OK, so March was a bust! I don’t think I’ve seen a March as cold or snowy in Alberta since I moved here 12 years ago! Global warming… yeah, right!

Despite the snow, soggy wet airfields, and high winds this month, I did get in a couple of interesting flights, though. I’ve been continuing with my commercial flight training and only need about 1.2 hours of hood time and 80 hours of ground school.

One interesting flight occurred last Sunday. I decided to take the C-150 up for a run and get in an hour of circuits in High River. I was quite pleased with myself after an hour of good crosswind circuits and headed back to Springbank. I called in over Pridus Corner at 5500’ and was told to head for a left base for 25.

That’s when all hell broke loose. For about 10-12 minutes, I suffered through some of the roughest turbulence I’ve ever experienced! A couple of frantic calls to the tower, and they opened up my altitude restriction so that I could safely battle the 1500-2000 fpm climb and descent rates I was hitting. As quickly as it started, it ended as I headed north over the Elbow River. I landed with my hands still shaking from the experience. What a ride!

With March behind us, I’ve been looking for some interesting fly-out destinations. I came across one in a magazine article last week while waiting for an optometrist. It reported that a geological feature was found in Google Earth that looks like a Native Canadian woman in full feather headdress listening to an iPod! It’s located 40 km east of Medicine Hat. Finding the old lady could make for a nice trip with a stop for lunch in Medicine Hat! See for yourself: Last month, I also hit a personal milestone. I finally decided to pull the pin on my second career plans that I’ve been brewing for the past 4-5 years. On March 5th, I gave my boss my resignation effective April 26th.

It really started years ago as high school graduation approached. I had narrowed my choices down to becoming an AME or an engineer. My parents suggested that I might be better off with an engineering degree, so that’s the path I chose. In 1989, I graduated from Ryerson with an Aerospace Engineering degree and dreams of designing the next great bush plane. Unfortunately, by the time I graduated, most of the aircraft manufacturing shops (DeHavilland, Canadair, etc.) simply were not hiring junior engineers. I shopped around my thin little resume at various engineering firms and finally got a hit with a small offshore engineering firm in Newfoundland. More importantly, they specialized in CAD and 3-D computer design, areas that I was trained in at Ryerson. Before long, I was asked to help out the sole IT guru in the shop with the technical support of these systems. That has led to a career in IT support and my current position at Encana.

Although this career path has been very rewarding, both personally and financially, I felt something was missing. I was becoming less interested in my desk job as a junior manager in a very large company. My mind often drifted off to the building projects in the shop or flying on some new adventure.

About two years ago, I had a thought. Maybe I should resurrect my earlier aspirations and go back to school to become an AME? After all, SAIT has an excellent school right here in Calgary. I started looking at our finances to see if I had the means to do this.

In November, I applied to SAIT for their AME course. This is a two-year course with approximately two years of apprenticeship resulting in an AME license. In January, I received the letter saying I was accepted.

With a partially completed cabin up near Bashaw, and plans to return to Oshkosh this summer, I decided to take a few months off before heading back to school in September. I’m not sure which I’m more excited about, going back to school or taking the summer off!

However, this will have an impact on the club. Currently, I use Encana’s corporate discount to print the Skywriter. These lower printing costs are what allowed us to start printing a color cover for the Skywriter. Since I will no longer be eligible for this, we were faced with deciding between one of two options: double our printing costs to get a color cover or keep the costs the same and print the entire newsletter in black & white.

The executive has decided that the money required to continue printing in color would be of better use on other projects such as fly-ins, poker runs, COPA legal funds. Also, with the introduction of the digital Skywriter, which is entirely in color, the need for a color printed version is reduced. If you do not currently get a digital Skywriter and would like to, please send me an e-mail, and we’ll add you to the subscription list.