Well most of you hear me time and time again mention how it has been so long since my last post. While yes I have been away for a long while from the blog, I have been working hard in school. As many of you know, my love for aviation stems way further than just climbing into and airplane and going flying. No, it is much more than that to me, it is a pure self sufficient love for aviation. With that being said, you would anticipate that my major at Ohio University would obviously be in aviation. The truth is however, that I am a Finance and Entrepreneurship major at best! Yes yes, this may deter some readers from reading any more, but my justification for such strategy will be saved for a future post (I promise). This point brings me to the question that may be rising in the back of your mind… “How is he getting his aviation fix in college then?” And to be quite honest it is the most difficult thing of this entire life transition.
However, I get my fix through a team… a flight team! If you haven’t heard of a flight team before, in short, it is a team of pilots/soon-to-be pilots/wan’t to be pilots that all have a common goal. That is to be the best in their respective events. These events are segmented into two categories: Flying Events and Ground Events.
Flying events include: Navigation (Piper Warrior’s), Power-off precision landings and Short Field Approach and landings (Cessna 150 and 152’s), and Message drop.
Ground events include: Pre-Flight Inspection, Aircraft Recognition, e6B, SCAN, and Simulator.
To learn what each event consist of click their respective names.
Last week, the Ohio University Flying Bobcats Flight Team had tryouts for each event. As a freshman I am required to achieve a certain amount of team points before being allowed to tryout for the flying events, thus giving me time to hone my skill in on some of the ground events. As hard work, love for aviation, and a good sum of luck would have it, I managed to qualify to compete in the NIFA Region III regionals in Aircraft Recognition and Simulator. Since middle school I have known about flight team and always had a thing for aircraft recognition, although I am pretty horrid at it currently I am sure, through studying and effort, I will get much better at it in time. Simulator is perhaps my favorite event currently, perhaps because I used to live in the Redbird Sim that my flight school had… (working for a flight school had its perks).
Overall, I am content with my first tryouts results. I plan to try my best next time at preflight and hopefully make it in due time.
As I pack my bag for the competition at Kent St. next week I can’t help to get excited at the fact that I will once again be united with airplanes and pilots! Although I am deeply saddened that I will miss some valuable information in classes that I love, I think it will be worth the sacrifice.
We depart Friday morning for Kent St. University airport where we will remain (in a hotel of course) till the 13th. I plan to keep a running blog of multiple posts a day describing the events and the happenings as they unfold. You can also bet that I will be taking some awesome photos with my camera while there!
If you are a potential competitor reading this blog post, I wish you the best of luck at the competition and please bring your A game, because against the Flying Bobcats… You WILL need it.
Until next time,
Pilot Ian
