Category: Flying

Discouraged by reports of low clouds at various points along Interstate 10 and Interstate 20, but encouraged by forecasts of improving conditions, we launched from El Paso (KELP) to Van Horn, Texas (KVHN). The airport was deserted, but we managed to get the FBO guy on his cell phone and he popped right over to help us fuel the R44 from the pumps. The big users of this airport have been the U.S. Army with some drones and Blue Origin/Jeff Bezos with Gulfstreams and helicopters coming to see rocket launches (not stopping to chat with anyone at the airport).

We departed after refueling and, sure enough, the forecast great weather hadn’t materialized. As the highway climbed, the cloud deck didn’t move, which meant that the ceiling kept getting lower and lower. We hadn’t gone more than 10 minutes from KVHN before making the decision to do a 180-degree turn. We then called our FBO guy back to get the keys to the crew car and went into town for a truly great early dinner in a classic hotel:

After dinner… the same damn clouds. But they certainly didn’t look very high. Maybe we could go over them at 7,500′ and… we did! It’s unusual to fly over a cloud deck in a helicopter and if we’d had to do an autorotation to the highway it could have been challenging, but I have done autos on instruments in training. Anyway, the faithful Robinson never hiccupped so we made it over the last of the mountains and the broken cloud layer without incident and landed at Abilene just as it was getting dark. Abilene Aero lent us their crew car for the overnight hotel stay.

Next: Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 6 (Abilene to Kentucky)

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In Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 3 (They Built the Wall in Texas) we saw that man proposes and God disposes with respect to flying weather. Unable to proceed over the next batch of mountains, we enjoyed El Paso, Texas for about 26 hours.

Downtown El Paso seems to have been set up to serve Mexicans who came over for a day of shopping and then returned over the bridge. Here’s what it would look like to arrive from Ciudad Juárez:

After our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters from south of the border get through the 1950s-style shopping district, they arrive at the Square of the Sacred Rainbow Flag:

On the way they might pass this multi-story mountain lion (64 feet high!), fashioned from recycled trash by Bordalo Segundo of Portugal:

Inspired by the street art, it was time to duck into the (free) art museum. Meanwhile, I checked the radar to see whether we’d made a good decision (“sunk cost fallacy”?). From 2:30 pm:

The art museum had the usual stuff, plus an exhibit on Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, murdered by an embezzling employee who tried to hide her crime by claiming to have been sexually assaulted.

Here’s another temporary installation, a sculpture by Vanessa German:

Black Girl on Skateboard Going Where She’s Got to Go to Do What She’s Got to Do and It Might Not Have Anything to Do With You, Ever, 2022. Lemony things: vintage French beaded flowers, a yellow skateboard like I never had when i was a fat little Black girl in Los Angeles when riding a skateboard meant that you could fly, Capidomonte Ceramic Lemon Center piece, a dance in my thighs, high yellow so-flat paint, porcelain bird figurines, decorative resin lemons, papery yellow flowers, meanness transmuted, love, oil paint stick, rage, self-loathing transmuted, a joy-bitch, masturbation, plaster, wood glue, black pigment, giddiness, freedom in the body, freedom in the Soul, wood, tar, wire, a distinct and purposeful healing, hope, yellow flood light, heart, yellow decorative ceramic magnolia figurine, acceptance, abandon, not being afraid to be full of your own self in your own divine body, divinity, fear transmuted, plaster gauze, magic, silicone, tears, epoxy, water, tomorrow, now, yes.

Wandering around after the art museum, we happened on the Paso Del Norte, a hotel that put our Marriott to shame:

Some images of downtown, including the very first Kress store (part of the fortune built turned into the art museum and its collection). See if you can spot the Science-following photographer:

We enjoyed dinner at Tex-Mex institution L&J Cafe (1927), preceded by a walk in the grass-free graveyard:

Then it was time to enjoy El Paso by night, including a minor league baseball game (packed with enthusiastic spectators) and fireworks from our hotel’s pool deck:

The next morning I did my annual visit to the gym and also looked out from the pool deck:

Speaking of the gym, they still had their coronapanic signs up. Is there any kind of procedure for taking these safety notices down?

To undo any negative effects from the gym, we hit the Glazy Donut on the way out of town. Note how easily Internet content can be corrupted:

Then it was back to the airport where the skies were clear at least to the next stop (Van Horn, Texas) and forecast to improve beyond Van Horn:

Next: Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 5 (trying to get through all of Hell and half of Texas)

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Our story picks up again on an April Saturday morning in Tucson. When checked the previous night, the forecast weather beyond El Paso was a combination of ugly and iffy. Despite the weather forecast and having flown 5 hours (collective-cracked time, so closer to 6 hours of rotor-spinning time), we were at the airport a little after 7:00 am.

After weight gained via the previous night’s Sonoran hot dogs it would have been nice to steal this civilian Blackhawk with which we shared the ramp (they were dropping supplies into the forest for powerline construction):

Here’s Interstate 10 climbing over some of the hills in southern New Mexico. It is possible to do the trip at 5,500′, the highest elevation that we must fly in order to bring a helicopter from coast to coast along I-10:

We stopped for the bathroom and found some porn for pilots:

Due to a slight headwind, we couldn’t make it to El Paso on one tank. We stopped in Las Cruces for fuel and on-airport bbq:

Once we arrived in El Paso, just after noon and having flown only three hours from Tucson, we discovered that the forecast wall of bad weather in Texas was, in fact, impenetrable by prospective helicopter migrants. My copilot wanted to press on, pointing out that conditions weren’t so bad at various airports to the northeast, e.g., 1200′ ceilings were available in Carlsbad (elevation 3295′). I reminded him that we’d have to climb above 8,000′ to clear the mountains between El Paso and Carlsbad and that the 1200′ ceiling wasn’t going to follow the terrain. It hadn’t occurred to him that airports tend to be built at the lowest elevations in a region, not on hilltops or mountaintops. (He had more than 500 hours of airplane time and nearly 200 hours of helicopter time so I can’t explain this gap in knowledge.)

Million Air KELP is a favorite spot for military instructors and students. It’s also a great place to make sure that you don’t get sunburned when transferring from your pavement-melting SUV into your Greta Thunberg-approved Gulfstream:

We headed downtown:

More about El Paso in our next thrilling installment… Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 4 (El Paso Interlude)

Related:

• Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 1
• Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 2 (Davis-Monthan boneyard)

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Follow-up to Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 1…

We actually did this before landing in Tucson and enjoying Sonoran hot dogs at “EGC”… an orbit of Davis–Monthan Air Force Base. The military wasn’t doing any flying at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon, so I figured that the tower controller would either tell us to stay out or invite us to come in and do whatever we wanted. Instead, the controller approved one orbit of the famous boneyard. Why not two orbits? I should have summoned the courage to ask!

Here’s the part of the base that supports actively flying aircraft:

And then your choice of aircraft for any size family:

Note the A-10 Warthogs at bottom right if there is any need for domestic violence.

Here’s your fearful narrator enjoying the scene:

(Note the T-shirt from this year’s Sun ‘n Fun)

If you believe in “Peace, the old-fashioned way”… the B-1 bomber (sad about the reflection; it would have been better to land and take the door off and then take off again and yet better if Robinson would add a sliding photo window to the piston-powered machines that are now up to $750,000):

Not sure if this one is coming in or going out:

An overview…

And another wide image…

Tune in next time to see what we did about the following:

Notes: Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 3 (They Built the Wall in Texas)

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Nutrition is critical for any coast-to-coast helicopter flight. I loaded up on dim sum at Din Tai Fung in a Costa Mesa mall, then paid only $13 for a few strawberries at Hannam Chain in our inflation-free economy. The folks who run the supermarket are Korean and had neglected to boycott the Zionist entity:

I decided to skip the rainbow flag worship at the liquor store next door to the supermarket:

Our machine was waiting for us on the Robinson ramp in Torrance (KTOA), but the marine layer prevented departure prior to 11:30 am. Note the new horizontal stabilizer, not in any way resembling a Bell 206…

That gave us time to stock up on snacks at the nearby Whole Foods. The scene out front showed California at its best: outdoor maskers and a planet-saving Tesla.

In the rare moments when they de-mask, the Followers of Science detoxify their body with alkaline water in front of this Whole Foods:

We fly out of LA by following CA-91 and I-10, a route prescribed by Robinson that is the lowest path out of the mountains (the Banning Pass is at 2,200′ above sea level). I keep a cheat sheet of radio frequencies for the control towers and/or common traffic advisory frequencies (CTAF) of the 7 airports we will fly by. In the middle of the day (not rush hour) it’s up to a 4-hour trip by car, according to the Google, but we’re there after 30 minutes:

If one were tempted to complain about the R44’s 110-knot cruising speed, this sight in Carson, California (near Long Beach) is a good reminder to count one’s blessings:

As soon as we get to Banning the skies turn blue. We transition through Palm Springs and land at the Bermuda Dunes airport. After consuming all of the FBO’s Cheez-Its, it was time to continue climbing into the hills via I-10.

Blythe, California is a generally terrible airport where you need to park at the fuel pumps and where the “courtesy car” comes with precious little courtesy. We skipped it and continued across the Colorado River into Arizona.

Some more mountains before arriving in Metro Phoenix to land at the Goodyear, AZ airport:

One way to look slim:

More coffee and snacks at GYR before proceeding on toward Tucson. The Pinal, AZ airport is notable for Army helicopters and washed-up airliners:

Maybe a sharp-eyed reader can figure out what the coal-fueled facility below is. I don’t see huge powerlines coming out of it so my guess is “not electricity generation”. Also, a nice quarry:

We arrived in Tucson about 1.5 hours before sunset. If we couldn’t make it all the way to El Paso it probably made sense to shut down because southern New Mexico does not have a lot of services.

Then it was time to shop for microfiber cloths (clean the bugs off the bubble) and eat Sonoran hot dogs at El Guero Canelo (“EGC” to the locals):

(I cheat and order mine without mayonnaise)

Next: Helicopter from Los Angeles to Maskachusetts, Part 2 (Davis-Monthan boneyard)

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