Warning lights and turbulence

The past week has been very hard for flying. Combine turbulence with the terrible heat, and you get a recipe for disaster... or at least some discomfort. Monday was the worst. We got the helicopter out and did our pre-flight inspection. Then we took it down to the end of the hangar, and fired it up. We took off and left the airport, and began setting up for some instrument training. It was then that the Fuel Filter light came on, indicating that the fuel flow from the pump through the filter was weak. We immediately turned around and came back. The flight was only a half hour long, which is very short compared to the usual flight of an hour to an hour and a half.


Today the turbulence caused us to land early. We had departed the airport and were headed out toward our usual instrument training area, when the turbulence struck. It was pretty extreme for a few moments. I even took over for a while in an attempt to descend below the unstable air. At times we were being pushed up when we should've been descending quite rapidly. We finally came down, and I decided to turn and go directly to Provo (thinking that the turbulence would be less at a lower altitude in a different place) to practice holds (don't ask, you don't want to know). Again, the turbulence picked up and I decided that perhaps the turbulence would subside farther north, and we set up for an approach into Provo. It wasn't any better out over the lake, so we called it quits.

There were some other things during the week that were odd, but nothing that caused too much heartburn. I'll be glad when the heat and the wind die down. The wind I don't mind so much, but the heat... Yuck!