Flight School

If I'm going to tell some helicopter stories I figure I'm best to start right at the beginning. I may not tell them all in chronological order but I think I'll start at flight school.  Delta Helicopters operated out of Ladner, B.C. near the Boundary Bay Airport. Keith and Maryanne McMillan ran the school and I can remember it all just felt right when I went to see them while I was trying to pick a school.  It didn't feel so much like a school as it just felt like a safe, friendly place to be for the next six months.  They had a neat and tidy hanger and office in a rural farming area by the Deese Slough where they kept two Bell 47G2's flying pretty steady.  I started in September 1995 and Finished in about March of 1996.

Thirteen and a half years later my memory is a bit muddy about a lot of flight school.  I know one thing for sure; when I look back now at how little I knew then...I can't believe I survived!  Most of my clear memories are that of shear wonder, shear terror and shear stupidity.  Amazing how memories work.  Most of flight school was a life changing journey of accomplishing what I had always dreamed of doing. During my first 5 hours of training I was utterly astounded that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't fly the damn thing! I had read several books on theory of flight and helicopter aerodynamics before I even started school.  I was so sure that had it come down to it... if it was an emergency... (and someone else started it) I would be able to fly one.  Boy was I wrong. I would have killed myself and everyone else unfortunate enough to be with me during that emergency!  So you can understand my bewilderment when after only 8 hours Keith started to climb out of the helicopter in a farmers field that we'd been doing circuit practice to.  He hadn't given me any advance warning that this flight would lead us into my first solo.  I can remember that his instructions warned me that the helicopter would take off tail and left side heavy without him in it anymore and that he didn't expect me to land right next to him.  Within walking distance was fine... Holy Shit!  Here's some of the shear terror and shear wonder  all wrapped up in one.  I survived the circuit back to field by myself but I remember his instructions were bang on.  I worried the tail rotor was going to dig a ditch before the skids finally came up and I remember being so suddenly aware of how high I was as I climbed away from the field.  The rest of that experience is pure filler.  I landed, Keith smiled, I didn't stop sweating for a while and there was plenty of congratulations all the way around.  I would say that that circuit is probably still my strongest memory of wonderment that, "Hey, I'm flying! Holy crap I'm really high!"

I continue to feel lucky that I have a job that is full of times that I can look around and say, "Hey, I'm flying!" There is still moments of "holy crap" but they're fewer and further between.  There seems to be just enough of them to keep me honest.  One thing that hasn't really changed since flight school is the feeling I get in my stomach before launching out on a flight somewhere I've never been before.  The solo nav trips in school would only take us as far as Hope, Mission, Fort Langley and back to Ladner but it sure seemed like a long way from home when you were doing it.  At school we only got sent out on a trip if the weather was good.  In the real world, we look at the weather and try to figure out if the weather is going to let us get to our destination but you can never know what the weather on the coast is going to do between point A and point B.  It's a pretty lonely feeling as the weather is closing in on all sides and you're only half way.  Let alone when the fuel gauge is creeping lower than you'd hoped for.

My favourite flight during school had to be when we went  into the mountains by Pitt Lake on a beautiful sunny day.  I was near the end of my training and we had been working on some confined areas near the Swan E Set Golf course when Keith suggested we do some mountain flying.  The sky was deep blue and the air was crisp.  We climbed high into the peaks where I had never been before.  I'd experienced snowy mountain peaks while skiing but never from this vantage point before. The clarity of every ice crystal in the wind swept snow was like coming out a fog at night to see the road reflectors reach out for miles in your headlights.  The Coast Mountains aren't high altitude peaks, but they sure seemed like it when you were suddenly above the haze of the Fraser Valley.  In retrospect I had so little feeling for the aircraft that I could hardly notice the loss of performance. Mostly a passenger in awe, I tried to absorb as much as I could from Keith as he explained a proper pinnacle approach and overshoot.  And some of the coarse principles of mountain flying. I have yet to develop the fine skills to be a true mountain pilot.  After that introduction it was clearly where I wanted to fly.  It still is.

Looking back at flight school, I can't believe how little I knew of what I really should have. That isn't a knock at Keith but just reality that a person can only adsorb so much.  One of my current positions at work has me conducting recurrent training and annual check rides with the other pilots in the company.  I have the pleasure of working with a very qualified group of professional pilots who take training and good airmanship seriously.  I also have to pass a Transport Canada PPC every year that makes me study and sweat. At times I remind myself that every 100 hour commercial pilot graduate had to pass a PPC and that helps bring perspective.  Knowing now what I didn't know then, and having a better grasp of how much more I still have to learn in an attempt to keep up with so many pilots I look up to; seems like a daunting task! Flight school at Delta Helicopters finished for me 13 plus years ago. Now I grasp the fact that the real school was just starting.