This time the smile in her tone was more apparent. “Talk to you in a minute, Jake,” she said.
He flipped over to the frequency for LA Center and told them they could discontinue flight following for now and that he and aircraft NT637 would be doing some formation flying just north of Santa Catalina for the purpose of photography for a film project. The controller calmly repeated back what he said and then told him to have a nice day. He wished her the same and then switched back to Helen’s frequency. “Four-one-five is back on this frequency,” he said. “I’m coming up on you now. We’ll approach and maintain on the left side.”
“Sounds good, four-one-five,” Helen said. “That’ll be our good side for the purposes of this mission.”
The mission they were embarked upon, a mission that had put Jake back into contact with Helen, his ex-girlfriend (although, so far, that contact had only been over the telephone and over the aviation airwaves), was nothing more than a publicity stunt. Greg Oldfellow was currently sitting in the left-hand pilot’s seat of the Cessna 172 they were closing on. Helen Brody was “instructing” him on the flight. Greg did not have any actual interest in learning to fly an aircraft—he considered piloting to be a working-class skill that he had no need to acquire in order to live his life to its fullest—but he was about to take on the role of a rescue helicopter pilot and he wanted some publicity shots of him “training for his role” by learning the basics of flight operations from a certified flight instructor. The film they were going to shoot today—there was another one-hundred and twenty dollar an hour cameraman in Helen’s plane—would be used for pre-release shorts to generate interest in the film. They wanted exterior shots of the aircraft Greg was flying and interior shots of him practicing turns and banks.
“Why?” Jake had asked when Greg first asked him to contact Helen about the project. “Is any of this really practical? I mean, you’re playing a helicopter pilot and Helen—assuming she agrees to this—would just be giving you a little turn behind the controls of a single-engine fixed wing. It’s hardly the same thing.”
“It doesn’t have to be the same thing,” Greg assured him. “Practicality doesn’t enter into the equation. It’s only for publicity.”
“Are you even going to be in a helicopter when you film this flick?”
“Lots of times,” Greg said. “The Coast Guard is cooperating with the making of the film. They’re going to take me up and put me in the pilot’s seat to film a lot of the flight scenes.”
“They’re not going to let you fly it though, are they?” Jake asked, appalled. “Flying a chopper is not like flying an airplane. It’s considerably more complex and difficult. You can sit down behind the controls of a fixed wing and have someone talk you through the mechanics of controlling it. You can’t do that shit with a helicopter. You have to know what you’re doing there.”
“No, I’m not going to be flying it,” Greg said. “The real pilot will be sitting in the copilot’s seat and will be in control of the aircraft. The real copilot will be one of the extras in the cabin. I’ll just put my hands on the controls when they’re filming me and I have been instructed not to move anything or so much as touch any switches, knobs, or dials. Any actual control manipulations I do for dramatics will be filmed on the ground.”
That made Jake feel a little better, and, in truth, the project actually sounded kind of fun. Burn a day of band rehearsal to go do some formation flying near Catalina? Hell to the yeah. He was up for that shit. Calling Helen had been a bit on the awkward side, the part of the project that gave Jake the most trepidation. The two of them had parted in an amicable manner—they had, in fact, enjoyed one last glorious weekend together (the occasion of the Nerdlys’ Star Trek themed traditional Jewish wedding) just prior to her telling him they needed to talk—but they had not seen each other or spoken since. Jake had moved his airplane out of the small Ventura county airport where Brody Flight School was based and she had dropped back into anonymity, which was the way her relationship with him had taught her she liked to live life. Will she tell me to take a flying fuck? he had to wonder. Will she even speak to me long enough to say that?
To his surprise, however, she seemed quite delighted to hear from him. She warmly enquired about how he had been doing of late, expressed her opinion that Laura was a very attractive girl who seemed quite nice—at least based on the information she’d picked up from the popular media—and, when Jake told her the reason for the call, she agreed to it immediately, with only a few questions about just how seriously Greg would be taking the lesson.
“Not very seriously at all,” Jake assured her. “He’ll do what you tell him to do and he will be a polite, non-pain-in-the-ass student, but he has no actual interest in learning to fly beyond these publicity shots he wants.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “It’ll just be one of the introductory lessons we sell for two hundred bucks to try to rope people in. I’ll talk him through the mechanics of flying the plane as he’s doing it, have him operate the throttle and the yoke for takeoff while my hands rest on the controls in case he fucks it up, have him do some basic turns and banks when we get on station, and that’ll be that.”
And now, here they were, putting the plan into action. Jake throttled down a bit and then pushed the nose down some, dropping his altitude down to 4900 feet as he came up on the 172’s left side. It was more than a little disconcerting to be so close to another aircraft in flight—all of a pilot’s training and instinct were geared around keeping one’s aircraft away from anything else that flew through the sky—but it was also kind of thrilling. Em was filming now as Jake throttled down even further, dropped his flaps to five degrees, and then pulled up his altitude to bleed off his own airspeed so he could match the Cessna’s velocity. It was not a maneuver he had ever practiced—flying with flaps deployed at any time but during landing or takeoff was generally a big no-no—but he managed to take up position fifty feet off Helen’s left wingtip with only minor adjustments required.
“All right,” Jake told her over the radio link. “I’m more or less in position now.”
“More or less,” Helen agreed. “Now, my understanding is that we want Catalina in the background of your shots and that the sun should be behind the camera to avoid interfering with the light conditions.”
“That is correct,” Jake replied.
“This is the plan then,” she said. “I’m going to mate myself to you. That is not a Nerdly way of saying we’re going to get it on, okay? It means you do the maneuvering that needs to be done and I will match what you do to maintain our separation. Call out your banks just before you make them, giving me the direction you’re banking, what roll angle you’re going to use, and what compass heading you’re going to roll out at. Let me know when you’re starting your bank back to level as well. We will not do any right banks at all because my ability to visualize you during a right bank will be compromised and you will not be able to see me very well either because you’re sitting on the left side. That’s too dangerous.”
“No right banks?” Jake asked. “In order to pass by the eastern portion of the island I’m going to have to maneuver left and then return to one-eight-zero. How am I going to do that without making a right bank?”
“By making three left banks instead,” she said. “Just go out further and treat it like you’re doing a left approach to an airport with a runway one-eight.”
“Oh ... yeah,” Jake said, resisting the urge to slap his forehead. “I suppose that makes sense. If we’re not doing any right banks, do I still need to call out which direction I’m banking? That seems extraneous.”