Felix nordmark

P assionforFlying T W V F C hroughtheeyesof

est alley lying l

Acknowledgements I have to thank the Palo Alto Golf Course for letting us use their fields for interviews, as well as West Valley Flying Club for being so cooperative and letting us wander around the airport with cameras.

Most importantly, I must thank Freestyle for making this project possible for me and for providing the environment to produce my creative work.

3

Table Of Contents Preface........................................................................7 Introduction.............................................................9 Chapter1Aviate.....................................................11 Chapter2Navigate..........................................17 Chapter3Communicate.................23 Conclusion..............................................................27 WorksCited............................................................29 5

Preface This book has been a terrifically fun adventure for me to undertake. Whether it was showing up at the airport early in the day to catch the morning light for an interview, or watching the sun set on a field of planes. I decided to document West Valley Flying Club because I have always had a passion for aviation. West Valley seemed like a great place because it stood out as the only club at Palo Alto and as one of the more modern places around with simulators and some of the nicest planes in general aviation. The decision turned out to be a great one, as my partner Rohit and I went out and met the people of West Valley who have been consistently very nice to us and are very helpful with offering whatever we need. At the same time all the neighboring locations, such as the golf course, were very nice in allowing us to use their location to film our interviews.

There have, however, been some difficulties, as coincidence would have it both I and the previously mentioned Rohit happened to contact the same place at the same time for our respective documentary projects; this became sort of a mess that was not sorted out until the last minute when our Film groups were rearranged and Rohit and I partnered up. It has also been difficult to hit deadlines on this very book as I have been consistently three days behind every deadline. I only have myself to blame for that as I had no idea what specifically to write about when I initially started, which ended up putting me behind. However, a brief conversation with Mr. Greco, the Freestyle English teacher, put me right on track. I decided to use the idea of organizing my book according to the aviator’s defining phrase, “Aviate, Navigate, Communicate.� as the structure (and titles) of my chapters. Overall, this project has been a lot of fun and a great learning experience. Nothing compares to meeting the people who have done the things that you aspire to do.

7

Introduction “Deciding where I wanted to work and where I wanted to teach people again, it was very clear to come home, back to West Valley because the combination of the equipment and the resources in terms of simulators and classrooms and everything that we have above and beyond just the airplane and then also the people, I mean the instructor core at West Valley are unlike instructors you’ll find almost anywhere else. I mean these are not kids looking to build hours to go on to the airlines these are all people that have been there done that and now this is what they really want to do and you get pilots that have thousands and thousands and thousands of hours and there’s no substitute for that experience.” -Jim Higgins Aviation was one of the biggest innovations of the 20th century, with all new high-speed transportation making the world a smaller place. However, giving people access to the sky unleashed an unexpected side effect on the world. A passion in people was unlocked. This passion is something that I and many others fall victim to: a yearning to leave the grips of the earth and soar above the surface with speed and delicacy.

This passion is a want for speed and height, two things that require an incredible amount of energy, and energy is expensive, to say the least. In the words of Jim Higgins , “you need that elusive combination of both time and money .” This is where the issue begins to arise: passion is a beast that slowly eats you from the inside out if not fed, and the aviation aficionados can often find it hard to get the resources needed to feed that passion. This brings us to West Valley Flying Club one of the providers of the resources needed to fly.

9

Chapter 1 Aviate

According to the Federal Aviation Administration (or FAA) the top priority for the pilot in command of an aircraft in case of emergency is to “Aviate,” or to maintain control of the aircraft.

In order to do so the pilot has to identify what is happening to the aircraft. In terms of entry into general aviation this means getting acquainted with the difficulties and attempting to address them. After doing some interviews and talking to people in the general aviation industry, I found out that the most common impediments for people who want to fly include a lack of finance, a lack of time, and, in some cases, fear of the dangers that come with leaving the bounds of earth at 150 miles per hour.

When talking about the

price of learning to fly, Steve Blonstein says it takes “deep pockets” to reach the finish line. This is because flying is as you may have guessed is not exactly cheap. West Valley estimates the cost of getting your private pilots li-

cense at $18,300, Assuming you make the average bay area salary of $65,000 this is a massive 28% out of your yearly salary and thats with the bay areas sky high wages. With the average United States income at $26,965 it becomes easy to see why financial issues tend to arise.

The second major issue that seems to be prominent in general

aviation and training to be a pilot, is students not having enough time.

According to Steve Blonstein becoming a pilot typically takes 70-80 hours, he recommends at least two or three one to two hour courses a week. This however is for the basic private pilots license, to receive a more advanced license takes 40-50 hours for an instrument rating (the ability to fly in clouds, low visibility, and above 18000 feet) getting a commercial rating (the ability to receive compensation for flying) can require upwards of 250 hours. The problem becomes that if students are taking lessons less than twice a week they tend to forget more between lessons and have to spend more time reviewing what they did the week before, causing the entire process to take more time. More time at a rate of $215 per hour exaggerates 11

the financial problem and ends up making the whole process far more taxing on the student.

The third large roadblock many students have is less quantifiable that the two previous problems and was less known to me when I began researching for this book. The problem is some people who dream of flying are afraid of flying. However, this fear can be difficult to justify as by most calculations general aviation flying and driving can be found to be equally as safe over long distances.Another factor to consider when it comes to fear is that people tend to be afraid of things they can’t control; this is the cause of much of the fear about commercial flying. However, this does not apply to general aviation, particularly to a student who is the one doing the flying; this fact alleviates the fear of being at the mercy of someone else.

15

Chapter 2 Navigate

The FAA states that the second priority for a pilot in distress is navigation, or making sure you know where you need to go and how to go about getting there. In the becoming a pilot sense, this means recognizing the difficulties in your path and finding ways to navigate around and through the narrow spaces between them – in simpler words, overcoming the problems.

The idea I’ve gotten from most of my research is that the best way to overcome a problem in aviation is passion. Mckinley Siegfried, a pilot and volunteer at the EAA, puts it this way: “[flying is] usually something they’re passionate about. They think that it would be very cool but they’re deterred very easily. “I would tell them that it is just the coolest feeling in the entire world and you don’t get that feeling until you solo, when

you’re learning with your instructor next to you it doesn’t really hit you that you’re flying, you know you’re defying gravity you’re doing something that people aren’t naturally supposed to do and you don’t get that feeling until you’re by yourself in the airplane and you take that first lift off, take off and its a magical amazing feeling.” The general idea is that a passion for flight will get you past any difficulties that you may encounter. You may ask yourself, well, what if you aren’t passionate about flight, then what? The truth is that unless you have a passion for it, getting it to work can be difficult. According to Steve Blonstein “There’s a pretty high fall out rate for student pilots, for various reasons. It’s harder than they thought it was going be, it costs more money than they thought it was going take, its not as fun as they thought it was going to be, their not as dedicated as

they thought they would going to be. So there’s a high fall out rate.”

Despite the fact that the actual act of controlling an airplane is not much more challenging than driving a car, it takes far more mental resources to make sure you’re safe at huge heights and speeds, and an even greater amount of physical resources to get you to such height and speed. It ends up being difficult to devote all these resources to flying if you aren’t passionate about it.

If you are passionate, however, you will find that passion always finds a way. In one such example, Jim Higgins, an instructor at West Valley, teaches a student who always wanted to fly but the opportunities did not present themselves until rather far into her life:

17

“It’s usually something they’re passionate about. They think that it would be very cool but they’re deterred very easily. “I would tell them that it is just the coolest feeling in the entire world and you don’t get that feeling until you solo, when you’re learning with your instructor next to you it doesn’t really hit you that you’re flying, you know you’re defying gravity you’re doing something that people aren’t naturally supposed to do and you don’t get that feeling until you’re by yourself in the airplane and you take that first lift off, take off and its a magical amazing feeling” - Mckinley Siegfried

“The perfect example is the, some way to say nicely, older woman who I am teaching now who had wanted to be a pilot all of her life and she’s in her 60s or something and has gone through her career and finally is getting the chance to kinda go back and do what she always wanted to do. It was her son that provided the opportunity to do it because her son actually said, ok im going to go and do this and she said well I guess I can follow along with you.”

This example makes it clear that passion always finds a way.

Learning something new far into one’s life is rare for most people but as Jim tells us people who are born with the “flying bug” tend to find their way into the air.

19

Chapter 3 Comunicate

The FAA puts communication as the last vital priority for the pilot in command in case of an emergency. This does not make it unimportant as it is still one of the things the pilot must do to ensure the safety of the flight, it’s just less important than keeping the plane flying and knowing where you’re going. In the getting into flying annology this means you need to have other people. A large part of any learning process is the teacher, or in this case the flight instructor.

In learning another important part is your peers, or in this case, fellow Private pilot students.

To simplify, in order to communicate you need a community.

This is much of what sets West Valley apart from a typical flying school. It’s a club, not a business.

The focus and goal of all its members is to build a community and be friendly, which they do by or-

ganizing events; these include the monthly pizza and barbecue and their “California Passport Program,” in which the club hands out prizes for flying to a certain amount of California airports.

There are 240 airports to visit and prizes for 25, 50, 100 and 200 visited. Another added bonus of flying at a nonprofit club is that the focus of management isn’t entirely on money. Steve Blonstein, the general manager, says that “It it’s sort of a self-selecting process whereby you kind of only want the people who are deeply passionate about safety and flying to remain.” At a typical for profit flying school the staff may try to keep a student flying even if they begin to lose interest because losing a student is losing a paying customer, which can sometimes be a death sentence for a for profit school where a set amount of money needs to be passed on to executives at the top.

At all these events you can meetsomeincrediblepeoplesuchas Don Styles, who I met on a “sightseeing flight” for the purpose of getting pictures and video for this very book. He told me about his experience as an aerobatics instructor doing things such as aiming for the plane’s shadow on a cloud for accuracy practice. When in the air with him you could tell he was good.

When doing a stall it took him less than a second to recover to stable flight, compared to 3-4 seconds for most beginning pilots. At the same time there are other people like the previously mentioned Jim Higgins, who has flown as an airline pilot, the type of flying that carries the strictest of regulations. These are only the people I have met, but from looking around, all the people at West Valley seem to be have the same high standard in terms of their aviation history and experience.

23

Conclusion

It is clear that passion is a big part of aviation. The people who succeed are those who love flying, those born with an inexplicable urge to leave the bounds of earth.

West Valley continues to do what it has done best for 43 years, giving people a place to fly and do what they love.

The people there continue to be passionate about what they do while providing a sense of “down-to-earthness,” excuse the pun, that simply isn’t present at other flight schools. If you are interested in flying but don’t think you have the passion for it, this should not serve to tell you that you can’t do it. You can’t know if you have this passion until you actually test it. If you are interested, try flying and see if you like it. There will be challenges, but enough interest and self-motivation will get you into the air.

27

Works Cited “Average San Francisco Bay Area Salaries.” SimplyHired. n.p. n.d. Web. 14 March 2015.

Blonstein, Steve. Personal interview. 26 February 2015.

Styles, Don. Personal interview. 25 March 2015.

Greenspun, Philip. “General Aviation Safety.” Greenspun. n.p. 2002 Web. 14 March 2015.

Higgins, Jim. Personal interview. 26 February 2015.

“How much do Americans earn? What is the average US income and other

income figures. Fiscal cliff talks only useful in context of incomes.” mybudget360. n.p.

31 December 2012. Web. 14 March 2015.

Irish, Wes. Personal interview. 8 March 2015.

Siegfried, Mckinley. Personal interview. 8 March 2015.

West Valley Flying Club. n.p. n.d. Web. 15 December 2014.

“What are the differences in the types of pilot licenses (certificates)?” custhelp. Federal

Aviation Administration. 12 December 2003 Web. 14 March 2015.

“What is A-N-C?” FAASaftey. Federal Aviation Administration. n.d. Web. 13 March 2015.

29

Felix Nordmark is a student at Mountain View High School and attend Freestyle Academy. Felix loves to travel and has an obsession with planes. On the side he also plays soccer, badminton and perhaps an unhealthy amount of video games. He lives with his parents in Mountain View and enjoys traveling the world with them. He wants to go into aviation as either an engineer or a pilot, and at the same time wishes to spend his time photographing the aircraft he is around.

31