#161 landing the helicopter in my backyard to eat a Turkey Sandwich

Foreign. Here we go. Welcome to day 161. Coffee with Kenny. We're leaving the hangar, gonna head over to my house, land in the yard. Yesterday we did just a little pre briefing there on the ground. I did from the house, just kind of show you what it looks like.

Warsaw traffic. Helicopter 26 Papa departing the hangars.

North end of the field to the south.

Warsaw traffic.

So now we're gonna buzz over there and land. Day 161. This has been fun and I've had this house almost a year now. Been waiting to do this for quite some time. And today was just a nice day. Got the doors off the instrument this morning. Had a great coffee with Kenny. Enjoyed that sitting up on the deck and talking about helicopter training. And I just thought, you know what, today we're gonna yesterday we're gonna talk about it. Today I'm gonna do it. So normally on a confined area I go around at least three times making sure I keep 500 AGL, making sure I keep 60 minimum on the airspeed today because we're landing at my house and I've blown over it a bunch and I have shot one approach in there but didn't set down because the ground was just too soft. And I knew that. I just wanted to see what the approach felt like. And I knew I was going to film this one day. So I wanted to do it on a day when the wind was in the right direction. It is today. It's from like 190 to 250, which is perfect to go in over this channel. So I'm not flying over anybody's home. And I just text my neighbor, said hey, I'm going to be landing in the yard. And he gave me a big thumbs up and I said if you can make sure nobody approaches the helicopter until the blades are done spinning, you know, I explained to him it takes a couple minutes to shut it down. And he said, you know, cool. So my neighbor's got me there in the backyard making sure nobody approaches the helicopter. So that's awesome, right? Good neighbor. First one I met, first day I bought the house and just been an awesome neighbor.

Right.

He works for the police department. I know they do a good job making sure nobody walks up. Not that I'm really worried about it but you know, people approach helicopters and they like to approach helicopters and you know, it's exciting. Most people don't get upset now that's.

Not always the case.

Sometimes you'll end somewhere and you can get people really, really frustrated. But nobody seemed to get upset when I stopped before. Did that approach in. And as I mentioned in yesterday's video, I made sure that, you know, I mentioned it to Jack, who works for the police department. He mentioned to the chief of police for the lake area, And he said, no problem. There's no ordinances or nothing. I talked to my neighbor on the other side, and he's like, heck, I don't care. He's land. He goes, land there every day all summer, as far as I care. He goes, we'll come out and take pictures and video. So I've talked to the neighbors. They know what I do. Is it the first time I've done it. And the fact that there's no, you know, ordinances or anything, that's also cool, too. So it doesn't take long to get over the house. I just started 9 minutes ago since I started. Went through my startup, hoping my batteries are going to last. This GoPro is old GoPro. The battery ain't that great. And I'm using my other. Got another fancy camera over here. Hopefully it does a good job and will come out stabilized camera. We'll see how well that works. Looks like it's doing good so far, so I probably will just, you know, kind of make a circle just to make sure nothing's changed. Nobody's drove into my yard or, I don't know, make sure nothing else goofy's going on. But I checked it this morning, got my neighbor alerted that I'm coming in, so he'll be out there watching. I know he was out in the yard just before I left. I'm not really worried about anybody approaching, not worried about anybody complaining. The wind's in a great direction for what I want to do, for the way I want to go in. It's perfect. So, yeah, just on the north side of the lake. So we're gonna head over and make an approach into my y. Do have to tell you I just absolutely love what I do. And, you know, flying helicopters can be a struggle financially, mentally, can be a struggle on your family. And I never want anybody to, you know, put their own health at risk or, you know, how do you want to say it? You know, make sure you have that good life balance. Right. A little noise in the radio today, but that's because I got both doors off. I just unplugged the extra headset, so hopefully it'll be better than what it was the first part of the flight, but I'm going to use it. If you keep the aircraft in trim, you don't usually get a lot of wind blowing through, but today's kind of gusty, so I might have some extra wind coming through that not normally. Last few days of training this week we had the doors off. We had no problem at all. Almost like I could keep them, keep these guys keeping it in trim. Sound was no real problem. Beautiful day. There's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 12 boats. I can just count right off the bat people aren't having fun. That's gonna be me later. I'm not sure, you know, right now between boats and helicopters. I love them both, But I got 20 years in helicopters, only a year in boats, so I'm kind of favoring the boats right now. But it's a flippin beautiful day. Oh my gosh, I can see my yard. Everything's looking good. And again, I'm gonna go right over this channel. So I'm not going over anybody's houses. I'm not flying right over their roofs. When I go to depart the area, I'll kind of go in between the houses. I won't fly right over somebody's house.

Right.

Just trying to be respectful. And in the event of an engine failure, we want somewhere to go, right. We want to make sure that we got somewhere to land. So I'll be careful going in, careful going out, not to be right over top of anybody's houses. It was kind of fun with my neighbor when I did that first approach. When I saw him the next time, he's like, well, you didn't blow any shingles off my house. I'm like, good. Didn't blow any off my house either. And the way the wind is coming, our houses will be fine. And then downwind there's houses clear on the other side of the channel, but they're quite a ways away. So I really don't think I'm going to disturb anybody's house. Don't think I'm going to disturb anybody's shingles. I might disturb somebody's NAP. But it's 5pm so you know, I wouldn't do this at, you know, 9 o' clock at night when the sun was setting, as much fun as that would be. You know, some people go to bed early, so looking good on the ground. I'm gonna go on around and get back over that channel and shoot my approach in. Of course, before I land, I'm gonna do a free landing check which I'm landing anyway, right. But if I had a problem, I could divert back to the airport versus Going to my house. But everything looks good. We just changed the oil on this thing, did the cleaning, cleaned the blades, got her all prettied up. So I feel good about everything. Should be able to get it started. I'm gonna make sure I take a little break at the house, take some pictures so I can. I don't want to battle it hot trying to start it right, be embarrassed in front of all the neighbors. So I'm gonna take a break when I land, take some pictures in the yard, goof around a little bit. So here we go. Approach into.

My Warsaw traffic Warrior 50 Charlie is about four miles to the southwest. Inbound can do it. 45 entry downwind for two seven. Full stop Warsaw, Warsaw traffic South facility 10 mile to the west. We're going left downwind for 27 Warsaw, Sam.

And so of course my camera went to hell on a stabilizer, went wacky on me. Gosh dang it. Guess we'll have to shoot another approach. But I'm here. I made it. There's the yard.

Warsaw Traffic Warrior 50 Charlie on left downwind for Runway 27. Full stop Warsaw, Warsaw traffic picking Air 503 Charlie Bravos 11 to the north. We'll be crossing midfield. Enter Left downwind Runway 27 Warsaw. Warsaw traffic Warrior 50 Charlie on final for Runway 27 Warsaw. Warsaw traffic Victoria 5 to the west, 27 Warsaw and Warsaw traffic Gulfstream 500 Juliet. So City Aviation taxi onto Runway 27 Warsaw.

So there you go. There's the view from my deck. Pretty darn cool, huh? Now the helicopter sitting here, you can get a pretty good scope of how this is really a pretty open area. And if anybody complains, you know what, what do they really got to complain about over there is going to be the fencing wires. I'm going to be going out. So there's actually in reality all kinds of space. There is a fixed wing guy that showed up, of course. As soon as I'm shutting down playing 20 questions, 5 bucks says if anybody complains, it'll be the fixed wing pilot. Sorry, did I just say that? Over the years, that seems like that's where the planes usually come from. Go down, take a look from down near the aircraft. Hey, you made it home. See how good my special windbreaker microphone is. One of the neighbor over here just came out. He's gonna shoot some video for me when we leave. I had trouble coming in with my one camera head set up in there on a stabilizer. And of course, as I'm set up for the approach, it goes, eh, So I have a clip the neighbor shot for me coming in. He's a professional photographer, so he'll probably get me a pretty good shot as I go out that way. So I wanted to point out to you why we're here in the. In the yard. When you're up there coming in, the confined area looks pretty small, right? And then when you get down here now, you can see by the size of the air current sitting in the yard, you can see how much room there really is. And I'll swing the camera around here so you can see about how much room I got to go to get out of here. So I got a pretty good wind. I'm going to be able to lift, move a little bit forward if I need to, and I should be able to come out of there with all kinds of clearance. Shouldn't be a big deal. Clearance, clearance. So, yeah, pretty cool. I got to do this. Been waiting an entire year. An entire year to do this. But I think it's good that I waited. I made the comment about the fixed wing pilot. People don't get upset and get all mad. Over the years, the biggest pain in the butt we ever had that made complaints about us was a guy that flew, you know, big jets, heavy jets, airlines. And we were doing something on a daily basis that was legal. And this guy was calling and complaining all the time. And it was like, dude, open up the rig book. And you'll realize we're not doing anything against the. We're not doing anything against the law. So I'm gonna get me a sandwich here and get ready to head out and fire that baby up. Giving her time to Cool neighbor will shoot a little video for me. And since my first big setup didn't work out so well coming in, I'll just flip the GoPro around. You don't need to see me. Anyway, so we'll have a shot from outside taking off, and then I'll have a shot from the GoPro inside. And kind of the thought process as I'm lifting up and trying to clear those trees. All right.

Hope you can hear me. Had a heck of a time getting her started, man. Mechanics coming through Monday. These light homing, but this one's just acted up. Got a new battery and starts great cold, but man, is it not one star Hot, but all right. So, hey, did the best I could coming in. Got the neighbor up there on their. On their porch doing some video for me, and I got the GoPro rolling. Hopefully it'll come out good for you, too. I'm just doing my run up right now. Winds calmed down a little bit, but I'm pretty light.

It's cooler.

It's cooler now. I perceive no trouble getting out of here. I got lots of room. I'm gonna take my time and then in the event I found trouble or I had some trouble with amount of power getting out of here, I'll just set. They'll just step back down. It's that simple. On these off airport landings like this, if you fly long, you probably will find a point where you'll go in somewhere too heavy. Someday people will tell you don't do it and then you'll do it and then you'll go to go out and you'll, you won't have enough power to get out of your hole. So you'll have to wait for weather to cool offload passengers. You'll have to come up with something else to do to get out of that hole. But it's common. We did it in EMS fly in a lot of times. You know, we went with a certain amount of fuel and then maybe the patient would be heavier than what was expected. We go to get out of a confined area. We couldn't get out. We had to sit back down and burn fuel. Burn fuel for three to four minutes and then lift up and try to go again.

It's, it's.

All right back up here just to give me a little bit of room. But I think I'm going to have all kinds of power. Pulling 32 inches, I can pull clip to 39 and here we go. I'll get a little shot of my house going over the Keller Marina. That red line means keep the skids of this side of that. If I go past that red line, that means my blades are going to start eating the hanger and nobody's going to be happy. So I don't go all the way to it. I keep the helicopter out, I don't know, three or four feet away, the skids away from the red line and that way I know I'm not gonna hit the hangar. And then our also rule here is here we do not open or we do not start helicopters with the doors open, period, ever. Doors must be closed before starting any helicopter. But don't do it. Doors closed. That's it. Like subscribe, comment below. See you in the next video. Oh yeah, I was going to shoot the 7 minute check r tomorrow, but it's supposed to rain all stinking day, so I may not get that infrastructure Monday. But we'll do something tomorrow. Even if it's wrong.