AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2013 - 32

PILOT BRIEFING
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AVIATION JOBS

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VIEW THE

VIDEO

Winch a sea captain, mug a buffalo
For more variety in your aviation job choice, see Brim Aviation
B Y A LTO N K . M A R S H

IMAGINE YOURSELF A HELICOPTER PILOT-

unless you are one of 14,264 AOPA members
who already fly them. Next, imagine you are
going to pick up a ship captain on a hoist but
with your rotor blades 10 feet from the ship
structure. Now, imagine doing that at night.
Pilots of Brim Aviation in Astoria,
Oregon, not only do that at night, they do it
up to 17 times in one night. Ships need specialized captains to pilot them across the
four-mile-wide Columbia River Bar-a nasty
obstacle of boiling water that has claimed
400 ocean-going ships since 1794-2,000 if
you count the small boats, too. It's where the
Columbia River shoots like a bullet into the
Pacific Ocean, unfettered by the deltas that
slow and calm the Mississippi River where
it meets the Gulf of Mexico. A helicopter like
Brim's new twin-engine AgustaWestland
109SP is the best way for captains with special knowledge of the bar to meet arriving
32  |  AOPA PILOT  December 2013

ships or depart from outbounders-especially when waves are 15
to 20 feet. Ten-foot waves equal,
"a nice summer day for us," said
Gene Hill, Brim's chief pilot.
Brim's crews are good at what
they do. It was only 28 seconds
from the time the Agusta began its
hover above the deck of a bulker-
a ship with cargo cranes that must
be avoided by the helo pilot-
and the time the captain's head
appeared above the floor level of
the cabin. During that time the
hook was lowered, the captain
attached, and the hoist completed.
Crews make the trip 2,500
times a year, Brim said. "If there
was a road dug in the sea, we
would have a 20-foot rut in it," said
hoist operator Russ Scheel. "We do
it the same way every time."
The company was started
by Burl Brim, owner of a Cirrus
SR22, and has branches in
Texas and Arizona with headquarters in
Ashland, Oregon.
In winter Brim crews using MD500 and
MD600N helicopters to catch bison in the
Henry Mountains of south-central Utah. A
Brim crewmember shoots them with a gun
that fires a net and another Brim employee-
a "mugger"-wrestles it to the ground to
take blood and tissue samples. The buffalo
are fitted with a transmitter broadcasting a
GPS position that lasts two years.
Brim crews do other interesting things,
like setting fire to the old armament ranges
of Fort Ord (closed in 1994) at Monterey Bay,
California, to expose unexploded ordinance.
They rescue boaters from the Oregon River
in southern Oregon, and train the Beijing
police in search and rescue. But those are
stories for another day.
EMAIL alton.marsh@aopa.org

Fly along with us in this online video.

r!
No autoh ov e
AGUSTA COMES WELL EQUIPPED
Brim's AgustaWestland 109SP
comes equipped with enhanced
vision by Max-Viz, a four-axis
autohover autopilot from Sagem
Avionics, and the Cobham
FlightLogic terrain display. Brim
pilots do not autohover beside
ships. There are dual GPS, VOR,
and ILS navigation receivers
as well as an air data attitude
and heading reference system
(ADAHRS). While ships automatically transmit a GPS location,
the helicopters use Honeywell
RDR 2000 weather radars to
find the ships. Occasionally they
land on ships.

99% f o re ig n

sh ip s

TALKING PAST THE LANGUAGE
BARRIER
Since 99 percent of ships arriving
at Astoria, Oregon, are foreign,
helicopter pilots taking channel
pilots to them keep communication simple. "We'll say, 'Please
open all deck lights,' followed by,
'Open all in-port lighting,'" said
Brim Chief Pilot Gene Hill. "Open
lights means different things in
different cultures. With our Russian ships, open all lights means
you open the switches, which
turns them off."

our s

>2,500 h

WANT THE JOB?
You need to have a commercial
helicopter certificate, Brim Aviation founder Burl Brim said. You
also need instrument and multiengine ratings. "I prefer to have
pilots that have 2,500 hours or
more. This is a tough job. Tough
conditions. Lot of weather.
Instrument conditions. It's more
instrument flying than it is VFR
flying, especially at night. When
you take off to go offshore at
night, you're flying into a black
hole."
AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2013
