#FMAsolo – Page 2 – FMA Solo Program

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

Doodles and drawings from our interest meeting

My friend Elisa and me with our first poster

Engineering Musical Instruments

Hey!

Unfortunately, the weather has not been the best lately, so I have not been able to go flying. I’m going to talk more about music at some point in time, but first I wanted to talk about how I’ve really seen music become more connected with my other interests. I signed up for this short, 1 month long, intro to mechanical engineering class, going in with very little expectations. Turns out that it is a project-based class and that the goal of the class was to build an instrument out of household materials. How cool is that?

This project stemmed out of when classes were online the past few years and engineering had to be implemented from a variety of different places. What a better way to get more creative and resourceful than using household materials to build a project?

It took me forever to come up with what type of instrument I even wanted to build out of everything imaginable and possible. Within that I did some research that I’m sure people are interested in. I came across the question of, what even is music at its very core? And one response to it was this piano piece called 4’33” by John Cage and in the same vein the Monotone Silent Symphony. I would encourage you to look it up if you don’t already know about it. If you don’t have the time, it’s basically a whole piece where the performer doesn’t play a single note on the instrument, but sits there in silence, and the music that is made comes from the audience’s reaction. It’s the whole idea of how silence is just as important as everything else in music and how music is a performance. Around the same time, I saw a poem my classmate from high school wrote who goes to a music college that relates very well. He talked about how in music “space has power too” and how “maybe you have to write 99 notes to realize the power of 3.” I don’t know, I think that’s just speaking to me right now, how intentional we can be with the littlest things in music. What do y’all reading this think? And do you have a really strong opinion of what music is or can be at its core?

Anyways, I decided on making a kalimba, aka a sanza, aka a thumb piano. The kalimba originates from the mbira instrument out of Eastern and Southern Africa. The kalimba consists of a wooden board, usually with a resonator, with attached (metal) tines that are constructed to create different pitches when struck/plucked by fingers.

At first I had no idea what type of materials I could come up with from living my very simple college dorm life. But, with some time, ideas came up. At college, they often give out these metal water bottles, basically like 1 use plastic bottles, but metal. I can add in a picture for reference. So, I wanted to do something with them because I had access to them. I decided to take my kid scissors that I brought with me to college and see what I could do. In the end, I just cut flat strips and realized that I could make noise with them. Thus, a thumb piano.

The kalimba I made is composed of different length tins strategically placed on top of a bridge that is held together by a sound box. The materials I used for this are a small 22 x 6 x 1.5cm box, a hair tie, and strips of metal cut from a water bottle found in the recycling bin. The hair tie acts like a bridge: part of the metal goes under it once and over it the second time. Changing the length of the tin from the second hair tie to its end changes the frequency that the tin resonates.

Now, this is where my project turned into more engineering, because right where I left off was nowhere near being done. My instrument had to be tunable and it had to be part of a band of other homemade instruments.

The tuning process was rather difficult. To make a long story short, most of the different ways I tried to tune the instrument did not work because the devices I was using could not pick up the frequency of the kalimba when the sound was not constant, but rather plucked. My solution to this was to set up a drone on my phone or a different device and use my ear to match the kalimba to that pitch.

I have attached below, pictures of my instrument and the song that my group decided to play together. I hope you enjoy!

-Jovie

I made the Kalimba on the bottom left. Can you guess the song that we played?

An Update…And Some Big News!

Hello everyone!

The past few months since my last post have kept me quite busy, and excited, and in this post, I’m going to tell you why.

The first thing that I’d like to share is that I have been accepted to Penn State University for their Meteorology program! This is my number one school, so this is quite exciting for me. They also have one of the best and most respected meteorology programs in the country. As I have mentioned in previous posts, my plans are to major in meteorology while doing AFROTC, with the end goal of being a pilot in the air force. If I can’t be a pilot in the air force for some un-foreseen reason, then being a Meteorologist in the Air Force would be my second choice, as I have always been interested in and fascinated by weather. That is why I’m planning to major in Meteorology. But my career goal is still to fly. Of course, having a deep knowledge of the weather would also aid my skills and decision making in aviation.

In November, I was also named Senior of the Month, which is a pretty big deal at my school. All the teachers come to together to choose the senior of the month based on academics, achievements, accomplishments, and general actions of the student. I’m excited about this because of how it looks on college and scholarship applications. I also have just started my winter job. I work for a nearby ski resort as a ticket checker, and am an avid skier myself, in case you didn’t know.

Unfortunately, my flight training is still at more or less of a stand still, but I’m working hard at applying to scholarships to get going again. I just got done filming and editing a video of myself talking about why I want to be a pilot, as well as some other things, for a $5,000 scholarship being distributed by an organization called Make-A-Pilot. I’ll make sure to share the video to my social media and tag FMA so everyone can watch it when I submit it. I also put a link to it down below. I learned that I unfortunately did not receive the EAA Ray scholarship, but that doesn’t deter me in the least bit. I still plan on applying for the version of the Ray scholarship that my EAA Chapter distributes. In the meantime, I have finished Sporty’s Learn to Fly ground school course and am taking the tests they require to get my endorsement for the FAA knowledge test, which I plan on taking soon.

Now for the biggest, and most exciting, news. I’m proud to announce that my brother and I, also known together as Pyxus, have released our debut album as of today January 2nd, which features seven original tracks in the folk rock/newgrass genre. It can be found on all streaming platforms, and is also for sale online in CD and digital download form. I do hope you all go and check it out! I’ll leave the links to our website (which is where you can order our album) and our social media below. Just copy and past them into your search bar.

https://pyxusmusic.bandcamp.com/album/pyxus

https://www.pyxusmusic.com/

https://www.facebook.com/pyxusmusic/