From city beat to the sky, they're now chopper cops

By Dong Hui  |   2009-8-30  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

THE careers of two Shanghai policemen took a dramatic turn two years ago when they were chosen for helicopter pilot training. Now they're preparing to fly new choppers in the skies over Expo, Dong Hui reports.
Like many working men, Ye Lei takes a suitcase to work. Night navigation light? Check. Sunscreen and sunglasses? Check. Cloud breaking chart? Check. Ye is among six police officers in Shanghai's first police helicopter team who, without any history of aviation experience, have trained to become young pilots.
Also from Shanghai, and the same age as Ye, 27-year-old Wang Fei has worked side-by-side with his colleague for two years after they were chosen as two of the six pilots-to-be in the team.
Ye, energetic, and Wang, calm, passed a rigorous six-month selection program in 2007 - including two physical tests, a coordination test, a response test, a psychological test, an interview and an English test - to finally stand out from over 200 applicants, including other city police officers and students in the Shanghai Police College.
They were then sent to a helicopter flight training school at the Bristow Academy in Florida, the United States, for a 10-month initial training course. Returning home with pilot's licenses from the Federal Aviation Administration last December, they are continuing intense training in Shanghai to serve the city in three light-duty and medium-sized choppers next year.
"None of us touched anything in aviation before," said Ye, a yearlong traffic police officer in Shanghai's Baoshan District before being chosen. Wang was scheduled to be a specialist policeman after graduation from the Shanghai Police College.
"The first time I controlled a chopper, I felt I was performing aerobatics," said Ye.
In his first flight in the United States, Ye's coach let him control a "right hand," a lever to keep a chopper balanced in flight. "The plane started to perform like a wig-wagging pendulum," Ye said. "And when he handed the 'left hand' over to you, you felt like the plane was almost falling." A "left hand" lever connects with throttle and triggers the engine.
Unlike drivers, aviation pilots need to keep the other three hands or feet moving while operating one. If Wang peddles the "right foot" to raise rotor blades, he needs to move the "left hand" to turn on more power, control the "right hand" to balance the chopper from head up and use the "left foot" to steady it from right-hand deviation.
"At the same time you need to observe data on 3 to 7 meters, report conditions to the control tower and listen to their instructions," said Ye.
They also experienced a huge language barrier. "In the first month, I could only catch 40 percent of their words," said Wang.
The barrier comes especially when it involves the raft of essential aviation phrases and terms in noisy radio talk between control tower and cockpit.
The first time Ye flew a chopper solo from one airport to the other and engaged with the control tower, most responses he got were "say again, please," while Ye also failed to catch instructions from the air traffic controllers. "He then asked me to follow a chopper in front of me and return to my own base," Ye said. "I felt suddenly depressed." Getting out of the chopper, Ye found he had sweated buckets.
"They talk very fast if the tower is busy with three to five aircraft movements happening. For over a month, everyone of us listened to radio talk during our leisure time," Ye said. "I remember this radio talk now, to warn myself."
Any tiny mistake can lead to a fatal clash and it came especially early for Wang. In one of his training exercises, the chopper's only engine suddenly stopped working, probably as a result of thin air at altitude affecting the engine performance.
"I felt I was about to die," Wang said. "Because when you go down, nobody can guarantee you'll manage it right. Actually lots of people die in such situations, as the craft can easily tip over."