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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

A Day in the life......10/22/11


A Typical day at Blue Hill Helicopters starts with opening up the office and looking at the schedule for the day, today the schedule went off the computer screen for all four of us that were instructing/flying that day !

Jen’s day started with one of our regular aerial photographers needing aerial shots of downtown Boston. She completed the preflight washed the canopy and removed the dual controls ready to load the photographer and all of his gear, the Schweizer C model works well for this with space in the middle for a camera bag when the collective is removed not to mention the ability to carry 4 hours of fuel !

Adrian’s day started with the same preflight but a different passenger. John is a regular Saturday student who is just about ready to solo, he already has a fixed wing license and just needs to refine a couple of things before he heads out for his first solo mission. Both helicopters are in the air by 8.30 and whilst Jen heads of to the northeast to join the Fenway route into Boston Adrian and John head over to the numbers of runway 28 for some pattern work.

Back in the office Dave lines up his first student for ground school before he takes one of the helicopters at 10AM for a flight with Hugh, a new student to BHH Hugh is loving every minute of his training with Dave and looks forward to the weekends when he can get back in the air and work towards his private  license !

At 9.45 Adrian Returns and has a different task ahead….Teaching in the new Fly-It simulator, the new addition to the BHH fleet, he is working with two more regular students that recently started and drive from Martha’s vineyard !  Jen tells him to “leave it running and the heat on !”  The simulator is both air conditioned and heated for those winter mornings. Saturday was not warm !
Adrian , Jen and Dave continue to 6pm with a myriad of different missions !

Now for my day … It started at 6.30am when I headed from my home in Plainville MA to our private helipad in Worcester to pick up the Robinson R44, I had four different missions to complete in it by 4pm and the first was out of Norwood (KOWD).

A Korean TV station that I had been in communication with for several weeks had chosen BHH because of our close proximity to Boston to complete a video shoot of Harvard for a Korean TV documentary, we loaded up the photographer the director and the translator , that’s right a translator ! We headed into Boston and over to the site in Harvard for the shoot , as soon as we headed in on the fenway route and talked to skyways I knew it would be hard work , 2 banner tow aircraft , the state police and another helicopter making a movie in the city just for starters ! We were soon joined by another tour helicopter with a very scratchy radio and another tour helicopter who had no idea of their position ! 45 minutes over the site and we headed back to Norwood. Back on the ground we re attached the doors and back to the office……

Next up was a couple from Randolph taking a tour of the city, we headed in and quickly found that a flight restriction had been placed within a four mile radius of Harvard giving us limited access to the city , we managed to get the financial district in and then flew out over the harbor islands and back to Norwood via some pictures of their house in Randolph !

Next Starbucks coffee and Lemon Loaf………

A quick check on Adrian, Jen and Dave and off again to the helicopter.  I Almost forgot, I dropped our new office assistant Austin in the hangar to work on his endless sweeping job….
The next flight took me to our other tour location, Marlboro airport . On arrival at Marlboro a tumbleweed greeted me rolling down the runway, not to much goes on out there except helicopter noise complaints (not from us) I picked up my next couple and took them  and their 2 year old daughter for a beautiful foliage tour of the watchusett reservoir , very relaxing and a $25 tip ! that pays for at least my dinner tonight !
The last flight of the day was Tait who wanted to propose to his now Fiance over his house in Boston where he had laid out signs on the roof  “will you marry me “. Reaching the edge of Boston’s airspace we were greeted with the radio reply of “Unable, Harvard TFR still in affect “ Oh no …. I had to get into Boston , I tried asking Boston approach for higher …. No reply we just weren’t high enough … I could not let Tait down…..I climed to 3500 feet and asked if we could get over the TFR and over Fenway . “ Report over the station “ was the reply and relief  ! unfortunately we couldn’t see the signs from that altitude but it still worked out and she said  YES !

I dropped the happy couple back at Marlboro still complete with its tumbleweeds and headed back to the helipad to put the helicopter away, some background music courtesy of My Iphone and Maria Callas (opera singer) made for a fantastic flight back to the pad near Worcester.
We completed a total of 16 flights/ on Saturday between us all , well done everybody , another great day at the office, we topped it all off with the usual crowd out to dinner in the evening …..

Now its Sunday night and I am writing this on a plane to Arizona where Helen and I are heading for our next adventure !!!

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