Jetwhine Welcomes a New Voice: Scott Spangler

Do you know this fellow?

Scott Spangler and I recently met for the first time at a Starbucks in Oshkosh, land of each summer’s AirVenture . Although this was our first meeting in person, Scott and I have corresponded by letter, e-mail and phone calls for over a decade. He’s the former editor of EAA’s Sport Aviation magazine.

Funny how this industry has a way of bringing people together even after all that time. I remembered Scott as the guy who granted me permission to run one of his excellent editorials about the flight training industry in the first edition of a book, Professional Pilot Career Guide. When I was editor at IFR Refresher magazine, I also recalled that he was smart enough to tell me he hadn’t flown in the clouds in years when I tried to recruit him as a writer there.

But we always stayed in touch. Now that Jetwhine has grown beyond the ability of one beleaguered writer – that would be me – I am really pleased to have Scott add his voice to our industry chorus.

He’ll be adding his two cents about a wide variety of topics, flight training, sport aviation and perhaps even the occasional glimpse of new flight technologies. I’m trying to get him to tell me more about the powered parachutes I see buzzing around at AirVenture each summer. These are akin to the motorized backpacks my friend Norman Rhodes at The Digital Aviator keeps telling me about.

Who is Scott Really?

A pilot since 1976, Scott M. Spangler was the founding editor of Flight Training magazine. In 1999 he launched and edited NAFI Mentor for the National Association of Flight Instructors and later assumed the position of editor in chief at the Experimental Aircraft Association. After seven years at EAA Scott took his freelance writing full time. He continues to write for EAA publications, and he’s also written for Air & Space Smithsonian, Overhaul & Maintenance, Aviation for Women, Airport Journal, and a growing number of non-aviation titles.

Aviation continues to be Scott’s first love.

An instrument-rated commercial pilot, he flies for fun and recreation. Whether it’s flying an amateur-built Sportsman 2+2 from Seattle to Anchorage or an evening of flight-seeing in a trike or powered parachute, what’s important to Scott is getting off the ground. Aviation education is an overpowering interest for him as well because he understands the key to safety is initial and recurrent training while also being sure not to lose track of the prime ingredient … having fun in the sky.

If you’d like to chat with Scott about a story idea, make an industry comment, or tell him why you thought his last post was completely off base, he swears he’ll answer all e-mails that come to him at scott@jetwhine.com

Welcome Scott.

Rob Mark, editor 

Technorati tags: Scott Spangler, Jetwhine, aviation blog, pilots, flight training magazine, light sport aircraft, flight training