Path: mythinc!moon!pixar!uupsi!psinntp!uunet!cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!orstcs!jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU!mpucket
From: mpucket@jacobs.CS.ORST.EDU (Margaret Puckette)
Newsgroups: rec.aviation
Subject: Flying for the Environment: Toxic waste
Summary: aerial reconn for illegal toxic waste dumps
Keywords: the Feds, crooks, pictures, low and slow
Message-ID: <1992Apr28.053016.11211@CS.ORST.EDU>
Date: 28 Apr 92 05:30:16 GMT
Sender: Margaret Puckette
Followup-To: rec.aviation
Organization: CS Dept. Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon.
Lines: 58
Nntp-Posting-Host: jacobs.cs.orst.edu


The story you are about to hear is true; the names have been
changed to protect the innocent.  There's a lot of creeps in 
the big city, I know, I spot them from my plane.  My name is
Margaret, I'm a pilot who flies for The Feds...

The phone rings at the airport, it's from the DEQ (Department of 
Environmental Quality), they're getting reports of illegal dumping 
in the Portland area, nasty stuff, anything from tires to PCBs, and
they need a pilot to fly some of their men around to take pictures...
My colleague, Friday, takes the call, he hands the phone to me.

"Sounds like just the thing for you, Margaret, busy tomorrow?".

The man gives me the news: they hear reports about crooks out there,
they dig a pit and offer to take care of toxic waste at a low cost
to unscrupulous operators.  But crooks are sloppy, they leave 55 gallon
drums lying around, and big brown stains in the landscape, discolorations
visible only to the sky...that's where I come in.  I agree to meet them
in Hillsboro the next morning.  This will be the maiden flight of the
Polluter Patrol!

The day is warm and hazy with a 20 knot wind out of the east, my pax
lead me through a preflight briefing.  We've got a swath of land to
cover 40nm long, following the mighty Columbia river from the Trojan
nuclear power station upstream to the mouth of the Gorge; it's a wet
avenue of industrial complexes and landfills, and it'll take 3.5 hours
of circling low and slow with full flaps--lights on and eyes open--to
do the job justice.  It's might bumpy, and they've got a dozen rolls 
of film to shoot...somehow.

I'm about to give Portland Approach Control one major headache.

I called all the airport towers (Hillsboro, Portland International,
Troutdale) and the TRACON supervisor and discussed my plan.  They
gave me a special squawk code and said to talk to them.  What I
didn't know and couldn't tell them was that the REALLY bad guys
had parked their pits at the approach end of all the active runways!
How devious and cunning!  So while my pax snapped away shots of
petrochemical slime, I busied myself with avoiding that long string
of jetliners on final approach, consoling the captains and Tower
with lots of "Traffic in sight", "We're well south of the extended
centerline", "Lights on and eyes open", etc.  It wasn't that bad,
but ATC is...well..."protective".

They were so happy to see us leave the area they immediately terminated
radar services :-).

Back at Hillsboro, a good day's work tied up in a dozen rolls of film,
my federal friends tell me there's a whole state out there needing the
same sort of exposure, am I available?  (yes!)  They shoot their last
few frames posing with me and the airplane, we exchange business cards.
I fly home tired but feeling good inside...me and that airplane were
a team again!

***********************************************************************
Margaret "this is a great job" Puckette
AOPA Archer N1939G