Dave's Career Progress!

So Rachel roped me into making a post of my new career plans, here we go! On Friday, January 9th, I went up with Shane (one of the instructors at Upper Limit Aviation) in a Robinson (R22) for an hour-long introductory flight. I loved it! So three days later I started my ground classes at Salt Lake Community College. That week was also my last week of work at AAPC (side note: I really did enjoy the people I worked with there and am sad to leave them). I'm including some photos of that intro flight here as an idea of just how amazing it was (on a scale from one to super-great, it was mega-awesome). Shane demonstrated a landing in the mountains, let me fly a little to get a feel for the controls, and even had me try to hover about five feet from the ground. By the way, hovering is about the hardest thing I've ever tried to do in my life. I think I was decently successful for approximately 3.8 seconds (on a scale from one to ridiculously hard, hovering is about a "Holy crud I can't believe how difficult this is"). The controls are VERY sensitive. Imagine if you were learning how to drive and on the "stay in your lane" lesson, all you could do to succeed was jerk the wheel to the left and then to the right to compensate. That's what it felt like.

Anyway, it may be difficult to master, but I'm looking forward to every second of it (even the white-knuckled seconds...or minutes...or hours...)! One of the tricky things I've learned is that helicopters are not made to be balanced. The very physics of them is anti-equilibrium. In a fixed-wing aircraft, it's all about symmetry and balance. But the rotor blades (on top) of a helicopter are spinning in one direction, forcing the helicopter in the opposite direction. So there are just a lot of little tricky things to get used to.

I'm waiting on a couple things before I really get more in-air education. But as soon as everything gets worked out, I can't wait to go flying again! Meanwhile, I'm learning TONS of things through SLCC's professional pilot program. It's really interesting and I'm actually enjoying these classes (I might even attend all of them...)!

So the plan is to wrap up the certificates and be an official pilot by October or so. At that time I'll have about 200 or so flight hours and need another 800 before I can really get hired at most places. So the schools hire the students who have recently completed their program as instructors. So I'm banking on getting a job at Upper Limit around that same time, as an instructor. Then I get the rest of my hours over the next year or so. Meanwhile, I should be able to wrap up the Aviation Technology degree at SLCC by the end of December, 2009. So by the end of this year, I'll be done with all my schooling and actually working as a pilot!

Check out what I'll be flying around during my education!