FOLLOW YOUR OWN FLIGHTPL By Tyler Wisbar My start in aviation was pretty early. I have vivid memories of my father taking me to the Cleveland Airshow as a kid and watching F-14 Tomcats, A-10 Warthogs fly demos as well as performances by the Blue Angels and others. Military aviation inspired me in part because it was always the cutting edge of technology. I became a member of the Military Aviation Preservation Society or MAPS museum and was able to volunteer doing cosmetic restorations of retired airplanes. After some time getting my hands dirty working on airplanes I decided that this was something I wanted to make a career out of and I began working on my private pilots license while in high school. I rode
My Dad didn’t miss an opportunity to get me in an airplane as a kid
Me at my current job flying the CRJ Regional Jet
my bike to a job at Dairy Queen for $7.40/hr and was able to pay for lessons as I went. Doing my training this way wasn’t as fast as an accelerated program but I still finished by the time I graduated college. After doing some searching I discovered my high school had a program that allowed me to attend another local high school fo r aviation classes during the first half of the day, then go back to my high school for the rest of my regular classes in the afternoon. After I graduated, these classes and the credits they gave me for having my private pilots license, became a semester worth of credits towards my bachelors degree, for free. As luck would have it, a family friend was a pilot at Fedex. I was fortunate and he was willing to guide me through my ratings at a local flight school and I eventually became a flight instructor with his help. I will be forever in debt to him for his mentorship, especially early on in my training and career.
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Along the way I towed gliders, took a flight with a friend who flew skydivers and did other odd jobs. Of all of the jobs I had, the one I enjoyed most was instructing. The flight school I worked for had a J3 Piper Cub, so in addition to the usual flight training for students, occasionally I would be able to fly with someone looking to be signed off for tailwheel aircraft in our Cub. We would get to fly out to a grass strip and do landings on turf just like in the 1940’s when the airplane was built. I flew the family on a few weekend trips in rented airplanes which were fun. My sister and I took our dog Mitzi with us to lunch a few times too. If you get the chance to fly into any of the Lake Erie islands during the summer I recommend it.
Flying back to San Juan from Curaçao in the Beech 99
Mitzi in the back seat of a Piper Cherokee 140 I flew
