SquirrelFlight

Thanks for the replies. I guess there wasn't that much that I was missing. If I head a better head for business stuff, I might look into trying to set up a company that contracts pilot (maybe even helicopters and pilots) two at a time - one "rookie" and one "mentor". Alas I don't, so it'll have to remain a pipe dream a little bit longer... off to read through the flight instructors manual again...

Ah. it has been a while since I've been on here, and I didn't find the prior discussion with a quick search - thanks for the link.

Thanks for the answers. What I was hoping to find was a way to get from newly-minted commercial pilot to *actual* commercial pilot without flight instruction as a first step. I'm not even thinking of myself in this case - a lot of people have told me that I do pretty well in an instruction role (I even spent a semester teaching math at community college and got good feedback from the student evaluations; the pay sucked - a lot - so I didn't go back).... but let's face it, there are some people who are competent helicopter pilots who should never be let near a classroom. And, honestly, who would you rather have teaching you: the guy who just finished training himself, or the guy who has a few thousand hours of real-world experience? So, what's the answer? I don't know, but I was doing some mental masturbation the other day and thought what if there was a company or two that matched new pilots with experienced pilots who would work as a team until the new pilot got enough hours to qualify for "real" work? Sort of like an apprenticeship. I don't know if it would be organized like a temp-agency that would contract out the two-pilot teams, or if the company would have to own their own ships and contract out the whole package (ship, both pilots, and possibly other support services)... or something else I'm not aware of. So, the overall idea is, you'd get your COMM, then sign on to this "apprenticeship" company who would match you up with one (or more) experienced pilots, and put you to work right away. Then, when you get your 1,000 hours you can start looking for other jobs on your own. Like I said, just some mental masturbation... I don't know if anyone else has ever tried something like this....

HowD all - it's been a while since I've been on, not to mention since I last posted. Anyway, I spent the last month and a half in Toronto for business. I was originally contracted to be there until mid-December, but that contract got cut short. Anyway, when I first got there, anticipating the longer stay, I hopped online to see what there was in the way of helicopter flight schools. I didn't find very many, and most were pretty far from the city. One thing I noticed is that all the flight schools I looked at hired instructors starting at 2000 hours.... which immediately raised a question for me. Assuming that the training programs in Canada are similar to those in the US (that is, 200-300 for a commercial certificate) and that insurance companies are still the reason for 1000 being the "magic" number, then how does a pilot in Canada go from being newly licensed to working? There has to be something I'm missing... but I'm not sure what it is.

Hmmm.... do you think there'd be enough heat generated from exhaust gasses to heat a mobile kitchen or oven? We could land the helicopter in a neighborhood park and cook the pizzas right there ;-)

This is somewhat along the lines of some mental masturbation I was doing a couple months ago. Bear in mind that this is currently an "aha!" idea that I haven't had time to critically pick over yet, so there are probably lots of flaw; probably many of them fatal. Anyway, I've recently taken an interest in cooking. Enough to ponder whether or not I could afford/schedule going through a culinary school (I haven't made any decisions there yet; it's another area of mental masturbation). So, I started thinking, what if I could outfit a mid to large helicopter with a mobile kitchen and fly to places where people might not have ready access to "gourmet"-ish food and cook it for them. Sort of a taco truck in the sky with better food. I'm not exactly sure who that would be (oil rig workers? forest fire fighters?) or if they'd even be able to afford it (I'd have to support both myself and the helicopter with my income, afterall). Plus, if I were to get the idea to take off, the "kitchen" could be made modularly so that one day I could fly a pizza oven around, the next I could fly a sushi kitchen (or whatever).... I've even wondered if were possible to fly around to state/county fairs with a set of deep fryers and sell fry bread and elephant ears (since any given fair would be several weeks long, that would cut down on the overhead of the helicopter). Like I said, probably not that great an idea once all the pros and cons are hammered out, but fun to think about all the same.

The name Jerry Trimble is ringing a bell with me *A LOT* but I can't put a person/face to the name. I did some FW flying up in OR before moving to AZ, and MMV was one of my regular destinations. Is Jerry the guy who has the glider school there?

I got my fixed-wing private a long time ago for fun (interesting that when I decided it was time to switch careers away from being an IT desk jockey, I went for helicopters....) and all the close encounters you have with them will probably be because they don't see you. They probably don't know you are there. They don't really have the slightest idea what you are doing or what to expect from you. I've been there, I know. The last airport I flew fixed wing out of had a fair amount of helicopter traffic on the other side of the field. I would hear the pilot talking to the tower, but only rarely did I ever see them. Some that, I think, is altitude difference - the pattern altitude for the bug-smasher fixed wings is going to be somewhere between 800 and 1000 AGL - when was the last time you flew a pattern that high? When was the last time you flew that high? ;-) A 300-500 foot elevation difference between aircraft that small means you're going to be very hard to see. Someone mentioned a C172 almost running them over on a turn from downwind to base... Guess what? There's a big huge blind spot that most Cessna's have right there - down and toward the front they have a big instrument panel in the way. He probably thought he was perfectly clear. Am I defending the fixed-wing guys in these cases? Not really. It is a purely a matter of ignorance. There isn't any training - at least I've never received any - about inter-category interactions. And, I've found, it case go both ways, although it'd be my guess that there are more airplane guys switching to rotorcraft than the other way around. So, watch your own ass out there, and try not to get too upset with that other jerk out there; it's likely he just doesn't know any better.

Tomorrow (the 14th) from 9AM to 1PM, if I remember right. I plan on going.

Yep - kept myself fed for the most part at the places down by the theater. Thanks for the info :-)

This is a small one I've posted on Facebook... if anyone's interested, I'll post the full-sized version once I get home... I haven't posted photos before, so I hope this works:

Yep - the Ramada. Why drive when you can walk? ;-)

I'll be at that safety course.

A little over 100 hours in about 5 months for me. I tend to be a slow learner when it comes to "fine tuning". That is, I pick up coarser skills pretty quick, then take a long time to fine tune them. The first part comes quickly enough that it often fools people teaching me (not just flight instructors, just about anything else I've gone to learn) into not worrying about the other skills so much. I'm a moderately smart guy, which I think tends to exacerbate the problem. I was also working full time during training, so I wasn't able to focus 100% (or anywhere near it) for the majority of my training.

Anyone else gonna be there?