Being as it is an hour's drive from my home, Camarillo airport is not surprisingly a difficult field to depart by 8 am on a Sunday morning, especially when Dane and I also had to fuel it up via the self-serve pump down the field. In an R22 that requires the entire normal process of draining the fuel sumps, hand pushing it to a suitable start-up location on the ramp and, after a thorough pre-flight inspection, starting and warming up the engine; then requesting clearance and hover-taxiing down to the fuel pump, landing as close as safely possible, and then cooling down and shutting down the engine. So I didn't actually feel too bad when after this entire process and all the rest of our preflight planning and preparation we finally ended up beginning our trip from Camarillo up the 101 highway at around 9:30 am.
Not wanting to overload the small two-seater helicopter with too much fuel behind 400 pounds of pilots and their necessities, we opted to put only 23 gallons in the 30 gallon set of tanks. Still, we took off with good performance and made good time up the familiar coastline from Oxnard to Santa Barbara, and on over the hills to cross over Santa Maria. This was the farthest I'd been in a helicopter, and from here on it was fairly new territory.
We stopped in San Luis Obispo to refuel, and though we managed to use a self-serve station again, the 2 airplanes that pulled up and waited in line for us to finish fueling, to go through the detailed start-up process, and to depart made me realize that perhaps these pumps weren't really meant for helicopters. Having made such good time and not really taken a long break in San Luis, we started to feel time was on our side and so we became a bit more playful with our next leg of the trip. The wine country we crossed through was beautiful, and with the sun at our backs the warm day didn't bother us. The skies weren't busy, especially not a few hundred feet off the ground where we were. A couple TFR restrictions to avoid firefighting areas were all we had to worry about between airports. Whoever wasn't flying was taking dozens of pictures with Dane's new camera. Though I started us out very straight and level towards our destination, Dane started having a little fun during his turn at the controls by circling around whatever interesting things we passed. Cruising low over a succession of wide-open vineyard fields, we also took a few minutes to stop on a sand bar of a creek bed to snap a few shots of each other and the helicopter amidst the scenic backdrop. After that we saw one other helicopter that we widened our path to avoid, a Bell 47 we suspected of being equipped for agricultural spraying. They didn't respond to us on the helicopter frequency, but I wasn't surprised. This wasn't our backyard anymore, and there were probably a number of customs here we weren't aware of.
A few minutes later we arrived in Salinas, which in addition to the Bell 47 seemed to be the home field of a good number of impressive helicopters. On this Sunday afternoon the ramp was fairly quiet, though we were happily greeted by a fuel truck driver after we touched down. What appeared to be the main airport lobby was indeed uninhabited, but a welcome place to rest for a short time and stretch our muscles that had been stuffed unused in the small cabin for 4 hours. In addition to re-supplying us with water, the local FBO that had fueled us also thanked us with a bottle of local wine. I dare say, sending something like that home with me makes for a very good chance they'll get my business again! (Though sadly for me, Dane was the one who ended up with it after the trip, since he'd brought the larger bag that could fit it. That will teach me not to pack so light!)
Now if I'd thought the previous leg of the trip was beautiful, I was even more blown away by the next. From Salinas we headed back out to the coast and followed it north. It was now the warm part of Sunday afternoon and the beaches had filled with locals out to enjoy the sun. Of course, it isn't a new experience for Dane or I to fly low over beaches, but what we discovered right away was that unlike the patrons of Venice Beach or Malibu who take little or no notice of the sound of swishing rotors coming their way, the inhabitants of Watsonville and Santa Cruz were delighted by it. We found ourselves waving back at them, seeing parents point us out to their babies and surfers block the sun with their hands to watch us as our shadow passed over them. Dane's acute eye found us a variety of notable sights as well, including nude beach goers and dolphin pods.
We arrived in Half Moon Bay with the hope of eating lunch. I'm not sure where I'd heard of this airport, but it seemed to be a place I remember people talking about and upon a quick search I'd found a beloved airport restaurant was rumored to lie on the edge of the field. What we discovered, however, was that on Sundays a 3:30 pm arrival was a half hour too late to get your order into the kitchen. This new turn of events coupled with the newest weather information that streamed into Dane's iPhone led us to do what all great pilots do on occasion - change our plans. Instead of heading up and around the city of San Francisco for what we'd imagined to be a gloriously scenic climax to our adventure, we instead took off back toward the south-east to where the skies weren't coated with a low level of helicopter-hindering clouds.
After another stop for fuel in San Carlos, where we had the pleasure of chatting briefly with a just-arrived EMS pilot who's significantly larger helicopter we parked our little R22 beside, we started back up and Dane transitioned us through the airspace of several busy airports on the way to South County airport. There we finally got to fill up on some sandwiches and sodas when my sister Cheri and her boyfriend were able to meet up with us and give us a ride into the modest town of San Martin.
As it was already pushing 6 o'clock at this point we kept the visiting short and soon hopped back in our trusted aircraft and were on our way. Somehow the return path seemed faster, which was not only on account of San Martin being significantly closer to home than Half Moon Bay, but also because as we watched the GPS we could see that our 90 knot indicated airspeed was cruising us along at a swift 110 knot groundspeed. What had been a strong headwind during our last northbound stretch from Salinas had now turned into a tailwind. Our plan of stopping in Salinas for fuel became a plan to stop in King City, 35 nautical miles beyond. And after departing King City, just as the dusk had become night, we had a decision to make.
Our original plan had been to stop next for fuel in Santa Maria, but according to our weather information Santa Maria was sliding under a low overcast layer of clouds, and according to our flight planning we wouldn't be at all low on fuel by that point anyway. In fact, as we watched our tail wind persist and Dane recalculated our rate of fuel burn, it became increasingly apparent that we might not need to stop for fuel at all. We passed by the field while staying clear of the moonlit clouds, and by the time we were approaching Santa Barbara we'd already convinced ourselves we would be fine to get home on what we had. After all we had kept our tailwind since South County, and besides there was always Oxnard we could stop at if we were getting low. Our only debate was whether we should make a straight line for it but climb over the mountains, or take the slightly longer route following the coast. In the interest of being safe, intelligent pilots, we took the coast.
We felt good about this choice at first. We'd already proven to ourselves that we have good judgement when a week prior we made the wise decision to refuel in Van Nuys before heading back from a routine night flight over the city. This plus our conservative practices earlier that day of not overfilling the tanks and being quick to stop for fill ups gave us the impression we were being overly cautious and simply wasting time. I mean why should it have taken from 9:30 am to 8 pm just to get to the Bay area and halfway back? And still in my mind was the story our fellow pilot friends had laughingly told us of how they came into Hayward International with the Low Fuel light on. Clearly we were being unnecessarily careful.
But what we didn't realize while making this bad decision not to refuel was that in addition to running the risk of losing our engine at night due to fuel exhaustion, we were setting ourselves up for a whole lot of stress and distraction during the last 30 minutes of our flight. Sure enough, as we confidently told Santa Barbara Approach Control that we only required clearance to pass through, not to land, we also noted our tailwind had evaporated into a gusty unpredictable sea breeze. With what we estimated to be only six gallons left but only a half-hour of distance left to cross, we continually recalculated our margin of error as we stared at the declining fuel needles. It wasn't a good feeling. With my hands at the controls, I made the decision that we would stop at Oxnard to refuel, and Dane agreed.
We made it to Oxnard, but in a hurried and very unsafe way that brought us in low over power lines and straight into the center of the luckily empty airport. Bringing it into a low hover we almost let ourselves feel safe, but our nervous systems weren't about to relax. We called on the radio to ask about a self-serve fuel station, desperate to get it there and set it on the ground, but were only met with the unexpected information that Oxnard airport didn't have such facilities. Still on the controls I moved us into a transient parking spot as the Low Fuel light finally illuminated. With pleasure I plopped it down and rolled down the throttle to idle. That's okay, I thought, it can stay here until the morning. We're safe.
It turned out not to be a problem at all that we left our helicopter in Oxnard. Our pilot friends live nearby and at 10:30 pm had no problem running over to pick us up. I stayed the night at their invitation with the intention of getting fuel and shuttling the helicopter back to Camarillo in the morning, but it turned out our mechanic in Oxnard wanted to change the oil in it anyway, and as luck would have it I'd left it parked directly in front of his hangar.
All in all it was an amazing trip, but unfortunately tarnished at the end by a single bad decision. I found it incredible how the distraction of one problem can cause you to make other significant mistakes you would never have made otherwise. Fortunately for us, the experience is something we can learn from to make us safer pilots for the rest of our careers. And for our next flight up the California coast, which we're planning for this weekend.
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