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An FAA-certified [Federal Aviation Administration of the United States] flight instructor, Dan is set to begin teaching his own classroom-based aviation course here in Fukuoka. We met the Californian to discuss the time he spent in Indonesia as a child, the interesting turns his career has taken over the years and what brought him to Fukuoka.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s go through your background story.<\/strong> And that\u2019s what ignited your love of flight? Was it strange returning to the States after spending your childhood in Asia? And what did you do after high school? So, you were putting satellites in space? Do satellites go up frequently? How expensive was it? You first took flying lessons in high school. While you were working, then, did you continue to fly in your own free time? What airplane have you enjoyed flying the most? So you came to Japan in 2006, then. And what brought you down to Fukuoka? Tell me more about the class you\u2019re about to begin teaching. The course is in English \u2013 do you intend to conduct classes in Japanese at any point? Any last words? For more information, contact Dan at 092-555-7222 or wd4ket@funnote.net<\/p>\n Hometown: Tehachapi, Califormia
\nI was born and raised in Indonesia. My dad was a pilot there with an organisation that provided transportation for missionaries \u2013 maybe over 100 families who had no access to food or medical help or any of a variety of needs. They had eight or nine airplanes that flew eight hours a day, six days a week to very remote and rugged airstrips in New Guinea. So, that was my childhood until I was about 11.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Yes. My earliest memories are of flying. My dad enjoyed doing it so he sort of transmitted his enthusiasm to me and it was very easy for me to latch on to.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Yes, that was a difficult transition because I was at junior high and, you know, that\u2019s a hard time anyway. To switch cultures like that, even though I had gone to an American boarding school in Indonesia, was difficult.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I studied electrical engineering at Cal Poly [California Polytechnic State University]. That was because I had tried to get into the air force academy but was rejected because of my eyesight. So I decided to be an engineer \u2013 which was a very rewarding career. I got out of college and worked at a variety of jobs. The first was for a company that, among other things, developed early GPS receivers. That was a lot of fun. From there, I went on to flight test instrumentation. I was involved in the B-2 (a very famous stealth bomber) programme for Northrop-Grumman. Any time they design a new aircraft they have to test it under all anticipated conditions that it might encounter in flight and see if it\u2019s conforming to the original design constraints. I did that for 11 years. I also got to spend some time on the C-130J flight test programme. That\u2019s the big four-engine transport turboprop plane that Lockheed builds. After that, I moved to Orbital, which is a very diversified company. They have their origins in the commercial space industry and so they worked very closely with NASA in developing some of the early technology that they used. An example of this was the Pegasus rocket. The unique feature of Pegasus was that it was air-launched, which eliminated the need for that first rocket phase. We put it on an L-1011 plane which took the rocket up to 39,000 feet and launched it from there. So my role was to manage the airplane that launched these rockets.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Yes. Just to give you an example, we had a university in the States who wanted to measure and characterize gamma ray bursts that occur in space for an experiment \u2013 that sort of thing.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>For the United States as a whole, I couldn\u2019t really say but in our peak year at Orbital, we saw four rockets launched and in some of the leaner years, it might only have been one.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I recall it cost up to US$20 million for a launch.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Because of my interest in military flying, I took advantage of the opportunity to take lessons in high school. But the realities of life after college \u2013 getting married, having kids, buying a house \u2013 meant I couldn\u2019t afford to fly. So I went for a long time where I hardly touched an airplane. That was hard to do because I loved the hobby.\u00a0It wasn\u2019t until some years after that I ran into a guy, whose wife worked with my wife at a bank in California. He said to me, \u201cYou know, I\u2019m a flight instructor and it\u2019s a wonderful thing. I get to teach, I get to fly and I can afford to do it because it\u2019s actually making me money.\u201d He told me there was quite a demand for lessons, which I found to be true. I got my flight instructor\u2019s license soon after and from then on I had as many students as my schedule would allow.\u00a0Then that opened doors to other opportunities, like corporate flying. There was a corporation in Bakersfield, California that had a small business jet. The president and his assistant would fly all over the western United States to check out their operations. It was unscheduled, so I would just get a call asking me to fly out to Washington or Montana or somewhere like that and I would take them out. My job at Orbital was quite flexible at the time and allowed me to do that.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I think it was the one I flew for that corporation \u2013 the Cessna Citation. It was just really nice and the guy I fly with was a very good pilot. But I have enjoyed every plane I\u2019ve flown.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Yes, my wife and I came to Sapporo to begin language study. I had a number of things going on at the same time. My family lived in a very small town called Tehachapi in Southern California from 1990 to 2006. While we lived there, my wife and I were involved with a Baptist church in town and I was the missions\u2019 director. Through that, I met missionaries who were working in Japan and I got interested in being a part of that.\u00a0It must have been a huge change. Yes it was. I\u2019m more of a technically-oriented person and missions work is a lot more social than technical, which has been a huge adjustment to make. It\u2019s been an expansion of my own horizons. I suspect I\u2019m still in the transition but it has not been a bad one at all \u2013 I\u2019m enjoying it.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Our organisation is starting a team here in Fukuoka, so I came to be a part of that. We got here in August, so we\u2019re still finding our way around.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>It\u2019s going to be a course of 20 classes, once a week for about an hour and a half per class. I\u2019m targeting a wide audience. From people who have aviation as a hobby to folks who, when their time is over in Japan, want to go home and pursue flying. Particularly for those from the United States, this course will give them most of the material they need in order to pass their first written exam. And I would imagine that it would be similarly useful to students from just about any other country. My materials will be from the FAA, but the principles of flight are universal and the things you learn apply everywhere. In the classes, there will training videos, lectures and text book work. I want to make it interesting and also entertaining. I also want to provide time for students to ask questions \u2013 things they\u2019ve always wondered but were afraid to ask. The class starts April 6 and will take place every Tuesday, from 8 to 9.30 pm.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I thought about that and decided to initially advertise to foreigners, to get the ball rolling. Then once I get my first few lessons done, I would like to offer it to Japanese students, because there\u2019s bound to be many who are interested.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>I\u2019m looking forward to teaching class and to seeing what opportunities there are for aviation in Fukuoka and Kyushu both for teaching and flying. And if I get a chance to fly, I\u2019ll definitely take it.<\/p>\n
\nIn Japan: 4 years
\nIdentity: Missionary, Aviation Instructor<\/p>\n