What an amazing month I’ve had! There wasn’t a lot of flying involved, but the flying I did was awesome. In addition, I finally finished AME school!

Two years ago, I quit my job at Encana to embark on a new career in aircraft maintenance. The course runs for two years with a summer semester off in between. When I first inquired about the course, the industry was in desperate need of new AMEs Graduating students were getting several offers to choose from and the placement rate was close to 100%.

Unfortunately, the economic landscape has changed in the last year. Only a handful of students had job offers by the time we finished on April 27th . Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of them. There had been a couple of near misses in the job hunt, but I was officially joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Fortunately, and with the help of some friends in the industry, I did get an offer from Klarenbach Aviation in Springbank which I accepted and will be starting tomorrow! Since they specialize in light aircraft, I should have no problem getting my M1 AME license with them.

The AME course offered from SAIT is an excellent program. The school and facilities are wonderful, and the staff is very helpful. After having done the university bit, I found this class environment to be a complete departure from what I was used to. The instructors take the time to work with the students and help them succeed.

Although the program is now finished, I still have 28 months of “apprenticeship” to undertake before I can apply for my license. There is also a Transport Canada Air Regulations exam to pass, but that shouldn’t be much of a problem.

The day classes ended, I hopped on a red-eye for Halifax. I spent a week helping out my father on his Murphy Rebel project. It’s coming together quite nicely and should be airborne in a year or so.

While in Nova Scotia we visited a project under construction in Waterville. This is where Bob Kirkby got his Starduster Too from and where I learned to fly gliders. The project we were there to see was a 2/3 scale Sea Fury. The owner has been building it for years and has done all the work including designing. The plane is powered by a Warner radial engine. Everything works like the original including the tailwheel doors. It even sports a tailhook!

While we were there, one of the Air Cadet L-19’s landed for fuel. It was neat to see one of the old birds again as this was one of the planes that towed me aloft while I was training in the Schweitzer 2-33 gliders.

However, the L-19 had undergone some rather drastic looking changes since I had seen it last, changes that I definitely disapprove of. The original two-bladed, fixed-pitch, metal prop has been replaced with a four-bladed, wooden Hoffman prop. In addition, two great big mufflers were slung under the belly giving it the impression that a two-stroke engine now lived under the cowl. Both of these modifications were done to reduce the noise, but it sure made the plane look ugly deterring from that military look which makes them so cool. Oh well.

That brings us to today. For the past few years, the Sundre Mother’s Day Fly-in Breakfast has kicked off the annual fly-in season in southern Alberta. Being set in a meteorologically volatile part of the year, this event has had its share of poor weather. However, this year could not have been better. Winds were light, the skies were blue, and folks turned out in droves. I arrived before 10 AM and was the 70th aircraft to arrive. I’m sure they must have beaten their previous record of 100 aircraft.

There was a great turnout from the club including several members that brought along the whole family. Along with homebuilt RVs, Rocket derivatives, a Piel Emeraude and a Sonex a number of classics also showed up including a Tiger Moth, a radial powered Fairchild, a Harvard, a biplane that looked like a Stampe and a beautiful L-19 Birdog. There also seemed to be an abnormally high number of Cessna 170/180/185 aircraft in attendance.

If you missed today’s fly-in, not to worry. There are a number of them on the agenda for the next month including a speed dash in St. Albert, a poker run in Indus and the Camrose fly-in.

Well, that’s it for this month. As always, I’m looking for new articles and photos from the membership (I’m sure you’re all getting tired of hearing from me ☺)

See you all at the meeting on Thursday.