Snakes on a blog!

Greetings everybody. I’ve decided to take another stab at this blog thing, now that I’m actually flying for a living and may actually have something interesting to write about.

I’m currently working as a flight instructor out of Bay Bridge Airport on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. My school has two locations, Bay Bridge and BWI. Most of my students attend the US Naval Academy and are going through a program called Initial Flight Screening. This course is made to make sure that these student’s aren’t entirely inept at flying an airplane before they head down to Navy Flight school in Pensacola, FL. In our program they must solo before reaching 15 hours, as well as pass 2 stage checks (like drivers tests on crack) and 4 written exams. All in all I think this course is more difficult for the instructors than it is the students. While it is a screening program, the quality of instruction the students receive in the aircraft plays a big role in how successful they are. Thankfully because these students attend the Academy, they are very smart, very motivated, and pick things up very quickly.

I do most of my flying in the Diamond Katana.  Its not the biggest or most comfortable airplane, but all in all it makes a good trainer. It cruises anywhere between 110-120 knots depending on the power setting and only burns about 6 gal/ hour, which is pretty good for a general aviation plane.

Well that’s just a short overview of what I do. At the moment I’m at a bit of a lull as far as work goes because I have finished most of my students for the semester. I’ll try to update this on a fairly regular basis and include pictures that I take while flying around the MD, DE, PA, and NJ area.

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