A lake I found exploring!
Hello All!
The month of June has been a very exciting, busy, and crazy month! My company gave me the opportunity to build my flight hours through a cherry drying season! That's right! We use the helicopter's rotor wash to dry off the cherries after it rains. If the water is left on the cherry then the cherry will split, and the farmer cannot sell it. So, they hire us to sit around waiting for rain! Well, back in May I took a week off for vacation, and then I got an extra week off to get my overtime down to zero, but was asked to get my CDL (commercial drivers license) with a Hazmat endorsement. I was frantically trying to get that done so I could trailer the helicopter to the farm and drive our fuel truck. I passed all my writtens no problem, but failed my first drive test (the pre trip portion). I was all ready in Eastern Washington when I took that test and had to drive back to Chehalis to test again and passed no problem on the second try! I'm glad to have that done!
I headed straight back to Eastern Washington to get my training on power line avoidance and on how to dry the cherries. After a couple days of of training I was on my own and eager to start drying. One week went by with nothing but sun, then another week, and another week. For three weeks me and another pilot were waiting for rain. During that time of waiting Amanda was able to come out and visit for a week with Grace. It was great to see them after being away for a while. Amanda brought the rain with her so I had to work a little while she was here. On Father's Day, we went out for breakfast and showed Grace the helicopter. She loved touching all the buttons on the cyclic and tried to figure out what kind of awesome toy we got her. Then my dad was flying and EC130 from Montana to Washington, and decided to stop by for a little bit. It was good to see him on Father's Day and it was fun checking out the helicopter he gets to fly! I fueled him up and away he flew. The next day Amanda and Grace drove to Montana to visit Grammy.
Over the past three weeks I have logged about 20 hours of flight time! This has been a good help of building my required 500 hours for Helimission. Lots of exciting things are getting accomplished. Because of this cherry drying season, I have obtained my 100 hours of turbine time in a Bell 206! It also rolled my Total flight hours over the 350 hour mark! I was so excited to see these accomplished and thank God for all His generosity toward us! I still need to fly 150 more hours to fulfill the 500 hour requirement, but we are well on our way to getting that done by the end of the year! I still have one more week here in Eastern Washington and Amanda is going to join me for the 4th of July weekend here!
Thank you all for your prayers, encouragement and support! We are excited to see how the rest of this year unfolds and please pray for more opportunities to fly! I attached below a few photos of my time here in Eastern Washington. Hope you enjoy them!
This was the landing at Paterson
Both of our helicopters waiting on rain.
We mark our landing with bright orange
Got to watch the sunset after flying
It gets to be long days waiting,
so a hammock is nice!
The ground is nice too!
Found this baby robin hiding
in a cherry tree
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13
