{"id":5225,"date":"2019-06-14T05:28:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-14T12:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.mechadigital.net\/?p=5225"},"modified":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T20:37:51","slug":"234-air-awareness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/234-air-awareness\/","title":{"rendered":"#234 Air Awareness"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAir Awareness\u201d was a term that Bill Warren used often.\u00a0The longer I\u2019m in this flying game and the more I get involved in flight instruction, the more the term means to me.\u00a0As many of my associates know, I\u2019m very much concerned with the cost of flight instruction.\u00a0 I feel that I must charge what my time is worth, but I also feel that the person who\u2019s paying for that time must get their money\u2019s worth.\u00a0And that is where the term really begins to mean something. And I think I\u2019ve come up with something that may just make your flight time a lot more economical!\u00a0 We seem to be a bit obsessed with the time that we spend when the engine is running and the Hobbs meter is clicking over.\u00a0 But there is another type of time that is just as valuable.\u00a0 And that is the time during which we build \u201cAir Awareness\u201d.\u00a0 \u201cAir Awareness\u201d time can be built many ways.\u00a0 One way is simply hanging out at the airport, spending time with the Geezer Patrol and simply watching and learning.\u00a0 Occasionally, the time might be spent in flight, just riding along.\u00a0 I remember one such time when a friend and I were offered a chance to ride in the Catalina that was part of the Erickson Aircraft collection.\u00a0 We sat in the voluminous back of the plane as Brent Conner rumbled the old ship down to the approach end of the runway.\u00a0 He did the runup and one mag on one engine dropped a lot.\u00a0 Brent decided that some work needed to be done and it wasn\u2019t worth departing with that bad mag.\u00a0 So we never flew, but it was Air Awareness time.\u00a0 And it was worth something to us all.<\/h3>\n

<\/h3>\n

Why do you think that the ranks of working pilots are filled with those who were once \u201cairport kids\u201d, who pedaled their bikes to the airport just to hang out? \u00a0Perhaps it is because those kids, without really thinking about it, were building \u201cAir Awareness\u201d.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t as many such kids anymore, but there are still some out there.\u00a0 And you are reading this!<\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Ryan Fukumoto was once an airport kid and is now a Private Pilot, building time and still hanging out at the airport.\u00a0 In fact, I once observed him snoozing in his car in the Outlaw Aviation parking area.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/h3>\n

\u00a0Working pilots have an air awareness that they first began to develop when they were simply hanging out at the airport.\u00a0 Sometimes their friends and relatives would criticize them for \u201cwasting\u201d their time at the airport.\u00a0 But, to steal a line that my mother wrote toward the end of the Academy Award winning short subject, \u201cThe Wetback Hound\u201d, \u201c\u2026you and I know<\/strong>\u2026\u201d\u00a0 That time is being well-spent, developing air awareness.<\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“I remember one such time when a friend and I were offered a chance to ride in the Catalina that was part of the Erickson Aircraft collection.\u00a0 We sat in the voluminous back of the plane as Brent Conner rumbled the old ship down to the approach end of the runway.\u00a0 He did the runup and one mag on one engine dropped a lot.\u00a0 Brent decided that some work needed to be done and it wasn\u2019t worth departing with that bad mag.\u00a0 So we never flew, but it was Air Awareness time.\u00a0 And it was worth something to us all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5227,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[22,30,35,67],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tailwheelersjournal.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}