My path to Pilot

     The weather for this weekend looked great, but I decided to split my time between Climbing rock in Kentucky and flying the glider in Ohio so I only got 1 day this weekend. It was a real good day and John had a 6 tandem flights scheduled so a bunch of local pilots came out to get aero-tows too. Best flight was 3 hours or more and at one point there were 4 gliders working the same lift (another awesome sight for a beginner like me and also excellent motivation to keep the training sessions frequent). Some day I hope to add myself to the gaggle of gliders on a soaring day.      My training flights were good. After looking at last weeks video and taking the advice of my instructor and a couple of other pilots my goal was to focus on only making small corrections in order to avoid the oscillations I was getting last time from making large corrections repeatedly. I also wanted to work on my approach and landing. I still tend to approach at near t...

    The forecast for this weekend looked great and John expected to get 2 good days of weather to train in. Since the training field is an hour and twenty minute drive I have to get up at 6:00 am in order to be there at the field ready to go at 8. But on Saturday morning, I didn't wake up until 8:00 am. Apparently I set my alarm for 6:00 pm instead of 6:00 am. Oh well, I got a slightly late start but it turns out I wasn't the only one running late.      The first few flights of the day I took on the 220 Condor, the Wills Wing training glider I used on day 1. It's large and slow and responds slowly to pilot input which makes it perfect for beginners. My first few flights were really painful though. I used the same training harness I did on day 1, but this time it felt awful, the leg straps didn't fit right and there was a stiff seam right at my belt line that was pressing hard on my stomach when I hung in it. So I don't remember too much about the firs...

This weekend was supposed to be my second training session but the sunny, calm, and clear weather we had last week apparently isn't the norm in Ohio so Saturday ended up being too windy to train. According to John, my instructor, the weather on Sunday looked promising for some new novice (H2) pilots to get a chance to do their first foot launch from the local ridge at Richmond Dales. I thought it would be cool to meet some of the experienced pilots and watch them fly so I went down too. Even with an early start, the wind was pretty gusty and wasn't blowing strait into the launch which would make a foot launch more difficult. One pilot did find a calm enough window to launch in and around noon he had a 15 minute flight on the ridge. It was my first time watching someone foot launch in person and he made it look easy. Although, I was later told he was one of the local legends and pretty much everything he did would look easy. While I didn't get to touch a hang glider today, I...

     The school nearest me is Wings to Fly ltd which conducts training at a grass airfield about an hour and half away from Dayton. My first day of Training was Sunday, Oct. 9. There were other students already at the airfield when I arrived at 8:00am. One of whom was camping out between weekend training days. In the future I'll probably try to use both days during the weekend for training and maybe I'll start camping out too!      After some paperwork and choosing a training harness John Alden, the instructor, immediately jumped in with a bunch of information for me in order to bring me up to speed. He talked about the gliders, how they work, and how they are controlled. There were 2 training hang gliders which are designed to be easiest for a beginner to use: The Wills Wing Condor 330 and the Condor 225 (330, and 225 square feet of surface are). Since that morning had essential zero wind, John had me use the 330 since its enormous surface area...

     While I do find my work interesting and really get immense satisfaction from the task of engineering solutions to complicated problems, and also plan on being an Engineer for life, I sort of think of work as a means to an end. There are many different things that I dream about doing and feel the only way I'll be able to do them all is to keep a good job that will give me the opportunities. I wish I was a Shaun White, or a Tony Hawk, or a Tiger Woods and was talented enough to pursue the one thing I loved above all others. But I feel I don't have the skill (or maybe the courage to try) to do that. Instead I decided I could use my interest in math and the sciences to enable me to pursue my favorite pastimes.      Anyway, after recently starting this new job and leaving behind my friends and family and moving from the deserts of New Mexico to the humid continental zones of Ohio I decided to use some of my free time to pursue a new in...