And Now For Something Completely Different...Av8rdan, v2.0

I have been publishing this blog since December of 2005, and it's had a nice happy run. But that is about to change for the better...in a big, big way.

When I began this blog, blogging was really cool, everyone had a blog, and it was a great way to blast my daily aviation thoughts, opinions, stories and crazy ideas out into the world. A few "blogs" stood out from the "what I ate for breakfast" blogs, but the very nature of a blog was limiting to large-scale growth and national acceptance.

But now, as 2010 creeps towards 2011, and as I look at starting my sixth year of this blog, I've realized that "blogging" as I have been doing it might have ran its course. But it hasn't been without what I would call limited success:

I had no idea what to expect when I began this blog. As a trained journalist, former Sports Editor, closet newspaper column writer, and of course, lifelong aviation fanatic, I knew I could be satisfied posting my daily ramblings about whatever I choose. Over the 5.5 years I have written and published this blog, I have grown my readership somewhat, but in the last few years, that growth has hit a major plateau. No amount of social networking has given the blog the bump in traffic I was always hoping for.

But my lust for creativity and publishing continues to grow in ways I cannot contain. As a professional writer, photographer and graphic artist, I have a constant need to CREATE, and this blog does not satisfy that need any longer. Which is why I am happy to announce the following:

My new AIRPLANISTA MAGAZINE, will be full-fledged online aviation magazine that will resemble the print publications you are used to reading. The main difference though will be that it will be published online only, using a great service I have located that has perfected the task of publishing online magazines. This new project will resemble the former blog in spirit only, everything else – from the name to the content to the style to the frequency to the art – will be a complete makeover. And it is going to be fantastic fun, you have my word on that. And about that name? Well, you'll just have to read the first issue for that backstory.

To be truthful, I have always wanted to publish my own aviation magazine. I read most of the big ones every month, and as a "old school" sort of dude, I've always enjoyed holding a slick, color monthly magazine in my hands. But while that proven medium is decades old, I hope to make this new magazine into something really fresh:

Throughout my travels and from spending lots of time on Twitter as @Av8rdan, I have "met" lots of very cool aviation people. Every one of them has something unique to add to the conversation we call the "aviation community" and with this new magazine, I plan on giving them a voice. Many already have their own sites or blogs, and I am rounding some of these familiar online names up to produce content for this publication. My goal is to make this magazine a welcome addition to your aviation reading, a place where you can sample the work of many of the hot writers and photographers out there, along with adding a few new ones to that party. Of course, me being ME, you can expect sumptuous portions of the same content I have been producing for my blog, served with the same tone and lighthearted style, only with LOTS more photos. And I have some surprises planned, enough to keep things interesting.

One thing I have already decided it that this new online aviation magazine will always be free to the readers. It is not meant to be competition for the glossy print magazines such as AOPA Pilot or Flying, who are the flagships of this industry. To think I can touch them is ridiculous. As a supplement to what you are currently reading, my focus will initially be content acquisition and readership growth, starting small with a focus on quality content. And that, my friends, starts with you, my current readers:

I want this new magazine to really be a big brush look at the entire aviation world. Not just jets...not just flight training, not just used airplanes. So I am hoping that anyone with a story to tell will send those to me with photos. If you've been trying to break into aviation journalism but can't get a foot in the door of the big magazines, this new publication may provide the vehicle to get your work out there. I will also be relying on the Twittosphere to keep the buzz alive, since this will be a monthly book and I do not want interest to wane before each new issue drops.

So there it is, all laid out. My new world in beautiful full color, online for all the world to see. Are you with me?

If you join me for this ride and tell your friends, I promise a monthly journey through our aviation world that will be well worth your time. And if you help me get the word out as each new issue publishes, we might be able to fire some people up about learning to fly when they see how much FUN we're all having.

Wow, this is gonna be a blast!

Among All The Things Threatening GA, One Stands Above All Else: Flying Today is Reserved Only for the Rich

I am not about to try and define "rich" as it is used in the headline of this post. And no, it is not news to anyone that flying GA aircraft – or learning to fly one – costs too much money these days. So to spare you from having to read the obvious, let's look at aircraft ownership and flight training costs and see if there might be some sort of wiggle room.

This post was prompted today by a very good post by Rob Mark published on his site, Jetwhine.com entitled "Playing Jeopardy with Aviation’s Future," it is a must read. Rob is well connected in the industry, and there are parts of this post that are worth repeating:

"Without pilots, there is no aviation industry, period. No Part 135 charter, no corporate flight departments, no sightseeing flights and most of all, no airlines … nothing. We need to stop pussy footing around trying to grab a few new students here and there to fly our shiny new Cessnas, and Cirrus SR-22s and Piper Warriors. Let’s be serious, none of the previous incarnations of any Learn-to-Fly programs have ever come even close to returning us to the old days when 17,000 new airplanes were delivered in a year and a commensurate number of pilot starts kept the Government Printing Office in business producing student pilot certificates. We’re all so focused on Learn-to-Fly though as the solution as if the only audience we need to succeed with are those potential customers for flight schools."

Mark makes a great case that our current programs for recruiting new pilots are not working, and to that I agree. Again, from his 08.23.10 post:

"We all hate listening to the fact that 75 percent of new student starts last year quit before they ever earned their Private Pilot certificate. But for the moment, how we deal with that one issue is irrelevant. The Big Picture question really is why are only a few of us appear to see the writing on the wall … that very soon, we’re again going to be short of qualified pilots not simply to teach people to fly, but with the commensurate skills to compete for professional pilot cockpit jobs coming down the road?"

In this pull quote is the big clue to what lies at the very heart of this problem. It is not ambition, it is not the amount of dreams to fly that are being cultivated in young minds across this country. It is the cost, plain and simple and how that cost converts student starts into students bailing out:

There was a day when a farm boy could pull his granddaddy's J3 Cub out of the barn and blast off across the pasture into the sky. Gas was cheap, insurance was unheard of, and he never had to worry about buying $15,000 avionics packages just to find the next patch or spending two grand to upgrade his ELT. But those tales of dirt cheap flying are now just aviation lore, beloved hangar flying stories told by a dwindling number of Old Timers sitting under a tree in the Vintage Aircraft area at Oshkosh.

Today, flying is anything but cheap, again not a news flash. But costs to fly and learn to fly haven't just come up somewhat, they have rocketed out of sight as if duct taped to the belly of SpaceShipTwo. When it can cost as much as ten large to earn a private ticket, it is not a surprise that 75 percent of those who begin training can't continue to pump thousands into their dream. That has to change:

Nobody can blame the flight instructors, or the flight schools. I know plenty of CFIs who can confirm that they are making less profit these days than just a few years ago. While the hourly rates of training aircraft continue rising, there are limits to what the average flight student can afford or will pay for training. When ragged out 172s with steam gauges rent for $150/hour wet with instructor, anything with glass well north of $200/hour, and worn Senecas touching $300/hour, the flight schools are struggling to keep prices down to keep students flying while paying increased fixed day-to-day costs for everything needed to keep the doors open and the lights on. Rob Mark is right on, this is indeed the perfect storm.

But if you can't blame the flight schools who are just trying to stay alive in this economy, who can we blame? Is it the airframe makers that have caused the cost of flying to go off the charts? Not entirely, but they could be the only players in this game with enough at stake to do the only thing that might keep GA alive so my granddaughter can afford to enjoy it:

I am overjoyed to be the owner of a 1964 Piper Cherokee 235. With her fixed pitch prop, "down and welded" gear and predictable 12 GPH Lycoming 0-540 engine, flying Katy is about as cheap as it gets for a comfortable ship with enough payload and range to actually carry four people and all their stuff on a nice long cross country. But even before the tach starts moving, my fixed costs just to have the luxury of going out to wax her comes close to $400/month. When we do fly her, I can expect to pay about $100 per flight hour for fuel. Again, not like driving a Citation, but from Oregon to Cali and back at 8.0 on the Hobbs works out to $800, just for the dead dinosaurs. Even a little flight to see a client in Portland – about 2.0 r/t – means dropping $200, just for gas. Unless you have endless money, we all think twice about sending $200, for anything.

I mention the costs of flying my older Cherokee to illustrate just how much flying anything costs. What happens when you want to enjoy that new airplane smell on the same trip. Here is where – in my opinion – the makers have dropped the ball:

Yes they are fast, and yes, they have the latest and greatest avionics. But let's get serious, new airplane prices have crept far out of the reach of Average Joe and Jane. A new 2010 Cessna 400 Corvalis TT lists for $644,500, while a Cirrus SR22T GTS Turbo goes for $657,000, for a used factory demonstrator. Sure, this is the top end, but even a new light sport such as Cessna's popular Skycatcher lists for $111,500. Very few of us have the money for new airplanes today, which is the largest stumbling block for anyone considering a run at their pilot's license. People are struggling to keep their house, and buying a slick new ship that costs just south of three quarters of a MILLION dollars is ridiculously out of the question for anyone except the seriously rich.

Flight students are not stupid. They can read Trade-a-Plane, and see that once they get that ticket, maintaining it or actually going anywhere will cost truckloads of money. And somewhere between that first demo flight and the day they quit training, those 75 percent realize they really don't have the money to be a pilot. Dream. Goes poof.

But what if this all changed? Hmm, let's ponder that for a moment:

The big airframe makers know their sales are down, but they continue to build expensive ships with six-figure buy-ins. But when Lexus can build a very nice automobile for $45,000, why can't Cessna or Cirrus also build an entry-level cross country ship for maybe twice the same amount? Not an LSA, but a full-on IFR-certified cruiser. Yes, I'm deep into Fantasyland, and yes, we know this will never happen due to the incredibly high costs of certification, union labor, litigation prevention, research/development and the components themselves. But when the car guys can do it, the physical cost of hanging two wings and a tail on a Lexus doesn't cost that much in actual materials. The Lexus has sophisticated computers commanding a beautifully smooth, powerful engine, and a "glass" panel with a GPS navigation system that is a distant second cousin to those you find in the high-end GA ships. When you compare vehicles, yes, the Lexus doesn't FLY, but is is 1/10th the price of the SR22T or Corvalis! That price point gap just can't be ignored...and you don't need to wear headsets when traveling at cruise speed in the Lexus.

If GA is to survive for decades to come, the airframe makers must make development of an affordable entry-level ship their top priority. This ship needs to be about as expensive as an Escalade, with insurance premiums about as much as Cadillac's behemoth SUV. A new engine must power this ship at "get there" cruise speeds north of 130 knots while burning far less fuel, five GPH would be groovy. This ship must seat four people, and be sold with the same kind of "seven year/70,000 miles (XXX hours)" kind of warranty we have come to expect from the new car makers...to keep maintenance costs cheap and predictable.

Do this, and training costs get cut in half, flight schools again prosper and factories again start cranking out affordable new planes that Americans in present day America can actually AFFORD. But if the makers continue only servicing the extremely rich while ignoring the bottom end of the flying food chain, then Rob Mark and a million other prognosticators are correct, we indeed are really screwed.

A 'BizBlimp'...such a far out concept?

O.K., right up front, I am really tempted to crack jokes about Aeroscraft's ML866 Blimp being touted as a "Flying Business Center" because it's really, really easy to crack jokes about blimps. They look funny, they fly too slow, and they are a handful in a crosswind.

But this product from Tarzana, California's Worldwide Aeros Corporation may deserve more respect then is usually offered to your everyday, run-of-the-mill blimp. Worldwide has made a name for themselves in the blimp industry with their FAA Type-Certified Aeros 40D Sky Dragon, a very versatile airship designed to carry different types of surveillance and monitoring equipment, TV broadcasting and infrared cameras. and is also an ideal aerial platform for advertising and tourism.

This story first caught my eye on Aero News Network, and I soon found myself pondering the concept of what a blimp could be if it were completely reinvented. From there, I raced over to Blimp Central and found this:

One of many possible Aeroscraft ML866 configurations is the Airborne Business Center. Equipped with the latest state-of-the-art technology suite, the ML866 can be configured to serve as a high-tech airborne conference center. Business amenities include the functionality of a Computerized Office; Video-Conferencing Capability; Communication Package; Conference Room; Transformable Interior; Personal State Room. Customized cabin space allows full amenities including possibilities of a gourmet galley, entertainment area and sleeping quarters with elegant washrooms and showers.

O.K., they have my attention. The reason this concept is hard to wrap a brain around at first is our pre-conceived notion of blimps plundering across our sky, with a few gawkers crammed into a tiny enclosed gondola. I have always stopped any time a blimp tries to land, because watching the ground crew rein one in with any kind of wind blowing is always entertaining.

So for the sake of discussion, what if? What if the Aeros Creative Team took a blank sheet of paper approach to blimp design? What you end up with is an airship with roughly the same floor space as a 747-400, one that delivers projected performance like this:

Maximum Speed: 138 mph
Cruise Speed: 0-115 mph
Operating Altitude: 0-12,000 ft
Maximum Range: 3,100 mi
Overall Length: 210 ft
Overall Width: 105 ft
Overall Height: 52.5 ft
Floor Area: 5,382 ft

So flat out – hopefully not against a headwind – the BizBlimp could make it coast to coast in about 24 hours. That kind of excursion beats the hell out of the train, and might bring to air travel the luxury that was commonplace back in the days when Pan Am's Clippers delivered high rollers to Hawaii.

But I see a different mission for the ML866 Blimp in "Airborne Business Center" configuration. I believe that FedEx/Kinkos and Gold's Gym should buy a fleet of these things and put them into service along the hundreds of congested commuter corridors in every large city in the land. Part of the cabin would be all business, with laptop workstations, copy center, the usual stuff you find at a Finkos. But in the back would be a Workout Center, with cardio equipment and maybe pneumatic machines replacing the weight of iron barbells.

Instead of being stuck on the train or sitting wasting your life away in traffic, these blimps would pick up a load of commuters at strategically-placed centers near downtown, and then aim their bulbous nose towards the 'burbs. Gliding along quietly over the jammed freeways below, the pax in back could answer a few emails, maybe down an imported beer, or get in a quick 30-minute set on the elliptical machine.

Downside? From an airspace perspective, about the last thing we need inside the class bravo surrounding all big cities is a bunch of blimps lumbering slowly across the airways. This will be a hurdle the blimp guys will have to cross some time, but if something safe can be worked out – maybe in a full ADS-B environment – who knows, maybe someday clean, efficient blimps will be the answer we desperately need to replace the ridiculous losing proposition we now call Amtrak.

My Name is Dan and this is my Aha Moment

Since beginning World of Flying in December of 2005, I have written many times about the responsibility each of us aviators have to reach out to the public and tell them about this incredibly cool thing we enjoy called flying. We all need to be spokespeople for general aviation, and we need to keep a lookout for opportunities to blab our story to the masses.

This week, one of those opportunities came at me, and I grabbed it before it could sneak away:

Mutual of Omaha has been running a campaign that is based around the "Aha moments" of regular people. They outfitted an Airstream trailer with a mobile TV studio, and hit the road in search of stories. The Aha Traveling Road Show was slated to visit Eugene, Oregon, so their researchers began looking for interesting people in my city with a story to tell. After one researcher stumbled on this blog and liked what she saw, they shot me an invite to come tell the world my aha moment. It was the opening I was waiting for.

Of course, I would talk about flying. With a small but national soapbox, maybe one person would see the video posted on their site and decide to visit the flight school at their local airport and sign up for the lessons they have always wanted to start. But before I could look an expensive video camera in the lens and tell of my aha moment, I had to determine what exactly that was, so I went to the source at ahamoments.com:

Aha moments are powerful. More than an idea, or an epiphany, aha moments demand attention and action. Deciding on a new career. Jumping out of an airplane. Launching an international philanthropy, or becoming a fire dancer. In 2004, researchers at Northwestern University wanted to discover the physiological responses that lead to the breakthrough moments known as aha moments. What they discovered was that a split — second before having an aha moment, we experience a burst of electrical brain activity... kind of like a big light bulb going off in your brain. They have been described as, "magic," "enlightenment," and, "that moment of clarity when all the pieces fall into place." They've told us that having an aha moment is like, "getting hit by a bus," and that it just "hits you."

Oh...kay. Then how do these aha moments relate to...insurance? As an advertising guy, I initially found myself caught up in the nuts and bolts of this campaign, failing to connect the dots. But the site does finally get to the root of this endeavor:

What is an aha moment? It's a moment of clarity, a defining moment where you gain real wisdom - wisdom you can use to change your life. Whether big or small, funny or sad, they can be surprising and inspiring. Each one is unique, deeply personal, and we think, worth sharing. Mutual of Omaha celebrates and honors these moments and the people who act upon them. We're proud to have the products and services that can help people insure their possibilities.

So what then was my aha moment? Mightly glad they asked:

My aha moment came in 1991 while looking at my late father's logbook. Louie "Papa Louie" Pimentel had 25.1 hours logged when he was hit with a massive stroke that year and passed away suddenly. He had yet to solo, but I remember him telling me how happy he was to finally be starting flight training. He had fallen in love with flying while listening to the family Zenith All-Band console radio in the early 1940s, mesmerized with DC-3s as they operated out of San Francisco. AOPA members can read the entire saga of Papa Louie, The Old Radio and Flying from the October, 1998 AOPA Pilot Magazine by clicking here.

I too had fallen madly in love with airplanes by listening to that same Old Radio, but like my dad – who had to wait until he was 60 years old for career and family obligations to allow him to start training – I was wallowing in excuses why I had not yet started training for a pilot's license. However:

Anyone reading this who has lost a parent they loved and admired knows the waves of emotion that hits you in those few days after their passing. I was given the three things most important to Papa Louie right after his funeral, an Icon handheld aviation radio that was welded to his hand while he was training, a well-worn pair of Birkenstocks (that incidentally fit me perfectly, kinda spooky) and his logbook. When I opened the book and saw the last entry, I broke down big time. It was just a short hop from Fresno Airport (KFAT) across town to Chandler Airport (KFCH) in a C-152, N25829, four landings and 1.0 on the Hobbs. But it represented the end, for him, and I knew it was the beginning for me.

What hit me as the aha moment was that had Papa Louie not waited until late in life to start flying, he would have earned his ticket long before and could have enjoyed years in the air. But for one reason or another, he had not, and now it was too late for him, but not for me:

I went home and stared at his logbook for hours. And the very next day, I called up a CFI I knew and told him I was ready, that day, let's do it. What my aha moment taught me – and what this post is intending to teach you – is that life is shorter than you think. I started flying that week, but life got in the way as it always seems to. It took me until 1996 to earn my ticket, but I kept the promise I silently had made to Papa Louie after we lost him, to get my license, for him.

So if you are a licensed stick and are reading this, go out and convince a friend or family member to start those lessons tomorrow. Do it because they really will regret it if they've always dreamed of flying, but put it off for any of the many sorry excuses we use to avoid the left seat.

And if you are not a licensed pilot and always wished you were, please think about Papa Louie's story and go do it today.

Consider this your aha moment, from me to you.

Review: An Aviation Film That's Not Just an Aviation Film

(Note: I again got to say hello to Monika at Airventure a couple of weeks ago, and it reminded me to run this review of her film. In case you have not yet watched it, I still highly recommend it - dan)

At its very core, Monika Petrillo's film Flyabout is aimed squarely at pilots. Come on, what aviator wouldn't want to ride along on a 30-day circumnavigation of Australia in a flight of GA planes, chasing dreams, making lifelong acquaintances, and possibly dodging a few wayward kangaroos?

In this documentary – which premiered at the super-cool SXSW Film Festival in Austin in 2006 – Petrillo is a freshly-minted 25-year-old VFR pilot who embarks on a dream flight of a lifetime around the entire Australian continent. It is a film about a journey any GA pilot would cherish, so let's look at the synopsis from the flyaboutmovie.com site:

Monika Petrillo has never been a person to postpone her dreams. So at 24 she decided to get a pilot's license. A year later, her father surprised her by learning to fly as well. As the movie begins, they take off together to circumnavigate the continent of Australia.

The only woman pilot in a group of eleven people, Monika experiences the true freedom of flight above one of the most untouched places on earth. As she becomes exposed to Australian culture, she learns about the Walkabout, a spiritual journey the Aborigines have valued for tens of thousands of years. That inspires her to use this trip to take stock of her own spiritual household. The first step toward that end is to relax. But that proves much more difficult than she thought: a tight schedule, careful and constant maintenance of the aircraft, pot-holed dirt runways, mechanical failures, sudden loss of visibility and unpredictable crosswinds keep her both too busy and too uptight. But what impacts her most is the conflict that arises between her father and herself.

They had both underestimated the consequences of her father‘s limited experience as a pilot, and that quickly takes its toll—not only on the collaboration in the cockpit, but also on their relationship. Monika struggles with feelings of responsibility on the one hand versus doubts about contradicting her father, who has always been her role model, on the other.

As their plane continues its path across the outback, the young woman slowly comes to realize that personal and spiritual growth can‘t be forced. Instead of searching so hard, she starts to look out the window. And that simple action is the first step towards learning the real lesson.

Flyabout is an intimate, personal story about a pilot‘s journey around Australia. It is the story of a young woman growing into an adult and coming to grips with how generational roles change over time.

The last paragraph of the synopsis really is the takeaway here. This film is layered so deeply, it cannot even remotely be considered "just" a travel film. One minute, the screen comes alive with gorgeous footage of vast Aussie sunsets, and in the next scene, we are flying across endless vistas of the Outback. But just when you begin to settle into the joyride, Petrillo launches into a multi-faceted story designed to make us think about, life, family, relationships, destiny and our inner being. Of note are Petrillo's poignant thoughts about how we all need to learn the ways of the Aborigines once in a while and strip away life's stresses and cleanse our souls. She talks about the importance of getting out into nature alone, where you can focus on...you. I cannot agree more with that notion.

The film hits my personal mark on many levels. Petrillo succeeds in capturing the true essence of what it means to fly, and how flying affords we aviators certain freedoms that non-pilots cannot enjoy. And as a photographer, I applaud much of Petrillo's footage in the film, especially when she interlaces stunning visual scenery of Australia with air-to-air footage of her flight and shots from the ground. It is obvious a great deal of planning and coordination went into this project. However:

My only struggle throughout the film was Petrillo's contentious relationship with her father. This trip was meant to be a once-in-a-lifetime thing, a memory you remember long after dads go west to fly with Lindbergh. The filmmaker does such a great job carrying the "Walkabout" story line, and is able to demonstrate the camaraderie pilots enjoy while on these kinds of long cross-country adventures. While the problems with her father were real, I left the film wondering if the main story line would have been more powerfully delivered had Petrillo left out the "daughter vs. father" thread entirely.

Would I recommend you see this film? Absolutely. It will make you think about how short life really is, and about how important it is to live every second without regrets. And, it will make you immediately start planning some serious flying adventure trip. If this film does not make you want to head out to the airport NOW and crank up the Skyhawk, you should consider turning in your pilot's license.

On the infamous four star film rating system, I would happily give Flyabout 3.5 stars. The story is solid, the photography is very good, the score is moving, and [of course] the aviation details are right on. If you have a party planned soon with a bunch of your pilot buddies, buy this film and show it on the big flat screen withe the surround sound cranked up...I guarantee that everyone in the room will thank you.

The film can be ordered here, or you can catch it July 27th through August 2nd at EAA AIR VENTURE 2009 in the Skyscape Theater in the AirVenture Museum. You can watch a preview trailer here (high bandwidth) or here (low bandwidth).

Grab Your Logbook, Cowboy, You're Hired!

Sometime in about the third year of every boy's life, it happens. Their career path as an adult is etched in their brain for all time, and with a few exceptions, if you ask most three-year-old boys what they want to be when they grow up, the answer is always the same:

Grinning wide, the tot will look up at you and with great seriousness, tell you it'll be fireman, astronaut, garbageman, cowboy or airline pilot. While the first four can be debated and the answers vary widely, it is almost a foregone conclusion that all young boys want to be airline pilots. I know one that did...me.

Now, 51 years later, is it any surprise that I STILL want to be an airline pilot? Of course, that isn't going to happen, because I can't afford the schooling and time-building it would take just to get an interview with a carrier. And once I got in the room, they'd take one look at my middle-aged self and realize in an instant that with mandatory retirement looming, the money it would take to train me to be a good little line pilot would be a really sorry ROI.

But if I throw out all reality, there are a number of very cool aviation jobs I'd love to have:

Airline Pilot: Yes, what private stick wouldn't really want to be at the controls of a 747 as it carried several hundred souls on a Great Circle route over the North Pole en route to Europe? Even a left seat job driving CRJ-700s might be a rewarding way to fill the bank account once you worked through that bitter period where you fly right seat on a dinky regional and they pay you just a few bucks over minimum wage because they know your only goal in life at that point is to build time.

Charter pilot: Sure, you spend a lot of time lounging around FBOs, surfing the Internets on their free wi-fi, eating free cookies and waiting for Mr. Bigshot Executive to finish gladhanding downtown. But look at all the awesome hardware you get to fly! And having the honchos in back change up the trip mid-flight so they can get in nine holes in Florida (or Hawaii) would keep you at the top of your piloting/flight planning game.

Airshow performer: What a wild life you'd have, hopping from airshow to airshow, wringing out your Edge 540 or Sukhoi Su-29 to the adoring throngs of fans below. Yes, you mostly live in hotels for a good amount of the year, and yes, you damned well better be in great physical shape which means you're in the gym whenever you're not tail-diving out of a Hammerhead. Oh, and you get to go to Oshkosh every year, how sweet is THAT?

Astronaut: What a rush it would be to blast off at the Cape and go floating around space for a couple of weeks. Enjoy spacewalks in the morning, a lunch of Tang and dehydrated Pork & Beans, closing out the day in the cocktail lounge aboard the ISS. Look a few years out and you'll get to pilot a yet-to-be-designed spacecraft up to the moon, hauling freight for all the new neighborhoods that will be going up. Hopefully, there will be no SUVs among that cargo.

CEO of a major airframe manufacturer: Now THIS is living! Jetting off to Miami for a morning board meeting, smoozing with ultra-high rollers in Vegas for lunch before slipping into something more comfortable...like Maui, after hours. Somewhere in there, you force yourself to make a few tough decisions, and come up with new ways to justify your $34 million annual salary.

President of AOPA: Not that this position will ever be open any time soon, but who wouldn't want to lead such an important organization? AOPA is the most valuable asset GA has right now, and what a joy it would be to wake up every morning, strap on the gloves and head over to D.C. on the a.m. train to duke it out with the clown posse up on The Hill. And a huge bonus is the exceptional staff at AOPA HQ that you get to surround yourself with!

Burt Rutan's personal assistant: What right-minded pilot wouldn't want to be a fly on the wall in Rutan's world? You KNOW he has one guy or gal who is welded to him at the hip, someone who knows everything about everything that is going on at the Rutan Skunk Works. We all know that the stuff Rutan comes up with blows our mind, and with commercial space travel just around the corner, bet the farm he has more than we know about going on down there in Mojave.

Boeing sales guy: You walk into the room, wearing a $5,000 Brooks Brothers suit, with a couple of beautiful female “assistants” wearing tight black 787 shirts following. One – a tall, blonde number from Sweden – carries your fine Italian briefcase, while the other – an ex-Laker girl that could stop traffic – carries a stack of jetliner order forms. Before you can even sip the free scotch they're offering you, the bigwigs from the airline are clawing at those order forms, shouting “More, more more!” It's your Dreamliner they're after, baby, and they can't get enough. Life as a Boeing sales rep these days is about that sweet, at least it is in my wild imagination.

EAA Media Relations Guru: O.K., we all know Dick Knapinski, EAA's Director of Media Relations, is not going anywhere. The guy manages to stay cool during the most intense week of the aviation year, juggling a 1,000 camera crews while Mother Nature slaps Central Wisconsin upside the head. But can you even IMAGINE how cool it must be to live, eat, sleep and breathe Airventure 12 months of the year? Sure, the historically large Wisconsin mosquitoes would prevent me from living IN Oshkosh, but as a long-time media guy, it has to be a thrill a minute to be on the "inside" of Airventure. Yeah, Dick's job must be way cool, until you have to write the press release that announces all those good people with paid reservations for Camp Sholler have to camp over at the abandoned Sears parking lot.

Now that's quite a list, don't you agree? What is your fantasy aviation job? Send them to me and I'll post the good ones.

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The Equation for a Thriving GA Community: Pilots x Planes + Kids = New Aviators for Future Prosperity

[Note, this is part two of a two-part article on the camaraderie that we pilots share.]

In part one of this series, I took a look at exactly how rare it is to possess a pilot's license in the United States. The conclusion – while not really news to most flyers – was quite a stunner to non-pilots on the street:

At my weekly Toastmasters club meeting this past week, I had the honor of presenting one of the club's members who is also a best friend with a few silly aviation-related gag gifts in celebration of him earning his private ticket one day before. The giant pencil was a hoot, meant to poke fun at his possibly obsessive affinity for carrying the exact retractable pencil in the cockpit. As I introduced him, I asked the club how many licensed pilots they would find in a room full of 1,000 people. One guess was 21, the other 16...neither was remotely close to the correct number of two. Yes, out of a country consisting of an estimated 309,891,332 humans, there were only 594,285 active airmen certificates held as of 12/09.

That means there could be 309,297,047 people out there who legally cannot fly airplanes. O.K., you throw out the rogue Alaskans who think the formality of a ticket is just more government intrusion into their lives, and deduct the clowns who Darwin should find when he goes about thinning the herd, and it still leaves over 309 million souls out there ready to learn about flying. Oh, baby, if it was only that easy:

Pilot Michael Combs is currently on a mission to fly a Remos GX Light Sport Aircraft named "Hope One" to 136 stops beginning in Salina, Kansas and ending in Honolulu, Hawaii, a trip that began this past April. The plan is to hit all 50 states, and fly a total distance exceeding 22,000 miles. Called "The Flight for the Human Spirit," the effort is meant to be encouragement for every soul he meets to never, ever give up on their dreams. "As the millions look up at the aircraft as it soars through the sky, or follow this amazing story online, they will be reminded of their own dreams," Combs' site says. "They will peer to the depths of their soul knowing that it is never, ever too late to achieve their fullest potential. The goal is to touch 20 million lives using aviation as the method of bringing his message to the masses.

In following Combs' flight, it is easy to conclude it might be nearly impossible to complete without the help of endless pilots willing to drop everything to help him as he visits their town. His flight is a big, sparkly effort with a marketing engine driving a national media campaign, so visibility is high. But even when it's just a couple of guys in a single-engine trainer flying coast-to-coast to generate interest in GA, the flight is helped along by the never-ending generosity that one pilot always show another:

Vincent Lambercy of plasticpilot.net is a Swiss private pilot, now living near Frankfurt (Germany) and Jason Schappert is a 1,500 hour CFI in Florida who owns and operates N512R, an IFR equipped Cessna 150 that might be one of the cherriest 150s you will see. Together they recently completed a 23-day flight from the Atlantic Ocean to Catalina Island in the Pacific ocean, abeam Los Angeles. Full of wild weather and adventures, the 31 individual legs included 62 hours 50 minutes of flying, with a sole mission to promote GA to anyone they met.

An inside baseball look at this flight again makes me immensely proud of my fellow aviators:

"When we started the Flying Across America project to promote general aviation," Lambercy said, "we asked people for financial support but also for help with accommodations and local media. We established lots of contacts during the year we spent preparing the flight, and most of the accommodations got covered. At four places, organizations or supporters booked hotel rooms for us, and at six of our stops, the plan was to stay overnight directly by some fans. Yes, at their place, like we were family! We also received other kinds of support like opportunities to talk at aviation events, give TV interviews, visit museums... the list of what the aviation community offered to us goes on and on..."

Nobody reading this who carries around a pilot's license will be surprised that as Lambercy and Schappert talked their way back and forth across America from small field to big airport, pilots who had made promises kept their word, as pilots usually do:

"To be honest," Lambercy continues, "when we started this, I expected some supporters of our project to vanish at the last minute, because people sometimes tend to promise too much, or simply because life happens. After 23 days of flying from Florida to California and back, we can now say it: everybody showed up!! Plans changed, yes, and dates slipped, which was not unexpected given the nature of the project. But because supporters along our route are aviators (yes, aviators, like pilots but with more passion and with style), they did all they could to cope with these last minute changes and help us."

I guess that while poking along over vast portions of barren tundra in a C150, a guy has plenty of time to come up with philosophical gems like this one from Lambercy:

"One of the messages we wanted to pass along with this project is that aviation is not made of individuals locked-up in their cockpits. Each pilot certificate comes with a life-long membership in the great family of aviation. Whatever your experience, the kind of flying you do, if you are a pilot you can instantly communicate with other pilots and be understood. This works across distance, culture, languages, age...because aviation carries universal values, and solidarity is one of them."

Wow, dude, that's deep..but also RIGHT ON!

To preserve GA for years to come, it seems we aviators all have one common thread running through our flying careers, and that is to turn kids on to flying. We all love taking up wide-eyed young humans for their first airplane ride, it is part of the DNA each pilot is built from. Of course, EAA's Young Eagles program – which has flown more than 1.5 million "first flights" in 90 countries by 42,000 volunteer pilots – is the leader in promoting aviation for the NextGen kids hanging on the airport fences of every little patch in every town in the land.

To be sure GA thrives long after we lose our medicals, each and every pilot MUST groom at least one new pilot. As part of this wonderful aviation community, it is our duty to bring what we do to the public, and that always starts with kids. Smiling kids coming out of Duggy, or the young girls flocking to the Girls With Wings booth at Airventure, it does not matter. All that matters is that we take Lambercy's advice to remain in blissful solidarity to make sure we accomplish the goal of launching dreams, lighting fires and dragging new people to a flight school lobby near you.

We do that, friends, we prosper. We get lazy and, well, I don't EVEN want to go there.

Our Aviation Community: You're a Pilot? I Love Ya', Man!

[Note, this is part one of a two-part article on the camaraderie that we pilots share.]

Many of us are still coming down off our EAA Airventure Oshkosh high, trying to blend back in to daily life without thinking about flying machines 24/7. We're washing the brat stains from our "Rock Your Wings!" t-shirts, trying to find the bottom of our overstuffed rollaboard bags, and trying not to focus on how many days there are left until Oshkosh 2011.

As I settled back in to reality, I found myself thinking mostly about the community of pilots I met and lived with for a week as I traveled the Upper Midwest chasing airplanes. Yes, we are lucky to be pilots, the select few humans who have earned the privilege to soar with birds in their sky. How lucky are we? Well, I had a Twitter acquaintance help me crunch the numbers and here are the results:

According to census.gov, there are an estimated 309,891,332 of us here in the U.S. as of 8.03.2010. But while the FAA doesn't give real-time statistics, in Dec 31, 2009 there were 594,285 active airmen certificates held. Yes, there is some wiggle room in these numbers since a few months worth of babies were born, but without getting all "mathy" on me, that means pretty close to 0.19 percent of the population are licensed pilots. To pound this stat home, say you walk into a packed theatre that holds 1,000 people. You, as a licensed pilot, would have a tough time finding the one other licensed pilot in the room. Or, when the numbers get crunched a little more, we see that on a beach populated with 521 people, you'd be the one guy or gal with your pilot's license shoved in the back pocket of your board shorts or hidden in your bikini.

That, my flying friends, is a small community of like minds. I enjoy 99.9 percent of the pilots I meet, and when pilots get together, it is mere seconds before we all become best friends. My Oshkosh trip illustrated that with aviation in our hearts, we are like one big happy family:

From the moment I set foot in Kindred, North Dakota to hook up with Duggy's owners on 7/23, I began meeting "airplane people" that I really, really liked. The Odegaard family treated me like one of their own, their house was my house, their car my car. The next two days, I hung out with six previously total strangers at the Rock Falls DC-3 event who arrived there like me inside the happiest plane in the sky, and it was golden. Two memorable young people on board Duggy were Tanner, from Kindred, and Jessica from Minnesota. Both were Odegaard family friends and huge Duggy fans. It took only minutes after meeting these two seriously special young flyers to become old buddies. We chatted up each other for many hours over the next 48 hours, poked fun like we knew each other forever, and earned each other's mutual respect. It was truly a breath of fresh air to meet such wonderful young members of this aviation community, they are the future, and that future is very bright indeed.

When I arrived at Oshkosh, it wasn't an hour before I was sitting in a new friend's motorhome, eating his cheese curds and drinking his pop. And as is usually the case with Oshkosh, dinner time came and a crowd formed:

Rod Rakics and Mike Miley run MyTransponder.com, a website devoted to "making aviation more social." The pair likes to practice what they preach on the site too. As the highway 41 traffic whizzed by the Old Sears parking lot that was the temporary replacement for Camp Scholler, about eight new friends teleported themselves to the side of the motorhome to chow down and drink some crazy Wisconsin beer made from berries, brats and cheese. O.K., probably not cheese. Before the evening ended, this new pack of buddies – tethered together by our iPhones, iPads and Twitter – descended on the local Dairy Queen to forcibly remove large Blizzards from the premises. When this geek squad determined that the DQ had free wi-fi, it became our goal to collectively try to bring the network down with our fingers as they flittered and flamed across our virtual keyboards tweeting about ice cream and airplanes.

Yes, we are very lucky to have each other, and with only the rarest of exceptions, pilots in this community are kind, helpful souls who would rip the shirt from their back if you were a fellow stick in dire need of a shirt. A few days at Oshkosh proved yet again that this big happy family can get along swimmingly, we can co-exist in our aviation world while the rest of the planet can't seem to keep from killing each other over the damnest things.

Each day, I seem to be more proud of my pilot's license, and what it represents. It gives me the license to fly a machine high above the crust of this crazy planet, something than does not come easily or without risk. But that little FAA card with Orville and Wilbur's picture on it also gives me admission to a very elite club, a group of fellow aviators that share one common bond so strong nobody outside the group will ever understand.

And the glue keeping the aviation community together in solidarity and AvGas-induced bliss is that...we fly!

Hardcore in the Caribbean!Planespotting at Maho is Like Nowhere Else!

We pilots love to "spot" big jets inbound to land...we've been doing it since we were puppies. The closer the better, and if you get a little jet blast on your brow...all that much better.

But if you REALLY want to visit the Mecca of planespotting, Princess Julianna Airport on the island of St. Maarten is the place to be. You can stand at the end of their mega-runway on scenic Maho Beach, which sits one tiny chain link fence away from the TDZ.

Now take a tour of Maho Beach with me, via Youtube:

Here's a 747 toying with the vacationers at Maho | View

The largest back taxi in history! This landing on St.Maarten from the cockpit of a 747 ends with a 180 on the runway and a back taxi to the terminal. After a nosewheel landing, the crackling noise you hear in the video is the camera hitting the windshield! | View

This guy puts his camera in the sand to get the full effects of the blast from a KLM 747-400 landing | View

Gotta watch this one all the way through...the girl in the video is oblivious to what is about to happen! | View

This videographer says that St. Maarten has the smallest runway in the world where a Boeing 747 lands. Watch this one through to the end and you'll see the inbound do the biggest, baddest go-around ever flown | View

Here's a long one shot with a Sony mini-cam worn in the headband on the Captain's head, lots of good cockpit chatter | View

And last and certainly least, a bunch of presumably drunk college boys getting a blow job courtesy of KLM Airlines | View

There are dozens more on Youtube, found here. Just don't blame me if you waste time browsing aviation videos when you're supposed to be taking out the trash or attending Susie's piano recital!

UPDATE: I almost forgot the crazy short airport at Saba: Insane approach here. And reader @FiveFs wrote to remind me the approach into St. Barts can be hairy as well.