Happy November!
I can't believe it's November 2nd!!! NO!!!!!!! I have too much to get done! Don't go so fast.
This week felt a little odds and ends-ish. I taught my final writing classes–until January. (We always end near the beginning of November.) I still have a few papers to grade when they get returned. I really worked on getting all the info I needed to put together and sent to Faith Blum who is coordinating our joint blog tour. Yes, Faith and I are hosting a joint blog tour at the end of this month for our new Christmas books! It's rather fun to each be releasing a new Christmas book. If you have a blog and are interested in joining the tour, just let me know.
Another thing I've been working on is getting my books ready for a huge Black Friday sale. No, not all my books will be on sale, but I will have several, and many other Indie authors will have their books on sale too! I'll be sharing about it when it's closer.
Another thing that has been fun is starting to plan my "24 Books Before Christmas" list for Read Another Page. And yes, I do have enough books to not duplicate any from last year, and perhaps none from the 6 or so I shared the year before.
But I still have two projects I haven't finished! One is getting Christmas Quilts formatted, cover designed, and the proof copy ordered. The other is compiling all my month stories and getting them into a paperback.
But you know, VOTING is next week! I'm going to be doing a little campaigning in the next few days, so that'll keep me busy. And then on Election Day I'll be working at the polls all day long.
One thing I'm NOT doing, is NaNoWriMo! I really want to get back into writing as it feels like I've hardly written a thing for months! But I have too much going on to even attempt NaNo.
This report is only broken into two parts. It was our final class except for Graduation Night. I hope you enjoy it!
October 4, 2018
It was a cloudy evening when Dad and I arrived for our final class of the Missouri State Highway Patrol Community Alliance. To my great disappointment I discovered that because of the weather we would not get to see the helicopter! I had been looking forward to it since the start of class. Sgt. Lueckenhoff introduced us to our first instructor Sgt. Dan Wohnoutka.
Sgt. Dan has been with the HP for 29 years. At the beginning he was a state trooper working the roads. Then there was an opening to start working in the air. Sgt. Dan had gotten his pilot’s license and became a back up pilot for the highway patrol. “At that time,” he told us, “we had two full time pilots and several others along with myself, were backup. We had to have a certain number of flight hours each month to be able to fly as back up, so I scheduled them in. The other guys didn’t and sometimes only got a few hours of flight in a month. But I made sure I got my time in. And when one of the pilots couldn’t fly, I did.”
Sgt. Dan is now one of the two pilots for the HP and flies both their plane, a Cessna 180, and their helicopter, an MD 500E. We got to see pictures of both, and of other current and previous planes and helicopters. He said he spends about 80% of his time in the plane and the other 20% in the helicopter.
His helicopter is used mostly for searching for criminals or missing persons. And it doesn’t have any air-conditioning. “It’s like a greenhouse in there,” he said. “So usually when I fly I take the doors off”
There is a larger helicopter that has air conditioning. It can hold 7 people counting the pilot and co-pilot. It has a searchlight and a special “flare” (camera) in the front that is used when searching for someone. If they are searching for a criminal at night, they can operate the searchlight and the flare together or separate. When they find the person, they will often keep the flare on him and make the searchlight go all over so the bad guy doesn’t know he’s been found. Then, when the SWAT team is ready, the pilot just has to push a button and the light synchronizes with the flare, putting its beam right on the criminal.
The other thing the larger helicopter has is a line to lower someone for rescue work. While they don’t do the full bring them back to the helicopter thing, they do what is called “long line - short haul” rescues. This means they will lower someone to the victim. The rescuer will secure the victim and then the helicopter will lift them off the ground and carry them a short distance to safety.
“At first we didn’t have a helicopter with this ability,” Sgt. Dan told us. “And there was an incident down in the boot-hill with someone in the water. The water division was there, and somehow two of the rescuers ended up in the water with the victim. We didn’t have a helicopter. We had to call the Coast Guard, but their nearest helicopter with that ability was down in New Orleans. They responded, however, and were on their way when a group a civilians came up with a plan, put it into action and had all three people on land before the helicopter arrived. That caused our governor to decide that we needed to have one available in the state.
Missouri does not have much terrain where many of such rescues are needed, but it is good to have one anyway.
There is another use for the flare on the large helicopter. It has a special map overlay that can tell the pilot and co-pilot exactly where someone they are tracking is located. “I didn’t believe it could be any better than a GPS, “ admitted Sgt. Dan, “until we did something in Springfield. There are problems, especially in larger cities, with people racing their motor bikes. They can go faster than the police cars and often weave in and out of traffic. Many times they aren’t caught, but we were doing an enforcement one time. I was in my smaller helicopter, and the other pilot was up above in the larger one. We were alerted to a motorbike and soon picked him up. The guy above me was calling off the names of the streets as the biker passed them. Then the biker turned onto some small streets, and I thought the street names wouldn’t come as quickly. They did. When the biker turned in to a cul-de-sac I figured that would mess up the map for sure, but nope. And then the guy drove off the road between some houses to some trail-path-overgrown road. That would stop them. Nope. The pilot overhead called down the name of that road too. By then I was convinced it was really good.”
Yes, it is good, but it’s expensive! It cost a million dollars for the flare and putting it on the helicopter.
Next Sgt. Dan moved on to the plane and how he used it to check for speeders. No, he doesn’t have radar. He uses a stopwatch.
Imagine a long straight stretch of highway below you. There are large white blocks on either lane. Farther down the highway are two more white blocks, and then still further are two more. The space between the pairs of blocks (which are really just white squares painted on the highway) is exactly 660 feet. Each white square is 2ft x 2ft.
The pilot will fly his plane 1500-2000 feet up in a large circle. In each hand he holds a stopwatch. When he sees a vehicle that appears to be going above the speed limit, he will watch it. As soon as it reaches the outer edge of the first white block, the pilot starts his stopwatch. He’ll stop it as soon as the vehicle is over the second white square. The third set of squares gives the pilot a second chance to time someone if he doesn’t get his stop-watch clicked at the right time, or something like that. “I can do four vehicles if I need to,” Sgt. Dan told us. “I’ll have a stop-watch in either hand and when the first two reach the first blocks, I’ll time them, but then I can get the next two vehicles on the second to third set of blocks.”
Once he has verified that a vehicle is going too fast, he’ll radio to one of the troopers who are waiting a few miles up ahead. He’ll tell them the color, the kind of vehicle (like a red pickup truck), how fast he had them clocked, which lane they were in, and anything else. He’ll also follow the vehicle and let the trooper know when he’s behind the right one. If there’s only one red pickup, it’s pretty easy to keep track of and the pilot can glance away for a second or two, but if it’s a white compact car and there are three other white compact cars, he doesn’t take his eyes off it for a second.
The place where the “speed traps” are set up, are picked by the pilot. “There can’t be any bluffs along that stretch of road, or a lot of trees because when the sun is at certain places it will create really big shadows and any dark cars disappear.” Not only does the pilot choose the stretch of highway, but he also measures the distances and actually helps put the “blocks” down. “Those things used to be painted on,” Sgt. Dan said, “but now we have these really durable things that stick right on the road. You peel the back off and put it down. If you think those sticky mouse traps are bad, you ain’t seen nothing! These things are so sticky that by the time I’m finished, my finger prints are completely off my fingers. It takes two people to put them down and if the back should touch the road where you don’t want it–tough. It’s not coming up. And forget trying to pull it apart if it should stick together. Just toss it in the back of the truck and get another one.” Someone asked how long the white blocks lasted on the roads. “Oh, around five years.”
Sgt. Dan talked some about the drivers who don’t believe that a pilot in a plane caught them speeding and sometimes the trooper who stopped them will request that Sgt. Dan fly over so the driver can see his plane. “Of course there are always some drivers who say they’ll see us in court, but the truth is, very few seldom do. And of those that do, only a few actually try to put up a fight after they find out I didn’t catch them with radar, but with a stopwatch.”
The stopwatches have to be checked every three months by the atomic clock in Denver. It can’t be off more than a 10th of a second. “I’ve never had a stopwatch be off that much. Sometimes the buttons stop working, or something like that. And, if I’m ever in doubt about my timing of a vehicle, I always give the vehicle the benefit.”
Someone asked what the fastest someone was going that they stopped. 120 mph. Then he told us a story.
Sgt. Dan was one of the troopers on the ground stopping cars while another pilot flew the plane. He had just finished driving a check over the blocks and was heading to his spot when a car goes zooming by. When a trooper is sitting and waiting for speeders at the check, he won’t have his radar on. Quickly Sgt. Dan radios the pilot while trying to turn on his radar because he knew the pilot wouldn’t be ready for him. He got his radar on, and the pilot saw the vehicle. The driver was going 163 miles per hour! Sgt. Dan knew he’d probably not be able to catch him, but he was following. The driver was weaving in and out of traffic, going on the shoulder when he couldn’t pass, and being very dangerous. “I think he knew I was following and was just trying to get away at that point.” Anyway, the driver tried to go around a semi, lost control, and the car flew off the road. It landed 710 feet away from the road, bounced a few times, flipped and rolled. The driver, who was not wearing his seatbelt, was flung from the car and died. His passenger, who was his brother, was wearing his seatbelt, and aside from a broken shoulder and arm, and large cut to the head he was all right. “I think they were messing around,” Sgt. Dan said. “There were other vehicles with family members behind them, and they all stopped. I guess they were heading to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving and these two were going to do the whole ‘get there early and what took you so long’ deal.”
It was a cloudy evening when Dad and I arrived for our final class of the Missouri State Highway Patrol Community Alliance. To my great disappointment I discovered that because of the weather we would not get to see the helicopter! I had been looking forward to it since the start of class. Sgt. Lueckenhoff introduced us to our first instructor Sgt. Dan Wohnoutka.
Sgt. Dan has been with the HP for 29 years. At the beginning he was a state trooper working the roads. Then there was an opening to start working in the air. Sgt. Dan had gotten his pilot’s license and became a back up pilot for the highway patrol. “At that time,” he told us, “we had two full time pilots and several others along with myself, were backup. We had to have a certain number of flight hours each month to be able to fly as back up, so I scheduled them in. The other guys didn’t and sometimes only got a few hours of flight in a month. But I made sure I got my time in. And when one of the pilots couldn’t fly, I did.”
Sgt. Dan is now one of the two pilots for the HP and flies both their plane, a Cessna 180, and their helicopter, an MD 500E. We got to see pictures of both, and of other current and previous planes and helicopters. He said he spends about 80% of his time in the plane and the other 20% in the helicopter.
His helicopter is used mostly for searching for criminals or missing persons. And it doesn’t have any air-conditioning. “It’s like a greenhouse in there,” he said. “So usually when I fly I take the doors off”
There is a larger helicopter that has air conditioning. It can hold 7 people counting the pilot and co-pilot. It has a searchlight and a special “flare” (camera) in the front that is used when searching for someone. If they are searching for a criminal at night, they can operate the searchlight and the flare together or separate. When they find the person, they will often keep the flare on him and make the searchlight go all over so the bad guy doesn’t know he’s been found. Then, when the SWAT team is ready, the pilot just has to push a button and the light synchronizes with the flare, putting its beam right on the criminal.
The other thing the larger helicopter has is a line to lower someone for rescue work. While they don’t do the full bring them back to the helicopter thing, they do what is called “long line - short haul” rescues. This means they will lower someone to the victim. The rescuer will secure the victim and then the helicopter will lift them off the ground and carry them a short distance to safety.
“At first we didn’t have a helicopter with this ability,” Sgt. Dan told us. “And there was an incident down in the boot-hill with someone in the water. The water division was there, and somehow two of the rescuers ended up in the water with the victim. We didn’t have a helicopter. We had to call the Coast Guard, but their nearest helicopter with that ability was down in New Orleans. They responded, however, and were on their way when a group a civilians came up with a plan, put it into action and had all three people on land before the helicopter arrived. That caused our governor to decide that we needed to have one available in the state.
Missouri does not have much terrain where many of such rescues are needed, but it is good to have one anyway.
There is another use for the flare on the large helicopter. It has a special map overlay that can tell the pilot and co-pilot exactly where someone they are tracking is located. “I didn’t believe it could be any better than a GPS, “ admitted Sgt. Dan, “until we did something in Springfield. There are problems, especially in larger cities, with people racing their motor bikes. They can go faster than the police cars and often weave in and out of traffic. Many times they aren’t caught, but we were doing an enforcement one time. I was in my smaller helicopter, and the other pilot was up above in the larger one. We were alerted to a motorbike and soon picked him up. The guy above me was calling off the names of the streets as the biker passed them. Then the biker turned onto some small streets, and I thought the street names wouldn’t come as quickly. They did. When the biker turned in to a cul-de-sac I figured that would mess up the map for sure, but nope. And then the guy drove off the road between some houses to some trail-path-overgrown road. That would stop them. Nope. The pilot overhead called down the name of that road too. By then I was convinced it was really good.”
Yes, it is good, but it’s expensive! It cost a million dollars for the flare and putting it on the helicopter.
Next Sgt. Dan moved on to the plane and how he used it to check for speeders. No, he doesn’t have radar. He uses a stopwatch.
Imagine a long straight stretch of highway below you. There are large white blocks on either lane. Farther down the highway are two more white blocks, and then still further are two more. The space between the pairs of blocks (which are really just white squares painted on the highway) is exactly 660 feet. Each white square is 2ft x 2ft.
The pilot will fly his plane 1500-2000 feet up in a large circle. In each hand he holds a stopwatch. When he sees a vehicle that appears to be going above the speed limit, he will watch it. As soon as it reaches the outer edge of the first white block, the pilot starts his stopwatch. He’ll stop it as soon as the vehicle is over the second white square. The third set of squares gives the pilot a second chance to time someone if he doesn’t get his stop-watch clicked at the right time, or something like that. “I can do four vehicles if I need to,” Sgt. Dan told us. “I’ll have a stop-watch in either hand and when the first two reach the first blocks, I’ll time them, but then I can get the next two vehicles on the second to third set of blocks.”
Once he has verified that a vehicle is going too fast, he’ll radio to one of the troopers who are waiting a few miles up ahead. He’ll tell them the color, the kind of vehicle (like a red pickup truck), how fast he had them clocked, which lane they were in, and anything else. He’ll also follow the vehicle and let the trooper know when he’s behind the right one. If there’s only one red pickup, it’s pretty easy to keep track of and the pilot can glance away for a second or two, but if it’s a white compact car and there are three other white compact cars, he doesn’t take his eyes off it for a second.
The place where the “speed traps” are set up, are picked by the pilot. “There can’t be any bluffs along that stretch of road, or a lot of trees because when the sun is at certain places it will create really big shadows and any dark cars disappear.” Not only does the pilot choose the stretch of highway, but he also measures the distances and actually helps put the “blocks” down. “Those things used to be painted on,” Sgt. Dan said, “but now we have these really durable things that stick right on the road. You peel the back off and put it down. If you think those sticky mouse traps are bad, you ain’t seen nothing! These things are so sticky that by the time I’m finished, my finger prints are completely off my fingers. It takes two people to put them down and if the back should touch the road where you don’t want it–tough. It’s not coming up. And forget trying to pull it apart if it should stick together. Just toss it in the back of the truck and get another one.” Someone asked how long the white blocks lasted on the roads. “Oh, around five years.”
Sgt. Dan talked some about the drivers who don’t believe that a pilot in a plane caught them speeding and sometimes the trooper who stopped them will request that Sgt. Dan fly over so the driver can see his plane. “Of course there are always some drivers who say they’ll see us in court, but the truth is, very few seldom do. And of those that do, only a few actually try to put up a fight after they find out I didn’t catch them with radar, but with a stopwatch.”
The stopwatches have to be checked every three months by the atomic clock in Denver. It can’t be off more than a 10th of a second. “I’ve never had a stopwatch be off that much. Sometimes the buttons stop working, or something like that. And, if I’m ever in doubt about my timing of a vehicle, I always give the vehicle the benefit.”
Someone asked what the fastest someone was going that they stopped. 120 mph. Then he told us a story.
Sgt. Dan was one of the troopers on the ground stopping cars while another pilot flew the plane. He had just finished driving a check over the blocks and was heading to his spot when a car goes zooming by. When a trooper is sitting and waiting for speeders at the check, he won’t have his radar on. Quickly Sgt. Dan radios the pilot while trying to turn on his radar because he knew the pilot wouldn’t be ready for him. He got his radar on, and the pilot saw the vehicle. The driver was going 163 miles per hour! Sgt. Dan knew he’d probably not be able to catch him, but he was following. The driver was weaving in and out of traffic, going on the shoulder when he couldn’t pass, and being very dangerous. “I think he knew I was following and was just trying to get away at that point.” Anyway, the driver tried to go around a semi, lost control, and the car flew off the road. It landed 710 feet away from the road, bounced a few times, flipped and rolled. The driver, who was not wearing his seatbelt, was flung from the car and died. His passenger, who was his brother, was wearing his seatbelt, and aside from a broken shoulder and arm, and large cut to the head he was all right. “I think they were messing around,” Sgt. Dan said. “There were other vehicles with family members behind them, and they all stopped. I guess they were heading to Grandma’s house for Thanksgiving and these two were going to do the whole ‘get there early and what took you so long’ deal.”
What are you looking forward to this month?
Have you ever wondered what those white squares were on the highway?
Are you doing NaNoWriMo?
2 comments:
I'm working the polls too! High five! I've not noticed the squares before, but I will certainly be on the lookout for them! I am doing Nanowrimo for the first time, sorta as a break from my WIP. But I do hope to work on it as well. We'll see how it ends up!
*High five to fellow poll worker* :)
Have fun with NaNoWriMo! I hope you're able to get a lot written.
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