JWilsonphoto
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Good Evening Everyone,
Over the years some of you have indicated that you enjoy hearing about the in's and out's of commercial work, today was filled with them. I knew that today's A2A assignment would have peaks and valleys, so I prepared for everything that I thought I might encounter. The challenges that I knew about from the get go, were, very dissimilar subject aircraft, and not being able to pull the doors because that would limit cruise speeds to 100 knots, about 40 knots lower than we might need.
The Bell 407 is a wonderful helicopter, smooth as glass due to the power and the four bladed rotor, my rides are super smooth because my pilot is GW Bush's Marine 1 pilot and as good as they get. Having the ability to aim the A/C nozzle right at my face is really nice in the summer, and today it may well have helped me keep my breakfast down. We had a perfect day, "clear and a million", winds 5-10 and the airspace was ours, or so we thought. Turns out that our re-join spot with our subjects was Eagle Mountain Lake, just 5 minutes west of Alliance Airport. Migratory birds, and student pilots were taking full advantage of the beautiful weather so our heads were on swivels as we approached our TOT. Experience was telling me that our actual shooting time was going to be much shorter than we anticipated, I was dead on. We arrived, our two subjects arrived, and the dance began. The pilot flying the Game Bird has a few t-shirts, Thunderbird #3, F/117 Stealth Fighter test pilot at The Skunk Works, A/10 and F/117, and F/16 combat pilot in multiple theaters, Distinguished Flying Cross Award, and a host of other accolades. The E-VTOL pilots were Blackhawk jocks, retired. We brought two safety pilots with us in the Bell to watch over the operation. Try as I might, I am fairly worthless on these missions as I am boring a hole in my singular responsibility..........bring home the shots.
Wonderful as the Bell 407 is, with the doors on, it is a real challenge to shoot from. The 5x7 sliding window is so low that you have to virtually lay down on the floor to look through the viewfinder, but it's just high enough that you can't completely lay down, very uncomfortable. So, there I was, in whatever contortion necessary to see what I'm supposed to be shooting, gritting my teeth to endure the pain and dueling with the waves of nausea as the helicopter ascends, descends and spins per my direction , to join up with our subjects, it was a real mind over matter circumstance. The R5II's AF and tracking functions were an absolute life saver today and I "prayed and sprayed" at 30 frames a second while trying to compose something worthy of the effort, and the client. This client calls on me frequently, particularly when the task toys with the next to impossible, like a single B52 pass, or a B29 that is having a tough time with the prescribed route. My hit ratio, thankfully, has been 100% over the past 30 years so the pressure and the challenge mounts with each assignment. Today, as I struggled to fight off the nausea and see what I was shooting, the thought that this might just be the one that breaks my winning streak shot through my mind. My safety guys, and my pilot were calling out birds, and traffic, in the midst of asking me where I needed to be, it was all a blur, a reasonably safe blur, but organized chaos. Finally, I announced that I had gotten what could be gotten and we broke off and headed for AFW to capture a low formation pass around the iconic ATC Tower and over the FBO. We hovered at 750' and awaited our subjects to arrive at 300' and perform their pass.
Often I am a bit sad when an A2A shoot comes to a close, but today felt only nauseated relief as the skids touched down and we got out and waved goodbye to the 407 crew as they lifted off and headed for Love Field. The last thing that I heard in my headphones was, "great work Jim, don't walk into any 'spinny things' on your way out. Ever so happy to be back on the ramp, I organized my gear and headed for the car. Once home, I downloaded everything and was very relieved to discover that my streak was still in tact. We didn't get any of the "hero shots" that I had tucked away in my imagination, but we did get everything the client was hoping for, and a few more. And, we got to document aviation history in the making, the first transcontinental E-VTOL trip in history.
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