My Flying Story Part 2: Medicals & Flying Clubs

 

 

A few weeks after the retreat (read Part 1 here), I got a package from Lisa! She got our address from Mommy, of course, being in contact with her with T-Tapp 🙂  She not only sent me four of the magazines from Women in Aviation, she also sent me a note with money to join WAI if I wanted to. And a CD with a song based off of the verse, “Be still and know that I am God”.

 

I was so excited! I read all of the magazines, looked up the website, and found out that actually, they DO have scholarships for people who want to fly, ‘just for fun’! It was too late to send in an application for the scholarships for 2014, so I knew I would have to wait until November of 2014 to apply for the 2015 scholarships. And oh it seemed SO far away!

 

My first three magazines 🙂

 

It started becoming a countdown….

…to April when I would send in the membership money (they require you to be a member through March of the year of the scholarship you’re applying for, so I wanted to make sure my membership was current when I applied).  It was a happy day when I got the little packet and membership card in the mail from them!

…then a countdown for my first magazine to come!

…then for the second magazine to come that would list all of the scholarships available for 2015.
I picked two scholarships I wanted to apply for and started reading up on what they required. One required that I get my third class medical and student pilot certificate. What was that?! I emailed Lisa several times, asking her questions 🙂

The student pilot certificate is sort of like a driving permit.  The 3rd class medical was basically a physical, only I had to find an ‘AME’…aeronautical medical examiner…to do it.  That was another happy day when I held that piece of paper that said I was physically fit to fly. It was starting to feel a bit more real!

 

I started writing the essays and putting the scholarship requirements together, and saw that they wanted to see what kind of involvement I’ve had with aviation. Ummm. None. Other than dashing out of the house when I heard a low-flying plane, or waving at a nearby crop duster as he looped over our house. So I asked Lisa again…what do I do?  I remember one of her suggestions was to visit a local flying club.

 

One of the many crop dusters we’ve seen this year 🙂

 

That intimidated me a little bit…you mean go to a meeting where I don’t know ANYBODY?!  Yikes! 😀

 

It turned out that the Warsaw Flying Club was getting a new hangar, and they needed help remodeling and painting the lobby area. Cassia and I went one evening and had a blast helping peel off old wallpaper, and visiting with some of the moms who had kids in the ‘Young Guns’ flying program .  We made new friends, and it was fun to be able to help out that way 🙂

 

I also visited the Mentone Flying Club during a meeting where they had a cookout. I asked Cassia if she wanted to come with me, because I was so nervous about going into a group where I knew NOBODY 😀  Especially since I was pretty sure there weren’t going to be very many other ladies, lol! She was interested in coming, so the two of us went together. I met the same instructor that taught Daddy how to fly, and also several other people. They were ALL so nice and very helpful, and I kept hearing good things about Ted Cox, Daddy’s instructor.  I asked Ted a few of my questions (if only he knew it was the beginning of many questions, haha!), including whether I should do ground school before, during, or after flight training.  Ted told me about Jim Ewen, who teaches ground school for free every January!

 

We also talked to another pilot named Brent.  When I asked him if he flew for the airlines he said, “No, I’m a crop duster.” Kind of like, “No big deal…I’m a crop duster.” Cassia and I lit up and started asking him lots of questions about that…we love watching the crop dusters around us! We also talked to a helicopter ambulance  pilot, and several other people. I realized during that club meeting that I REALLY enjoyed talking to pilots. I also became a ‘social’ member of the club that night 🙂  I found out that I didn’t really need to be nervous…they were all very welcoming and a lot of fun!  Cassia and I really enjoyed coming that night, and I started attending the club meetings whenever I could.

 

At this point I hadn’t told a lot of people yet about the possibility of flying.  I guess unconsciously I had this idea that I wanted to see if it would work out before I said anything about it.  The problem with that idea is that you miss out on a lot of help and encouragement from others in your journey…whatever it may be.  People aren’t waiting to see if you’ll succeed, they’re wanting to help you succeed!  I’ve seen that to especially be true in the aviation community.  I LOVE my flying club!  It’s like having a lot of uncles and grandpas cheering you on 🙂

 

 

At some point in time, I started realizing that God had bigger plans than for me to just ‘fly for fun’.  I’m still not sure what that is, or what that looks like…but I think God takes dreams that He’s placed within us, and then gives us ways to bless others with the things we love doing most!

 

Always, always there was the thought that maybe this is a silly thing to be pursuing. Maybe I shouldn’t be spending all of this money on it. Maybe this is frivolous …maybe it’s irresponsible…maybe.

It’s NOT that I haven’t enjoyed it!  I have enjoyed every.single.minute of my flight training 🙂    God gently kept nudging me forward, through encouragement from someone, or something I read that day, He kept (and keeps) telling me again, “THIS is where I want you to be! Keep moving forward!”

 

A big hurdle for me was/has been the cost of flying, which is why the scholarships appealed to me so much. When I first started applying for them, I also began saving whatever money I could, but I was pretty sure that if I didn’t get the scholarship, I wasn’t going to be flying. There was just no way.
Well, God is way, way bigger than my box! Thank goodness! And he keeps nudging me out of my box, too, which is rather frightening and exhilarating at the same time.  He is also a very good Father with all the resources of the world at His disposal…and He loves to give good gifts to His children 🙂

 

My next thing I looked forward to was ground school.  You have to take a few tests to get your Private Certificate, and one of them is the Written, or ‘Knowledge’ test.  I didn’t have the money to fly yet, but I could get the book work part out of the way plus it was going to be fun to at least learn more about flying 🙂  Ground school started on January 6th of this year…I wrote in my journal that night, “Tonight I had my first night of ground school-YAY!”

 

 

 

to be continued 😉

 

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