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An Aviation Brief
by Robert Steen
Rotary eClub One Member

I was asked to relate some tales from my experiences in the world of aviation.  I would be remiss if I didn’t thank the United States Army for a twenty-one year career enhanced by its training, trust and education, all of which contributed to my experiences within the service and later.   

In both military and civilian aviation, I have dodged bullets, rockets, trees, and a fall into the South Pacific with engine failure. I have advanced through fingers of flames from roaring forest fires, and flown blind through columns of smoke hoping to come out the other side right-side up. I managed to climb out of the cockpit in one piece and without bleeding.

The Army must have realized that they had latched onto someone who was thoroughly enjoying himself and thus qualified me in about everything in their aviation inventory on both the rotary wing and fixed sides.  Then, they trained me as an Instructor Pilot and eventually as a Flight Examiner in both categories of aircraft.   Little did the Army know how excited I was to fly, and prepared to take any risk!

As an instructor, I was a firm believer in letting the student or pilot go through refresher training exercises, including all appropriate flight maneuvers and procedures, without hovering my hands or feet over the controls.  This method allowed the students and pilots to truly experience the results of their training. 

I will admit, however, there were some questionable moments exercising this manner of evaluation.  Like the time I allowed my attention to drift while the student was running out of rotor RPM in an autorotation; or, the time my student in a Sikorsky was attempting to set the helicopter down tail into an upslope.  He was doing quite well until he allowed the helicopter to tap dance on the ground rather than planting it which created a situation where this type of helicopter begins to beat itself in the ground due to entering a phenomenon known as ground resonance.  This occurrence can be terminal to one’s day.

Flight Examiners have long maintained that they walk on water and that no harm will ever befall them.  Student pilot rely on that fact.  However, our survival in the field of aviation must be equally insured by a high quality of training, personal experiences, a little skill, and the blessing of someone on a much higher plane than those of us in the cockpit.

After retiring from the US Army, I opted out of scheduled airline employment (I was still young enough at 39). with  its similar game of numbers and uniforms.  I decided instead, to pursue a career in commercial contract aviation.  This entailed forgoing a regular paycheck in lieu of offering my skills to the highest bidder.  That was the best decision I ever made other than my marriage to my wife, Carol.

Later, I consulted in aviation operations and aviation safety, helped to develop small airports and evaluate aviation training programs on behalf of the Army as an outside consultant.  My heart, however, was always in the sky, with the excitement of flying in new and strange locales, experiencing a wide variety of missions, and meeting new friends.

These missions included chasing fish across the South Pacific (between American Samoa and Guam along the equator) for an American Tuna Super Seiner with 1300 tons of capacity (all on a phone call from Australia); transporting corporate folks to mundane, though occasionally exciting destinations; flying power-line checks one to two feet off 500KV and 1000KV power lines; fighting forest fires in mountainous and residential environments by dropping water from 700 to 1000 gallon buckets; depositing US Forest Service Hot Shot crews in the midst of flaming timber land; and even flying frost patrol over citrus crops during freezing temperatures. 

Frost patrol, by its very nature, happens in the dead of winter and dead of night. With no light, other than possible moonlight, helicopters fly five to ten feet over the fruit trees attempting to spread the heat from exhausts onto the trees with the powerful down blast of rotor blades.  We came close to freezing in the cockpit as we flew without doors in order to improve our vision around the area and to enable us to listen for other helicopters operating immediately over the same large fields.  Whew!

People often ask me about the close camaraderie among pilots.  After successfully completing a mission and landing safely and soundly,  many pilots become close in both professional and personal lives. 

So much of the work I and my fellow pilots engaged in was inherently dangerous.  Those of us who survived both military and commercial flying missions look back with amazement regarding our jobs and our survival. 

Those who didn’t make it back home from their last mission will always be in our hearts.  But, they were doing exactly what they loved and eventually flew above the bounds of earth to a greater place.

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