Big Al's "Heads-Up" Award

The highlight of my helicopter-logging day came when I finally got to set that last turn of stupid logs down in the log landing and head for Service. Eight hours in the saddle was plenty for a guy who's long in tooth. My bod would literally tingle when I could finally sit up straight in the seat; stretch out on those beefy Bell Huey tail rotor pedals, and fly straight and level for a minute or so.

Second to that would be the noon maintenance break. Beside lunch, I mean. It's sooo satisfying to peel one's sore butt out of the saddle after hammering it for five hours plus and let "Big Al" ("Mr. Good Wrench") check over Lorena while yours truly ("Captain Methane") limps like a cripple over the crusty snow to the toasty service truck. Al usually had it all warmed up for me.

Once seated, I'd scan the weak radio waves for a distant, scratchy Paul Harvey or some News from the BBC. I listened to the world fall apart while consuming the contents of my lunch bucket. Wash it all down with a cold Dr. Pepper for a jolt of caffeine, and Captain Methane is ready for the last two cycles.

Big Al usually took thirty minutes to perform an honest inspection of the UH-1H for hot bearings, cracks, leaks, chafing lines, things that'll git `ya in this line of work.

The noon maintenance break became such a cool routine that Big Al and I got real comfortable with each other's work habits. One thing he always did on cold days was to preheat the Huey's cabin with a kerosene space heater five minutes or so before crank time. I never could hack climbing into an ice-cold helicopter and cramming on a frigid flight helmet, to say nothing of all the foggy windows and bubbles I needed to see through. Al respected that and saw to it that I started out cozy.

And then it happened. We were logging just west of Tamarack Creek, near St. Regis, Montana. It was a quarter to one on a cold, but sunny December afternoon. Al signaled that he was all done with his maintenance check and headed into the maintenance trailer, toting his heavy canvas bag of tools. I moseyed back to the ship, glad to be getting the last three hours of logging started, after I did my customary walk-around-the-ship preflight.

As soon as I began my walk-around, I sensed that something was already wrong. I couldn't put my finger on it, so I further scanned the area with my Okie sensors on acute while securing my lunch bucket behind the left pilot's seat with a bungee cord. Then I realized what the problem was: It was too danged quiet and too danged cold!

The noisy space heater was sitting in the rear cabin area, all right, but Al had spaced plugging in the power cord. I hollered loud enough for Al to hear me, "Thanks a lot, Pee-Pee!!"

(Al's big brother, Terry, gave him his other nickname, one that Al didn't particularly care for.) After plugging the heater in, I slid the door shut and keyed up the Motorola radio, checking with Terry (yes, Al's big brother) to see if the boys were ready to start logging.

"Waitin'on you, Dork," came Terry's Texan-tinged sarcastic reply.

By that time, Big Al was on hand, scrambling around, apologizing, flustered that he had forgotten to preheat the cabin. I climbed into the chilly left seat, making light of Al's omission, and had the big rotors turning in no time. Blasting thru my mental checklist, the windscreens were just beginning to un-fog when I throttled `er up to 100 percent N2. Al waited patiently for my nod then removed the rosy-red space heater and reclosed the cabin door.

Returning Pee-Pee's crisp salute, I leaned hard left into the bubble and rolled over onto my achy left hip, into the familiar position. With a little spurring, up sprang good ol' Lorena, like a rested workhorse. I urged her over and up with the 185-foot Kevlar long-line, picking it cleanly off the snowdrifts, weaving around the brushy clumps until the heavy remote hook arose from the orange-painted mud at Al's feet. A right pedal turn put me on track, and I headed up the hill toward the logging strips, a mile or so distant.

"Lorena's headed your way, Tex," I radioed the Landing.

"'Need you to take a saw to `Johnny-wad' before you haul any logs," Terry informed me, so I beelined in the knot-bumper's direction. A minute later, I decelerated from 80 knots and brought the remote hook in smoothly to the knot-bumper's chute, where "Pie- Cut" was supposed to be standing with a chain-saw-on-a-rope.

"So where is Pie-Cut?" I had to ask. Looking down from my high hover, I could see Terry and two chasers jogging to hook up the saw. Oh, there's Pie-Cut, yonder. Temporarily indisposed behind a nearby royal fir. (You see everything from up here!)

Holding my lofty hover, I watched Terry jog under the left skid. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I saw something streak to the ground, smacking into the mud a few feet ahead of him. The impact made a big muddy splat, causing Terry to reel backwards and stare up at the hovering Huey. The sky is falling? "Something just fell off your chopper!" Tex exclaimed into his chest-pack radio. My Okie brain raced to think of something vital in the inventory of whirling parts surrounding me that might have just fallen off of some other indispensable part, but Lorena was hovering happily--the gauges were in the green--and I began to wonder.

Big Al suddenly chimed in on the service radio, "Did I hear that something fell off the helicopter?!"

"A-ffir-ma-tive, Pee-Pee," I replied, knowing he'd be interested.

"What is it, Tex?" I inquired of Terry. Terry glanced back up at the Huey and cautiously proceeded underneath toward the item(s). He stooped down and gathered the muddy pieces into his big, freckled hands. "It broke into three chunks," he drawled. "One piece is a 14-volt DC battery pack that says "Milwaukee" on it."

A power tool? A heavy, crack-your-skull-open, two-hundred-dollar power tool? Pee-Pee always set his power driver down on the left engine deck before he climbed down from the ship. Once his hands were free, he'd stuff the driver into his canvas tool bag and plug in the heater with monotonous regularity.

Getting back to Pee-Pee, you probably could have heard him without a radio at that point, for as soon as he heard his brother say "Milwaukee," he let out one of those sky-cracking Charlie Brown Arrrgghhh's!! that came from way deep down in his pocketbook, trailing off at long last into a death rattle. Poor Pee-Pee!

Captain Methane was, of course, equally at fault for not catching it. I allowed a cold cockpit to distract me from finishing my walk-around, where I definitely would have seen the power tool sitting on the engine deck at eye level. But I didn't. And that's the argument I used to console my mechanic when the day was over and the pieces of his power tool were returned to Service.

"It takes two sets of eyes, amigo, and I let us down," I told Al. "We're awfully lucky that no one got hurt. Your drill can be replaced, your brother can't," and so on.

"It wasn't mine," he whimpered, waiting for me to shut up, "It was Larry's!" (Larry was Big Al's relief mechanic, and he had just purchased the new tool.) "I borrowed his Milwaukee `cause mine quit workin'! There goes Christmas," he lamented.

Always one to have a cartoon suited to the occasion, I quickly whipped out a sketch that carried the headline, "Big Al's Heads-Up Award!" Under the title was a caricature profile of Tex with his big red beard and hardhat, looking up, but with a Milwaukee power drill half-embedded in his face. Digging out a red pen, I made scarlet rivulets trickle downward here and there from the point of impact. Big Al's "Award" hung in the maintenance trailer for many days as a reminder of the close call.

Only five days later, during the maintenance break, "Eagle-Eye Al" discovered my turbine engine's diffuser was cracked and just about to ruin my day. That was the good news. The bad news was, our poor boss would have to buy a new engine. We were done!

"There go the Christmas bonuses," Al groaned. I groaned in harmony, as did the whole danged crew when they heard the news. It'll be a lean holiday, now, for sure.

Driving south the next morning for an early Christmas in sunny California, I could at least be thankful for the fact that Big Al had saved my aching butt, once again. -- By Dorcey Wingo