THE NIGHT SHIFT AT UKIAH
EMS, Emergency Medical Services, or Earn Money
Sleeping, as some practitioners refer to it, is a 24/7 gig. Flying medical
helicopters is the part of EMS I do. Tonight I am on duty at CALSTAR IV
(California Shock Trauma Air Rescue) in Ukiah California. This has been home
for over three and a half years. It is never the same. Sometimes I fly all
night. Sometimes I sleep, with one eye open it seems, all night. We will see
what tonight brings.
The Earth passes by beneath me. Sometimes it is
sparkling clear, as if I could reach out and touch it. Sometimes it is obscured
by clouds, rain, and fog, or dulled by haze and smog. At night the Earth is
defined by lights or a glow through the clouds. On those scary nights, there is
only blackness. It is dark as death. There is nothing to see, no where to
focus your eyes outside. There is only the glow of the instruments off the
inside of the helicopter or on the faces of the nurses who fly with me.
Tonight three fourths of the moon will rise at about 2230 or 10:30 PM for all you non-pilots. That is the official moonrise, but Ukiah sits in a valley at 600 feet MSL (mean sea level) with a ridge about 3000 feet just a few miles east of the airport. It will take awhile longer for the moon to actually show its face tonight. Until the moon is high over head, it is not much help to us in illuminating the ground. Mendocino County's 3500 square miles is sparsely populated. The population density is only a quarter that of the entire United States and 12 percent of the State. There are not a lot of lights out there at night. The county goes from sea level to nearly 7000 feet, but not in one smooth transition. There are lots of ups and downs, and ripples. If you spread out all the "wrinkles" in Mendocino County it might be the biggest county in the country.
The challenge for me, if I am not earning money sleeping, is to fly out and make a landing at night. Departing Ukiah valley and turning in a westerly direction turns the lights out as soon as you cross the ridge line west of town. I know how low I can fly from our charts, and my familiarity with the local terrain. But as soon as those lights go, silence envelops the aircraft, as the anxiousness spreads among the crew, including me. I know from my instrument approach plate that I have a minimum safe altitude of 4600 feet for 25 miles. I still climb to 5500 feet in the blackness. We have numerous lights on board the helicopter, including a 15 million candle power "night sun". They really do not much good until we are just a few hundred feet above the ground. As close to the ocean as we are there is a lot of moisture in the atmosphere. When you turn the lights on, its like turning your car's brights on in the fog--nothing but reflection and glare.
Landing to some vehicle lights in the middle of the night, is the real test of the EMS pilot. Nothing quite prepares you for it, even doing it. In Mendocino, Sonoma, and Humboldt counties It is not only very dark at night but there are lots of big trees. They get even bigger after dark. We circle over the code three lights and talk to the fire fighters on the ground. We ask them about wires, wind, obstacles to landing, things that can kill us. Now we have to descend from an altitude above the ground that we know is safe, to a point that our lights can clearly pick up some detail. This is the hard part. You are descending into terrain that you can not see.
There are lots of techniques I have developed over the years to do this. One danger that haunts all of doing this type of flying is spatial disorientation. As we slow the aircraft becomes more unstable. As we focus our attention outside the aircraft, we lose our reference to our flight instruments. In the dark areas, which we seem to always be called, there is very little light for reference outside the aircraft too. I have to be careful to make sure that I have something to allow me to know when I am right side up. It is just too easy to get vertigo. Close to the ground, in the mountains, is not the time to lose control of the aircraft, and nothing is harder than trying to regain control if it is lost.
As hard as it is to land at night, sometimes it is harder to take off from one of these dark holes. When you are descending to land, you are looking down at whatever lights are available. You try to see if the lights are disappearing. This means that there is something between you and the landing. Of course wires and old dead trees are nearly invisible and do not block out the lights as you approach. When you get ready to depart, you look for obstacles around the landing zone with your lights but as soon as you clear those landing zone lights, you find you are climbing into blackness. There are no lights above you to help. The aircraft is unstable because it is slow, your night vision is gone from the lights at the scene, and you better have a plan. Sometimes I could land but I know departing is just too dangerous.
Here I am waiting...
Tonight three fourths of the moon will rise at about 2230 or 10:30 PM for all you non-pilots. That is the official moonrise, but Ukiah sits in a valley at 600 feet MSL (mean sea level) with a ridge about 3000 feet just a few miles east of the airport. It will take awhile longer for the moon to actually show its face tonight. Until the moon is high over head, it is not much help to us in illuminating the ground. Mendocino County's 3500 square miles is sparsely populated. The population density is only a quarter that of the entire United States and 12 percent of the State. There are not a lot of lights out there at night. The county goes from sea level to nearly 7000 feet, but not in one smooth transition. There are lots of ups and downs, and ripples. If you spread out all the "wrinkles" in Mendocino County it might be the biggest county in the country.
The challenge for me, if I am not earning money sleeping, is to fly out and make a landing at night. Departing Ukiah valley and turning in a westerly direction turns the lights out as soon as you cross the ridge line west of town. I know how low I can fly from our charts, and my familiarity with the local terrain. But as soon as those lights go, silence envelops the aircraft, as the anxiousness spreads among the crew, including me. I know from my instrument approach plate that I have a minimum safe altitude of 4600 feet for 25 miles. I still climb to 5500 feet in the blackness. We have numerous lights on board the helicopter, including a 15 million candle power "night sun". They really do not much good until we are just a few hundred feet above the ground. As close to the ocean as we are there is a lot of moisture in the atmosphere. When you turn the lights on, its like turning your car's brights on in the fog--nothing but reflection and glare.
Landing to some vehicle lights in the middle of the night, is the real test of the EMS pilot. Nothing quite prepares you for it, even doing it. In Mendocino, Sonoma, and Humboldt counties It is not only very dark at night but there are lots of big trees. They get even bigger after dark. We circle over the code three lights and talk to the fire fighters on the ground. We ask them about wires, wind, obstacles to landing, things that can kill us. Now we have to descend from an altitude above the ground that we know is safe, to a point that our lights can clearly pick up some detail. This is the hard part. You are descending into terrain that you can not see.
There are lots of techniques I have developed over the years to do this. One danger that haunts all of doing this type of flying is spatial disorientation. As we slow the aircraft becomes more unstable. As we focus our attention outside the aircraft, we lose our reference to our flight instruments. In the dark areas, which we seem to always be called, there is very little light for reference outside the aircraft too. I have to be careful to make sure that I have something to allow me to know when I am right side up. It is just too easy to get vertigo. Close to the ground, in the mountains, is not the time to lose control of the aircraft, and nothing is harder than trying to regain control if it is lost.
As hard as it is to land at night, sometimes it is harder to take off from one of these dark holes. When you are descending to land, you are looking down at whatever lights are available. You try to see if the lights are disappearing. This means that there is something between you and the landing. Of course wires and old dead trees are nearly invisible and do not block out the lights as you approach. When you get ready to depart, you look for obstacles around the landing zone with your lights but as soon as you clear those landing zone lights, you find you are climbing into blackness. There are no lights above you to help. The aircraft is unstable because it is slow, your night vision is gone from the lights at the scene, and you better have a plan. Sometimes I could land but I know departing is just too dangerous.
Here I am waiting...
Posted: Sun - July 24, 2005 at 10:09 PM
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Published On: Dec 09, 2006 10:23 PM
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Published On: Dec 09, 2006 10:23 PM