Gorgeous photo to mark the gorgeous flight!

This photo was taken by Sam LaFoca last week on our flight from San Diego back up the California Coast to Los Angeles. I love how this photo captures the moment. It's almost as if by looking at this photo you can imagine yourself in the helicopter with us. Thanks Sam! I love it!

Inspiring ways to start the day

I've been fortunate to be keeping busy flying news the past couple of weeks for the morning shift. I had the chance to take a couple of photos of the sunrise while on the ground. Just about every morning has been gorgeous the past couple of weeks except for a few fog days. The weather has been great and as always flying around L.A. is fun.

Funny thing, the mornings always seem tough especially getting up at 230am for work, but when you see the sun come up, it makes it all worth it! Then you have your whole day ahead of you which you get more out of by being up so early considering the days get dark sooner this time of year. I love this shift!

PHPA Annual Membership Meeting and 4th Annual Social Mixer

Join your fellow PHPA Members and Guests for
an evening of “hangar-talk”, food, and fun!
Wednesday, November 18, 2009 at 1830.


Young Pilots, Come talk with and gain knowledge
from Pilots with years of experience.
Experienced Pilots, Come socialize with your
Colleagues and share your experiences with
up-and-coming Pilots.

Hangar-Talk Key-Note Speakers:
Steve Smith and Torbjorn “TC” Corell of
Southern California Edison
“Flying in the Wire Environment”

Santa Monica Aviation
3159 Donald Douglas Loop South, (second fl oor),
Santa Monica, CA. 90405
(Santa Monica Airport)

This event is FREE to current PHPA members. $20.00 for adult guests, and $10.00 for guests under 12. All
guests must be accompanied by a current member or pay $40.00 at the door and become a PHPA member.
If joining the PHPA at the door, you will receive membership through June 30, 2011.
RSVP, before November 15th, and receive 2 free raffl e tickets. RSVP by e-mail to rsvp@phpa.org, with the
name(s) of those attending. You can also RSVP by phone to the PHPA message center (213) 891-3636 with
the name(s) of those attending and a telephone number, (Please speak clearly).
Admission to this event is free for Student Pilots
possessing a current Student Pilot certifi cate.

PHPA - P.O. Box 7059 - Burbank - CA -91501
213-891-3636
www.phpa.org

Awesome flight down to San Diego today for unfortunate circumstances

morning sunrise over San Diego as we fly back up the coast towards home

photo from the flight back up to L.A.

Spent my morning flying to San Diego for a aircraft crash out at sea. Didn't fly out to the search of course, but spent the time over the mainland enjoying the change of scenery and the gorgeous coastline.

Keeping my blogs short these days as I have been extremely busy and haven't had time to keep up. I still enjoy blogging and want to spend more time keeping up on my blog these days then facebook, so having said that..........

Will also be saying goodbye to Facebook after a year of being on it. Had a great time on it, met amazing people, reconnected with old friends. Just don't have the time these days to spend on my computer to keep up.

I hope my friends will try to keep in touch with me here instead. :)

Thanks for reading! :)

Still on the go every week from flying in L.A. to adventures out of state

My mom and I at Crate Lake

Travelled with my mom for her 70th Birthday last week up to Oregon. Then made a quick trip to Illinois before coming back to L.A. to get back to work again. Lot's of flying in and out of LAX these days. Happy to be home now. Flying SKYFOX today and so happy to be doing so. Missing out on the Wings and Wheels event at Los Al. Would have been nice to participate and help represent our PHPA booth we have down there. Hopefully many of you had a chance to go and can share your stories here.

News, News, News

Flying news this past week for KTTV and KTLA for Helinet. Loving staying busy, so thankful for the work as always and having a great time flying in this gorgeous SoCal weather and working with my longtime Helinet buddies.

I've worked many places in all my 19 years of flying and I must say, my buddies at Helinet are the best buddies I have. I can be gone all summer and then come back in the winter and it's as if I had never left, we just don't skip a beat. I'm able to get right back into the groove with everyone and have fun and laughs about everything with them. I miss them all so much when I'm gone every summer, but so thankful to be working with them all winter. I've met so many great people all over the U.S. in the places I've flown, but no one can replace my friends here at Helinet. We just have the best times always.

Another great thing is flying at VNY. I love Van Nuys Airport. I can't even begin to describe all the wonderful things about why I love flying on this field. I was driving our aircraft tug across the ramp the other day to visit a friend of mine who flies for Erickson and a few other friends who fly for L.A. City Fire, and I thought to myself, this is great! I love my job. I sometimes can't believe I get paid to work for such a good company and do cool things. Then later I had dinner at the 94th Aero Squadron on my dinner break, it just doesn't get any better, well maybe it can, but I'm pretty content for now. lol.

Dirtbiking in Mammoth California before the snow, back to the rain then hot sunny warm windy days in L.A.

Wow, what an amazing time I had riding my dirt bike in Mammoth! I have been going to Mammoth for skiing and snowboarding since my early 20's, then spent two summers flying a fire contract up in the Inyo around the entire area up near Mammoth. After all these years of knowing how gorgeous it is and how amazing and plentiful the trails are up there and wanting to ride up there badly but never finding the time, I finally had a chance to go meet my friends up there at the end of my fire contract to go dirt bike riding around the Mammoth area and in Bishop. I was fortunate to get enough riding in before the storm came through dumping several feet of snow on the mountain now allowing for an early opening of Mammoth. They are supposedly opening tomorrow. Would be wonderful to go snowboarding this weekend, but I'm happy to be back here in L.A. flying news for FOX the rest of the week. Very thankful for the work. Talk about weird weather, flew in the rain and cold yesterday, now it's in the upper 80's and gorgeous today, just waiting to go fly! Okay, just went flying, nice! It was a gorgeous evening, super clear, always amazing flying over Los Angeles at night on a clear evening after the rain! Haven't flown in the day for a while, hahaha, all night flying in the early morning and late evenings the past couple of days. Gotta love it!

By the way, tried my new Spot GPS, didn't have any luck with it tracking my adventure riding up in Mammoth. When I have more time I'll have to look into it. I didn't have it facing up towards the sky on my ride since there isn't a good way to clip it on my pack, so that may have been why, but when stopped for long periods of time I layed it out and it still never showed any moments of tracking, bummer, very disapointing.

Mission Flag in the Pacific Flyer

The Pacific Flyer made it's way to VNY (Van Nuys Airport) yesterday! Yay! I was so excited to pick up a copy and see the article on our mission flag in there. Thanks again to Vince Mac and Rick Dickert. Thank you Wayman for the wonderful write up.

Pyrocumulus Clouds

So I recall a few people talking about the Pyrocumulus Cloud that formed above the Station Fire recently in which they seemed to comment on the fact that they had never seen anything like it nor did they know those types of clouds existed.

Well, I finally found some of my old fire photos from my early days of flying news in Los Angeles to share with everyone who hasn't seen the many pyrocumulus clouds that form from our fires.

Growing up in SoCal I had always seen these clouds hovering over our brush fires, but it wasn't until I starting flying news that I got an up close and personal view of these amazing formations. I was so intrigued by their many unique developments that I started taking photos on each fire I went on.

I can't tell you all of the names of these fires because there are too many to remember. As a news pilot, I flew over more fires than a fire pilot since fires in SoCal are a major news event and there are many of them.

All the while I was up there, wishing I was down below fighting the fire. hahaha. Some of these photos are from fires in San Diego as I do recall some of them. Most are up here in the L.A. area. Enjoy!

I ran out of time to try and upright some of the horizontal photos, so sorry about that. I accidently deleted a few really cool ones in the process, so I decided to just leave the rest alone.

Chopper Chick in the next issue of Pacific Flyer

I had a great conversation with Wayman the Editor of Pacific Flyer earlier this morning. I'm so excited to let everyone know that our little story on the "Mission Flag" will be in the next issue which as far as VNY goes, should show up sometime this week according to Wayman. I always thought of Pacific Flyer as a local publication. I really never noticed that it was nation wide, but not only nationwide, it's world wide!

According to Wayman, he said "the Pacific Flyer is distributed, not only in the 50 states, we have subscribers, the last time I looked, in England, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Russia and China and we send out more than 1,500 copies to APO/FPO addresses in Iraq and Afghanistan, to squadrons (Navy, Air Force , Marines) on every aircraft carrier, to Coast Guard cutters, to guys stuck in tents in remote locations and others at the antarctic (delivered by Air Force C-130). In addition, airline pilots and military pilots take bundles along and drop them off as they travel around the world. They'll probably start a Desiree Horton fan club some where (I'll join). Most of the military subscriptions have been paid for by the readers (almost $600 this month) and close to $3000 has been sent in so far by patriotic readers so we get addresses from the military and send them off to troops around the world."

hahaha, love it! That's so cool.

Track Chopper Chicks Adventures, coming soon

So I recently aquired a couple of Kayaks and with the purchase of those I receive a free Spot GPS with the purchase of a one year activation, so much for free as the annual subscription is pricey but worth it if this gps does everything it says.

Once I went online to claim my new toy I realized a newer model came out that my free coupon was not valid for. It was a little frustrating but after researching more on the two models I realize the older one may be a bit more tough for my kayaking adventures as it is waterproof more so than the newer one. But again, after I read the reviews of the unit on REI's website, I was a little more disapointed to see such poor reviews of the Spot GPS. There were some good reviews, but mostly poor. I'm hoping it works well for me.

I'm looking forward to receiving it soon so I can start sharing my adventures online. Not only is it going to be fun to show my progress but it will be a great safety tool to have the peace of mind that my last trackable point will be stored online incase something were to happen to me.

I signed up today for Spot Adventures, so you can see me as one of the newest members on their page. Looking forward to seeing if the Spot GPS can do everything it promises!

http://www.spotadventures.com/

A visit to "The Cat House" in Rosamond

I've never been a fan of seeing animals in cages so you won't see me visit the local zoo, but I had to go check out the kitties in Rosamond since it was not far from Bakersfield and something fun to do.

The Cat House is dedicated to the protection of endangered felines. If you have some extra money to donate they are in need of donations. You can adopt or sponsor a cat so to speak. You pay a monthly fee to help support the cats there, pick your cat, and have your name on a plaque on their cage, it's kinda cool.

Their website...

http://www.cathouse-fcc.org/

My favorite cat there besides the black jaguar was a little fella called a jaguarundi named Aztec. She's a girl kitty. If I could have her as a pet, I'd be all over it. She's a really cool cat!

Chopper Chick Rides

Wow, two Sundays in a row I finally made the time to take my bike out. haha. Last weekend I went with two friends to the higher ground riding up around Boquet, Lake Eliz and Lake Hughes Road, etc. I miss riding. Yesterday I took my bike along with a friend/coworker Jamie and his new R1(gorgoeus black bike)up the coast through Malibu up around Pt. Magu. What an amazing ride. Love riding along the coast. Rides like that make me really appreciate the weather and the beauty here in SoCal. It was a warm sunny gorgeous day to ride. After our ride we headed over to fellow pilot Brian's house in Thousand Oaks which is also a fun area to ride through. Really beautiful homes and nice curvy roads.

Still carrying the mission flag in my bag

After it's mission in Iraq and in Skyfox I wanted to frame the flag with a photo of Steve Bennett by putting it in a shadow box on my wall as a reminder of the men and women who fight for freedom every day. But for some reason I feel the flag needs to stay out and airborne. I have it in my luggage with the photo of Steve and his CPG holding it. I'm just so honored to have this mission flag and I want to fly it again in support of our troops. I'm hoping to take it flying again in the Sikorsky before the end of the season on a fire before I hang it up on the wall at my home.

"Chopper Chick" descends on Bakersfield

Check it out....

http://people.bakersfield.com/home/Blog/bakosphere/49112

Thanks to Richard for pointing this out to me, kinda cool. I love how I wasn't interviewed or even contacted for this, but it's still cool because at least they now know we have our ship in Bako for Fire Season here in Cali. How does the saying go, any press is good press. hahaha.

I've certainly come a long way from being a "reporter first to an accomplished fire/lift pilot" in very little time, hahahaha, according to the article. Love that!

For those of you who are reading my blog for the first time, I was never officially a reporter. I've always been a helicopter pilot since 1990 and fell into being a pilot/reporter for a few years starting in 2001 through 2007 for various stations in L.A. such as KABC, KTLA, and KNBC. It was alot of fun and the money was fabulous but it didn't allow me to pursue my fulltime passion which is firefighting, so I eventually stopped reporting and flying as I went to work for a company that primarily did heavy lift construction and fires in Sikorsky's in Oct. 2007. I've never looked back, I love the path I'm on. I now work for an even more amazing company, Midwest Helicopters, Inc. based in Willowbrook, Illinois. I still live in L.A. but fly all over the U.S. working for them. I'm excited to have our ship out here in Cali so close to home.

I still fly news part time just as a pilot for a local company here in Los Angeles, Helinet Aviation. I haven't reported and flown since early 2007 last for KNBC. Helinet has been so great to me all of these years as I have been working for them since November 1998. I was with them fulltime for a couple of years then went contract. They have kept me in the loop so to speak and have me fly news whenever I'm in L.A.

I also fly as a contract pilot for a few other companies here in the L.A. area doing fire seasonally as well as charter, etc. Elite Aviation, HP Helicopters, and Air Resources on occasion.