Clashmaker.com

Just got an e-mail from another ‘correspondents’ in Russia. Dima, a guy I’ve been intermittently corresponding with for the last two years, wrote on some achievements he accomplished lately going on the road of ‘career flying’ - a walk of life he began not too long prior to the time we met on the Internet. Right now he’s undergoing a transition course for the Tupolev-154 type rating, and says chances are he might just ’seamlessly’ transfer to another training class - of English, and International flying regulations.

So, once he’s done with all the training, he’s about to get endorsements to fly the Tu-154 as a F/O on scheduled international operations with ‘Ural Airlines’, a large company based in the Ural Mountains region’s capital city of Yekaterinburg.

From that much what I know about his background, I should hand it to him - he’s moving on at quite a remarkable pace, and I wish Dima all the best on his way ‘from the ground up’.

And it would be interesting to look back into days of the very beginning of ‘Dima’s way’.

What puts him in some ‘out of ordinary’ position, - when talking about person’s circumstances on early stages of his, or her interest toward flying - is the fact that Dima, like a ‘truly aviation pioneer’, learned how to actually fly an airplane.. entirely by himself!

See, how tiny this ’sky flea’ is?! There’s no way you can jam an extra, an instructor’s seat (’for the purpose of dual training’) into this ultra-slim, 13,7-ft long fuselage!

It figures then, - go ahead and learn how to fly your own way!

Now in order to keep conversation going, I’m soliciting a ‘piece of memoir’ on the episode from our ’self-made’ aviator to post it here. So, monitor the Clashmaker on the ‘Getting Wings’ frequency.