*Interview with Mark Smith, Helicopter Pilot for WCVB-TV   MARK SMITH

I started flying professionally, in 02, so that’s about five years now. The helicopter I fly for WCVB is a rugged aircraft – European, made by the French. It’s an A-Star 350. This particular model pushes around 550 horsepower. It has 3 blades and a maximum gross weight of 4300 pounds. Our cruising speed is around 100 – 120 knots.

Q. What’s the range?      A. On a full tank of gas, I can go for about 3 hours. But we have a lot of equipment on board and I carry a photographer, so we have to subtract that from the maximum gross weight – it takes away from the maximum fuel I can carry. So that gives me somewhere in the ballpark of around 2 hours.

Q. How long can you fly before you have to go through maintenance and inspection?     A. I do a complete walk-around inspection every morning. That takes about 10 – 15 minutes. Every 30 hours, the aircraft gets inspected. That is recommended, but I make it mandatory, because this aircraft works very hard. It does a lot of hovering, which means it just sits there at 1500 to 2000 feet, looking at a picture. That takes a lot more power; it puts a lot more stress on the aircraft, than just flying directly at 100 knots straight ahead. You use up a lot more power hovering than just flying. After that there is a 100 hour inspection which is pretty complete. The aircraft is looked at for an entire weekend – 16 hours of work for a two man team.

Q. How different is it to fly for a TV station than other flying jobs?      A. This is my first job with a TV station. I started doing this in October of 2005. It’s quite a bit different. Before this I used to fly charter tours. You pick up an aircraft full of people. I used to fly an AC-130, which could carry 8 people. I’ve also flown other A-stars with a capacity of 6. The tours are the same thing every day.. Up and down, around and around in the same area. I did this in Alaska, and in New York. But to do the news, it’s a different thing every day. You never know what to expect. Every now and then you stumble on something and you just say “Wow, look at this!” It’s an exciting job. Last night for example, we got a call while we were up over Boston doing the 90 minute broadcast from 5 – 6:30. We were shooting weather and a few other stories that they had already covered that day, when we got a call for an emergency aircraft landing at Logan airport, because they had an on-board fire.

Q. What are some of the more interesting stories you’ve covered from the air?      A. So far, it was probably the silo explosion in Charlestown. It was good because it was a huge deal and nobody got hurt. Zip (the photographer) and I were over Beverly at the time, where we were covering the funeral of a soldier. I told Zip that I could see a large plume over in the Boston area. Zip called the station and they sent us in that direction. We went down there and sure enough it was some sort of explosion – a powder was all up in the air. From what I understand, rescue services wanted to see our footage before going in, because they didn’t know what they were dealing with. It turned out that they had been unloading some sort of product that goes into the making of concrete. They were pumping this stuff from a tanker into a silo. There must have been some kind of blockage, because the pressure built up in the silo and then it popped. Thousands of pounds of this white powder were blown up into the air. Another good one was up in Danvers. Also an explosion in a factory. That was a big story. Many people’s homes were destroyed.

Q. If you were to be called right now to respond to a fire in Fitchburg, how long would it take you before you could have video of the fire on air? (from Norwood)      A. I would say that we could be there and shooting within 18 minutes. From here to Fitchburg. But there are some other factors here. Zip, the photographer is used by the station to cover other assignments and is not always here. So, if they have him in the city it may take him some time to get here. Or, he could be at the station, where they have a helipad, so I could go and pick him up there. That is exactly 5 minutes from here, skids up to touchdown on the roof.

Q. Why don’t you just keep the helicopter at the WCVB station?     A. It’s a noise sensitive area up there. We try very hard to keep the noise down. When I do go to land at WCVB, I try to stay as far east of the residential area as possible. This put me over, what I think, is the Coca-Cola warehouse. Commercial people don’t seem to mind the noise as much. I make my approach and I leave in that direction to avoid any complaints of noise. In the 14 months that I’ve been doing this, I haven’t had one complaint. If the helicopter was stationed there, we would have a lot more noise and probably would get complaints.

Q. How do you coordinate your flight path with the pilots from the other TV stations, when you are all covering the same story?      A. It’s never really been a problem. Those things were worked out long before I arrived on the scene. When I first started this job, I made a point of saying hello to all the other pilots. I said, “Hey guys, I’m looking forward to rubbing elbows with you in the sky.” The pilot whom I replaced briefed me on the protocols. We usually fly at different altitudes, depending on the capability of our cameras. One of the competitors has a very sophisticated camera and they are able to go very high and still get a very well defined picture. Our camera is a good one, but older model and the light can affect it. I usually take between 1200 and 1500 feet and I stay in that area. Ch. 4 stays around that altitude also, when he’s live. If he’s not live he’ll climb to around 1800 feet. Channel 7 stays around 2000 feet. But when we are all heading to a scene, we’ve gotten into a habit to talk to each other. “Hey guys, anybody else going to Fitchburg? Yeah. Okay, I’ll take 1.5 and I’m coming in from the southeast. My ETA is about 6 minutes. Okay, we’ll see you in a few.” Technician/Photographer Karen Lippert at the camera controls.

Q. Do you have to listen to the Control Tower as well?      A. If we are doing a story in Boston; that’s all controlled air space. You have to talk to the tower. The tower, they deal with us all the time. They know that we all have multiple radios on board and that we are all talking to each other on the other frequencies. Sometimes the tower will just say; “Hey guys – you’re all over there – be careful.” Depending on who the controller is in the tower that day. He might say; “Mark, what altitude are flying? Kevin, what altitude do you want?” Or he’ll just assign us a specific altitude. We all try to orbit, in right hand orbits, so that we are all flying in the same direction.

Q. What sort of limitations have been put on helicopters since 9/11?     A. There have been some restrictions imposed, but over all general aviation, not specifically TV helicopters. There is an area in Boston that is sometimes restricted, depending on what is in port. They will call and tell you that a tanker is in port and that you have to stay away from this area. You have to keep a one mile distance. Baseball games or whenever more than 3,000 people gather in one spot, you have to give them a 3 mile radius. That’s a flight restriction, which is lifted only by special permission. There are also rules against loitering around power stations.

Q. What is the most difficult part of your job?      A. I’d have to say that it’s working around Boston and trying to stay noise-sensitive, and yet cover a story. You try to get low to get a good shot. I’ll call up to find out exactly when we’ll be hot (on the air), because I don’t want to just sit there at 800 feet; there are people living around here. That’s pretty difficult and what runs a close second is having multiple radios. I’ve got 4 radios on board and if they are all going at once, you have to shut some of them off. Now I can’t listen, because I’m trying to hear the tower. And he (the photog) can’t listen to me, because he’s listening to the station. So the tower is talking, the photog is trying to talk to me, and we often have to use hand signals. When we are live, I try to turn on the IFB to hear what is being said on air, to hear the key words that they are saying, in case I need to move the helicopter to another angle. Sometimes it’s better to just sit still so as not to lose the picture.

Interview with Isaiah Bradwell (Zip). WCVB-TV helicopter photographer. March 6, 2006.

Q. Explain the process of what you do as a chopper photog?      A. You have the camera, which is controlled by gyros, and you have a panel on your lap that controls it. It has the same controls that are on the camera that you would put on your shoulder. The difference is that now you are using both hands - everything is in front of you. But you do have to keep in mind where all these controls are set, because often you have to look out the window to find the object, because you might not be able to spot it with the camera, so you have to visually spot it and then swing the camera around to it. It's basically operating a hand-held camera, but with the main difference that it is controlled by gyros, keeping the camera at a very steady level, compared to keeping it on your shoulder and you acting as the gyro.     The FLIR Camera mounted on the nose.

Q. For those who have never used such a camera, can you explain what the gyro does?     A. The gyro does basically what an aircraft does. It's a bunch of small wheels that keep the camera balanced and wherever the camera goes they counter-balance any movement. Once they are adjusted, normally they can stay in synch pretty well and they operate for and against each other quite well. These bunches of wheels turn left and right, back and forward, that keep the camera steady. It's not exactly very easy to explaing, but like an aircraft, when it goes forward, the gyros counteract that force of the aircraft and keep the lens steady on what you are trying to shoot.

Q. The camera itself is mounted on the belly of the aircraft?      A. Yeah, it's mounted at the nose of the aircraft. This gives you almost a 360 degree range, probably closer to 270 degree, because skids can get in the way. If it wasn't for the skids you'd have a complete view - 360 degrees.

Q. What sort of stories do you normally cover?      A. Most of the stories we shoot now are breaking news type of stories. Crimes, fires, accidents, rescues, maybe a police chase here and there. We don't get as many HFR (hold for release) type of assignments as we used to get in the past. Rarely will a copter be a complete story in the air. Once in a while we'll get a big story, like the Station Nightclub fire, where the copter was the only way to get the entire picture to the public, to show the magnitude of the fire. We've had other big fires, mill fires, what have you, but this was one of those that the camera could get to places that people on the ground couldn't get to. Big Mill fires, you can see from miles away, so it's easy enough to get as many angles as you choose, but the Station nightclub fire, because it was such a small congested area, surrounded by fire equipment and rescue personell, the aircraft camera was the best way to show the scene. We have many situations like that. The even in Springfield the other day, in which three people in a car burned to death. The copter could have been the main instrument in getting this story, but the problem was that snow squalls kept the copter on the ground, so that's the drawback of covering some stories with the bird in the air.

Q. What's the most difficult part of your job?     A. I'd have to say it's the control room, the people in the control room, who don't always understand that you can't just park the copter on a cloud and wait for them to come to you. They tell you to stand by, stand by, and what happens is eventully you will run out of fuel. A lot of times you are expecting them to use you for a minute, but they only use the shot for ten seconds. You may have a better angle of something, but at the same time, that's the nature of using the copter. That is the most frustrating part of this business. No matter how good the picture you might have, they may not make it on the air.

Q. How important is it to have a good pilot that understands the needs of television.      A. It's very important. When you are shooting a story, you need to have a pilot who knows the angle and how low to get to get a better shot to tell the story. If it's a fire, to know where to get the video. Also he has to know the limitations. A pilot has to have a visual of what you are shooting, to see what the camera is getting Now the pilot sees what the camera is seeing in his monitor. This has helped Mark to understand the news angle of the stories and the challenge of getting the story. It's more than just flying the aircraft. He has a good understanding now of what is required to be a good aerial photographer. The pilot also needs an understanding of how to fly when we are shooting an HFR or Chronicle type of story, to get the low swooping shot or the shoreline, mountains, pastures etc. Being able to do it at the speed that the photog needs and so forth. As a pilot comes into the business, yes, you have the cowboys, and then you have those who can see all the angles and the needs of videography.

Q. One of the things that Mark complained about is the difficulty of communicating with so many sources at the same time. Does that affect you as well?      A. Yes, it comes into play, but not as much as for the pilot. There are a lot of times that I can isolate myself from him and he from me. Often, however, I can be having a conversation with him, and then the FAA says something to him, he has to tell me to shut up. sometimes it's the other way around, where he will isolate the stations' communication and I hear them calling me, and I have to tell him to shut up. We have to listen to everybody. For instance, when Entwhistle was being brought back from England, we had four aircraft over Hanscom field, and we were all stacked on top of each other. The airport was very good about allowing us to act as our own air traffic controllers. It was daylight and we all could see each other, but by the time he landed and was put into a cruiser, it was dark out, and now, we were all in controlled air space and going into uncontrolled air space, and as we followed this cruiser, we truly at night time, had to be the eyes and ears for each other. We had to listen to the control room, the pilot has to listen to the other pilots, to get their altitude and direction. If you get too close, either above or below, the downdraft can create problems for us, so you have to be very careful. So this particular night there are four helicopters, following this tiny cruiser to one location, and we were pretty much our own air traffic controllers, and we are all communicating with each other. You are not just sitting back there, operating the camera and listening to the control room, you have to be the second pair of eyes and ears for the pilot, because it's your life at stake. It's better to lose the shot than to lose your life. When you get into situations like that, very tight, it's very important that everyone work together, you have to become a copilot. Often you find yourself playing the backseat pilot. You are looking for other aircraft as you fly along.

 WCVB Helicopter on the ground at Norwood Airport.

Q. Have you been involved in any close calls?       A. Yes. I've had a couple. Majority of them were in uncontrolled air space. In Plymouth we were flying along and all of a sudden there was a small plane that just popped out of nowhere, and we must have passed each other by 100 feet or so. Before that, over Cape Cod in controlled air space, near Otis Air Base, we had a close encounter with a transport aircraft, one of those big ones. He just dropped out of the sky above us, we never heard anything from Otis that he was in our proximity. We looked up and there was this giant black thing above us and to the right. This was with another pilot, and he just nosedived down, and we just managed to get out of his way.

Q. Over the years that you've been doing this, what sort of changes have you seen in what the company wants or expects from the chopper?      A. It's become more demanding, because just in the past two years, the copter has become a very big part of the newscast. We are also doing things, not just for the newscast, but also for Sales, or for Chronicle. We do a lot of filler stuff, for the newscast. We do a lot of coverage, in case we can't get a crew there on the ground. We will go shoot something and it never sees the light of day, because the ground crew gets there in time and they have a better shot. We are flying now on the average for three hours a day. We fly for the hour and a half newscast. Weather permitting. We'll go up, even if we don't have an assignment, and we are in the air, just in case something happens. And I think that this is a good thing. Sometimes in can be very boring because we can flying over Cambridge or Boston, doing lazy eights for an hour and a half. some days it's good, but other days it's boring or it can get very bumpy. When it's windy and some people can't handle that. Not everybody could do this. Your body has to get acclimated to this work. Management sometimes thinks that anybody can do this. Yes, anybody can learn how to control the camera, but you also have to be part of the ATC (air traffic control) no matter where you are. If you are worth your salt, you have to be involved, and not just along for the joy ride. You have to pay attention to what is going on, the scenery is great, but it's in your best interest to stay involved in what is going on around you. It seems that everything is pointing to making this eventually a full time job. I get pulled to do other stories, but we are building a crew that is interchangeable in this assignment. It would be nice to have someone who is dedicated and can maintain the camera and equipment. This is the way things are going, because of the amount of flying that we do and that the other stations are doing, it's leading towards a full time shift. Right now I'm doing the largest amount of this work, and it's fun and the amount of stuff you pick up in flying is good. One thing that helps a great deal in this job is to have a good street knowledge before going up in the air. A good knowledge of the New England area. It can help you tremendously in the air, when you get to a story, regardless of the co- ordinates they give you. If you know the streets and the town, most likely you can be very competitive in the air, when it comes down to locating things. Being on the street first and then going into the air, it will help you a long way in the air - they go hand in hand.