[00:00:03] Speaker A: You have probably, depending on your altitude, maybe 15 to 30 seconds to from the time something happens with that engine to the time to get it safely on the ground. And just like in a fixed wing, single engine, fixed wing, you only really have one shot at it.
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Welcome to the HangerX Podcast. We're live at Verticon and we're talking to some of the most interesting people here at Verticon. Innovators, educators and people that are actually changing the industry. And I'm really excited. Today we have Dave Salomon. So Dave, welcome to the podcast.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Thank you very much, John.
[00:01:24] Speaker C: And you're with Eagle West Helicopters. And we got to talk a little bit. Before we started, you started out as a policeman in the patrol cars.
[00:01:32] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:32] Speaker C: And then you moved to motorcycles and you were doing actually fatal accidents. I mean, you were doing the hard work and then they transferred you over to aviation. You got to get your helicopter rating in the MD500 correct and you found a calling. It sounds like.
[00:01:46] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:01:47] Speaker C: You really did because you went from there in law enforcement to working for MD and becoming a test pilot with MD and then actually getting into some very advanced training, some things that you guys do at Eagle west that nobody else is doing. So I'd love to love to hear a little bit about kind of that, that journey, what it's been like for you getting into helicopters. Because I mean, this is about everything, helicopters here.
[00:02:07] Speaker A: Absolutely.
I, I think I got the bug when I was little. My dad was a rescue pilot with the Air Force. He flew in Vietnam and had over 400 missions in Vietnam the year he was there. And what was he flying? HH43 huskies. So basically a max counter rotating helicopter. And there's only a couple flying now, but great machine for what they did.
That was in 1965. So I've always loved aviation.
And then like you said, I, I, I was transferred to the air unit of Mesa Police Department. And then I found my love. So did that for about 12 years, retired and then worked at MD Helicopters for a 11 years. Okay. So that's where I really learned from a lot of senior guys on training, emergency procedure training, and just everything to do with the production of aircraft, training of aircraft and all the advanced trainings.
[00:03:06] Speaker C: Now, as a test pilot, were you, were you developing, you know, training protocols, test procedures? Were you testing out new aircraft? Tell me a little bit about that because I always kind of picture the test pilots are at the peak of their game because you never know what's going to happen to the aircraft you're flying.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: I wasn't an experimental test pilot. That's a whole different breed. Okay. I was a production test pilot. So what my job was was to take a brand new aircraft that's never been flown, just coming off the production line and then taking it through all the flight regimes to get it as a certified aircraft. The way it works is manufacturers don't go to the FAA every time an aircraft certified. The FAA designates pilots within the industry to be what you call bipilots. The different, different companies have different terms, but basically by pilots, meaning I have the authority to sign off the aircraft as a. What meets my standards or the department standards as a certified aircraft, which means you can sell it to me and.
[00:04:04] Speaker C: Purchaser, you take it, you put it through its paces, you go, okay, this is ready for delivery. Everything works as advertised.
[00:04:10] Speaker A: So once I sign it off, it then goes through the whole certification process. The FA at it says, okay, it has the pilot's signature on it, it has the engineer signature on it, and now it's a certified aircraft with an in number on it or whatever serial number is going with that aircraft. So all the production Bell helicopters, Airbus, everybody kind of does it the same way. Okay, so.
So I was more on the production side, on the test pilot. We did do some programs, but we're not going out and testing new blades, new new limits of the aircraft. Those guys are nuts. But, but yeah, we did a lot of first flights on aircraft.
[00:04:52] Speaker C: Right, and you still volunteer at what panel? County.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: Pinal County.
[00:04:56] Speaker C: Pinal county in Arizona, Yeah. Are you flying for them too?
[00:04:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we have a Huey and two oh 58s. Those guys are absolutely amazing. They're probably some of the finest search and rescue people in, in the, in the county or the country.
Probably the best in the state that I've seen.
But they. We go from basically Phoenix areas all the way south to the border and we do a lot of things with border patrol and our own deputies. But I'm On a volunteer side, the full time guys, those, those are the heroes. Yeah.
[00:05:29] Speaker C: And what led to transitioning from MD to Eagle West? Because one of the neat things you guys do is some really advanced training.
Nvg, night vision goggles and some other things for first responders, paramedics, you know, some training that is really needed but kind of hard to find. But what kind of led to that?
[00:05:48] Speaker A: I, I was at MD for about 11 years. I went to Bell Helicopter for a few years. I went back to MD and I just kind of had this calling that I should do something on my own. So I started up Eagle West Helicopters and a lot of my old customers from MDN Bell would call me, hey, can you do our training? So I just slowly started doing training for customers that I used to have and then picking up new customers as I go.
But yeah, I just kind of saw a niche. I saw a niche in the area that, where I thought people were lacking and thought I could do a better job at it. So I do transitional training. So someone buys a new helicopter, I will transition them into that helicopter. I do recurrent training.
I do some very initial training for someone trying to get a helicopter rating.
But most of the stuff I do is advanced training, mainly emergency procedure training. Auto rotations. I kind of specialize in full down auto rotations and mainly into MD products.
[00:06:53] Speaker C: So now for somebody who's not a helicopter pilot, what is a full down auto rotation mean?
[00:06:58] Speaker A: Basically, the engine is no longer driving the rotor system.
So we can manipulate the speed of the rotor by manipulating the amount of pitch in the rotor system. And we do that by lowering or raising the collective. The collective is the stick that you see the pilot using in his left hand. Yep. So the air is being forced up through the rotor system and the higher the rpm typically it changes your glide. The lower the rpm, the more lift you have and the farther you can go.
So by manipulating the rotor RPM within limits and manipulating the air speed changes our profile to where we want to go. And basically my big thing is always hitting the spot or hitting that spot that will save your life in event of an engine failure. So an auto rotation is how we deal with an engine failure.
So that's, that's where they come up the term auto rotation. So, but sounds like there's a lot to learn.
[00:07:56] Speaker C: There's a lot happening in your mind and procedures when, if you're in that.
[00:07:59] Speaker A: Situation for real, you have probably depending on your altitude, maybe 15 to 30 seconds to, from the time something happens with that engine to the time to get it safely on the ground. And just like in a fixed wing, single engine, fixed wing, you only really have one shot at it. Right. So, so I'm, I'm one of those that try to make it as real as possible. Coming from the law enforcement background, I try to make the scenario as real as possible, put them in the situations that they're going to be flying in. If I'm flying with a utility pilot who's up next to the power lines putting a guy up on the rope, then I try to put that pilot in that situation and then I give him a emergency engine fire, stuck pedal, governor failure, that type of stuff.
If you're a law enforcement officer, then I put you in a 60 knot orbit 500ft over a call and then something might happen. If you're a private individual flying from point A to point B, again I try to give that person a scenario that they fly in quite a bit. Yeah. If you're an agricultural guy flying low level at 80 knots, then we're going to go out and do auto rotations, injury fares at, at 10ft and 60 knots because again they need to be able to deal with that emergency based off of what they have in front of them. So I try to make it as real as possible.
And like you said, I also do night vision goggle training, so initial training, recurrent training and one of the things I do probably unique to the industry is I actually do full down auto rotations at night, aided and unaided. Meaning with goggles or without goggles all.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: The way down to touchdown with goggles?
[00:09:40] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:09:40] Speaker C: So I got a question for you. So I was a military pilot, the year after I got out, they introduced NVGs into the F14 community. So I never flew with them. So when you're flying for the first time with somebody and this is their first flight, what is their experience flying a helicopter at night? NVGs the first time?
[00:09:57] Speaker A: I think the thing that they experience first of all is the lack of perception that they are used to. When you're flying a helicopter loader ground, you're using a lot of your visual perceptions to know where your altitude is, what your airspeed is, things like that, and when. Now you put them under goggles at night and you don't have any outer illumination, they start losing that depth perception, they start losing that air speed.
[00:10:23] Speaker C: So this is outside their comfort zone.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Yeah, you're, you're looking literally through a toilet tube, 40 degrees field of view.
So imagine looking through a toilet tube and trying to fly the aircraft you know, with that very narrow field of view. So your scan is much greater, your head movement is much greater.
[00:10:40] Speaker C: Are you looking at your instruments more during the NVG scan too?
[00:10:44] Speaker A: So when you're flying, the goggles are out in front of you, but you're looking at your instruments underneath the goggles.
[00:10:50] Speaker C: Oh, you are.
[00:10:50] Speaker A: Okay. So you're kind of looking underneath, but you're also looking through. So you're scanning through the goggles and under the goggles, and then your head movement is very dramatic because you're. You're basically painting a picture of what you're seeing and then imagining that and then flying that profile. So now you fail the engine on them, and they're coming in for an auto rotation.
[00:11:13] Speaker C: Well, they're already stressed because the visual. The visual is so different.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Absolutely. And so now they're coming close to the ground at a pretty good rate of speed. And now they're trying to estimate their speed as their closure and estimate their height above the ground and then touch down without hurting the aircraft. So it's a learned skill.
[00:11:34] Speaker C: It's gotta be comforting having an instructor pilot next to them that's done this probably thousands of times. Well, I mean, the transfer of knowledge there must be significant.
[00:11:44] Speaker A: My job, I think, as an instructor is to give them every tool they have. So if something happens, they have a big tool bag that they can pull from to deal with that emergency, no matter what it is.
I was just down in South Florida doing NVG training and MD products and Bell products.
And one of the things I do is when I shut the engine to idle and they enter the auto rotation and we're descending, I shut all the lights off in the cockpit. Now they can't see their gauges, they can't see their rotor tech.
[00:12:13] Speaker C: You're not nice.
[00:12:13] Speaker A: Well, I try to make it as real as possible because they don't know what's going to happen in a real emergency.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: It could happen.
[00:12:19] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:12:20] Speaker C: Bus could fail, generator fails.
[00:12:22] Speaker A: So you have to be able to learn to use those other senses that you have to be able to deal with the emergency.
So, yeah, I try to make it as real as possible. And the fact that I've been flying quite a while and I've had some great instructors in my. My career. I've been surrounded by great people.
I try to pass that along. And again, my job is to give somebody every tool they have in case something happens.
[00:12:44] Speaker C: It sounds like your approach. And this must. It sounds like to me like this might differentiate. Differentiate. Eagle West. It's the same rigor that of the training that we had in the military, because ours, it was. You never knew it was going to happen. Any flight, even advanced stuff, all of a sudden they'll fail something on you. If you're flying with an instructor pilot and you never knew when it was going to come. You had to. And you had to be prepared in the moment or you'd fail a flight and we'd get in the training pipeline what's called a down. If you got it down, you could re fly it once. If you got two downs. And I think we had 150 total sorties from the beginning until I got my wings.
[00:13:19] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:13:20] Speaker C: But if you got two downs, you're probably done.
So, I mean, there's. You had to be prepared.
[00:13:24] Speaker A: Well, you have to be prepared, and it has to be instinctive.
[00:13:27] Speaker C: Yep.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: You know, when I fly fixed wing, typically I have a lot of altitude and I have a lot of time. You pull out the check, checklist. You'll, you know, okay, how do I start an engine? In the helicopter, you have probably 15 to 30 seconds before you're actually hitting the ground. So it has to be instinctive. And if it's not, then we need to make it extinctive.
[00:13:48] Speaker C: Which also means that my knowledge of my systems, my checklist, my emergency procedures, my bold face has got to be absolutely dialed into.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah. And I push them as much as I can push them. So after a while, it does become instinctive. So they are not having those fairs. Because you never know when your tail rotor is going to fail. You never know when your governor is going to fail. You never know when the engine is going to quit. So you try to make it and give them every possible scenario that you can think of to if something does happen. And I've had people that have called me later, friends of mine, and say, hey, I just had an engine fair. And all I. All that got through me was you sitting on my shoulder saying, fly, fly, fly. Never give up. Just keep flying. And. And they got it through the situation. So again, my wife says it's my calling and I truly believe that. And I just do what I can to, to help pilots out and be as safe as they can.
[00:14:43] Speaker C: I love that. Well, Dave, keep up the, Keep up the great work. It's important work that you're doing because you know what safety is. You know, everybody we've talked to here, this community, it is such a pillar of everything this community does, and you're just, you know, you're adding that, bringing it to a. Just a level of excellence, so.
[00:15:00] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that. Yeah. You know, I just.
When you get your ratings, you do everything the FAA requires, but after you get your ratings, now you train to save your life. Yeah, that's what. That's the ultimate goal. We don't care what the aircraft looks like as long as you walk away. So probably the same in the Navy, you know, if you got to get it down, you get it down. As long as you walk away, it's a good landing, right?
[00:15:20] Speaker C: True. Well, we also had an ejection seat, which you do not have in the helicopter.
[00:15:24] Speaker A: No, no. So I don't think I want to try that.
[00:15:27] Speaker C: No, no, that would be bad.
[00:15:29] Speaker A: But I appreciate. John, appreciate your time and best of luck to you guys.
[00:15:32] Speaker C: Yep. Thank you. Have a great one, Dave.
[00:15:34] Speaker A: Appreciate it.
[00:15:34] Speaker C: All right, see you, buddy.
