To Live, Per Chance to Write...

By way of introduction you can call me Tactic (long story). This is my first post on my first ever Blog. Blog, the idea is an alien one to me. I am not the most net savvy person.

I have lived my entire adult life in the field of Aviation. I have been a pilot for 15 years with time in more than a dozen different aircraft types. I have worked the last thirteen years in the field of Airport Management and have even owned and operated my own privately owned public use airport.

I have worn many hats in my field, Pilot, Airport Manager, Operations Supervisor, Line Crew member, Aviation and Aerial Photographer. And now I have interest in a new hat, that of an Aviation Writer.

I have started a novel, and have written a few short articles for aviation trade publications that nobody has ever heard of.

Recently some people have said my stuff is very good, and this has come as quite a surprise. You see throughout my scholastic career nearly every writing teacher and professor save one, (Thank you Dr. Wellman) had told me that I cannot write.

Being the stubborn type however, the best way to get me to do anything is to tell me that I cannot do it. Still my confidence has been shaken by those "experts" that told me I had no gift for the written word and I rarely finish the writing projects I start for fear that I am not good enough.

As I read the ramblings of those who do get paid to write for aviation periodicals, I have become more and more disappointed with the state of aviation writers today.

I fell in love with aviation at an early age, due in no small part to the writings of Richard Bach, Gordon Baxter, Ernest K. Gann, and the like. Flipping through the usual aviation periodicals today, Flying, Private Pilot, AOPA Pilot, Plane & Pilot, etc. You will find no one of such caliber.

Now I do not profess to be a talent on the level of Bach or Gann. I bring them up because they wrote about aviation in a way that you never hear any more. Lost in the modern day discussion of GPS, and EFB's is the beauty and romance of flight that made us want to be pilots in the first place.

Thirty-five thousand dollars for a new GPS/Satellite Weather/Navigation System you say? - Yeah Right, that's more than my airplane cost!

$300,000.00 for a new Cessna? Come on, I'm a public servant working for a state airport authority. My house didn't cost that much!

All I see in these periodicals are articles about the latest million dollar airplane, or the latest hundred thousand dollar avionics package. Never do I hear of the average Joe who flies his 30 + year old, single engine Cessna on a shoestring budget, for the pure love of flight.

What about Joe's trials? How does he cope with the latest TFR or the rising costs of insurance, aircraft parts and maintenance? What kind of adventures does Joe take with his airplane? A trip to visit the relatives? Rise with the sun for a stack of pancakes at the local EAA breakfast Fly-In? Commute to work high over the clogged interstate highway?

Joe represents about 75-80 percent of the aircraft owners and pilots out there today and yet no one writes to, or about him.

Well Joe, this ones for you.