Member Check Ride Prep & The Enstrom Returns

It was an amazing two day trip down to see Jed Hughes. Absolutely amazing. I have a ton of pics and video to go through, probably hundreds of clips. Right now I'm heading out to check in with Gary, see what's up. And the instrument arrived. Go take a look at the instrument. Two day trip to Southern Ohio. I'm back. Kicked me in the rear. A six hour drive to get down there and then jump out and start shooting video. Then had supper with Jared and Jed, got a good night's rest, went back at it, did a bunch of filming, drove six hours back home. And I've got a really great story to tell, so I'll give you a sneak peek of some of the footage.

Now, once again, it's all about public safety and increasing electric reliability. That dead tree up there which would be unsafe to put a man in, which has the potential to fall into the power lines, taking out hundreds of people. The helicopter can come in, take the top out of that safely and effectively in a timely manner.

Nice. Oh yeah, here he comes. That's cool. He just happened to come start working up there as we pulled up to look at it.

You see the one I'm talking about?

Yep.

We can't put a man in that safely. We can't get equipment to that. The helicopter can take the top out of that.

Nice.

There is a satellite dish right in the right of way.

Okay, I'll check it out. I might not even be able to get that close. We'll see. But yeah, I think that way. Awesome. And this is where you're gonna be watching the house. Make sure nobody comes out. Or if they do, you can pre warn them that, hey, there's a helicopter out here.

I'm gonna stand and make sure the pedestrians don't get into the work zone.

Nice. Chris Hauser's here. That's his plane over there on the ramp. So there's everything I took with me. No matter how hard you try, you forget the most important piece. The charger and extra battery for my best camera. Never fails. Always forget something every single time Gary and Chris are on the phone with somebody. So real quick, come out here a peek. There's the instrument. She's back. Glad to see it back. We really dig this little helicopter. Total cream puff. Nicest used instrument you'll find anywhere. My good friend Dr. Nick spares no expense. It gets what it needs. The mechanic that's been taking care of it for the last 15 years is one of the best instrument mechanics in the industry. The instrument factory sends him all over the world to work on instruments. And he knows he doesn't have to call Nick when it needs something. He just does it.

And I'm hoping I said that right, because what's the 10 hours of duel.

That you have to do?

That's if you're already a rated pilot. A duel with him. Just like I had to do 10.

Hours duel with you.

That's what it is. So then. But you during those 10 hours you weren't logging pic and happy haircut. You like my haircut?

Mm. Looks good. Does it look professional? It does. Military policeman. So you want me to do a confined area with him and.

Yes.

Yeah, that'll work.

Cool. So as we know, typical check ride, our guy that was gonna go today on Friday did not go because of. Tell us Chris. The same what we said.

What did I say? From day one you're gonna deal with Indiana weather in the middle of July or January. And go figure. We dealt with weather issues. On Monday we couldn't fly as much as we wanted to. And then again on Tuesday we were actually out for a little bit and it just turned to crap and we had to. Not only do we have weather issues and we weren't able to fly as much as we wanted, then we ran into maintenance issues.

The examiner was available Friday.

The examiner could have gone Friday morning due to the weather and the maintenance. We are now scheduled to go Monday and we're gonna brush up with him over the weekend just to keep him fresh. And then he's gonna go Monday morning for a commercial checkride knowledge, test efficiency and actually take the check ride. But if there was say something that. And then he wants. While you were there, Bill wants it back in which you're not gonna be here. But if so 3 o' clock tomorrow.

Or something.

From the old days where you came from.

I know.

Yep.

Now I'm on the.

Well, I was gonna scare the bejeebers out of you. Didn't work. Try again because I owe you. Keep trying. Keep trying.

Only a couple times.

You scared me. I doubt it was ever accidentally.

Were you guys filming?

Did I just. We're filming you right now. And Gary, I need to get one of those for my office. Cool.

Yeah, the. The woman that's the director there at hai. She sent her phone number and wants a tentative time.

See it's.

It's. Well, six hour drive home. Last night was a good time to spend a couple hours with the bride on the phone. We cleared it up. He is going to be there all three days. So that will be Available whatever day they need to meet. I guess Heather decided we need to order a shirt. That's cool. Got a whole ton of video to download to start putting together the video and the jed behind the scenes tree sawing. So probably next week sometime before the full video is done. But we'll at least get some clips out there for you to see. Helicopter is incredible, but this is a little behind the scenes of everything that goes on on the ground as well. Left turn here. You can barely see the turn if there's any trains coming or.

So right here is the lz. The three phase runs through this. We're gonna have flaggers posted on each end stopping traffic. The eagle will come in, do its work. Crews will be ready to pounce on anything that falls in the road, get it cleaned up, get traffic reopened. All just to keep the power on and safe.

Awesome.

Up. And it would just look like a nice trimmed hedge all the way up through there. It's a pretty road right here.

Oh, this is pretty cool.

Pretty. I'm driving all over the place with this hilo and the service is pretty bad where I'm at. Goes up about three spans, turns to the left. Used to feed that coal mine.

There's a coal mine in there somewhere.

Up on top of that hill. It's a real old abandoned one.

Not hurting the trees.

This doesn't actually harm the trees. Trees are biologically set up to repair themselves after damage like this. Anything from a limb breaking off a saw cut. All the saw cuts we make are ISA certified. On your right hand side of the line, there's a big dead tulip poplar. Can you do anything with the top of that about halfway down this hill?

Yeah. Chopping for you.

Thank you very much. Like I said, anytime any tree or brush comes in contract with a conductor, it presents a huge safety hazards to the general public. Needs preparing of guys walking these lines to look for any hazards. Deer stands, fence rows, swing sets, anything like that to may be out in the right of way.

Right. Levi's got a pecan now.

Well, you might see a logging road up there. And I do know you probably could get the pecan up to some of it. What's your lip limit on there? Can you set it down? I wish. I'm gonna go do it again.

Yep.

So we got 22 spans. It took the fellas a week and some to work it last time I just knocked it out in two hours. Gonna send you up to the off road.

And then all sudden, bam. There you go. 10:30 at night, all I've been doing is sorting through pictures and video, getting everything aligned, probably a couple hundred clips. So that's what I've been doing all evening, is just downloading and organizing all the video I got for a really good video I'm going to do on Jed and the tree sawing and the behind the scenes. That's a wrap for today. Tomorrow they get the R22 fixed. I'm going to fly with Bruce and then Sunday, Hauser is going to fly one with him one more time for the finishing touches and then check right on Monday. So we'll let you know what happens in the next video.