Category: Student Members Flying

Flight Day One, and a Musical Update!

Hello all!

I am proud to announce that I have completed my first official flight lesson as a Flying Musician Ambassador! Between 5 and 7pm EST, I went up in a Cessna 172 (tail number N420U) from my local airport in St. Mary’s County. My CFI and I flew around the area and reviewed stall recovery, steep turns, and landing which are the areas that I am currently working on.

This past summer, I had a brief run in with a spin where I did the almost unforgivable and tried altering the ailerons while in a power on stall. That experience made it rather stressful to complete steep turns and stall recovery practices, but with the help of my CFI I had much less trouble today with those things, and I am even exited to practice them more so that I can fully overcome this obstacle!

Below I have attached some pictures I took today from the plane! (Everything looks more beautiful in a plane)

Tomorrow, I am to go up again first thing in the morning. I look forward to updating you on my flight tomorrow!

Musical Update

Tomorrow is Memorial Day. In honor of Memorial Day, my brother and I participate in Taps Across America, where musicians across the country play Taps at 3pm local time in honor of those who gave their life for our country. I will be participating on the flute with my brother on the clarinet, as we play in honor of our own family members who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Anyone can participate in Taps Across America. If you are interested in playing Taps in your community in honor of our soldiers, first register on the Taps Across America website linked below, then grab your horn and join us! You do not need a sanctioned event or an audience, just an instrument and a location.

Taps Across America – Taps Across America

To those who are veterans, thank you very much for your service. To those who are family to a veteran, thank you very much for yours.

See you soon!

Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support. I look forward to keeping you updated as my journey continues.

Bye for now!

Hello All!

Hello everyone! This is Lauren Compton posting from Southern Maryland. First things first, a big thank you to the board and to Mr. John for giving me this amazing opportunity. I look forward to keeping you all updated on my progress!

Flight

I was introduced to flying as a new member of Civil Air Patrol two years ago. After completing my orientation flights, I became aware of Aim High Flight Academy, which is sponsored by the US Air Force. Being selected to attend Aim High was an amazing opportunity! We attended ground school and flew nearly every day during the three-week program.

Currently, I am in the process of beginning my journey to solo with Piedmont Flight Center in St. Mary’s County Maryland, where my CFI thinks I can be ready to solo in about 10 hours because of my previous experience. At the moment, I have a total of 18.9 flight hours, mostly in the Cessna 172, through my completion of the Aim High Flight Academy and some added experience through Civil Air Patrol.

Speaking of Civil Air Patrol, I just achieved my Billy Mitchell award! For those of you that don’t know, the Mitchell award represents a CAP cadet completing half of the program and has been awarded to only 12% of all cadets!

Below I have inserted a few pictures and a link to the speech I gave when I was presented with my award!

Music

In terms of music, I just completed my high school flute journey with a superior rating at state solo and ensemble, playing Chaminade’s Concertino- the same piece my mother played in her senior year of high school. I could not have hoped for a better conclusion to my high school flute career! Below is a video of me performing at my flute teacher’s recital, and a picture of my brother and me with our certificates!

The week prior to solo and ensemble, my school band held our spring concert on Thursday evening in which I performed as Principal flute. During the same week, I sang Out Here on My Own from Fame in my school’s (very casual) senior coffee house. Below I have attached video links for both.

As for harp, I recently performed at a Mother’s Day Tea for one of the local churches. It was such an honor to be invited back, as I also played for this event last year. Next week, I’ll be playing at a local senior center. If you’d like to see that performance, please check out my Facebook page, harptunesandtales, to learn about my playing and my non-profit organization titled Tunes and Tales.

Sharing music at so many local venues brings me great joy and has brought me closer to the people in my community! I would love to hear about your musical journey – please feel free to share!

See you soon!

Thank you all so much for your encouragement and support. I look forward to keeping you updated as my journey unfolds.

Bye for now!

Exciting News!

Hello Everyone!

It has been awhile since you’ve heard from me, but I have had some pretty awesome things happen to me in that time that I would like to share with you.

The first announcement I have is that I won the EAA Ray Scholarship from my local EAA Chapter, #122. This scholarship has provided me with the funds I needed to continue on after my solo and finish my flight training. I start again this coming Monday, the 24th!

Secondly, I also received the Type 7 AFROTC Scholarship. This scholarship pays full tuition and fees to any school, capped at in state tuition rate. I am going to Penn State University to pursue Aerospace Engineering.

I want to thank all you who make FMA possible once more, as you got me started on my aviation journey, and have been a big help and motivation for me to continue!

Now for a little product review:

I received a few different goodies a couple months ago from Mr. John Zapp, and some of them I have found quite handy. Specifically, the Sennheiser S1 Passive headset, the Garland low profile pen, and the TUSQ guitar pick holder.

The S1 Headset seems to be made of really high quality materials, and comes in a nice carry-on case that is protects the headset quite well. I have not gotten a chance to use it in the airplane yet, but I’m sure that it will perform wonderfully, as Sennheiser is well known for their music and audio products, and I have no doubts about the audio or functioning quality. But, I will confirm this in a future post when I get the chance to use the headset.

The Garland pen seems like something that doesn’t need a review, because, after all, it’s just a pen. BUT…I have actually been really impressed with this pen, and for some reason, I find it super cool. It just has a super clean look to it, it’s shiny, and super slim. It is the perfect peen to take with you flying, as it isn’t bulky and can be easily stored on your kneeboard or in a pocket. But my favorite part about it is the Hartzell Prop logo that is in acrylic on the top of the pen. I find that to be a pretty cool touch.

Finally, the TUSQ pick holder is a super cool, heavy duty metal holder that fits all of my guitar picks in all thicknesses. It’s really nice to have for gigs, as it just clips on to my guitar case zipper and provides easy access to all my picks. I did also receive some TUSQ picks. They seem like they are ok, but I personally do not use them because the TUSQ logo on the pick is made out of a super grippy material that, at least for me, makes it hard to play. This would be fine for people who hold a pick normally, but I play holding my pick sideways, and this grippy material tends to catch on my strings, making it pretty much unplayable for me. I’m also not usually a fan of picks that have grippy material on it like this anyways. But, if you like that and you play guitar like a normal person, than it would certainly be a good pick for you! Despite this, I still highly recommend the TUSQ pick holder, it has been super useful to me.

Thanks for reading!

Jake Myers