Watermelon Man

WATERMELON MAN

You lift sixteen tons

and what d'you get?

Another day older

and deeper in debt

TH-55A being used as a shopping cart

I was the first to solo in Class 86-12.  
No clouds, no wind, visibility fifty miles.  I flew with my I.P. out to Hanchy stage field and landed, he got out, told me not to break the goddamn helicopter because he had signed for it and it wasn't coming out of his paycheque.  So, I taxied out, took off, flew crosswind, downwind, base, final and landed; three times.  I had single-handily slipped the surly bonds of earth and lived to tell about it.  My face hurt from grinning.  I opened my eyes.

When I landed, my I.P. stormed from the tower and met me at the aircraft, and told me to get the hell out of it.  Another Instructor had come with him and took the controls while I unstrapped, trying to remember what rule I had violated while unsupervised.  My I.P. grabbed me by the collar and seat of my flight suit, carried me to the tower, and threw me into a blow-up wadding pool filled with water.  Head first.  Then he shook my hand smiling and said I knew you could do once you got your head outta' your butt.  High praise indeed.  

Twenty minutes of flying and I was done for the day.  I had just conquered gravity and cheated death, and now I had to sit and watch every else fly.  Only one other guy soloed about an hour later.  So, I sat around, wet.  Fortunately, being the beginning of summer in Alabama, it was already in the mid nineties.  Then since the relative humidity was around 95%, I sat around hot and wet.  

Finally after everyone had had their flights and were heading home my I.P. told me I was going to fly him back to the field to get full ninety minutes I was being paid for.  After take off, he said he wanted to show me steep approaches and take offs from a confined area.  This meant flying in and out of small clearings.  Landing on an asphalt runway was one thing but I was a little unsure about landing in holes in the trees.  

Around Ft. Rucker there are hundreds of clearings, just for this sort of thing.  But, at certain times of the year, these ad hoc LZs become wild watermelon patches.  It was a matter of prestige for my I.P. to have the first student to solo in the class.  A credit to his genius, not mine.  And, as part of the Nobles Oblige, he was going to bring watermelon for all the other IPs.  And I was going to help.

We landed and took off from three or four “LZs” before we found any watermelon.  When we did he took the controls and said Don't ever try this yourself,  pitching the little two seater well past the recommended angle of bank and dropped into the LZ so fast my helmet bumped the canopy.  To slow the forward momentum, he pulled the nose up beyond the tops of the trees and kicked the rudder pedals making the trees lurch away up and to the left.  Thirty seconds ago I was flying and we were above the trees, now we were on the ground below the trees.  As he rolled the throttle down to the idle stop, he cautioned again, never to try that myself.  I nodded, trying to remember how to do it when I got to fly solo again.  

There was only one watermelon ripe, so I cut the vine with my survival knife, and we were off to the next field.  The next field was almost too small to land in, but from the air we could see five, maybe six good sized watermelons ripe enough.  Because the LZ was so small, our approach had to almost vertical.  This also meant that to take off, we would have to climb straight up to about eighty feet before we would clear the trees.  Once on the ground, I got out and picked six or seven watermelons, all weighing at least twenty pounds each.  Since no more would fit in the already cramped cockpit, I strapped in and readied for take off.

About Density Altitude:  Density Altitude is a combination of Barometric pressure, Temperature, and Humidity.  High temperature and high humidity make for a high density altitude.  This means the air is thinner than is standard.  When the air is thinner, engine performance is affected and there is less potential lift available.  For airplanes, this would necessitate a longer take off roll.  For helicopters, this limits the amount of weight that can be lifted.  

Being that I weighed in at about 180, and my IP at fifty pounds better, we were already rather close to Max. Gross Allowable with a full gas tank.  We had burned about 1/4 tank so far, but took on about a hundred pounds of produce.  These factors, in combination with the outside air temperature didn't seem important until about twenty feet below the tops of the trees.  Then they became very important.  As we struggled aloft, me holding on to the watermelon and I.P. swearing, we made it to about sixty feet when the Main Rotor RPM began to drop.  Like the stone we would become shortly.  When Rotor RPM drops, it means the blades are not creating sufficient lift to make the helicopter fly.  To correct this the first response is to ad power and blade pitch, but this only aggravates the RPM bleed off.  The best thing to do is drop the nose and pick up forward air speed.  That's fine when you have 200 or even 100 feet to use, but in a tight confined area such as this a vertical take off is the only way out.  

Back on the ground, I recommended leaving some of the watermelons behind.  I was told that that was not an option; not in those words, but the blow I received on the top of my helmet said roughly the same thing.  Next I suggested letting the engine run until we burnt off enough fuel to get out.  Same answer.  I stopped making suggestions.  

My I.P. said there was a road just to the north of the clearing.  He said he would take the aircraft to the road and I would walk out to meet him, but to wait until he was clear of the trees before leaving.  After three attempts, my he set the aircraft down and motioned for me to come over.  He asked if I had any other recommendations.  Wisely, I thought, I replied no.  For my candor I was rewarded with another thump on the head.  I should have been wearing my helmet.  

It was decided that I should try to fly it out since I weighed less, and if I couldn't do it I would carry the watermelon to the road for pick up.  Without another word between us, I strapped in and rolled on the throttle and faked the before take off checks, along the lines on "Atomic Batteries to power, Turbines to speed".  Slowly increasing the RPM and pulling up on the collective and correcting with the pedals, the aircraft became light, then wobbly, then airborne.  This was not like hovering at a stage field; the ground was uneven, there was grass swirling in the rotor wash and I was staring at a wall of pine trees.  When hovering, the idea is to pick a spot on the horizon as a reference point.  I had a tree much too close for piece of mind.  Not having an adequate reference point, I mearly closed my eyes and pulled in the power.

TH-55 cockpit

Once above the trees, the aircraft reacts to the wind, causing the helicopter to turn into it like a 1600 pound weather vane.  Now, to find the road and actually land on it.  Well, this should be easy, roads look a lot like runway, right?  Well yes and no.  Runways don't have telephone wires across them or cars on them.  For very good reasons too.

I sighted the road and flew towards it.  The only way I could land was by doing a traffic pattern first, so I flew the little square, and lined up on the road. I wondered should I land in the middle or on the right hand side?  Or land and pull over to the curb?  This was not covered in ground school.  As I was about to touch down, I noticed the power lines and ducked under them, bouncing and skidding on the asphalt.  It was then that I noticed the car.  Also, in ground school they never mentioned who has the right of way, a car or a helicopter.  Since they had a horn, I figured the car did so I yanked on the collective, sending me up and sideways.  I was so rattled, I dropped the aircraft back to earth just as my IP came through the bushes.  The car had already disappeared out of sight , so the bad landing became my fault.

Gold Flight WOC hat

We returned to Cairns Army Airfield as the other were getting their final critiques.  Normally an overdue aircraft was cause for great wailing and gnashing of teeth, but since we had watermelon, all sins were forgiven.  Nothing was said about the mishap with the car, and the damage to the skids was put down as run-on landing practice.  My beaming Flight Instructor did present me with my solo wings and wrote in my log book Candidate Waters did this day perform solo and unaided flight in the TH-55a Helicopter not once but twice.