We've been fogged in at the Hillsboro airport 80% of the mornings this month...day after day I drag into the airport at 5:00 am, preflight, and then sit hopefully by the windows watching the mist drift over the runway like a dog drooling over Thanksgiving dinner.  Please clear up, please clear up, please clear up!  Then at 9:00 am I pull the helicopter back in the hangar and go home until 2:00 pm, when I come back to the airport for my evening shift.

Yesterday in an attempt to outwit the weather (ha!) the studio had me fly the helicopter to Portland International and hangar it here overnight.  They had high hopes for this morning,  but unfortunately there is a fog bank hanging over the whole city.  In addition the ceilings (cloud bottoms) at PDX are sitting at 400 feet, which means to fly I'd have to cruise around the city squeezing between buildings and towers at 300 feet above the ground...which is not, alas, safe.  So here we sit again, myself and my pardner Daryl, wistfully gazing at the lights that appear dim across the runway.  You'll have to see those Black Friday lines from the ground cameras, folks, 'cause unfortunately FOX AIR 12 is grounded.

First week on the job!

I got to meet my main photographer, Daryl Mitchell. Daryl is awesome! He is a tall, boisterous comedian of a man. I was glad to finally put a face to the deep friendly voice I'd met on the phone. Daryl has a heart of gold-he has bent over backwards to help me set up my new office and hangar space, and make sure I have a jacket, business cards...even a place to go for Thanksgiving! I was touched that he and his wife were willing to take in a little aviation stray... he didn't know that I'm a Portlander born and raised so my family is here.

We spent the week testing and re-testing the ENG equipment. The KPTV engineers will tweak something, and then Daryl and I head out for a test flight over the valley, and then back to the hangar for more tweakage. Lucky for me, Daryl is very knowledgeable about the area, because I am unfamiliar with the territory west of the West Hills, and even neighborhoods that I am familiar with from the ground look different from the air. He's been a huge help and I'm stoked that I get to work with him! Thanks Daryl!

We'll get all the kinks worked out and pretty soon we'll be the best air news in Portland!

Flying out of Missoula was stunning. The sun was just peeking over the mountains, and lit the early morning wisps of fog below us like ice crystals on a glacier. We headed west between the steep walls of a deep canyon. The air was smooth as glass-unusual in the mountains-and we glided along like a peaceful airborn sailboat. Very Chris Van Allsburg.

Fuel stops in Coeur d' Alene, ID and Pasco, WA.

Flying over my home town for the first time in my life sent shivers down my back...there was Mt. Tabor, the convention center, the Fremont Bridge, Pioneer Courthouse Square...all the places I've known and loved since childhood. I am unbelievably blessed to be able to come home at last for good! As the anniversary of my homecoming, Halloween is my new favorite holiday!

Helicopters don't like altitude. The air is thinner, the engine performance is reduced. The bird is limited by the TOT (Turbine Outlet Temperature) rather than the torque, which usually limits it at lower altitudes. Additionally, I have a 300 lb passenger (that includes his luggage!) and a bunch of ENG equipment, so I have been flying at max gross weight with full fuel loads. Today I was forced to make much smaller hops between fuel stops, because I could only carry about 60 gallons of fuel instead of the usual 80+ gallons. However, the scenery was remarkable as we headed deep into the rockies, and my fixed-wing pilot passenger has definitely earned his keep with his intimate knowledge of the route and of sectionals (that's an aviation map.) Thank you Kenny!

We fueled in Sheridan, WY; Billings, MT; Bozeman, MT; Butte, MT; and finally stopped for the night in Missoula, MT. Yes, the hill over the school was burned, and yes, the M survived the fire!

Today was a looong day made longer by the stress of a scary maintenance issue.

We left at dawn from St. Louis, Missouri. Flying over the arch at sunrise was inspiring. I thought about Louis and Clark starting out on their historic expedition west from the very same city. Times sure have changed...I'll be able to make the trip in a couple of days-they were gone for a couple of years!

We fueled in Ottumwa, Iowa; Le Mars, Iowa; and Chamberlain, South Dakota. Flying over the flat states was pretty neat-I could see the curvature of the earth on the horizon. Ok, Mrs. Wong, I finally believe you that the earth is round! (She was my kindergarten teacher. Did I mention I flunked kindergarten...I told the teacher I didn't need her because I already knew how to write...in uppercase!) The grass on the plains undulates like waves-it made me feel very at home after all the ocean flying I've been doing!

Everything was dandy until suddenly the engine oil temperature gage shot up to red line and fluttered there like a nervous hummingbird. My eyes scanned the instrument panel-all other instruments normal. According to the Bell Jet Ranger Pilot Operating Handbook, this was a "land as soon as possible" (ie closest airport) situation, not a "land immediately" (ie a field). I diverted to the nearest large airport where I thought there would be maintenance. My heart was fluttering like the needle on the gage-an engine problem when you are 1500 feet above the ground is the stuff nightmares are made of! But 20 minutes later the gage suddenly went back to 90 and remained pegged there. I knew that the engine oil temperature itself could not have shot up and then cooled down so quickly, so it must be the gage, not the engine. So I diverted back to my original destination of Rapid City, South Dakota. There I did an engine power check and spent the night. When a mechanic checked the gage, it turned out two of the temperature probes were reversed. Problem solved!

Since I've gotten all of my professional experience as a pilot flight instructing and flying off the gulf coast of Louisiana and Texas, I have a lot to learn about ENG-or Electronic News Gathering. So Helicopters Incorporated flew me to New York City to train. It is stunning flying over the city in the darkness before sunrise...there aren't many man-made wonders that can take my breath away, but NYC at night is one them.

ENG presents a whole new world of challenges. I am getting used to hovering out of ground effect-that means hovering really high. This is tough because I don't have the visual references around me that I have when I hover at five feet. Also because any airspeed below about 16 knots requires a lot more power from the helicopter, so I have to be on my toes to keep from overtorqueing the system or getting into LTE-that's Loss of Tail Rotor Effectiveness, which causes the helicopter to spin out of control. It's recoverable as long as you have enough altitude to fly out of it, but I intend to never have to practice a real recovery!

ENG also requires me to have one ear on the air traffic controller, one ear on the news station, one ear on my photographer in the back, and one ear on the helicopter air-to-air frequency that I use to keep track of the other helicopters at the scene. We don't want a reoccurence of the accident that happened in Phoenix last year where two news helicopters collided in mid-air, so we are constantly communicating about where we are, which direction we are turning, etc. So that's about two more ears than I am gifted with! Talk about multi-tasking! Maybe I should visit a produce stand...

I'm confident I'll get it all down and be read to rock and roll by the time the Portland contract starts at the beginning of November.