Learn to Fly Day

Today was International Learn to Fly Day. One of the flight schools held an open house so there were a few more folks wandering around than normal. I was out working on our Mooney when I decided to take a little walk with a friend. We discovered a P-51 Mustang at the Pacific Coast Air Museum. This one is called Red Dog XII. It is regularly flown by Chuck Yeager and it's owned by a friend of his. I even found his signature on the tail of Red Dog. But the best part of the day was hearing what I thought was the voice of a friend of mine, Darren Hopkins, who was soloing a Cessna 172. After he landed I went around the hangar and caught him pulling into the flight school. I took his movie camera and filmed his instructor cutting the tail off his shirt. This is a tradition for pilots who solo. It goes back to the days when student pilots sat in front of their instructors. In order to signal the students in the noisy open-cockpit planes, the instructor would tug on the shirttail. After they soloed, the instructor cut off the shirttail as a sign they were good enough to not need those signals any more. For the next few weeks, the back of Darren's shirt will be on display at North Coast Aviation. Three other pilots near my hangar saw the back of Darren's shirt missing and knew what he had just accomplished and congratulated him. And he did it on Learn to Fly Day.