The project seemed straightforward… at the appointed time, fly over the field next to an elementary school, and photograph the assembled group as we circled around them.
Nothing’s ever as simple as it sounds, however, is it?
This project took place in Ormond Beach (about an hour northeast of Orlando), and Pine Trail Elementary was the target. A helicopter training company at the local airport had agreed to donate the chopper and pilot for the project, and I donated my time to get the shot.
The plan was to get 750 children at the school, along with any parents, faculty and administrators that wanted to join in, to stand inside an outline of “PTE 25″ on the athletic field, to mark the 25th anniversary of the school. A faculty member had organized a trial run the day before, so all appeared to be in order.
I gave my aviation radio to my friend Dan, who would be on the ground with the students, so I could let him know when we were approaching, and give him some guidance on what we were doing, and when to get everyone to wave up at us. We agreed on a frequency to use that wouldn’t interfere with any local communications.
However, the morning of the event, the weather didn’t want to cooperate. There was a layer of very low cloud / sea fog at 300 ft., which was too low for us to take off in. Since the school was less than 2 miles away from the airport, we’d be circling almost directly in their final approach path . This meant that by FAA regulations, we had to stay in constant contact with the control tower.
Which meant we couldn’t switch over to talk to my friend with the radio on the frequency we’d agreed on.
If we could even get off the ground.
The appointed take-off time arrived, and the cloud was still at 300 feet. I texted my friend to tell him we were holding until the sun burned off some of this cloud. So he had a field full of excited kids and adults standing around, waiting like BJ and Hawkeye on MASH for the chopper to arrive.
Fifteen minutes later, things were looking a little better… clouds at almost 500 feet now… but we were still waiting for the tower to give us the clearance to go. I got the occasional text from Dan, such as “Well?” and “How’s it looking?”
Nearly half an hour after we were supposed to be there, we got the all clear from the tower, provided we stayed clear of the clouds and stayed on their frequency in case they needed to move us for an incoming aircraft.
So I texted Dan with a quick “on our way” and put my phone back in my pocket.
This helicopter was a Schweitzer 300CB, which has no doors, so anything not in a pocket or strapped down will soon be falling to its certain demise.
When we arrived on the site, things were ready to go. Everyone was in their appointed place, and we circled the campus several times, getting wide and close shots of the very organized group.
Without getting into a lot of technical details, there is a certain altitude range at which it’s dangerous to hover in a helicopter… needless to say, we were inside this envelope since we had to stay well below the low cloud. So instead of hovering and shooting the group from exactly the right position, we had to maintain forward speed of about 60 knots, and circle the group. This was something they weren’t expecting either, and I had no way of letting them know this, since we couldn’t switch radio frequencies.
All things considered, we got some good shots, and the sun actually broke through the clouds once or twice, to create a little contrast on the otherwise dreary, overcast morning. Everyone involved seemed happy with the final result, and the delay didn’t seem to bother them too much.
