Student Pilots I Have Soloed

    I have always said that flight instruction is a good job, if you like to see other people's dreams come true! It has been a privilege and a pleasure to share in the dreams of so many people. Below is a list of student pilots I've soloed, beginning in February 1985.

    All of these flights have taken place at either Hinton-Alderson Airport (WV77, formerly W59), at Pence Springs, West Virginia, or Greenbrier Valley Airport, at Lewisburg (LWB). So the listing uses these airport identifiers.

*  Pilot's names marked with an asterisk (*) actually accomplished their very first solo flights somewhere else, usually at a much earlier date. Maybe because of a long time lapse, (sometimes decades) or using a different aircraft, regulations, and prudence, required a fresh solo, and the review leading up to it.

    You'll also find a few other notes of local aviation history here.

My Own First Solo Flight

I began accumulating "loggable flight time" in the fall of 1976 with Ruth Gwinn as my instructor. I soloed under her supervision on March 19, 1977, at Greenbrier Valley Airport. Several years later, my first trainees soloed in this same airplane, a 1959 Cessna 150.