From Rock Drummer to Pilot

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In high school I was in a ‘punk rock’ band. I was the drummer. It was a great experience, kept me out of trouble, and it actually had more benefits than I thought.

It turns out that my skills as a drummer helped me out a ton as a pilot.

One day, while I was flying with my flight instructor near the university I was going to, he chimed in ‘You have really good footwork. Did you play the drums or something?’.

I thought it was really funny that he noticed such skills. As a drummer himself he had realized that it helped him out quite a bit when he started flying.

Of course, just being a drummer doesn’t make you great at all things. The fact of the matter was that all the footwork involved in playing a drumkit really paid off when it came to doing things like slow flight and stalls, keeping the aircraft coordinated.

I believe there are opportunities around you and I every day to help us become better pilots; real or in sim.

One of the best situations for this, I think, is driving. I’m not talking about the actual physical driving part, but rather the fact that things are coming at you fast, and you’ve got to ‘stay ahead’.

I can’t tell you how many times I saw what was coming up ahead, like traffic or an obstacle in the road, and I was able to get out of the way to save my own tail.

Another one I use to do in a car (very illegal) was to follow ‘centerline’ on the freeway when no one else was around. I’d often drive home on weekends during my pilot training, and I’d follow centerline since no one else was around.

Sticking with the driving theme, I’d also read road signs as fast as I possibly could in the phonetic alphabet. Usually I’d try to rattle off the biggest set of words (15 characters+) before I passed the sign.

Possibly one of the best is: Never run out of fuel again. With cars there is a certain amount of carelessness when the gas gauge is reading ’empty’. Would you do this same thing in the airplane? Try to get just a little further in your flight? Practice for that in your every day world by stopping for fuel when you’re getting near empty. Maybe even consider 1/4th a tank to be your reserve fuel and never dip into that.

Those are just a few of the things I have done in the past to stay sharp.

What do you guys do, or what have you done?

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