Helicopter Ferry Trip Diary: I

Woke up at 0445.  Cranked up N211SH at the Long Beach, California office of Silver State Helicopters, and departed north to Highway 91 then east to Riverside and Interstate 10.  A long beautiful pink sunrise gave way to a blinding sun as we flew over a city of commuters waking up.  Coming through the Banning Pass, we looked disconsolately at the GPS in the Robinson R22’s panel: 65 knots over the ground.  The 85-knot cruise speed of the R22 is bad enough, but with this headwind we could see cars passing us on the freeway below.

Our first stop was Thermal, California (TRM), a huge airport SE of Palm Springs, where private jets drop off polo enthusiasts at their 4th and 5th homes.  Self-serve Avgas is only $3.20 per gallon here.  We dropped into Million Air to chat and snack, but not to buy their $4.60/gallon gas.  By 9:30 a.m., we’d reached Blythe, California (BLH), on the Arizona border.  We bought a princely 10 gallons of gas and the owner of the FBO lent us his enormous diesel pickup truck to ride into town for breakfast at the Town Square Cafe.

At around noon, we departed eastbound on I-10 for Buckeye, AZ (BXK).  As soon as we crossed the Colorado River, we noticed mobile home parks for retirees.  Tony and I agreed that the only thing worse than dying in a helicopter crash would be not dying in a helicopter crash and having to live until age 100 in the middle of this desert.  We could tell that we were approaching Phoenix when the visibility dropped due to smog.  The Buckeye airport is just SE of a cattle feed lot, which lends the airport a rank odor and a lot of annoying flies.  We cranked back up and headed for the heart of Phoenix and its Class Bravo airspace, the most tightly controlled class of airspace.  In calling up the control tower for PHX, we confessed to total ignorance of Phoenix landmarks and said that we wanted to sightsee around downtown then proceed south to Tucson.  We were given the royal treatment and descended to around 600′ above the city streets, hugging Interstate 10 all the way through downtown Phoenix and past the departure end of the big runways at PHX.

The highlight of our trip SE to Tucson was orbiting over Pinal (MZJ), where the U.S. military bases more than 100 training helicopters, and where airlines park their discarded jumbo jets.  If you want to buy a cheap 747 and use it as a mobile home, Pinal has plenty to choose from.

We landed at Tucson (TUS), careful to land at the big international civil airport and not the adjacent equally sized Davis Air Force Base, parked at Trajen, where they pumped 18 gallons of gas into our Robinson and pulled up the Enterprise midsize car that I’d reserved.  In southern Arizona, a midsized “car” turns out to be a rather chunk pickup truck.  The folks at Trajen and Enterprise were able to arrange a swap for a Chrysler convertible.

Due to the presence in town of a national youth football convention, nearly all the hotels were booked and we ended up at a somewhat squalid Comfort Suites right by the control tower.  Dinner at El Nidito, the Mexican restaurant favored by former president Bill Clinton.  The largest and most fattening item on the menu is now named after him.

Stats:  around 450 nautical miles and 6.3 hours of Hobbs time.