Posts Tagged ‘AOPA’

blogging for me

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

AOPA, and organization I consider to be a good one, recently contacted me to see if I was interested in blogging for them as a pilot-in-training. Naturally I was incredibly flattered. But it made me think long and hard about why I want to document this latest journey I’m on. The answers I found were surprising.

My blog is a stranger.

Well, not really a stranger, but it’s sort of like talking to one. Blogging has been a therapeutic and wonderfully cathartic part of my life for nearly the last five years. I started in September of 2003 and have kept at it ever since. And we’ve all heard the saying ‘it’s easier to talk to strangers’. There is a load of truth to that, and that’s how I see my blog.

I don’t know if I converse with my readers or I talk to myself when I blog. Having worked for a few companies both writing and blogging for them, I’ve always tried to blur the line between talking to others and talking to myself when I write, no matter which publication it is. Somehow, the murky space between the two seems to work. I suppose if it didn’t work I wouldn’t have gotten paid to do it, and organizations like AOPA wouldn’t be asking me to write for them.

But flying.radiopeter.com is different. Sorta.

Usually my personal journeys are tracked on on regular old, comfortable, social, and laid-back radiopeter.com. I learned Japanese there. I got into cycling there. I’ve been through relationships, sickness and health, happiness and sadness, found life on stage and off, and experienced nearly every emotion close to five years of life has to offer. All that is recorded there. Except right now, flying doesn’t seem to fit.

But why? Why should this project differ?

More than anything else, this is going to be an intensely personal journey. I’m not trying to wax philosophical, but the more I learn about flying and the more time I spend in X-Plane (hey, it’s the best I have at the moment), the more I’m realizing this is going to be an intense experience. It seems like life has been preparing me for this for a while. It deserves it’s own place in my history. And honestly, it’s too personal to give away to an organization to help bulk up their content.

So the answer, in case you haven’t read between the lines, is that I will not be blogging for AOPA. I’ll be blogging my journey toward the sky here.

For me, for you, and for the stranger and friend that is the internet.

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taking me under his wing, pun intended

Monday, July 14th, 2008

KDPA Small Picture

Last Saturday I officially met my flying mentor, Todd, of My Flight Blog. Todd was one of the first people I reached out to in the aviation community, and he’s been great every since that first e-mail. He is a local pilot, a great writer, and from reading his blog from the beginning, I get the sense that he truly enjoys every aspect of flying.

A casual e-mail turned into a new friendship. Pretty amazing if you ask me.

After we realized that we peripherally knew each other from our writing time at Chicagoist.com, Todd offered to become my AOPA Mentor. AOPA (Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association) offers a great program to help ramp up the, how shall I term it, aviation cultural awareness of those interested in getting airborne. Project Pilot helps foster mentorships by providing basic tools and education awareness about the world of flight. AOPA also serves as a non-profit organization of mostly General Aviation pilots in the U.S.

There is a very similar thread between AOPA and ARRL, the American Radio Relay League, of which I am a member. When I became interested in HAM radio, all roads seemed to lead to ARRL as a resource for new HAMs. It’s an organization that keeps the legislators on their toes when it comes to amateur radio operations and provides it’s members lots of information and benefits.

AOPA is to GA pilots exactly what ARRL is to HAM’s. A group of like-minded individuals with common interests, seeking to further their learning and their hobbies in safe, fun, educational, and beneficial ways. The community is the important part here, and both organizations have stated goals that keep their communities in mind.

I liked the fit, and so with Todd’s help I joined AOPA. The most interesting part is that I had never met Todd, and only exchanged emails up until last Saturday, when he picked me up and we headed out to DuPage Airport for a BBQ and short seminar at American Flyers.

Chicago isn’t really next door to KDPA and we spent an enjoyable drive to and from talking about everything from aviation to our experiences at Chicagoist. I can’t quite explain how awesome it is to have someone in-the-know available for questions. Even though I’ve yet to take a discovery flight, Todd has been more then helpful with loads of information.

The seminar was fairly short, covering lots of ground (pun intended) on takeoffs and landings. Quite a bit of it was Greek to me, but like anything in life, the more you hear, the better prepared you are. It was a touch noisy in the hangar where the seminar was held because we were right off the area where they start the planes, but it was cool to meet some like-minded people (met Tim and Josh) and talk a bit of shop with them.

Not that I’m an expert at talking shop by any means!

I realized that I’d forgotten my Kenwood TH-G71A at home. It’s my HAM HT for 70cm/2M and we could have used it to listen to ATC while watching the planes work the pattern off runway 28. I’ve listened to a ton of ATC at KDPA but had trouble visualizing the planes and their calls. Would have been great to have the radio, but there will always be another time, right?

All in all it was a great day. Now if I could only figure out when to schedule those discovery flights…

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