Since a young age I have had an interest in flying. I believe somewhere around age 8 I was fortunate enough to take a “Discovery Flight” at Mahlon Sweet airport in my home town of Eugene, Oregon. I loved every second of it and knew I’d want to get to fly myself some day. A few years later I started flying various flight simulators on my computer and started to understand some of the fundamentals of flight. With the assistance of my Grandfather, I built a radio controlled plane and joined a local RC airplane flying club. Unfortunately my RC plane was crushed during my move up to the Portland area after high school. I was happy to donate the remains to a local flying club who intended to rebuild it as a project for some of their younger members so that the club would have a new trainer plane for everyone.

While I never had a chance to build a new RC plane, I did continue to fly simulators on the computer and slowly moved up in complexity of aircraft and flight styles. I mostly enjoyed the two extremes of large aircraft making commercial flight routes and small aircraft making flights in poor weather conditions learning to rely on instruments and dead reckoning for navigation. In late 1999 after moving back in with my parents, I decided to put the money I was saving on rent to finally follow my dream to fly. I checked around at a few local airports to find out what was involved, what the costs were and what kinds of instruction were available. One Saturday morning I took my second discovery flight ever, this time at the controls with instructor Dan Stoddart who was my instructor throughout my earning my private pilots license. Most weekends I was unable to fly due to bad weather, but by December I had earned my solo flight endorsement. During a week of vacation with clear, sunny and 40 degree weather for Christmas I spent almost every day flying.

Between work and weather I was only able to fly about two or three times per month throughout the spring and took my time building hours. By late spring I had enough of dragging my feet and took every afternoon off for a week and spent hours in the sky with a couple instructors preparing for my exam. That Saturday I took my written, oral and flight exams all in one day and passed all to earn my license. The next day, Sunday, I took my dad up for my first flight with a passenger for Father’s day.

Since then I have flown on and off usually averaging about one flight per month. Between work, weather and money I still don’t get up as much as I would like, but usually I take any opportunity of having company in town to take them up for a flight around the area. My next goal is earn my instrument rating which will allow me to overcome many of the weather barriers that otherwise ruin a good day for flying (light fog, low clouds, etc). Most recently, in lew of doing my second Bi-Annual flight review to renew my license, I completed the first phase of the Wings program.

Behind the Bunny