PROFILE
in trouble if we had extra toothpaste on the inside of the toothpaste cap. All of our clothes had to be folded exactly the same and lined up with each other. All of our hanging clothes needed to have equal spacing between the hangars. If you had 14 items and removed one, you had to re-space everything so that there was the same spacing between each hangar. I eventually learned to carry around a piece of plastic that had spacing markings for diff erent numbers of items. If I had 12 items hanging, I would use the 12 mark on the plastic to quickly and evenly space them. “The mental games weren’t without reason,” Slade says.
“They were pounding in the importance of attention to detail. We got a gig each time we did something wrong. We didn’t want to get too many gigs, because the lowest ten percent of our class who got the most gigs got set back two weeks.” Out of the 56 people who started the pilot training
program, Slade was one of 36 who graduated. The top ten percent of the graduating class was chosen to fl y OH-58s since it was the Army’s only single-pilot aircraft. “I was thinking to myself that I wasn’t going to make a career in the Army,” Slade tells D.O.M. magazine. “There aren’t a lot of Cobras and Blackhawks fl ying around in the civilian world, but there are a bunch of Jet Rangers! I was happy I made the OH-58 cut, the Army’s counterpart to the Jet Ranger.” Slade’s fi rst duty station as a pilot was in Hawaii. He says that pilots typically spend their fi ve-year commitment in
two diff erent duty stations. But because he bought a house on the island and convinced his superiors he would have a hard time selling it when they were looking at having him transferred to a diff erent duty station, he ended up spending his entire fi ve years in Hawaii.
CIVILIAN LIFE (AGAIN) When he got out of the Army, Slade went to work for for PHI for a few years. He was fl ying workers to and from the oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico. One day, he was talking to a fellow pilot at PHI who told him a friend of his in Hawaii was looking for pilot/ mechanics. Slade called the guy up and talked about his pilot and maintenance experience. He got a job off er and moved back to Hawaii.
BUILDING UP FLIGHT HOURS Slade fl ew out of Kauai for a Part 91 operation. “It was one of those jobs I’ll always remember,” he says. “I was fl ying right off the beach in a tank top, shorts and slippers. I was fl ying tourists around the most beautiful scenery in the world.” Slade was able to build up more than 1,500 fl ight hours in
around a year as a pilot mechanic. He would often fl y 9 or 10 hours a day, then maintain the helicopter in the evening. He worked for several companies in Hawaii over the
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next few years as a pilot/mechanic. He eventually landed a job with Hawaii Helicopters fl ying A-Stars. When he wasn’t fl ying, he helped out his fellow employees, learning many aspects of the business. He turned wrenches. He helped take reservations. His enthusiasm was noticed, and he was promoted to chief pilot a year later at the age of 33. He worked there for 15 years. Believe it or not, Slade says that after
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19 years in Hawaii, he got tired of 85 degrees every day with no seasons. He wanted a change. He took a job in LA as a chief pilot. He was fl ying night fl ights. He fl ew from LAX down Santa Monica beach, then fl ying along Hollywood boulevard showing homes of celebrities in the area. He also helped out with maintenance on the helicopters. After 9/11, fl ights were restricted to 1,500 feet, and it hurt the company.
Slade then got a job in Louisiana fl ying EMS helicopters out of Lake Charles for a few years. There was one mechanic at the company. He asked him how many days off he had, “None,” the mechanic replied. “I can’t drink a beer because I’m on call all the time. If my wife and I go to dinner or the movies, we have to take two cars because I never know when I will have to
01.02 2015
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