Climbing Above The Clouds My Life As A Private Pilot

"A gripping account of what it's like to fly from takeoff to landing. Climbing Above the Clouds is a wondrous tribute to the beauty of flight."
- Donna Kaz, author of "UN/MASKED, Memoirs of a Guerrilla Girl On Tour"
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As the old song says, "Come fly with me." Through this book, follow me on my voyage of flight training to become a private pilot and my adventures across North American skies for over two decades.

Ever since the Wright brothers briefly escaped Earth's surface in 1903, flying airplanes or taking trips in them became an important part of our daily lives. The miracle of flight has also captured the imaginations of millions who wonder just how airplanes-big and small-struggle to get into the air and stay there until reaching their destinations. Growing up on Air Force bases as a child, I was one of those budding aviation enthusiasts who watched massive metal airships like B-52s claw into the air as their engines howled. It was then, as a child of about 10, that I began to wonder about how I could learn to fly airplanes. A fulfilling family life and a challenging career in senior management in corporate America kept me from realizing that dream, until 1995.

At that point I wandered into an FAA-certified flight school near Albany, New York. All it took was a 10-minute conversation with the head of the school to convince me to sign up. I took off for the skies.

It wasn't easy, but one thing I learned was that most people could apply themselves to textbook manuals and flight training with an instructor and earn a private pilot's license. I continued beyond that, gaining an instrument rating that allowed me to fly in lower visibility weather, and I earned a seaplane pilot's license. In this book, for example, you'll learn how intentionally causing an aerodynamic "stall" while flying during training is an important lesson on the way to recognizing and preventing such dangerous situations. From my experiences, you'll also learn the ins and outs of aircraft rental, ownership, or sharing costs in a flying club. And I'll tell you about the fascinating flights, often with other pilots or friends/family members, I participated in over thousands of miles. From the far reaches of northern Maine and Nova Scotia to Florida to the Midwest, I climbed into small airplanes and visited those and many other locations. There are treasured experiences that I'd like to share with you.

Throughout my training and after subsequent flights over the years, I wrote about my feelings and observations in a collection of steno pads. As the pandemic raged, I rediscovered those pads and decided to chronicle my training and flying adventures.

It's my hope that this book will help inspire you to learn more about private aviation and ask questions. Perhaps you'll even consider becoming a private pilot and using small airplanes to come and go as you please to and from airports around the country. At the very least, my tale might spark a desire to read more about aviation and do what I do almost every time I hear an airplane in the sky above. I look up.