Airborne Stuntmen

Swept from warm, safe beds and deposited atop a snowy, windblown fourteen-foot diameter pinhead 600 feet in the air, Dave Ganci, Richard Nebeker, and John Annerino prepared the summit of the Totem Pole for a 250-pound desk, a new IBM typewriter, and a stuntwoman/ secretary, stars of an IBM commercial shot in Monument Valley. (CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP LEFT) A sky-high view of winter in Monument Valley. Unloading equipment atop the summit under the blast of the rotors. Placing wedges to level the desk and platform. Sweeping snow from the summit. Hauling a sling of rocks to mask the platform under the desk. (FOLLOWING PANEL, PAGE 34) With everything in place, filming of the IBM's thirty-second spot commercial begins. So we did have a few things going for us: a great pilot and a great machine plus the fact that Ganci and I had worked together under the gun on several other “rock climbing” commercials. But we had never before worked together out of a helicopter, and that unknown and its underlying fear would soon rear its ugly head.

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A rotorcraft has that disconcerting characteristic of being able to transport its passengers from safety to danger in a matter of seconds; in our case, that meant the dichotomy between warm, plush rooms in the Kayenta Holiday Inn to the cold, wind-swept mesas of Monument Valley. That notion was seconded by our assistant and gaffer Richard Nebeker about the time the Totem Pole first came into view: a stark, cinnamonbrown pencil of rock that seemed to defy the same natural forces the Lama did. “I was hoping it'd be larger than we originally estimated,” he shouted into my ear.

But it wasn't. And the closer we approached this awesome flat-topped obelisk, the more we realized there was absolutely no margin for error on anyone's part the noise of the rotor blades slapping the air above, now setting the cadence for my heart slamming against my ribcage.

Nothing any of us had ever done before adequately prepared us for the surreal approach to the summit of the Totem Pole at 110 kilometers per hour (nearly seventy miles per hour). The mind screams, “No way, too small!” The stomach knots and winds as tight as the clock springs Englishman Sir George Casey first used to power his model helicopters in the 1860s. And the next thing you know, before you've got a chance to say “Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore,” you're hovering there, defying all natural laws staring down a shaft of rock much too tall and much too small in diameter waiting for the pilot to land the ship.

But he doesn't. You open your eyes, and he says very calmly, “You guys are going to have to jump....” Jump? The brain scans the memory bank, and it reads out insufficient data. It punches in jump again, this time entering in onto what? But the cursory search of the memory bank comes up blank, as do our stares at one another.

“If I try to land, the machine will fall apart,” Jones assures us. He was talking about the hazards of “ground resonance” he'd briefed us on at the landing zone outside our rooms at the Holiday Inn only thirty minutes earlier: that, ifthe summit really only was fourteen feet in diameter, and he tried to land, the imbalance of the rotor wash on the summit and the valley floor 600 feet below would cause the ship to vibrate. And if he couldn't stop the ship from shivering, it would literally “rattle into pieces and disintegrate.” And us along with it. “You guys will have to jump.... I'll hold the ship and tell you when to go.” The words hung there, freeze-frame, as Jones pampered his foot pedals and carefully maneuvered the cyclic stick between his knees....

I looked at Ganci, then at Nebeker, huddling next to the opposite door. The snow-dusted summit of the Totem Pole was on my side of the helicopter, just a few feet below. I'd have to go first. But between the strut and the summit was an eighteen-inch wide strip of empty space, and 600 feet below, ground, hard ground, just waiting to suck anything into its silent grip. Look at the summit; don't look at the ground. The thoughts came instinctively as I opened the aluminum-framed Plexiglas door with my gloved right hand and waited for Jones' signal.

And there I was standing on the icy carbon-black strut of a jet helicopter defying gravity 600 feet above the floor of the largest Indian reservation in the United States in the grip of winter, trying to put an executive-sized desk, a typewriter with a better memory than mine, and a “secretary” we'd yet to meet on the narrowest, highest finger of rock on the planet for a Madison Avenue commercial.

I'm the kind of person who wouldn't parachute out of an airplane, unless it was going down for the final count. But this incredible machine made standing in midair without a parachute seem almost easy. Or maybe I'd developed a false sense of security about what a helicopter could do. But there I was, without even thinking about it, standing on the strut of Mother Ship as if it were The Rock, itself.

“Now.” The word floated away as I unclipped my lifeline and jumped my Nikes kissing the bare summit, before my body went into a spread eagle to keep the unbelievably powerful rotor wash from blowing me into the Land of Oz. But this I realized wasn't some gale-force dream. This was real. I clipped my lifeline into an anchor bolt right in front of my face, placed there years earlier by several climbers who made the first ascent of this spire the real way the way Ganci, Nebeker, and I would have preferred, had there been the time and some practical way of winching up a 250-pound desk.

I then crouched in the middle of this cyclone trying to brace myself with my wind chilled legs waiting for Jones to give me the signal to begin unloading gear. His eyes were riveted to the summit, and when he maneuvered the ship a bit closer, he nodded his head and held the machine defiantly in place while Ganci handed me each of the packs.

The winds still whirling and roaring around me, I felt a lot like I was working in the vortex of a Space Age Casablanca fan as I secured our gear to the summit anchors. Thought was difficult, and each move seemed programmed by someone else. I clipped a lifeline to Ganci a moment before he jumped; it was a safety precaution we all used in the event the ship was caught by a fickle gust of wind and Jones had to “jump” the ship away from the summit.

As soon as Ganci landed, I crouchwalked him away from the ship before going back for Nebeker and repeating the process.

The three of us huddled together in the frigid wind until Jones nodded acknowledging this pinhead of a landing zone was secure. A moment later, Mother Ship was gone. And just like that, the three of us were alone in the frightful silence of the Totem Pole. It felt like this sliver of rock would topple over onto nearby Yeibichai Rocks if any of us stood up too quickly. Carefully, Ganci reached inside his down parka for the walkie-talkie to make radio contact with Mother Ship. “Break Lama-One, this is the Totem Pole.”

“Break Lama-One, this is the Totem Pole.”

“Lama-One, over.”

“Ten-six (standby) Lama-One.”

We had landed safely, but the adventure would continue through the next five days and three snowstorms. And as the red Queen told Alice, it took all the running we could do to stay safely in the same place atop the Totem Pole.

"And back in those days, it was noisy, had inadequate performance, was underpowered, was difficult to fly, vibrated, and was hard to maintain. But despite all this, it could do the job and was accepted as a form of transportaIn 1943, Colonel Phil Cochrane (who actually had been Milt Caniff's inspiration for a character in the "Terry and the Pirates" comic strip) flew a Sikorsky helicopter from a base in Burma to rescue Lieutenant Carter Harmon, a liaison aircraft pilot shot down behind enemy lines. Three years later, a Bell helicopter dropped in on an injured pilot in New York, and Floyd Carlson was scooping up fishermen marooned on a Lake Erie ice floe. The helicopter was established as a mercy bird.

"I certainly can't see a higher purpose for any man or machine," commented Mashman.

Barely a decade after Sikorsky's first flight, the military helicopter was receiving a bazooka, then a turretmounted machine gun as experimental armament; civilian versions were setting altitude records of 18,500 feet and hopping the Alps while turbine choppers became prototypes.

"Personally," concluded Mashman, "It has been a great satisfaction to see something go from concept through a period of doubt to accepted product and eventually to something that has contributed to mankind, to the quality of life and, yes, the length of life."

But about that concept and all those doubts.

Centuries before Christ, the helicopter was a Chinese toy. Those ancient kite makers, hot air balloonists, and rocketeers attached feathers to a spindle. Twirled like a top, it flew, well, just like a helicopter.

The Greeks had a word for it. In reality, two words. "Helix," for spiral. "Pteron," meaning wing. And, inevitably, there was Leonardo Da Vinci who in 1500 included a sketch of a vertical-lift helix alongside the parachute and the ornithopter among his 150-drawing portfolio of flying machines.

Da Vinci, with typical brilliance, had the right idea. His rotary wing was a spiral disc that certainly resolved the aerodynamics of vertical flight. His frustration was power to weight.

Energy applied to turn bars attached to the shaft of the helix would certainly revolve the discs and literally screw the machine into the air. Just like the Chinese top. Unfortunately, four men running around the base of the helix to wind the machine into the air just wouldn't produce enough oomph.

Power to weight. "The whole problem is confined within these limits, to make a surface support a given weight by the application of power to the resistance of air," wrote English inventor and glider builder Sir George Cayley in 1809.

Springs and wound cords were tried and failed. A steam engine could power a model but not a full-size machine. A human-powered helicopter was built in 1825 but couldn't get off the ground. Its British inventor, in a masterpiece of making the best of a sticky wicket, described the failure as "very flattering if not perfectly successful."

In 1903, heavier-than-air, personnel carrying, powered horizontal flight was made by the Wright Brothers at Kitty Hawk. Thomas Edison added pertinent caution to the exuberance. No air machine, he said, could be considered truly practical until it could rise and descend vertically.

Four years later, humans did indeed wobble aloft vertically, albeit impracticably.

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Two Frenchmen, Louis Breguet and Charles Richet, built a four-rotor Breguet Gyroplane that rose three and one-half feet. Men held it down by its corners. The Breguet threshing machine just could not be controlled.

Also in 1907, Paul Cornu added paddle blades to a contraption of spars, wires, and bicycle wheels powered by a lightweight gasoline engine. His effort rose six feet and without tethers. But just like the Breguet, it flopped and rolled and would go nowhere the pilot suggested.

In Kiev, Russia, in 1909, a twentyyear-old hometown engineer made his entrance. As a boy, he had been inspired by elevator rides and his mother's readings from the imagination of Jules Verne. As a young man, Igor Sikorsky definitely knew he wanted to fly vertically.

"His machine demonstrated then all of the characteristics of the modern helicopter," remembers his son. He smiles. "It cost a great deal of money, it made a great deal of noise, created great clouds of dust, and it had many fascinating vibrations.

"It also had one minor technical prob lem. It wouldn't fly."

Disillusioned and wiser, Igor Sikorsky went back to his career and what would become a fertile drawing board-producing the world's first four-engined airplane and then, in the United States, transoceanic flying boats for Pan Amer ican World Airways.

From this point, the development of helicopters became serious comedy. Multirotors and coaxials and all per mutations were attempted. Two blades or four or more? George de Bothezat, a scientist-refugee from the Russian Revolution working with a $200,000 contract from the U.S. Army, built a cross-beamed bird cage sprouting four, six-bladed rotors. Plus four propellers. An engineer said he needed a blueprint to find the pilot.

Emile and Henry Berliner brought forth their gyrocopter with nobody pay ing too much attention to the thought of a small tail rotor blowing on the big rudder. Marquis Raoul Pateras Pescara in pursuit of the coaxial principle with sixteen rotors mounted on a two-story pylon. Theories that would prove sev eral dozen Frenchmen could be wrong. The Curtiss-Bleecker with four rotors, each driven by tiny tip-mounted pro pellers. For every patent there were a dozen experiments. Then, and quite appropriately from the land of Don Quixote and tilting at impossible dreams, came Juan de la Cierva, and an odd airplane that was indeed a flying windmill.

Cierva's autogiro was a standard air plane fuselage with conventional stabil izers, aero engine, propeller, and stub wings with tips like garden shovels. Its secret and eventual success, however, was four free-wheeling blades hinged to flex, flap, rise, and fall in perfect pursuit of varying aerodynamic pressures. The airplane engine and propeller pulled Cierva's machine forward. The airstream set the rotor blades wind milling to create life. And the autogiro, first flown in 1923 but in licensed pro duction in the United States (as a short distance air mailman for Eastern Air lines from airport to post office rooftop) until the brink of World War II, took off in a portion of the distance used by a standard aircraft.

Better yet, the Cierva autogiro rose and descended at angles usually asso ciated with storming a cliff. Still, despite later modification by a clutch that transmitted engine power to the rotors for rather dramatic and vertical jump starts, the autogiro could not land vertically nor could it hover in still air. Developing that particular talent in a

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flying machine was left to Germany and Dr. Heinrich Focke.

And in 1937, the Focke-Achgelis FW61 flew straight up and straight down, hovered and curtsied before a largely military audience in a Berlin sportsplatz.

It used Cierva's lifting rotor system but geared blades to the engine to allow vertical takeoffs from a standing start.

It travelled at seventy-six miles per hour and could stay airborne for more than an hour, but there was a problem.To counteract torque (the inclination of the fuselage, ergo pilot in cockpit, to turn beneath a rotor and away from its direction of travel), the FW-61 mounted twin rotors on outriggers.

It produced a span wider than many fixed-wing aircraft. Transmitting engine power to the rotor system was complex. Handling was capricious. So what actually was the world's first pure helicopter found no practical application in the buildup years of Nazi Germany, and the machine failed to survive World War II.

At that precise point in history came the Great American Depression. Industries cut back. And the decision of United Aircraft was to dump further production of big flying boats.

The victim would be the company's Sikorsky Division, founded, developed, and captained since 1923 by Igor Sikorsky. This dauntless visionary Russian decided to counter the closure. He asked for $37,000 to build a helicopter. If he didn't get it, he said, he'd try Pratt & Whitney Aircraft. Or he'd mortgage his house and build the machine in the backyard.

United agreed to fund Sikorsky.

The company bought something called the VS-300. It was a framework of welded pipes with a seventy-five horsepower aero engine spinning a big flywheel. Automobile fanbelts took power to the transmission of a three-bladed rotor.

And, funny thing, a small tail rotor to combat torque, the wrinkle that nobody had followed beyond the Berliners, whirled at the back of the fuselage.

The photograph from September 14, 1939, is a common museum piece. Sikorsky, topcoat over business suit with the brim of his fedora turned back. The VS-300, left wheel down a little, hovering almost triumphantly in its first flight.

"But between you, me, and the lamp post," explains Serge Sikorsky, "I'm fairly confident that it (the photograph) was made the day after the first lift-off. And if you look carefully, you'll see a steel plate and four cables holding that immortal VS-300 to the ground."

Serge Sikorsky was fourteen. He says he has "vivid memories of the mounting tension in Dad as the helicopter was finished prior to the first flight.

"Here he was trying something that others had said and other attempts had proved-was technically impossible. But in his words, it was a chance to live his life all over again and to try the new and untried.

"And although I was not at the first lift-off, I remember that Dad telephoned back home and very proudly said: 'Well, we did it.'"

Was there a champagne reception? Press conference?

"There was no victory banquet, no champagne," remembers Serge, "They just came back to the house and were so enthralled and motivated they spent the next hours exchanging notes, feelings, and recollections as the basis for further experimentation.

"And if he were alive today, he would be very proud of the young engineers who have taken the machine he developed and provided cruising speeds of 160 knots (184 miles per hour) with a comfort level to that of an airplane or an automobile, and with a genuine allweather capability. All in the short space of forty years."

From the VS-300 prototype (now in the Henry Ford Museum, Dearborn, Michigan) came the XR-4 (now in the National Air and Space Museum, Washington, D.C.) and 100 Sikorsky R-4B helicopters that served the U.S. Army during World War II.

It's been a long stretch since then.

Today, an estimated 25,000 helicopter-

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(LEFT) Heavy rains in mid-1984 caused floods near Red Lake. Department of Public Safety paramedic John Fink supervises the evacuation of Navajo shepherds from their brush-and-canvas shelter.

(BELOW) Weather, including snow, can cause hardship deep inside the Navajo Indian Reservation of Northeastern Arizona.

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(LEFT) Rarely depicted from a helicopter angle are the red rocks of Sedona, at the mouth of Arizona's famous Oak Creek Canyon.

(BELOW) Doll Baby Ranch on the East Verde River, near the geographical center of Arizona. Nyle Leatham photos (CLOCKWISE, FROM TOP) Familiar and not-so-familiar Arizona landmarks present a different face to the probing helicopter: Old Tucson movie set; typical ranch house at Pioneer Arizona Living History Museum, near Phoenix; a hunting lodge once used by President Theodore Roosevelt, on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon; and the unique house called Tovrea's Castle, between Phoenix and Tempe.

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Text continued from page 38 ters comprise the civilian and military inventory of the United States, with 14,000 more forming the free world fleet. Domestic manufacturers employ 75,000 persons. By 1987, predicts an industry study, the value of their market will exceed $26 billion.

Bell Helicopter has built two XV-15 Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft. They take off and land vertically. Like a helicopter. They fly horizontally. Like a turboprop airplane and at speeds of 346 miles per hour.

Serge Sikorsky believes his company's future is tied to ABC, the Advancing Blade Concept of the XH-59 which uses twin, rigid, counter rotating rotors. The system is bearingless and the blades composite, and the machine tops 300 miles per hour.

The new AH-64 Apache gunship from Hughes Helicopters Inc., costs $7.8 million, and the Army plans to buy 675. Assembled at Hughes Assembly and Flight Test Center at Mesa, Arizona, the twin-engined Apache will carry Hellfire missiles, rockets, and machine guns to counter the Warsaw Pact's fleet of 42,500 tanks.

Yet recently, at Cape Girardeau, Missouri, this present of rotary flight turned a full circle.

The Missouri Wing of the Texasbased Confederate Air Force, a doughty, nostalgic, all-flying organization dedicated to preserving the aircraft of World War II, took delivery of the remains of a Sikorsky R-4B, the 105th off the production line.

Right now its pieces are under reassembly. This fall, and with cooperation pledged by Serge Sikorsky, it should be back in the air.

As the only R-4 in the world capable of flight, its air show mission will be restricted to virtually crash-proof hovers of no more than fifteen feet.

"But it will be restored to mint condition and will fly as well as it ever did," promises John Farquhar, a member of the restoration team. "Shoot, we might even teach it to chew tobacco."

Selected Reading

Helicopters and Autogyros of the World, by Paul Lambermont, Barnes, South Brunswick, 1970.

The Helicopter, by Jacob Shapiro, Macmillan Company, New York, 1958.

The Complete Book of Helicopters, by D. Ahnstrom, World Publishing Co., Cleveland, 1954.

The New World of Helicopters, by Frank J. Delear, Dodd, Mead, New York, 1978.

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Turquoise Trail Support

I wish to applaud the article done by Mr. James E. Cook, entitled "The Turquoise Trail," in the August, 1984, issue of the Arizona Highways Magazine. This letter is written to you in hopes that your readers that have read that article will be brought up to date on this project, and at the same time ask for letters of support, to continue the construction, to the Secretary of Interior and the Arizona delegation of Congressmen/Senators.

Percy Deal Window Rock, AZ (RIGHT) A helicopter transports archeologists on a trailblazing survey of prehistoric sites within the walls of the Grand Canyon. James Tallon photo (BACK COVER) Into a lonely, watery world, a powerboat churns across Lake Powell, on the upper Colorado River. Nyle Leatham photo

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The Best Yet After reading every word of your September edition (ABOVE) and looking at the beautiful pictures again and again, I commented to my wife; "you know, this is really the best edition they've printed yet." She replied, "I know it, and we say that everytime."

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ARIZONA HIGHWAYS

FEBRUARY 1985 VOL. 61, NO.2 Publisher-Hugh Harelson Editor-Don Dedera Managing Editor-Richard G. Stahl Art Director-Gary Bennett Picture Editor-Peter Ensenberger Associate Art Director-Lorna Holmes Associate Editor-Robert J. Farrell Contributing Editors-Bill Ahrendt, Jo Baéza, Joe Beeler, Bob Bradshaw, Duane Bryers. Ed Cooper, Paul Dean, Dick Dietrich, Jack Dykinga, Carlos Elmer, Bernard Fontana, Barry Goldwater, Pam Hait, Jerry Jacka, Gill Kenny, Peter Kresan, Herb and Dorothy McLaughlin, Ray Manley, J. Peter Mortimer, David Muench, Charles Niehuis, Earl Petroff, Lawrence Clark Powell, Allen C. Reed, Jerry Sieve, Joe Stocker, Jim Tallon, Larry Toschik, Marshall Trimble, Lee Wells, Maggie Wilson.

Business Director-Jim Delzell Operations Director-Palle Josefsen Circulation Director-Sharon Vogelsang Marketing and Sales Director-

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Governor of Arizona-Bruce Babbitt Director, Department of Transportation-William A. Ordway Arizona Transportation Board Chairman: Hal F. Butler, Show Low; Members: Sondra Eisberg, Prescott; Lynn M. Sheppard, Globe; Doug Kennedy, Tucson; Ted Valdez, Sr., Phoenix: Arthur C. Atonna, Douglas; Don Cooper, Mesa.