"For the past eight years I have been privileged to live vicariously through the experiences of many of our members as they earn their wings through the AOPA Project Pilot program," says AOPA Pilot Managing Editor Julie Summers Walker. "Writing their stories for the Project Pilot update page in the magazine, covering the anniversary of the program, and interviewing members for this month's story (see " AOPA Project Pilot: 10 Steps to Making a Pilot" on page 64) have allowed me to continually experience the joy earning the pilot certificate brings — and the almost more joyful experience being a Mentor can be." The AOPA Project Pilot program gets reinvigorated this month as your association addresses the challenge of boosting the general aviation pilot ranks with its new initiative — see all the coverage starting on page 60.
"There's no question that the move to large moving-map displays and electronic aircraft instrumentation is changing how a pilot needs to approach initial training, proficiency flying, and resource management," says AOPA Pilot Technical Editor Julie K. Boatman (see " The Glass Specialist" on page 101). "During primary training, instructors could ignore, to a certain extent, the bells and whistles promised by the navigator in the panel, and focus on the basics. Now, in new aircraft, the cockpit is becoming so integrated that this kind of demarcation is pretty much impossible." An instrument flight instructor, Boatman sees challenges and benefits to instructors and students training today: "Students have a lot more to learn in order to master the systems — but once they do, they also have a far easier path to situational awareness than in the days of trying to draw crossing radials on a sectional chart while on a long cross-country on a hot, bumpy summer afternoon."
It was a bit of a risk, but Liberty Aerospace officials are among a growing number at new companies who want their promises and estimates to be realistic. Come check up on us, they said. And we did. The result was a little higher operating cost than the company had estimated, including a slightly higher fuel burn. But the numbers weren't far off. AOPA Pilot Senior Editor Alton K. Marsh's visit and checkup were admittedly an unscientific test, but the Florida Institute of Technology, based across the airport from Liberty, agreed to step in as supervisor and referee for " The Liberty Challenge," on page 78.
Ellen Paneok's family is originally from Kotzebue, Alaska, although she was raised in Anchorage. When she was 16 years old, the Native Corp. that she is a member of sent her a dividend of $1,500. That was the opening for her to learn to fly. By the time she was 23 she had her commercial and flight instructor certificates and her instrument rating. In 1983, her first flying job was in Kiana, Alaska, flying a Piper Cherokee Six. In her 17 years as a commercial pilot in Alaska, she has ferried everything from dynamite to live wolverines, the U.S. mail, passengers, and medevacs. In a 1980 crash (see " Surviving the Trees" on page 114), she says that the crash itself was nothing compared to being stuck out in an Alaskan swamp with stinging horde of mosquitoes — they were relentless.
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