Heli-Expo

​Trammel Crow Company Tour of a new Commercial Office Building & Residential Complex (CBRE)

​Commemorative & Texas State Capitol Day Visit

At the Heli-Expo I went early to get a behind the scenes press view of the exhibitors. Actually not really. Really I was walking around taking pictures going, wow, people in the helicopter industry are not ready yet, look at these people, they do not even have their carpet in their booth yet. Then I found it that was not true, that it was for exhibitors only, and that press was not suppose to be back there. I did not consider myself a member of the press until I realized I was probably the only person with a backup science degree with press credentials that was on site taking photos of them setting up by mistake, so I decided to go find out what else was going on.

​This event was from March 6th-March 9th and was held at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Center in Dallas, Texas

​Sporty's Pilot shop in Addison, Texas told me about the conference, and asked if I had ever met the Whirley Girls, which as essentially the Helicopter Women, so they do Rotor Wing.

​Vendors that I met with, will be disclosed at a later time with highlights, I have about three or four conference bags full of vendor items.

​I have only flown with Sky Helicopters in Garland, Texas & Epic Helicopters in Fort Worth, Texas. Both were R-22s, and I was able to practice hovering which takes a lot of practice. The best way that I could describe a discovery flight on an R-22 is that you are pushing against your grain of instincts riding a bicycle, because there is a bar that looks like a hughe biycle bar you want to grab both handles to navigate the helicopter, and you as the pilot, are only allowed to hold/touch one side of that bar which maneuvers the entire rotor winged aircraft.

​Rotor Wing is a different type rating that a fixed wing. Most of my experience has been on a fixed wing. My son really wanted me to fly helicopters too, so I put it in my schedule in my spare time that I do not have.

​I attended meetings, one was for Educational Safety, where we had a conference with people in the Safety industry about changes in safety for helicopters, it was like an open after forum discussion where we in the audience received an update from about 5 industry heads, and then people in the audience were able to ask questions afterwards.

​Dallas Big Rotor and other meetings ranged from March 7th- March 9th. I stayed for the whole conference, including coming early for the exhibitors section by accident. Called my AOPA to get a quote to include rotor insurance and talked with my flight training school about staying on course and schedule with finishing my private license, and then getting into other ratings.

​The rules for the FAA are that anytime in aircraft counts towards flight hours, so you can essentially build hours towards another rating, but most advice from flight training schools are that while you are working towards your private license, spend the most time in only one aircraft, even if you test out a few others, just make sure that you know everything about that aircraft for your check ride, because the test coming up to be reviewed by licensing by the FAA, means that you do not want to have a delay time of operating other aircraft you might not be tested on, so having a basic experience is great, but learning to span out your training on different types for other ratings, is more of a timing issue for building your learning in my opinion.

​There is also a saying about the learning process in humans that you can take a pilot from a Cessna to a Jet, but you cannot take a Jet pilot into a Cessna because he will forget. Once you build upon a single engine to a multi-engine, pilots that do not keep current with their aircrafts won't remember how to operate them if you just take them from their aircraft they are currently on and throw them back into what they originally trained on.

​I have had some normal nausea doing the engine stalls in a fixed wing, in helicopters, you do not do the same type of stalls because of how the aircraft is designed, meaning that you will not intentionally take a helicopter to stall the same way you would a fixed wing because a rotor wing flies differently with other controls like the governor that keeps a balance, & the drop of a helicopter is not the same angles, velocity, and so forth as a fixed wing. When I did my stalls in a fixed wing Cessna 172, we took it up multiple times midair to have the engine stall also while we were climbing, which has a different drop that you can feel than when you stall without climbing. So far in 20 hours I have had two or three times where I have been motion sickness, primarily from that maneuver, & I would go as far as saying that since I had flown a diamond star to Oklahoma and back and it had auto-pilot, which we are not tested on autopilot on a check ride, that you get more motion sickness from your vestibular having to be brain active with controlling the aircraft on account of the motions you have to do between your brain and body level to the horizon, rather than just having a smooth sailing experience on an autopilot.

​Helicopters, have more range of motion because they can fly forward and backwards, and I have not built up my vestibular, which is what I call it, most people who have not studied neuroscience, neurosurgery, or aerospace medicine, would probably call it building up your stomach. When you get nauseas, it is felt in your stomach, but it is really the fluids inside your ear that are giving you that sense of motion, that will then trigger those chemicals onto the receptors that tell your stomach you are getting sick, and pilots train to do things like look into the horizon instead of looking onto the ground in motion, because it is not solely the ear with the fluid, it is also the visual feedback from the earth moving below you that can also create dizziness. In helicopters, it is the same way in regards to viewing the horizon, but landing procedures that include hovering, are a completely different matter, because you have a stick that you are controlling the whole aircraft in a motion to remain still while the world is moving around you in a 360 angle from any side, which can be a different task than landing a Cessna or other fixed wing, in which you steer with your feet, without moving at a 360 angle, and you can use both of your hands for the controls.

​Some basic principles that are the same are things like commands you exchange with an instructor, such as if your instructor tells you "My Controls", you relinquish control to your instructor, and for both aircraft, your instructor can show you corrections on how to operate the aircraft because you both have a set of controls to share with your learning from.

​The FAA was present at the Heliexpo, and I went to one of their meetings. Our Ninety-Nines Women Pilots organization museum is located near one of the FAA offices in Oklahoma. Drones were a topic about registering drones and keeping them from entering into airspace to prevent catastrophic events from flying into interfering with live helicopters and so forth. There is a law about the radius which you have to operate a drone from an airport. The FAA now has a place to register your drones on their site, and I think you get a confirmation that you have legally registered your drone, with safety tips over maintaining your drone in appropriate airspace. I love drones too, they are great for surveying land, flying for fun with your kids, taking pictures or video of outdoor activities, delivering medicine, anything that is not them crashing an aircraft with people on it, I am for.

​HAI Committee Hearing, we had a broad range of discussions from safety topics, to industry participation, new members on the committee, we had some audience members give their background, from people looking for participation in their industry, to legislative representatives giving out their contact information over changes in Washington DC, and the meeting lasted the longest out of all the other meetings, I am pretty sure it was a 3-4 hour meeting.

​The Bell Helicopter unveiling of the prototype FCX001 was a new design that has not been put on the market yet. I opted for piloting the aircraft in the augmented reality, whereas the virtual reality passenger ride for the V-280 did not have an option to pilot because it was a military passenger only vehicle. The first day that I came by accident to the exhibitor booths while they were setting up I had initially tried out the V-280 before realizing that they were setting up. For the pilot test of the FCX001, it had features where your motion would be able to conduct the screen selection, and you could see commands on the panel window in front of you within your program.

​Other testing of devices for me included night vision goggles at a vendor's booth, where I was able to see the differences in using the green night vision technology over the white, and eventually I made it to the Whirley Girls booth to speak to them about their membership and scholarships that they give for their rotor winged girls.

​I also visited a reception with Pilatus before I had to go to another college campus for a class. I am off today for an installation of an officer position of the Ninety-Nines.org for the Dallas Chapter.

Touring the Trammel Crow Company building project, was a hard hat tour scheduled by the alumni of JSOM. I did not attend the Happy Hour, because I had a class to get to in another city for my mediation certificate that I now hold, & I actually had 6 events this day, as far as meetings went, so I pushed it a little too hard and left my iNetsync notebook and pilot log book on top of my car, which is why I have been looking into getting a personal assistant as well as a full staff for all of my companies, and not just be some lifestyle blogger who owns a media company, since I am also a scientist, an entrepreneur, a mother, and an artist. What is always fun about visiting new construction sites for building tours is that you can get some incredible views of the city most people would take for granted.

​For this particular site, we talked about the building we were touring as well as another that was being developed adjacent, which parts will be office space with tenants, and which will be condos or apartments, and so forth. The University of Texas at Dallas has been certified to teach the CCIM series since 2009ish, all of my certificates were completed in 2001-2003, so I had a discussion with one of the Trammel Crow CBRE guides who asked me about the group, and I told them that this was for UTDallas, that I did not know them that well but that I was coming back into the commercial industry after leaving in 2007 as an agent, now doing some investing of my own, and that I was getting acquainted with Dallas as a market as well as the DFW metroplex and North Texas, and he said that it was a great place to be. I shook his hand before I left and hurried along to my class that was out in Frisco. That day I had been in about 4 cities and was mortified that I had left my pilot log book and notes on top of my car and had broken the binding, so I went to my former book binding instructor to see what could be fixed, fixed what I could. Yes I did pull over and go back through rush hour traffic to get my journals that are now saved road kill.

​I brought my Bell Telephone hat because it was a hard hat tour, but they actually had hard hat cowboy hats ready for us, and I initially thought that we were doing a new park tour because I got part of the description when I registered for the event, so I actually registered myself and my dog, because I thought it was an outdoors tour for whatever reason, and then when I realized that it was not going over a land site prep and that it was a building tour, I cancelled my dogs reservation, & was early to the meeting since I knew that I had to leave before they had Happy Hour.

I felt bad asking them to round everyone up so I could make it to class on time, which I was 15 minutes late for after having to pick up things from the side of the road, but we had gone over our time that was allocated for the building tour anyways so they told me not to worry about it.

​Building engineering and architecture is definitely a different art in itself. I myself have been doing some aerospace engineering research on the side, but some of my favorite architectural gems are the miniature collections (which is what I call them, it is not what you professionally call them), i.e. when building tours have a city presentation to the development side, there is a smaller scale of the project that is done which is scaled down to be able to have an aerial view at your feet, really not at your feet, more like a centerpiece that gives it a round-table presence where you can view aspects of the structures at ground level. Those are some of my favorite things about having gone to world-class development projects that attract the living, tourism, nightlife, of the city by adding value & gorgeous buildings to look at from another skyscraper or walking by on the streets.

5/15 is National Peace Officer's Memorial Day. Here is Dallas, almost a year ago, we lost 5 officers, 4 police and 1 DART officer in a shooting. This is "Herme" that is the name I gave the statue, and he is a donation to the fraternal order of police. It was hard to let Herme go because for a while I talked to him like he was a friend. No he did not talk back to me, but, one of the detectives who investigated a sexual assault for me had lost her husband in the Dallas Ambush Shootings, and I initially called to see if she herself had been shot because I had gotten fragments of information over the radio, and recognized her last name. Then I called back from my emergency medical line and very irately and angrily told her to disregard my last message-it was just some man- not knowing it was her husband. About 20 minutes later I had gotten the update that it was not just some man it was indeed her husband, so I called again for the third time to tell her that I was sorry for her loss, and later on I called the victim's crime unit where I had originally met her through and asked if she was ok, that I was not calling for me anymore, just wanted to know if she was ok. They told me that she was doing alright, that she had been through a lot but that she was still working and that she had had a lot of support. I refuse to do business with anyone who had brought up her investigation during testing times at one of our colleges, because to me they are either impeding on her investigation that she handled, or breaking the privacy they had me sign over closing the matter.

​I took Herme to our State Capitol for Valentine's Day, Someone invited us down to speak up over Family Violence, so I went down for that and included Domestic Violence and Human Trafficking in my talks with legislators and online, just because I figured if you are going to have a day against violence, you might as well lay it all out at the same time. It was difficult to talk about somewhat, I would clam up in between rooms, but other than that, Herme stayed in the car, and then he came with me to visit with the Texas African-American memorial. We had a tent outside for the event to talk about supporting bills to protect those who had been through violence essentially.

​The plaque at his feet reads "In honor of our fallen, but not forgotten, officers, & gentle giants. For the love of their county, city, and country. We will never forget: Lorne Ahrens, Patrick Zamarippa, Michael Smith, Michael Krol, & Brent Thompson.

​Herme then visited the Peace Officers Memorial, and a few other places. For those of you who have never been to Restland, where my grandfather is also buried, the garden of honor, is only for the fallen police officers, and the statues next to them with the angels holding them up towards the sky, are from a local Dallas family, some of whom I have met.

​I attended the vigil & later on contacted the fraternal order of police to let them know that I had made Herme for them.  I did not tell them the knight's name was Herme, just that I had made it for them. Herme is a blessed inanimate object you can talk to.