He liked Jake because they had both honed their flight skills in the Army, BJ in Vietnam, Jake in the Drug Wars.
“Mornin’, BJ.” Jake saw his buddy, sitting head down, working on the morning flight assignments.
Looking up, BJ responded, “Hey, Jake, so you were able to rise and take a deep breath for one more day on this earth. Good to see you.”
“Yeah. Looks like a beautiful day for flying if you’re a penguin.”
“Penguins don’t fly, Jake. They just flap their wings to impress the girls.”
“Isn’t that why we fly!”
BJ retorted, “Yeah, right. I see more ladies walking around the airfield while sunning myself than you ever see flying out there. Gee, I wonder if those Army recruiting posters were phony?”
“I don’t know. All I can say is no girls ever looked at me twice as a pilot -- even when I was worth looking at!”
“Heh. Well, it’s fun to dream about anyway. Since neither of us ever found a woman desperate enough to marry, I guess there won’t be a second generation of fools bred for this work. Anyway, you’ll be in 0978E today while Rube’s on leave to San Diego, seeing his sick mother.”
“Yuck, that’s the oldest Long Ranger in the fleet. The engine’s rusty!”
“I know, but it’s got a new set of inflatable’s, and I know you like to fish.”
“Where to?”
“Head down to Port Arthur for a 0730 pickup, flying to platform F27. Two mechanics with tools, so watch your gross (gross weight limit for the helicopter).”
“Roger that.” Jake took the logbook from a cubby below the assignment board and went out to the flight line to pre-flight the helicopter.
0978E was first flown in the 1960’s and was acquired by CHI about ten years ago after heavy use and several complete overhauls during its lifetime. It was past its theoretical life but continued to pass annual inspections. The pilots knew it would end up at the bottom of the Gulf someday.
Jake went out to the helipad and opened the door of the helicopter, placing the log book and his helmet on the seat before performing a pre-flight walk around. He checked all the rotor edges, the fluids, the fuel and made sure all the hatches were secure. There were no leaks and everything looked okay, so he sat in the pilot’s seat and went through the turbine start checklist. When the C20 turbine exhaust reached stable output temperature, he radioed Operations that he was departing VFR (Visual Flight Rules -— no flight plan) to the CHI terminal at Port Arthur on the Texas Coast.
The flight took about twenty minutes, flying below the cloud layer under two thousand feet. When he landed, there were three platform workers waiting for a ride. With huge meals served on the platforms around the clock, week after week, the typical worker weighed over two hundred fifty pounds. With tool boxes, the helicopter would be overloaded. The company put no policy limits on the pilots if they felt they could fly safely. Another passenger meant more revenue, and he was expected to fly them, even if no one ordered him to exceed the aircraft’s factory limits.
One reason Jake was the top pilot was because he could manage an overloaded aircraft better than anyone. A helicopter pilot would be fired if he allowed the turbine to overheat, so flying at maximum torque and maximum throttle, while managing helicopter health, took thousands of hours of experience.
One of the tobacco chewing Texans, who appeared to be around three hundred pounds, said, “Hey, pilot, does this old rig have enough in her to get us all to Noble Lorris Bouzigard (Platform F27)? I ain’t fond a takin’ a swim a hunert miles out!”
Jake responded calmly without looking directly at the man, “Well, that depends, Bubba. If we start to go down, we’ll throw out your tools. If that doesn’t work, we’ll toss one of you out. But don’t sweat it. I’m low on fuel anyway so we’ve got a little extra weight margin.”
The man looked genuinely worried. “Look, funny man. I ain’t happy ‘bout flyin’ in these box kites, so don’t be bein’ funny. I always take the boat, but the boss says I gotta get there fast.”
Jake was reassuring. “Look, partner, I get to do this every day. Been doing it for a long time. Let me worry about driving, and you just enjoy the ride.”
“Well, okay. But, I won’t be enjoyin’ it.”
He got everyone aboard and distributed the weight for better handling. Then he called CHI control, “0978E departing Port Arthur for NLB platform with three passengers and tools. VFR within minimums. Expect to fly at 1500 feet to 27 33.5657 (North) by 94 34.0732 (West). Out.” At least they could draw a straight line on the map for his flight path if they needed to search for them.
The weather was stormy, and the ride, eighty miles over the Gulf to the platform, made all of his passengers sick. Jake had a package of barf-bags, but he would still need to clean the cockpit once they landed. He didn’t enjoy the flight either, but lousy conditions and swirling wind at the landing made him focus more on landing the helicopter than personal discomfort.
At a thousand feet, they could normally see the platform over twenty miles away, but the storm clouds limited visibility to about one mile. The gulf below was dark and forbidding in all directions. There was no landing beacon on the platform, so Jake followed the GPS heading, making several adjustments for drift in the swirling air. He saw the dark shadow of F27 like a large alien skeleton rising in the mist ahead. After circling twice to gauge wind direction, he flew onto the small landing platform under full power, modulating the controls to compensate for the wind shear. After a soft landing, the passengers were all woozy disembarking.
There was a small crew working on the platform. After tying the aircraft to the helipad, he used a role of paper towels to clean inside. After years of ferrying workers over the Gulf, he’d done this a hundred times. All the aircraft in CHI was fleet carried cleaning supplies.
When he finished, he went to the galley for a coke where the cook was busy at work. He knew most of the cooks and often ate on the platforms. Sometimes he would fish with his small collapsible rig in the luggage compartment. “Hi, Jake. Wanna stay for lunch?”
“Thanks, Roscoe, but I couldn’t fly if I ate here -- too heavy for the helicopter. You serve more good stuff at one lunch than I eat in a week.”
“Well, suit yourself. We got plenty. How about some fried chicken for the ride back?”
“Okay, but not the whole bird this time. It’s much appreciated, man.”
“All right. Comin’ up.”
The weather deteriorated further, and the flight back was going to be below visibility minimums, essentially flying blind in the storm. He would only use instruments without any visual references. He wanted to get back to base as early as possible before the weather got even worse.
The helipad on the platform was elevated above the working deck about a hundred feet above the ocean, providing rotor clearance above most of the equipment. Jake asked a couple workmen to help him push the tail boom of the helicopter around to point the nose into the wind. It was almost wasted effort with the direction changing with each gust. He’d need to time the liftoff carefully with winds blowing up to forty knots. Even this high above the ocean, spray was bathing the platform.
Inside 0978E, he closed the fuel control and pushed the starter button. When turbine revolutions reached about fifteen percent, he allowed a small amount of fuel to flow and pressed the ignition button. Engine RPMs increased slowly, taking several seconds to reach full speed and normal engine TOT (Tail Out Temperature) at full throttle. Jake waited several seconds for a gust to blow more or less at the nose of the helicopter before takeoff. Liftoff was rocky, but there was no damage.
The flight back to base in Lafayette was like driving in a car at night during a violent thunder storm without lights or windshield wipers. His only advantage was that no other aircraft were flying, and he only needed to remain upri
ght and heading toward land. Anything could break in the turbulence, but he worried mostly about the hydraulic system which gave him power assistance (like power steering in a car) for the flight controls. He hoped the hydraulic system was strong enough for the constant corrections, fighting the swirling air. Power was at one hundred percent and torque was at eighty percent, which should have given him about 115 knots forward speed, but the wind added and subtracted continuously from actual progress across the surface, so he said a little prayer that fuel held out. It was impossible to gauge flight time required to reach base in these conditions. He would be a lot happier once over land.
“Ah, CHI base, this is 0978E en route. Please advise weather at base. Over.”
“Jake, this is BJ. Everyone’s gone home with the storm. You’re the last bird out. Over.”
“Roger that, BJ. How is it over the mainland? I’m inbound from F27 with about a hundred miles of ocean to cross. Over.”
“I dunno, Jake. I’d tell the newer pilots to stay put on the platforms. Maybe Port Arthur is better. Not so far from you. Over.”
“I’m okay, BJ, as long as my arms hold out. This thing’s like driving the Baja race. 978E (Echo) is flying good, I just couldn’t handle a hydraulic problem if the unit overheats. But as long as I’ve got power assist and a bottle of Advil, we’ll be okay.