Plane Faith

Hey, this is pretty cool! I just stumbled across this podcast and have been really enjoying it. Plane Faith is a brand-new podcast hosted by a U.S. pastor/pilot who is interviewing missionary pilots from various organizations all over the world. As someone interested in eventually doing what these guys are doing, I'm finding it great to hear first-hand what the experience of everyday life is like.

Episode 1 features a mission pilot who is working in the same country that I may be heading to. Check out the website or look them up on iTunes and I'm sure they'll be thrilled for you to subscribe: https://www.planefaith.com/

Night Dreams

On climbout. My iPad camera doesn't do the scene justice

Thursday evening I got to go on a night flight with my student and we had a blast. The experience of taking a small plane up at night is especially delightful. The airport is peaceful and has a quiet charm to it as you preflight the plane and get ready to fire up. Pretty blue lights line the taxiways and the orange windsocks are illuminated and look like paper lanterns. Then as you accelerate into the sky, the bright white runway lights give way to the panorama of the lit-up city. Yes, I enjoy going aloft at night.

We toured the central valley, getting in the requisite landings at several airports: Merced, Castle, and Modesto. We had the airports all to ourselves, as often is the case at night. Then as a treat to top off the training flight, we arranged to do a couple touch-and-go landings at Sacramento International. It’s pretty cool getting to join the same lineup for a runway as the “big boys”; we followed a Delta MD-90 to Runway 16L and were told that behind us was a United 737. Fun stuff!

Yup, that's SMF from above (Yes, different airplane; had to borrow a snapshot from another flight)

With the lesson starting just after sunset and lasting 3.5 hours, it was after 1:30 a.m. before I finally got home and hit the sack. Worthwhile, and yes, tiring; I’m not a night person.

For some reason after drifting off to sleep, I dreamt I was still flying and trying unsuccessfully to stay awake while my student was getting ready to land! I guess I must have been really tired to be dreaming about sleeping, ha!

Ironically, the next morning I was reading in the book of Daniel, one of my favorite parts of the Bible, and the story happened to be about someone who also had a strange dream. As the account in Daniel chapter 2 goes, the famous Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar was in a frenzy because of a dream that he apparently couldn't remember, but nonetheless felt was very important. Dreams in the ancient world were considered communications from the gods and he was anxious to know what this dream was and what it meant.

Of course the court astrologers were useless in remembering the king’s dream for him, but in the end it was a Hebrew exile named Daniel who saved the day because he had a connection with the true God who had given the dream.

It’s a remarkable account and you can read it here to get the details, but the thing that stood out to me this time reading it through was the personal interest God had in the Babylonian ruler. As Daniel recounted the details of the dream, he started out by reminding Nebuchadnezzar what he had been thinking about before dropping off to sleep and the reason why he had this dream.

“As for you, O king, thoughts came to your mind while on your bed, about what would come to pass after this”. (Daniel 2:29 NASB). Nebuchadnezzar had reached a pinnacle of glory and success that few have ever achieved, but just like any other human being, he was still wondering, What next?

The answer to that question came directly from God: “He who reveals mysteries has made known to you what will take place.” (Daniel 2:29 NASB). The dream and its interpretation gives a fascinating outline of 2500 years of world history, all foretold accurately before it happened. At the end, the last culminating event is explained. After millennia of conquest and change, God Himself would set up a kingdom that would never end. And that was the main message He wanted Nebuchadnezzar to know. 

“Inasmuch as you saw [the object that symbolized God’s kingdom]…the great God has made known to the king what will come to pass after this.” (Daniel 2:45 NASB).

What a neat encounter with God! He was interested enough in a pagan king’s musings about the future to give him a glimpse of what would happen and the ultimate ending. And He was interested enough in you and me to preserve that story so we could see just how it turned out as foretold.

Just like Nebuchadnezzar, I believe God wants each of us to know what the great hereafter holds as well. All the events predicted by dream have happened except for the last one. Sometime soon it’s going to happen, all the chaos and heartache is going to end once and for all, and “the God of heaven will set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed”. (Daniel 2:44 NASB). Sound like something you’d like be a part of? I sure would!

Aloft Again

Hello folks, I think it's time for another post, wouldn't you say? Looks like it’s been a grand total of 3+ years since I’ve touched this space—woops! As you might imagine, quite a bit has happened. So let me summarize:

Spring 2015: I taught my first ground school class at Weimar Academy, my high school alma mater. Class size: 3. But what’s really great is that one of them went on to earn his wings and is a private pilot now!

A field trip to the local airfield to look at some real planes

Summer 2015: I got hired for my first ever job as a pilot! It was a summer contract flying a Cessna 172 over the Sierra Nevada mountains to spot fires and report them. It was a one-of-a-kind summer and in fact I’m going to write a book about it—stay tuned!

Using my Commercial ticket for the first time

Fall 2015: I joined the ranks of flight instructors. I learned a lot through the tough certification process and my first checkride failure; I learned even more when I started teaching people for real! I began instructing right where my own aviation journey started, at the great flight school in Auburn, California.

Another very expensive piece of paper. But, oh, the possibilities...

Winter 2015: Gary Roberts, a missionary pilot, extended the opportunity for me to join him in Papua, Indonesia. For the first time, it looked like I was going to reach that long-sought-after goal of becoming a real mission pilot. 20 months later, we’re still waiting for all the right elements to come together, one of them being a visa. I’ve been learning a lot about patience and God’s timing.

Papua, Indonesia (left half of the island): future home one day?

Summer 2016: A friend called me to ask if I could help ferry his plane from my local airport to his home in Montana. Long story short, I ended up not only helping fly the plane up, but staying the summer to train his brother-in-law for his instrument rating. To complicate things, I had yet to become a CFII (instrument instructor) myself. Want to hear about the adventure and the lessons God taught me that summer? Well that’s right…that’s going to be my second book!

On the way up to Montana; before the girls in the back started getting green

Fall 2016: Transition time. The prospect of going to Indonesia was stalled indefinitely. With business as an instructor being hit-and-miss at best, I was unsure what to do in the short-term. I nearly ended up in Tchad, Africa, then Midland, Texas (looking back, I'm glad I didn't end up doing that). Finally I stumbled into a salaried instructor job just one hour from home and signed on with EVA Flight Training Academy.

Pipepline patrol pilot interview in Midland, TX

Summer 2017: After 8 months of teaching at EVA, I still can’t believe how much God has blessed me. Though teaching wasn’t my first love, this job has fit my personality like a glove. While I wait to see how God writes the next chapter of the story, I continue to learn more about faith and flying each day. I can only hope and pray my students will eventually want to learn more about faith themselves one day—and that perhaps we could spend eternity together.

The journey continues...

On the Horizon

I had the special opportunity to give a short talk this morning to a group of neat high school students at my alma mater, Weimar Academy. The topic: missionary aviation, and how God needs mission pilots. How to take the first step? Well...we are working on setting up a Mission Pilot Ground School class this fall! If we get a minimum number of students to sign up, I'll be teaching it with my recently acquired Advanced Ground Instructor certificate.

The potential is pretty exciting because ground school is just the first step. As soon as I return from my summer job, I will be diving into Flight Instructor training so that not only will I be able to teach these kids about flying, but I will be able to teach them how to fly! So that's the latest and greatest, and I'm looking forward to seeing how this all pans out.

Meanwhile I've got some studying to do to get ready for my own training!

Lesson 5 Load Factors and Props

It's pretty interesting how doing maneuvers in an airplane will increase the amount of weight the wings are effectively having to support. In fact, if you get too happy with your yanking and banking, it is very possible to overstress your airplane. Hmmm, I can already think of other applications for that type of a principle. Perhaps something to do with taking on too much load of anything and getting overstressed? Hope you enjoy this lesson, and yes there are actually more on my Youtube channel, which I will eventually be posting here, one by one. (Just a hint that if you get impatient, you can go and watch the others already).

Lesson 4 Ground Effect & Stability

Continuing to pump the lessons out. (I'm actually working on processing Lessons 8 and 9 on the computer as I post this). You wouldn't believe how long it takes to get a good take of a lesson - with all the goof-ups, getting tongue-tied halfway through, forgetting where I was going, going around in circles, and the worst: realizing I've been saying something that makes absolutely no sense. So the record button on my iPad screen gets a good workout (huh?) as I start and restart the filming. But in the end, I am quite certain that I've gotten a lot closer to mastery in teaching my subject than when I got started. And when things finally go (almost) as planned, I have the pleasure of letting you watch another edition of SkyBound: On the Ground. So here it is; enjoy!

Lesson 3 Aerodynamics - the Dark Side of Lift

Alright, here is the next video in my SkyBound: On the Ground series, and in it we discover that sometimes producing lift also produces other, less desirable things as well. So enjoy it the video (and sorry for the thumbnail that Youtube grabbed - makes me look like I'm explaining a toothache to the dentist).