And I’ve decided that after all the side jobs are done, I am closing up shop and not going to do any more contract work on the side.  The money may help make ends meet, but it really hasn’t been worth it when I look at my health and happiness… there are far smarter and more fun ways to grow financially and personally (and no, that ISN’T an open invitation to anyone who wants to pitch a MLM, Get Rich Quick, yada yada scheme on me too… I already have ideas and it doesn’t involve that kind of stuff).

If I do websites, they will be for me alone and my own enjoyment… and of course, I will be working on maintaining or growing sites that are part of my job at Cutter Aviation… though I admit that I will probably be relying more and more on knowledgeable, talented and punctual professional freelance developers (like the amazing Selene M. Bowlby of idesignstudios.com who literally saved me from checking in at the local insane asylum by assisting me with the Cutter project) to get those web development goals accomplished.

I guess, in the end, I find more enjoyment out of creativity (which is one part of design) and communication (social and professional) and will be focusing more on how those two pieces can help me become a more strategic thinker and planner.  I’d like to, for once, plan out campaigns for marketing channels and manage the process of implementing campaigns within each — the leader overseeing all the steps in the process from a higher level.  Unfortunately it has taken me a long time to realize that the talents that have been the “differentiators” in my career — the fact that I could plan, write, design, produce, and monitor all by myself — were actually doing myself and my clients / employers a disservice.  No one can do all those things and do all of them well enough to actually be that “golden employee” — at least, not for their entire career.  Eventually a project will get dropped, a deadline will be missed, or an entire campaign gets ruined because one step in the critical path was skipped.  And once that happens, either the employer loses trust in the “golden employee” and/or the “golden employee” cracks under the pressure to be perfect and goes into a literal motivational nosedive… losing incremental amounts of confidence in his or her talent with each thousand feet they fall.  Unfortunately, I think there are a lot of my peers out there that are either there already or are headed that way.  With social media and information overload, the pressure to produce is at an all time high.  With tightening budgets and deadlines so “sales can meet quota before the end of the quarter” the time available to plan and test strategies is at an all time low and in many cases, you are understaffed to begin with.  Then there is the ever-present pressure of the rockstars of the social media, marketing, and communications world… and the fact that you can’t show weakness because they never seem to!  Their Tweets are timely and topical and you set your standards way too high because of it.   I think that my generation is headed for another perfect storm… the mid-life crisis monsoon of Generation Y.

Sorry about that last bit… I guess this was more of a rant than I expected it to be!  Oh well… ’til next time everyone!

Buy the film at Amazon.com by clicking on this link: One Six Right The Romance of Flying.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the film, One Six Right is something of a documentary of Van Nuys Airport – the business general aviation airport in the United States and one of the most historic airfields still in the Los Angeles area.  It was created in 2005 by filmmaker Brian Terwilliger.

As Lil was using my office and the sole scanner in our household for the day in preparation for another large eBay sale today, I positioned myself in the living room with laptop and TV at the ready.  Instead of watching the usual schlock of Doctor Who, Top Gear, or even (God forbid) one of those Worlds Wildest Police Videos shows in the background while I worked, I decided to take advantage of Lil’s absence and pop in the DVD of One Six Right.

Within the first ten minutes of the film, my laptop was closed, my attention was squarely on the TV and my eyes were doing that halting weepy feeling you get when bagpipes play Amazing Grace at a memorial ceremony… and that way they stayed for most of the duration of the film.

The film is breathtaking – and that is an understatement.  For me, a person who considers himself pretty creative, the rich mix of beautiful cinematography, historical footage, and just the right mix of well done visual and digital effects astounded me.  I absolutely loved how there was no real narrator to the film, but rather an ever-changing array of real people who were involved with the history of Van Nuys Airport from early on to today.

When the movie came out, I was still living in New Hampshire and really didn’t have an attachment or even much awareness of Van Nuys Airport.  I knew it was the home of Clay Lacy Aviation and I knew of Mr. Lacy from his years of writing for Professional Pilot magazine and his history as one of the early pioneers of business aviation.

I remember being at the National Business Aviation Association convention in Orlando, FL in 2006 with my team from Daniel Webster College and seeing a faux movie theater facade installed in front of one of the meeting halls for a premiere of the film – thinking back, I should have taken advantage of that showing…

Since relocating to Arizona and visiting Los Angeles a few times, I have become a lot more familiar with Van Nuys and its role in our industry now.  Working at Cutter Aviation, I see quite a few customers who originate from VNY – and many more who regularly fly in and out of there, including our own fleet.

So that made the film resonate so much more with me now. It was amazing what that little extra familiarity did to increase my enjoyment of it… “oh look, that’s (insert person here)” or “cool, that’s a T-6 from the Dawn Patrol”.  It was funny how the airport, for me in this case, took on the status of the celebrity in and of itself!

The beauty of the film really struck me, and that’s what initially got me weepy; but later on it was the realization of the reality we are faced with in aviation now… that’s what really got me teary near the end.

When this film was launched, business aviation was really growing… and general aviation was growing slightly too.  FBOs were busy, manufacturers were selling airplanes, and everyone was feeling good about the future.  The film carried a theme of “aviation is good for the community” throughout and warned that airports were closing and threats came from the ever increasing property values around an airport, complaining neighbors, and developers who felt that a profit could be turned on land if the airport was removed and another strip mall was built up instead.

Now, only four years later, the industry is radically different.  The economy is significantly down, private aviation has been vilified by our government and as a result, flight hours are down.  Manufacturers and dealers are selling far fewer aircraft, if any, and maintenance providers are slow or empty without the traffic that they once enjoyed.  Pilot starts are down and flight schools are closing all over – aviation as a career doesn’t hold the romance for the masses that it used to.

We all know it’s just another downturn on a cycle of business that we’ve ridden for years… another hill in the rollercoaster of capitalism.  The unfortunate thing is that it’s like a rollercoaster without seatbelts… and no one knows who’ll get tossed off as it keeps speeding downhill.

So, for me, the film is something of a benchmark… a flag stuck in the ground at a certain point in our history that we can look and reminisce back to.  Like the people who romantically recalled parts of the history of Van Nuys and got a twinkle in their eye that closed with a certain restrained sadness over the passage of time and the regret it could not be relived in any other way than memory; I look at the film and feel the same.  Vicariously I feel sad for the passage of time and the fact that I could not have been part of their history – a history when it seemed like the sky was literally the limit and the future was bright for aviation.

I am sure it will be again, but it will be changed for sure.  It’ll take time for people like me and my peers to adapt and become comfortable with it – but along the way, we’ll have movies like this to watch and reminisce.  We’ll use it to live, if only for 90 minutes, back when it was all comfortable to us.

Buy the film at Amazon.com by clicking on this link: One Six Right The Romance of Flying.

Perhaps my sour opinion on cars were due to the fact I was driving a Dodge Stratus at the time — hardly a car one could ‘love’ per se.

However, over the past year, my contempt for the auto slowly turned to care as something slowly brought me around.  Perhaps it was the day I caught a segment on England’s Top Gear by mistake and actually started enjoying the petrolhead banter of those smarmy Brits — so much so that I started watching it religiously.  Perhaps it was the day I spent wading through Wikipedia reading up on the most basic of information on the art of motoring — allowing me to understand what a differential is, or what understeer and oversteer are, and of course, all the stuff that I could have understood about care and feeding of my car years ago if only I had paid attention to my brother.

Regardless, as the Dodge started to gasp it’s last breaths in the Fall, I started looking for it’s replacement.  And dammit, I wasn’t going to get a loveless car again.

I wanted a fun car… something to take advantage of the nice weather in Arizona.  I didn’t care much for practicality as Lil has the Jeep Liberty and that has enough practicality for our small family.  I wanted something speedy, yet not a gas-hog… so a two-seater would be fine.

The recommendations came in… Honda S2000, Nissan 350Z, Mazda RX-8, and Mazda MX-5 Miata.  The prices for the S2000 and RX-8 were a bit out of my range and the 350Z wasn’t really that nice-looking for my needs.  The Miata reminded me of the British sports cars like the Triumph and the MG that I always liked, so I chose that.

Prices for Miatas were good too.  I kept seeing $4k to $7k cars in on Auto Trader and other sites — a good price range for me!  But I slowly began understanding why some were priced low… the harsh AZ sun wasn’t kind to the tops and interior of a lot of them… and others ran like a run-out, TBO’d Lycoming O-235 on a Fly-By-Night flight school plane.  I found out that I had a task on my hands.

Eventually I came across the right car at the right price… and ironically it was at BMW of North Scottsdale — a place that you’d think wouldn’t be the first place for a deal on a used car.  But they had a nice 1999 Miata in dark green (or Emerald Mica as they call it) with 55,000 miles.  Nice interior, nice exterior, and a strong  engine.  I did a little haggling with my salesman (see John Sarno there… he’s a good guy and did right by me) and drove it off the lot a few days later thanks to a great auto loan deal from Wings Financial Credit Union.

Over the past few months I have fallen in love with driving.  It’s the first standard transmission (5 speed) I’ve ever driven and I can’t imagine driving any other way.  It’s quick and really fun to drive… and has made the morning commute to Sky Harbor far more enjoyable than the Dodge ever did.

But then a wayward rental car bonked into the back of her last Saturday, leaving a nasty looking scrape on her bumper and quarter panel.  Though she was still fully drivable and in reality, the damage was far less than what I drove around with on the Dodge… it was just the pride and principal of the thing.

Luckily I have Progressive Insurance and the guy who hit me was the manager at the rental car place… and therefore no major headaches or delays.  I could fix her right away.

So I took her to the collision shop today and dropped her off… and got a rental car for the next ten days while my baby is in the shop.

And I REALLY miss my Miata after driving this thing…

I got a Nissan Sentra as a loaner.  It’s new enough and still has that new car smell, but who cares about new car smell on a boring box on wheels?  It’s got lots of room… almost too much room for a sedan.  My arms dangle on either side and the “well” where an arm rest should be on my right side is a gaping abyss with cupholders at the canyon floor that were obviously built for Big Gulps.

So evidently the product designers at Nissan found that the Sentra demographic have a sincere love for soft drinks I guess.

But, more than all other things missing, the two most important things missing on this Sentra that are standard on my Miata are the clutch pedal and balls.

My left foot feels extremely lonely and coming off stoplights or out of park, it stomps uselessly on the floor in search for some fun of it’s own.  Now, it doesn’t get jealous of the right foot though… because the right foot really isn’t that enthralled with the lumbering lack of response when it steps on its pedal.

I just can’t go back to the lack of control that an automatic transmission seems to have.  I can’t downshift, pull away, or control the engine in the ‘on-demand’ manner that the 5-speed gives me.  I never thought I’d prefer a standard, but I really do!

Yes, the Sentra has the acceleration of a constipated walrus.  But its actually a good thing that it doesn’t peel away from a stop like the Miata… lest my tiny body within this cavernous roadable hallway would thrash about like a “Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm-Flailing Tube Man“.

I know that some people love big, spacious cars… and with the number of Hummers, Cadillacs, and dual-axle jacked up pickups in this state, I think Arizonans are the kings of the cavern car enthusiasts.  I am far more comfortable in the tiny comfort of the Miata — with the sensation I am wearing the car, not riding upon it.  I love the feeling of going over the bumps in the road and how you sense every movement in the Miata.  She has an elemental feeling about her… whereas the Sentra has this complete lack of element.  The Sentra has this bubble feeling about it… completely isolating the driver from the road.  That may be a perk for some, but certainly not for me.

So I have ten days to tolerate this tug boat and then, thankfully, I’ll get my Miata back for some “Zoom Zoom” action again.  And I can’t wait…

Why only seventeen?  Because we’re too busy with the airplane project to come up with three more!

Hope you enjoy the chuckles… and hope they don’t hit too close to home!

THE LIST…

When your wife says your son was caught with dope and you get excited and run to the garage and turn on the lights.

When your new $25,000 truck sits outside in the snow while you protect $800 worth of wood and metal in the garage as you procratinate in building one of your wings.

When you don’t understand why your wife is mad at you for using the master bath shower stall as a spray booth — I mean, those parts aren’t going to zinc chromate themselves!

When you’ll spend $400 on gas, three days on the road, and 30 hours sifting through a junkyard in Wyoming in the middle of winter to find three good turbocharger cores, but can’t stand waiting for more than 5 minutes holding a purse outside the dressing room at Macys

When the local stray cat goes missing, but weeks later you find him after “smelling” something in the backyard — and it take 6 hours and a 12 pack to extricate him from the pile of parts in the yard.

When you go to an airplane museum for fun and end up needing to rent a trailer to come home.

When your idea of interior design is mounting pieces of battered metal “scored” from your wreckchaser friend on the walls, and you show your wife in all seriousness that Moto Art website when she says she wants a new dining room table.

When more than 20% of your home “junk drawer” in the kitchen contains either broken clecos, AN bolts, or odd shaped hydraulic fittings.

When Lava soap replaces that Aloe and Shea Butter pump soap at your kitchen sink.

When the stack of Aircraft Spruce catalogs, Trade-a-Planes, and EAA Magazines in your bathroom is declared a piece of furniture.

When you’ve got a half-finished deck and patio out back, two-thirds of your house has been covered in Tyveck wrap for a year, and the shed out back still has a roof covered in a blue tarp, but you pride yourself in engineering and constructing a wooden rib and longeron steamer in two weekends.

When the yearly tax-return in April always seems to vanish in May when the local “fly market” happens at the local airport — I mean, where else are you going to find those fairings for that Navion you may eventually buy when the kids graduate from college?

When you are the only family for at least 400 miles that has a microfilm reader on the bureau in your bedroom.

When you become insanely jealous and wish YOU had a dry lakebed where you could horde cool stray castoff projects.

When your shop vac gets more use than the Hoover in the hall closet does.

When your digital camera has taken only about a dozen photos of your kids playing teeball, but is credited with 2000+ photos documenting your project.

When you can’t hide your stray fingernail clippings in the carpet because they are all stained black from your overzealous usage of the parts cleaner.

and that’s it!  Seek help now if any of these apply…

Since we moved to Arizona, I have been wanting to get a cat to live with us.  Lil and I both looked at the adoption organizations and fell in love with all sorts of cats, but never had the ability to get one as we always made excuses — wait until we had a bit more money, a bit more time, a bit cleaner house, etc.  I knew we wanted a cat, but the excuses seemed neverending.

Until Wednesday night.

On Wednesday night, my carpooling coworker Tom dropped me off in front of the clubhouse at our community, and immediately I heard a pleasant chirping meow greeting me as I got out of the car.  Looking over to a boulder in the landscaped garden area, I saw a skinny, but adult calico shorthair cat looking right at me — as if she was talking right to me.  Being a sucker for petting cats, I went right over and started petting and scratching her.

Then the purring started — which absolutely melted my heart.

I picked her up and noticed she had no ID or anything.  She was clearly thin and was certainly dirty — so I knew she had been outside for a while.  Unlike many of the strays around the area, she was so friendly and had no aversion to being picked up or anything.  I thought “hey, if Lil approves, maybe this little one can be ours!”

So the cat and I scooted to our home… or I should say, she followed me!  She came inside without hesitation and Lil fell in love with her as well!  We fed our little girl and then promptly got into the Jeep and headed to the pet store to pick up a litter box, cat food, a scratching post (or should I say, cat condo) and other essentials including a grooming brush.

On the way home, Lil and I thought about what to name our new little princess — and in honor of Thanksgiving and her autumn colored coat, we decided on “Pumpkin”.

We got home to find her exploring the house and “feeling out” Wolfie.  Though Wolfie is extremely docile, the cat’s instincts were still kicking and so she growled and hissed a bit.

She immediately knew how to use the litter box and that took a load off.  Though Wolfie is housetrained, her age betrays her and she has been spotting a bit more than usual.  If Pumpkin were to take the same habit, it might have been a disaster.

Pumpkin slept through the night well and has been a delight to have around!  She has a bit of a curious nature and has been jumping up on everything — counters, bureaus, furniture… you name it.  Other than that, she’s been great!

We took her to Dr. Benesh yesterday and he gave her a clean bill of health.  He estimates she’s about six months old and has no signs of FIV or Leukemia — what a relief!  Now, he wasn’t sure if she was carrying some little surprises of her own — but we’ll just need to cross that bridge when we get there.

I’m quite happy that Pumpkin “chose us” last week!  Her arrival into our house is much like many of the events that have happened to us over the last few years — serendipity in the purest form!

A post on how nuts we are in aviation.

Yep, nuts.

Read it at: http://adamwebster.com/2008/04/16/how-nuts-are-we/

Adam uses the example of a Pilatus PC-6 obsessed pilot who would literally do anything, anywhere — just to get the chance to fly a PC-6.  Yes, that’s the ugly STOL plane that can be found in the movie Air America… the one that looks like it stole aerodynamic theory from John Deere.

Anywhere means exactly that in this post — the PC-6 is used to get around in some of the most inhospitable areas — the jungles, the war torn, the mountainous.  Basically places where the closest Hilton is not just miles away, but time zones away.

I’d sell my first born for a gig flying a Supermarine Spitfire… but that really doesn’t count, right?

Regardless, it is a perfect example of how devoted many of us are to flying. A devotion that sometimes makes the most logically minded people make decisions that escape logic.

I mean, how many people out there in the non-aviation community would consider paying $120 an hour to rent a plane and fly to a greasy spoon restaurant at a far-flung airport just to have breakfast and then return?  How about commercial pilots that take a $20,000 a year job flying as a first officer on a Dash-8 when they have a $500 monthly payment to repay student loans plus living expenses?

Yes, we in aviation will go to extremes to show our commitment to the sky.

But we are certainly not alone in our professed passions.  From Alpacas to IROC-Z’s, there are committed devotees to various hobbies and professions in any given area. It’s something like tribalism — we identify ourselves through the people we associate ourselves with and our pursuits are something of a totem of ours.

Any devoted Harley-Davidson owner will certainly say that the motorcycle is a part of their family.  It is as precious as a living thing and the hours of maintenance and care shown in addition to the hours riding on it establishes a connection that truly personifies an inanimate object.

And it is that connection — that commitment, that prompts Harley riders to display their passion on their skin.  Tattoos are certainly the embodiment of the total (and seemingly permanent) devotion to their bike.  Bikers have been associated with tattoos for as long as I can remember and vice versa.

We in aviation have the same kind of commitment to an inanimate object as well.  We are drawn to the freedom of the sky, the smell of Avgas or Jet-A wafting from the engine when we taxi, the challenge of an unfamiliar airport, or the excitement of exploring a new place made possible by the plane.

We talk to our planes and nurture them through the toughest of times.  How many times have you almost had a full-blown conversation with your plane on a long cross-country or on a flight over water?  The plane is our best friend.

So why is it that we are so restrained when it comes to displaying our passion for aviation?  We’ll populate our houses with airplane photos or art, customize our license plate, or embroider anything in our possession with the N-Number of our plane.

But so very few of us have tattoos celebrating our love of aviation. Why is that?

It can’t be due to our fear of pain — I mean, have you ever worn a David Clark headset on a cross country of more than 2 hours?  Now that’s pain.

It certainly can’t be our fear of permanence — some of our debt loads and loans on planes (and lessons) may outlive us!  Along those same lines, it can’t be the high price of a good artist — I mean, have you seen the price of gas these days?

Some may say that aviation doesn’t have a heritage of rebellious behavior — but how do you explain the barnstormers or the air racers?

So what is it then?  Did we inherit a conservative nature from the airline pilot generation?  Did the morays of a professional appearance at all times on the job put a fear of any dermal expression in our heads?

Certainly a person can have a professional appearance and still be able to have some personal adornment.  I know of no airline that requires pilots to take their shirts off as part of the job — so what is the deal with something on a persons back or upper arm that will never be seen by the customer.

I am a pilot and aviation enthusiast and have a good amount of tattoo work myself — every bit covered by anything that can be considered to be a uniform — a polo shirt and shorts even.

Every one of my pieces is connected to flying — be it an actual airplane or even mythology.  I have made a commitment to my passion that all the work that is and will be on my body will be related to aviation like this.

But it’s so rare to find others like me out there — those of us who love flying so much that we’d take it to this level.

And as a result, I decided to start and build an aviation and flight-related tattoo website (another blog) and it’s called Tattoos In Flight.  Take a look at http://www.tattoosinflight.com.

I am interested in hearing the thoughts of other pilots and aviation folks on the questions I posed above.

I’d love to hear of and see tattoos devoted to aviation and flying and specifically, I am interested in seeing any general aviation or airline related tattoos.  As you’ll see on Tattoos In Flight, there are a lot of warbird and military aviation tattoos, but little on the civil side.  Email them to me at keough.ryan@gmail.com.

Feel free to drop a line below and leave your thoughts!

Earlier this week I got an email via Facebook of a fellow alum of Daniel Webster College (though a much more recent class) who now works at avionics manufacturer Avidyne.  She said she works directly with one of my former coworkers at the Collings Foundation (I only had three) and was the direct contact with the avionics department at Cutter Aviation, my new employer. Her spot in my network basically represented the crossroads of my professional career!

Another contact I made later this week through Twitter was made interesting by the intersection of my professional and personal life — aviation and tattoos.  Basically as I was promoting my other hobby blog TattoosInFlight.com (an aviation and flying tattoos gallery), we both determined we had been part of a network of tattooed professionals on the web called Inked Inc. from early on, yet had never crossed paths — and it was aviation (via Twitter) that crossed them for us!

So in other words, aviation is a really small world — a world that can make or break your career if you play your cards right.

If you make it work for you, it’s great.  With some quality and influential contacts, you can find new opportunities that can make your job search easier and more rewarding.

However, if you are a poor employee or have a tendency to burn bridges at your past positions, you’ll find the road to a great career to be bumpy or non-existent.  Word travels fast in a small, tight community and you need to take that into consideration when you make career moves.  Think about how many times you have heard “that guy is a crook” or “I’d never fly with those fly-by-nights” in your conversations with others in the community — it’s easy for people to complain and if they are complaining about you, good luck!

Now with rampant usage of email and the popularity of web networking and social media, the time it takes to grow a network has shrunk considerably — and the time it takes for word to spread as also done the same. In the information age, we are used to and expect almost instantaneous information.

For me, nearly every one of my career moves was done through the use of networking — and not one came from a traditional job posting.  With such a niche like aviation, each position takes a set of unique skills and specialties and in many cases jobs are filled through recommendations more than anything.  Based on that, its advisable to make friends and market your talents amongst them — because you never know when you’ll be looking or when someone may offer something better than what you’re at.

It’s always good to revisit and evaluate your network every once in a while — just to make sure your contacts are fresh and any holes you have in industry segments get patched up.  I personally have a schedule to just send personalized social emails to folks every once in a while so they know what I’m up to and to see what’s new in their world.  If a trade show is coming up, I try to email those who may be there to see if there’s a chance to meet in person.  Anything I can do to stay on their “radar” helps to keep the channels open — you never know when you might use them to travel the rough waters when faced with a layoff or furlough.

Here are some good networking resources to review before re-evaluating your own network:

Getting a Job: Networking 101 - by Daniel Bowen

Networking for a New Generation: Be Authentic - by Penelope Trunk

Business Aviation Networking Notes - by Matthew Keegan

And for those of you who are interested in venturing off into networking on the web, there are some great platforms to do so.  Here are some of the more popular:

LinkedIn - One of the largest professional networks out there. Make sure to check out “Etiquette for LinkedIn” by Penelope Trunk before making some missteps.

Twitter - One of the most interesting ways to network — in 160 characters or less.  See my feedback on Twitter at a past post here — and make sure to stop at @AeroTweets or search at Twellow to find aviation “tweeple” out there.

Facebook - OK, so everyone knows this 900-lb gorilla of social media, but still it takes a committed social networker to get immersed in Facebook and not have it overtake you.  I say, stay away from MySpace though — that’s becoming a dumping ground.

myTransponder - Still in beta, myTransponder has lots of great networking potential for aviation folks.  Right now you need to be invited to participate, but read “Making Aviation More Social” by Rob Mark at JetWhine to learn how you can participate until it’s officially launched.

Good luck on your networking journeys!

Just about anyone who is or aspires to be a pilot realizes pretty quickly that the symbolic aviators jacket is a must have — not because it’s a "need" per se, but because the ego forces it on you.  I mean, how many of us fly in a "Members Only" jacket afterall?

If you want to reinforce your new found hobby or career path with family and friends, the leather bomber jacket is a requirement.  Nothing screams "I watch Top Gun at least once a month and want to be Maverick in my C-150" like it. For some of us, it’s a love of the historic side of aviation that prompts us to go after that piece of stitched goatskin… to wear a jacket like the heroes of WWII is in some way, a tribute to their influence on us.

After a time, you may get a bit tired of wearing the sweaty leather in all climates and may switch to a nylon or cotton aviator jacket — while the leather gets relegated to the "dress" uniform.  The nylon jacket offers the bonus of washability if you have an oil-hungry plane in your care and for those gadget "cockpit is an office" types, the nylon usually adds more pencil holders on the sleeve than you can shake a No. 2 at!

Perhaps you are up North a bit, or like those ski planes in the winter.  If so, you may find yourself with one of the fuzzy collar jobs — leather or nylon.  For those of you who have flown off flat-top boats in a past life, you perhaps know nothing else other than a fuzzy collar jacket, for the Navy ALWAYS picks shearling. Gold wings look better with it I hear.

Either way, if you fly, you probably have one of these types of garments in your closet — and I am sure there are some stories behind it.  I encourage you to share a story of your particular aviators jacket by commenting here below my little story — their importance to aviation lore is just as important as the debate over tricycle vs. tailwheel planes or high-wing vs. low-wing.

My First Bomber Jacket Story

When I was growing up, I was given the opportunity at the age of 11 to attend a two-week summer camp at the National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, NY to experience "aviation."  For me, that was a critical time in my life as those two weeks formed the foundation for my aviation passion that has served me well so far!  Each day we’d come in with our parents as they dropped us off, and each day we’d walk past the gift shop where a genuine A-2 leather bomber jacket hung behind the counter waiting for someone to come by and buy it.  Each day I’d look at it after reading stories of guys like Gabby Gabreski or Bob Morgan — often accompanied by photos of them looking all heroic in the shot.  I aspired to be like them and wanted that jacket more than anything.  I was too young to be a pilot at that point, but I felt that jacket could get me closer somehow!

Six months went by and Christmas brought snow to the Buffalo area that made aviation seem as far away as the North Pole.  I was still reading the magazines and books that kept my flying mind sharp, but I remember I was getting blue — winter wasn’t good to explore and actually get my hands on actual planes, and paper was a poor substitute (and yes, this was before the Internets!).

When I woke up on Christmas morning, I was surprised to see that I only had a few small boxes and one large one.  My brother, half my age, had a lot more boxes overall — and though I chalked it up to favoritism for the youngest son, I still kept my hopes up.  I opened my small pile and was happy and appreciative for the books and a plastic plane model of a B-17 — but still wondered what the big one was.

I picked it up and it seemed heavy.  I was dreading the fact that it might be a sweater or a new snowsuit or something.  Clothes as a gift to an 11 year old is about as close to torture as you can get — it makes us think of back to school shopping at Penneys or something like that.  I figured it couldn’t be anything grand because mom and dad weren’t exactly rich.  My dad was a dairy farmer and my mom was a homemaker, so it certainly wasn’t a new Atari or anything (in fact, we never got a game system in my entire childhood).

But when I opened it, I nearly fell over with excitement.  In that box was the jacket… THE jacket… the jacket that was at the museum, behind the desk.  The one I dreamed of!  Mom and dad actually got it!

"It’s a few sizes too big for you, but you’ll grow into it" said mom.  Good thinking on her part — as I grew to be a bit of a tubby kid.

I tried it on, and though it was a bit floppy, it was fantastic!  I wore it all day — no matter if I was inside, outside, or right next to the woodstove.  I didn’t care how much I sweat, I had the jacket!

It was a companion of mine for years.  I wore it for my first flight lesson at the age of 16, and I wore it for my first warbird ride in a BT-13 that year.  I wore it all through my first unaccompanied airline flight to Washington DC for a school trip and never took it off while in the 727 (for luck of course!).

But perhaps the most significant thing that happened in the lifetime of the jacket happened when I wasn’t even wearing it.

After my parents split up, my mom took a job as a waitress to make ends meet.  My mom, being a tiny thing, was always cold and was heading out for work one night when she realized her jacket was still in the wash.  She asked me if she could wear my bomber jacket to work and I said "sure" of course, as I was babysitting my little brother at home anyhow.

My mom got out of work late in the evening, since she worked dinners and in the bar afterwards.  I was usually in bed well before she got home, so I put my brother to bed and I headed off after watching a bit of TV.

At 2:00 in the morning, I woke up to the phone… it was my dad.  He said that my mom had been in an accident on the way home from work and he was coming to pick us up as she was in the hospital.

My mom was driving home from work at about midnight when she fell asleep at the wheel of her car as she was driving into the valley where we lived.  The police estimated the car was traveling about 80 miles an hour when it hit a guardrail protecting a culvert, and went airborne before coming down in the ditch. My mom wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, as she had grown up in a generation that didn’t use them. Fortunately the car had an airbag and it kept her from being ejected, but it shoved her under the dash when the car hit the ditch upright.  She was able to get out of the car and pulled herself to a house next to the ditch and was able to call for help.

Because our local hospital wasn’t well equipped for trauma, mom had to be airlifted to the hospital in Rochester, NY.

I saw her the next day and she was OK for the most part.  Her left leg was badly banged up and she tore just about every ligament and tendon in her knee.  Only after years of therapy was she able to get most of it’s use back, but luckily it was the worst thing that came out of it… she was able to live life like normal, which was astounding when one looks at the accident and the condition of the car.

To this day my mom swears that it was the jacket that kept her from getting hurt worse or being killed — she said that it was my luck that had rubbed off in the jacket that kept her safe. She fought hard to make sure the paramedics didn’t cut it up or do anything to it when she was initially treated at the scene because she knew how much it meant to me. And the jacket even kept her safe on the helicopter flight — ever the lucky charm as it had served me!

I eventually grew out of the jacket and had to upgrade to another size — but we still have the jacket and my mom still wears it.  It might be a bit dirty and worn, but she loves it nonetheless. To her it’s a lucky charm that she’ll never get rid of — and to me it’s the symbol of mom’s love for me and my hobby, and her commitment to provide for us kids no matter how much it cost or how poor we were.  It may not have been able to help me fly physically, but it certainly gave my spirit the wings it needed to fly.

So please share your flying jacket story with us!  Make a comment below!

The Lockheed Jetstar is one of those airplanes that kind-of grows on you after a while.  If you were like me, you hated it at first sight in the aviation books you read as a kid.  Raised on the clean lines of the Gulfstream and Dassault Falcon lineage, I had little taste for the boxy-looking 1329 Jetstar myself.  Everything just seemed wrong: four engines where two should be… square windows… those big damn tanks on the wings… and what about that barn door of a tail huh?  Gosh, I wondered who in the heck would have loved it.

Later on, I found out it was me who would… along with many more.

Yeah, the Jetstar doesn’t have the sheer sexiness of it’s contemporaries, but that’s just it — without the Jetstar, there wouldn’t have been contemporaries!

The Jetstar was the first… the first of the screaming hot business jets. Sure, airplanes of various types had been used exclusively for business travel before the 1329, but many were war-weary surplus piston-powered hotrods burning 100 octane like the A-26 Invader that was converted by OnMark as the Marksman or Marketeer and the Lockheed Lodestar and Venturas that were converted by Howard as the 450 or 500 powerhouses.

The Jetstar was the first purpose-built bizliner that would burn kerosene — and that made it sexy for the captains of industry.

Gulfstream flew it’s first business plane, the G-I, in 1958 and marketed it accordingly — and though it burned kerosene too, it was just a turboprop. It had a big cabin and all, but for those less-educated in the field of plane-spotting, those twirly-thingies that spun around on the end of the whoosie-whatsits that made it go, made it look an awful-lot like a prop-job like all the rest before. When Mr. President of International Doodad Inc. hopped aboard, he couldn’t say he was “jetting off” and thus wasn’t nearly as cool as those who could pick up the sultry Jetstar.

So those who grew up seeing the Jetstar in the magazines and books of the 60’s loved it in all it’s roaring beauty.  Even though those four Pratt & Whitney JT12’s left a five-mile-long carbon trail behind them, it was still a thing of beauty because it was what the boys and girls aspired to — if they studied hard and ate all their vegetables, they might too someday become Mr. or Mrs. President of International Doodad Inc. and fly aboard their own Jetstar.

Of course, we all know what happened next.  Gulfstream caught on and came out with their G-II, which shared the nice big cabin of the G-I but had those sexy jets on the back… and then they came out with the III.  Bill Lear showed us that bigger wasn’t always better and gave us the Ferrari of the BizJet set with the tiny 23 and then the 25.  Then Cessna came along and showed us the Business Jet for the masses — the Citation, or “NearJet” as some called it.  Either way, the Jetstar was old-hat within a decades time and became something of a hand-me-down.  Lockheed never followed up with another business jet, so the Jetstar remained an only child.  The type attempted a revival with the P&W engines being replaced by TFE731s later as the 731 Jetstar and Jetstar II, produced between 1976 and 1978, but the airplane was surely on the decline.

Today there are indeed Jetstars operating around, but not many.  The FAA has about 70 of the 1329 on the civil register, but not all are flying.  Only two are registered in Arizona, one being a JT12 bird registered to Allied Signal (which makes me think it’s not flying) and a Jetstar II owned by a private company that seems to have recent photo records of operating (at least from Airliners.net and others). I fear that within a few years, even these holdouts will no longer see air under their wheels and will be grounded like those before them.  Perhaps they’ll go to a museum or worse, a technical school where their guts will be taken apart and put back together by mechanic trainees.  They might get parted out to maintain the examples still flying south of the border in Central and South America where they still remain fairly active.  But I fear many will just sit on the edge of airports with a “for sale” sign forever stuck inside the cockpit window, waiting for the day when the owner either falls behind on tie-down fees or they get fed up with having a broken plane, and the once-mighty bird gets reduced to scrap — a sad end, but unfortunately inevitable for many.

I hope one or two does stay flying — fueled by a passionate owner who gladly sinks hard earned cash into keeping the “first of many” in the air where it belongs.  Sure, it may be loud, dirty, and expensive as all hell — but it sure is sexy.

For More Information:

• A Great Page on the Jetstar by Robert Bogash
• Wikipedia Info on the Lockheed Jetstar
• Photos of Lockheed Jetstars on Airliners.net

But once you are 30; you’re an adult and there isn’t much left that’s off limits to you — except maybe an AARP membership — and that’s nothing I’ll look forward to. By this time, it’s assumed that you’ve got your life together and are past the entry-level jobs, have some sort of meaningful relationship, and are well on your way to personal success and happiness.

For me, I’ll remember my 30th year on planet Earth to be something of an interesting and strange year — one that became a perfect example of serendipity in motion.

Most everyone who reads my blog knows that I got hit with a layoff in March. Along with my team in the marketing department at Daniel Webster College, I was let go as part of a reorganization of that department.  For me, it was the end of a two-year employ at the college and a ten-year close relationship with DWC as a student, alumnus, volunteer, and employee (in that order).  It seemed like my life with DWC as an important part of my life ended with a 15-minute phone call on a Friday afternoon — and it wasn’t even ended by a person who had been part of my DWC family, but rather was a department head who had only known me for four months.

I was obviously crushed by the layoff and what followed was nearly four months of emotional roller coaster rides as I reflected on where my life was compared to where I hoped it would be when I first started my post-college career six-years earlier.

But after all that self-reflection I finally came to the conclusion that the layoff happened for a reason — because now I had the renewed spirit to go back to what has been my passion — aviation.

Though my Bachelor’s degree is in aviation management, I haven’t actually worked in the corporate aviation sector since I graduated six years ago.  My former position at the Collings Foundation was far more focused in non-profit marketing and publicity management, and though DWC had a flight department and an aviation program, I found myself doing little to actually promote that unit because it seemed the program was being purposely cut-back (note: this is just an opinion — it might just be the effect of the industry).

In effect, my participation with the aviation industry was waning — and I certainly wasn’t happy with it.  But now that I was unemployed, nothing was holding me back to find a niche back in the industry again.

So, I committed myself to finding a great position in corporate aviation — and thank goodness the Phoenix area is a haven of business aviation activity.  At any given moment in the Valley of the Sun, you’ll find at least a dozen aircraft of various sizes in our skies — so there’s a lot of options.

Unfortunately, the price of fuel and the soft economy has done a lot to curb hiring at many aviation companies, so jobs aren’t exactly overflowing from the career pages and job boards — especially on the administration side.  Only the most successful and solid businesses would venture to hire — and I was fortunate to find one — or rather it found me.

Back in September 2007, right before I moved to AZ to join my wife already down here, I got an “out of the blue call” from a Vice President at Cutter Aviation in Phoenix who had been surfing around and came across my personal website highlighting my experience in website development for aviation enterprises. He was interested in hiring me as a contractor to rebuild the company website — one that was in serious need of redesign.

What was ironic is that I had just returned from visiting my wife in Phoenix the night before.  I clearly remember seeing Cutter Aviation through the window on the Southwest Airlines flight I was on — especially memorable because Cutter has the old air traffic control tower from Sky Harbor Airport installed as part of their terminal and office building.  I remember saying to myself “Hey, I should find out more about Cutter” right before we took off.

So when I moved down, I met with the folks at Cutter and they eventually hired me as a contractor to do the redesign.  While I worked on that project, Cutter contracted me to do other things — advertisements, email campaigns, postcards, etc.  Very quickly I found myself getting well acquainted with this company — a well established company.

Unlike many corporate aviation companies, Cutter Aviation has been around for eighty years.  Many companies out there, other than airlines, have been around for less than 50 years — due in part to the birth of modern business aviation happening after WWII.  Others have endured mergers and buyouts — turning from familiar family operations into large corporate megaliths.

Cutter remains family owned, operates eight locations around the Southwest, and has a diverse offering of services — fuel to maintenance, charter to aircraft sales.  With such a vibrant product mix and position of markets, I easily recognized the stability of the company and the strength of the brand.

So when the layoff happened in April, I obviously looked at Cutter as the best opportunity for me. Though the folks I worked for as a contractor had an interest in my work, I wasn’t sure if they would have a spot for me. There wasn’t an immediate opening in marketing the company and I knew summer is a time for conservative hiring for aviation companies — as it’s the slowest time of year (especially in the arid desert!)

After a few months of looking around, I thought the Cutter opportunity wouldn’t happen in time — but my patience paid off at the end of July.

A position for a Corporate Communications Coordinator — combining marketing and PR — was posted and I immediately applied.  It seemed like a perfect fit for me, easily able to capitalize on my marketing and publicity strengths.  I knew I could apply my passion… and really do something great for the company.

A week and a half later, after the standard background check and interview, I had an offer extended to me — and a week after that I reported for my first workday.

It’s the end of the first week, and I am more excited than I have ever been in regards to my career.  The company and the people that make it up have been fantastic to me and show a genuine love for what they do.  Their enthusiasm is contagious and combines well with my already-present passion for the industry!  In just the first week, I met with most of the managers within the various business units and have some great plans for the next six months to build business and communications.

What’s more, they already gave me something of a promotion — at least in the form of a title.  Everyone felt that the title of Corporate Communications Coordinator was a bit misleading, as I was going to be leading the production of marketing and communication programs.  So as a result, I have been re-titled as Manager of Marketing & Communications, a direct report to the Director of Corporate Marketing.

I cannot tell you how excited I am.  I have no problem getting up in the morning, and find myself energized and happy on my way to the office — even while fighting I-10 traffic!  Each day I go into the breakroom, upstairs in the FBO building, and look out over Cutters ramp and take in the view of the airport and our ramp — eating up the sight of those beautiful planes and being reminded how much I love aviation.

And serendipity shows that… aviation loves me too.