#FlyingMusician – FMA Solo Program

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!

Solo!!

I finally soloed!!

It felt so amazing and so weird at the same time! Not having my CFI next to me gave me a sense of independence in the aircraft and gave me a huge boost of adrenaline when flying. It went great, although I thought I could’ve done better on my landings, 3 in total, but I’ve heard that if you can walk away from a landing, it’s a good landing.

I hope that this chapter is the first of many and I can’t wait to share my future accomplishments.

TO and LND

I don’t have good pictures because I forget when I’m focusing on the lesson, so I usually get one before my preflight.

My CFI and I have been working on my takeoffs and landings so that I can solo. I’ve done two lessons working on them and so far, my approaches have been significantly improving but I am still perfecting the final flare when I am about to touchdown. This aspect has been a little bit of a struggle, mostly because I believe I am focusing on the runway right ahead of me instead of looking down the runway as most people encourage to look there instead. I do have better touchdowns when I remember to look down the runway, but I will just have to keep working at it and develop an “eye” for my touchdowns.

Mental Health Is Paramount

(1) My View as a Ramp Agent! (2) Editing my first batch of plane spotting pictures! (3) One of the finished Products. Enjoy!

Hi All!

I hope you are all having a wonderful summer.

2024 has been quite the year for me. I began flight lessons and online ground school and I finished my first year at college.

2024 has also been a huge mental battle for me. I remember just one moth ago laying in bed thinking about my year thus far. I had no motivation to fly or continue with ground school lessons, I thought about my dreams of flying commercially less, and I was generally unhappy. I had distanced myself from my closest friends, and I had very frequent anxiety and gastrointestinal issues which sent me to the ER after a myriad of doctor visits at one point all of which I had never had before.

That night I realized halfway into 2024; I had been depressed for six months. As someone who always had a goal in life to fly, to laugh, and to work out, I never thought I would be depressed.

I blog about this to bring awareness to the fact that anyone can deal with mental health battles and that its extremely hard for those in the midst of a battle to realize they are struggling. Life can throw us all curveballs that depress us and traumatize us as they can to fill us with utter joy and pure determination. However, realization is the first step to recuperating from any mental health battle and thus I am now doing better each and every day.

For me, for the last few months my focus shifted from flying and this wonderful community to recovering from my mental health which physically sent me to the ER and through numerous doctor’s visits due to gastrointestinal issues which went undiagnosed for four arduous months.

As I work on myself each and every day and the clouds begin to clear in my life, I am determined more than I ever have to fly again and to complete ground school as swiftly and to the best degree I possibly can. My dream of being a commercial airline pilot is once again filling me with determination and an amazing purpose! Two weeks ago, I returned to the airport to work as a ramp agent again this time contracted to Frontier Airlines where I will even be trained for loadmaster, pushback, and potentially station training manager duties! I also contacted my flight school’s owner to discuss flying again, and I have begun Sporty’s ground school training again. I also now plane spot which serves as an activity which brings me peace and tranquility. It’s a great mental reset. And like always I work out every day.

To anyone struggling physically or mentally, just know struggle is temporary. Even on your worst of days. Find your life purpose(s) even in the darkest of times, and don’t be too hard on yourself. Even when you feel horrible, love yourself and live life undeniably and confidently.

Flying!!

I’ve been kinda slacking on posting my flights that I have been doing but I’ll get you all brought up to date on them.

I’m still trying to perfect my landings to be able to solo but my CFI and I went to KGRI (Class D Airspace) and I worked on my communications with a tower.

Then later in the week, we scheduled the same flight again, but instead of my CFI doing the planning and helping me determine the cruising altitude and runway to use I did all of that and it was pretty amazing being able to make a plan then execute it exactly like it was made up.

I’m hopefully going to solo pretty soon so I’ll keep you guys updated on that!!

Hangar Jam

On the 29th of June, I held my very first Hangar Jam! I’ve been busy flying and working so I couldn’t get this posted sooner. It was awesome to play in front of a crowd and spread the light of aviation and music. I’ve been getting a few more hours in the seat and am starting to become more fluent with the controls and getting more proficient in maneuvers.

Flying Lesson!!

On Saturday I was given the opportunity to fly in my first Skyhawk 152. He is a member of the AAA (Antique Airplane Association) and wanted to take me up and fly me to my flight lesson. It was my first flight lesson with my new instructor. It was kind of a hard cross wind but it was a good time. It was great to get back in the seat and get some hours!

The Importance of Health When Flying

Hi all! I hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the warmer spring weather. In February and March, my flight training was placed on hold because of my health. I had an ear infection and bad stomach/digestive issues and therefore was forced to tend to myself rather than fly. As a result, I became rusty. I forgot how to execute steep turns and stalls properly, among other maneuvers that I was well versed in just weeks ago.

Finally, after three months, I am much healthier. I can consistently weight train to my liking in the gym, and I have found great additional health benefits in going to the sauna every day and adopting a regimen of supplements. I have also had one flight since.

All this is to say, that health is paramount in aviation. Without a healthy body, nothing is possible. Fight training takes discipline in scheduling out days to a lot for flights, studying, and ground classes. Additionally, it also takes discipline in taking care of your body and treating it as if it were a high-performance car. If you fuel your body with bad fuel and neglect to care for it by exercising, your body will not perform well, and vice versa. Flight training is so much more than flying!

Here is what I did to turn around my health (I hope this can help someone who is looking for ways to improve theirs too):

-Sleep early (sleep is everything, our body recovers during sleep, and sleep changes the chemistry of our brain and body)

-supplement regimen including multivitamins, vitamin C, and more

-weight training at the gym every day

-daily sauna sessions for 15-25 minutes at or around 290 degrees Fahrenheit

Aviators…Aviadores?

Hi everyone,

I have some pretty exciting things in the works that I wanted to share. Towards the beginning of the last semester, I made a friend who was also interested in aviation, and had a PPL. Her name is Elisa, I think I may have mentioned her in a post awhile back. It was so cool to meet another person in the same boat as I, struggling to fit flying into the busy-ness of Vanderbilt. I asked her if she knew anyone else in the flying community at college, and she said that she did know a few people, but we both yearned to have a bigger sense of community. In college we’re supposed to find our place, our people, and we felt like this was part of it.

Eventually we came up with the idea of an aviation club, like all the other clubs on campus. We realized that there had been an aviation club at Vanderbilt, but it didn’t exist anymore.

It was really fascinating trying to figure out what they did and what happened through their old Facebook page and through online searching. They did everything from Discovery Day’s, getting a lot of members to go on discovery flights to bringing in professionals from the aviation community. The club eventually died out due to lack of interest and the university not liking the idea of professors flying students. It was cool to see that something like this had existed at the school.

We reached out to others including someone who used to be part of the old aviadores and threw around ideas of making a club and how trying to make it an official club could affect what we do.

Eventually we met up with a few other students who were pilots who were willing to invest their time into this idea. I enjoyed meeting them and hearing their stories of how they got into aviation and where they are now. It made me appreciative of how we were all on our own timelines of getting licenses.

The next step was to take action and to make this idea on paper a reality. We created a group chat and the interested pilots asked around if anyone they knew would want to join. We made a few posters and hung them up around school. That’s all it took. From that we had a whole community of interested people and a time and place to meet.

I was slightly nervous for the meeting, but excited as well — seeing something finally turn into fruition of our planning and goals. There were about 20 people who showed up, so we had a mostly filled classroom. The original pilots who took on this idea (including me) went around and introduced ourselves and we talked about our goals for this club. We want to eventually set up a mentor program where students get matched with each other to give advice about where they are in their process of becoming a pilot and getting their licenses. Afterwards, there was a good amount of people who wanted to stay a little while and introduce themselves. It was nice meeting so many people interested in aviation and learning about their stories.

There were all sorts of friendly people who showed up. There were two guys in the back who also were pilots as a job. We asked them about details. They were visiting town and walking around campus when they came across some of the posters we put up and decided to come. They are survey pilots who are also building their hours. I thought this was just a testament how aviation can bring people together.

I am so happy that all of our collective ideas were able to come together to create a community, even if it is right now only a group of people who have a shared interest of aviation. I can’t wait to make it more and create experiences together.

That’s all for now,

Jovie