Quirky SoCal airport becomes a firefighting hub
Santa Paula helicopter crews swoop in, save homes
By Dave Hirschman
Fire had threatened Southern California rancher Bruce Dickenson’s property many times during the generations his family has lived among the rugged hills near Santa Paula—but the ravenous Thomas Fire that began in December 2017 was different.
What began at night as a distant glow grew into an orange wall of flames pushed by howling Santa Ana winds. The next day, the rapidly growing flames were consuming Dickenson’s avocado groves and headed toward his home.
“There was a 30-foot wall of fire coming directly at our home—the one my granddad built in 1950,” said Dickenson, 67, who lives there with his wife, Janice. “Fire was everywhere.”
The Dickensons had already hauled away some of their irreplaceable possessions when salvation came in the form of four firefighting helicopters. They were among a group of 24 heavy-lift helicopters that had transformed nearby Santa Paula Airport (SZP)—a small, quirky airstrip known for vintage and aerobatic airplanes—into a bustling base for firefighting helicopters.
“One of them was a huge Sikorsky 58 with a turbine engine, and it made several precision water drops that made all the difference,” said Dickenson, a pilot and airplane restorer with a hangar at Santa Paula. “They knocked the fire down so that the ground crews could save our home. I can’t possibly thank them enough for what they did.”
Santa Paula Airport is a privately owned, public-use, nontowered field with a 2,700-foot runway that’s normally limited to daytime operations. But it was perfectly positioned to fight the Thomas Fire, which began in nearby Fillmore and destroyed about 150 homes in Santa Paula before expanding and threatening Ventura and Santa Barbara. An adjacent highway allowed tanker trucks carrying jet fuel, water, and fire retardant to get to the airport, where ground and maintenance crews as well as pilots worked around the clock.
Tim Perkins, the Calfire Team Four helibase manager who set up the temporary operation at Santa Paula Airport, established a temporary flight restriction and brought in a temporary control tower to coordinate operations at Santa Paula. He repositioned airplanes to make room on the ramps, taxiways, and even the grass perimeter.
Santa Paula Airport Manager Rowena Mason said residents stopped by the airport to thank the firefighters for saving their homes. They had been stopping by every evening around sunset to watch the helicopters return for the night. “It was quite a scene,” Mason said. “These are big, heavy helicopters—and they put on quite an airshow.”
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Virginia soaring club helps young pilots fly
Finding a good instructor and the cash for flight lessons isn’t easy for many of today’s youth. Each year, teenagers find top-notch instructors and financial aid, provided by the Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation in Front Royal, Virginia. There, at the foot of the Blue Ridge mountains, about 60 miles west of Washington, D.C., the foundation offers scholarships for students who have an interest in flying.
The Skyline Soaring Educational Foundation was started in 2010 by members of the Skyline Soaring Club, based at Front Royal Airport, to introduce teens to the possibilities of a career in aviation and expose them to gliders. Scholarship candidates must be high school or college students. About 11 scholarship recipients have benefited so far, about two or three each year. The number is limited by the availability of two-place gliders at the Skyline Soaring Club, which provides the instruction.
Elise Wheelock of Sperryville, Virginia, earned her glider rating at age 17 with a SSEF scholarship, and she’s now studying aviation education at the University of North Dakota. “It was so much fun, I absolutely loved it,” she said. “The Skyline Soaring Club environment is so rich with talented pilots. The scholarship exposed me to the expertise of these soaring pilots, and the skill required to fly gliders pushed me to want to be that good, too.
“I’m a first-generation pilot. There is no history of flying in my family,” she said. Wheelock is the beneficiary of two scholarships. She attended a Women Can Fly event at Warrenton-Fauquier Airport in rural Virginia. There, she met a representative of The Ninety-Nines. She was encouraged to apply for a flight training scholarship and got it.
“It gave me direction and the opportunity to figure out what to do with my life. Now, I’m studying aviation education and plan to instruct and build hours. After that, who knows?” —Dennis K. Johnson
Web: www.ssefva.org
AOPA Fly-Ins
Learning from one another
Runway safety tips a result of fly-in participation
Pilots who attended the AOPA Fly-In at Camarillo, California, in 2017 had the opportunity to participate in a Runway Safety Roundup presentation with AOPA and the FAA’s Runway Safety group, FAASTeam, and air traffic division. The results of attendees’ input were released in a “Runway Safety Pilot Best Practices” document (www.faasafety.gov, search runway safety pilot best practices) that includes practical safety tips and links to additional information on the topic. Tips are in four categories: situational awareness, surface operations, crew resource management, and knowledge and skills. The 15 tips for situational awareness focus on planning, active listening, and active scanning. The surface operations category offers 19 recommendations to help pilots focus on taxiing, communication, and managing distractions. Six tips offer advice on how to use all available resources in the crew resource management section, while five additional pointers provide ideas for keeping aviation knowledge and skills sharp.
“AOPA Fly-In participants not only walked away improving their own knowledge, but the results of their brainstorming will help hundreds of thousands of other pilots,” said AOPA Air Safety Institute Executive Director Richard McSpadden.
AOPA Fly-Ins include several free educational seminars during the main event on Saturdays. Attendees also can participate in intensive, hands-on workshops on Fridays. The free seminars, paid workshops, fly-outs, and more will be offered at AOPA’s 2018 Fly-Ins in Missoula, Montana, June 15 and 16; Santa Fe, New Mexico, September 14 and 15; Carbondale, Illinois, October 5 and 6; and Gulf Shores, Alabama, October 26 and 27.
Web: www.aopa.org/fly-ins
LITTLE-KNOWN AVIATION HISTORY
Dean Paul Martin Jr.
(November 17, 1951-March 21, 1987)
On the afternoon of March 21, 1987, Capt. Dean Paul Martin Jr. took off in a McDonnell F–4C Phantom jet on a routine exercise for the California Air National Guard, scheduled to fly over the snow-covered San Bernardino Mountains. Also on board the aircraft was weapons officer Capt. Ramon Ortiz.
Martin, the 35-year old son of entertainer Dean Martin, and his co-pilot, Ortiz, 39, died instantly when their Phantom crashed into the side of a peak near Mount San Gorgonio, 90 miles east of Los Angeles.An investigation concluded that Martin may have been disoriented or experienced vertigo in a snowstorm and did not hear the command from a controller to turn to avoid the peak. According to a transcript of tower communications, the controller at nearby Ontario Airport tried to find alternative courses for Martin and the pilots of two other fighters flying in formation to help them avoid the worsening weather conditions. Two minutes before the crash, the Air Force group leader had asked to climb out of the storm, but he was refused because of commercial traffic in the area.
Martin earned his pilot certificate at age 16. He had said he joined the Air Force to be more than “Dean Martin’s son,” even though he also had been an entertainer, actor, and professional tennis player. He had told his sister, Deana, “I will always be with you; just look up in the sky and I will be there protecting you.”
