When I was a little boy, my dream job was to be a pilot. My cousin, Shane, was training to be a pilot so we spent many summer nights playing Flight Simulator on his computer. I was captivated by anything that could fly. I built all sorts of paper aeroplanes, looked at dragonflies for hours, and even studied birds’ wings.
As a boy scout at age 13, I was required to practice my public speaking skills in a poster presentation competition. Ofcourse, I chose the topic to be planes. I painted a plane on a poster and overlaid plastic sheets with sketches in leiu of different slides (note that computers weren’t commonplace in India back then). To guide my preparation, Shane gave me his old textbook, “From the Ground Up”. This book was so fascinating. I read through it day and night – studying every figure and imagining every part. We had a family friend who was an ex-fighter pilot and patiently answered all my questions too. Thanks to their help, I won first place in the competition!
My dream of being a pilot, however, took a few pivots over the years. We couldn’t affort the cost of flying lessons. Additionally, I found that as Shane progressed in his own career as a commercial pilot, he was actually flying less and instead, using the autopilot more. I wanted to fly, so my alternatives were to become a bush pilot (live in remote areas without earning much), fighter pilot (kill people and follow orders), or aerobatics pilot (nearly impossible to get into). So, once we immigrated to Canada, I applied to the B.Eng. Aerospace program at Carleton University. However, due to the number of applicants, the cut-off was so high that my Indian grades couldn’t make it. The recruitment officer was very considerate though and offered me to try starting in Carleton’s toughest engineering program because if I kept my grades up, then I could easily “drop down” into aerospace engineering later. Little did I expect falling in love with Engineering Physics enough to be fine with continuing it throughout my degree. It also helped that I promised to open more doors after graduating, including doors in aerospace. What really sealed the deal was realizing that the flow of light is very very similar to the flow of air – so through a crazy analogy, I got to keep in touch my my aerodynamics skills by working in optics! I continued into optics for my Masters in 2015, all the while reassuring myself that I could apply the knowledge and skills to aerospace whenever the industry started booming again (it did not). Then in 2018, I saw this…
I had wanted to be a pilot for so long and now this opportunity was right in front of me. I signed up for Ground School (which is the theoretical course required to start flying a plane). It gave me a chance to revise From The Ground Up and led me to a great group of friends. On my 29th birthday, the instructor gave me a gift – he took me up in a plane at sunset and let me fly it!
Honestly, if it cost less money and time to get a recreational pilot’s licence, I would be flying already. In fact, my love of planes is what led to my current career. To keep in touch with aerodynamics while the aerospace industry was in a slump, I worked on optics. From within optics, I integrated my values to finish a PhD on harvesting solar energy. This is ofcourse, what led me to pursue my current work in sustainability and Stocate. My love of planes, flying, and aerodynamics is still very much alive. I try to get a window seat by the wing everytime I fly, and take videos of the take-off and landing. My instinct is still to make paper aeroplanes with every spare piece of paper I find, even if the only objective is to fly it to the bin. I’m still trying to figure out how to build a ground-effect podracer which is carbon neutral, bird friendly, equitable, and accessible.