Aviation Education

It Takes a Community to Promote Aviation

December 21, 2015 by Scott Spangler

Promoting aviation to ensure its future viability and growth is something important to most of us who are involved with it personally or professionally. Individuals and organizations have promoted and pursued programs dedicated to inviting newcomers to the fold, and the results have often fallen short of those promised. Yes, there have been a number of one-on-one success stories, but the challenge is making this successful personal approach work on a larger scale.

The Raisbeck Aviation High School, a leader in science, technology, engineering, and math education is a worthy model for all to consider because it unites aviation’s many communities in pursuit of a common goal. Founded and operated by Highline Public Schools (District 401), RAHS serves 27 different school districts in the Washington’s Puget Sound region.

Its campus is located at Boeing Field’s Museum of Flight, making it the only aviation themed college-prep school that shares resources with an aerospace museum. And it receives an inspirational assist from the 200 or or so aviation related businesses that surround the school. But it goes beyond that, said Steve Davolt, RAHS’s coordinator of work-based learning. “Mentorships and internships have been an integral part of the schools since it was started 12 years ago.”

Mentorship pairs an RAHS student with an area aviation professional, he continued; both individuals make a one-year commitment, but many of them continue three or four years, until the student graduates. Every summer, nearly half of the 425-member student body participates in a 10-12-week internship, 60 percent of which are paid.

Building a Positive Aviation Future

June 16, 2014 by Scott Spangler

At American airports these days is hard to find a good word from pilots about their aviation future. After covering the 57th Sonex Aircraft Builder’s Workshop at the company’s Oshkosh, Wisconsin, hangars it seems clear I’ve been looking in all the wrong places and talking to the wrong people.

From as far away at Guam, the Netherlands, and the four compass quadrants of America, 21 people attended the workshop, and 14 of them brought guests—wives, sons, brothers, and building buddies—who attend the workshop free of charge and learn metal working by building an abbreviated metal wing section.

Most were first-time builders. Some already had Sonex kits at home, awaiting the courage the new workshop skills would give them to open the boxes. Others were still deciding on the model that best met their needs, and their future flights guided their decision making.

Most remarkable is that not once did I hear a work-shopper complain about anything aviation related. And all of them, except for one who was a student in training, were pilots. The closest one of them came was criticism of his own work; “I can do better,” he said.

Can’t we all.

Last Words: Charlie Victor Romeo

February 10, 2014 by Scott Spangler

Like moths seeking illuminated warmth, pilots are genetically drawn to aviation accident reports. Most say they pore over them to perhaps discern details that might keep them from ending up as the subject of their own accident report. As they read, I’m sure many have unspoken, fleeting thoughts similar to mine…Facing the same situation, I’D never do that!

Such thoughts are easy when reading the detail of an accident because we hear them in our individual intracranial echo chambers. Unless we’ve faced impeding doom, I’m sure the voices that play the different roles carry none of the original emotion, especially when reading the transcripts from a cockpit voice recorder, which by its phonetic initials is Charlie Victor Romeo, the title of a new 3D adaptation of a play first staged in 1999.

The film is now playing in New York and LA. It is listed on Netflix but is not yet available. After watching the trailers, which focuses on a snippet of the DC-10 arrival at Sioux City, one of the six airline accident CVR recitations, I’m not sure I want to. The presentation is all too real because the actors perfectly embody the focused and controlled pilot voice Tom Wolfe wrote about in the opening pages of The Right Stuff.

Watching these gripping snippets introduced a new voice—my own. Too many aviation tragedies are still the unintended results of decisions made by those involved. No matter how many accident stories we read, pilots still run out of gas, push the weather, and lose control of the airplane at low altitudes. We can find solace in the delusion that we’re immune to bad decision making, but how will we react in a situation with fatal consequences not of our own making? Will the CVR record a legacy of focused intent and composure? — Scott Spangler, Editor

Technorati Tags: aviation safety,Aviation Accident Rate,Aviation Education

Taking Measure of a Life in Aviation

November 26, 2012 by Scott Spangler

Beyond the kids, one of the pleasures of substitute teaching at Omro High School is talking with its principal, Brett Steffen. Infected in adulthood, he’s got a chronic case of aviation passion. I like it when he stops by during my student-free planning period because our airplane conversations are almost always thought provoking.

In the course of a conversation just before the Thanksgiving break, logbook tallies of total flight time and the number of different aircraft makes and models flown came up in some context now forgotten. Although he didn’t say it, I got the feeling that as a new pilot still building these aviation measurements, that he felt not quite equal to those with more experience. But he shouldn’t feel that way, nor should any pilot at any stage of their life in aviation.

What matters more to me is participation, and sharing what we’ve learned with others who share our interest in flight. The numbers in my logbook are inconsequential to the scores of aviators and enthusiasts who have taken the time to inspire, to influence, to teach, to reteach, to mentor, and to share the educational moments of their lives and, in the process, to change the course of my life.

Redbird Sims Changing Training Paradigm

October 29, 2012 by Scott Spangler

Given the rapid pace of change in cockpit technology, it’s really sad in a self-destructive way at how slowly change has come to the training paradigm that puts new pilots in those cockpits. With few exceptions, the way an instructor educates a new pilot hasn’t changed in nearly a century. The training duo talks a bit, maybe draws some diagrams, and then climbs into the noisy non-stop classroom that is the training airplane of your choice.

Certainly it was coincidence that sent me related e-mails on the same day. One was from Redbird Flight Simulation. In its first year, Redbird’s Skyport laboratory fledged 20 new private pilots for a flat fee of $9,500. More important, the simulator-based program took 38 hours, two-thirds the time of the national average time invested in the traditional training paradigm.

A contributing factor is GIFT, Guided Independent Flight Training, which introduces students to new maneuvers in the sim and automatically scores their performance. It works in concert with Parrot, Redbird’s communication training software, which coaches students until they are ready to fly for a CFI with a pulse, who is a mentor and coach rather than a primary instructor.

The second e-mail reported that the professional pilot program at the Fox Valley Technical College in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, had its two new Redbird FMX full-motion sims up and running. I responded not with if I’d visit, but when? I’d have to wait until noon.

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