Yesterday there was some very active weather in Florida and the south eastern states. I first heard of the crazyness when we received a phone call from the parents of one of our roomates. They were in Tampa Florida and commented on how it had been thunderstorming all morning long and it was just a mess outside.
I decided to go and pull up my aviation weather forecasts for the area and check out the live radar coverage. WOW, a very impressive squall line was racing across Florida at the time and there were severe storm warnings in many areas along with tornado warnings for Daytona Beach.
I had heard on the news of some great damage and had also heard that some aircraft had been destroyed. I found the images today and realized that the damage was far worse than I had imagined. The Embry Riddle Aeronautical University had their ENTIRE fleet of trainer aircraft destroyed by a tornado. These were very pricey aircraft equipped with the latest technology to train pilots in the newest of aviation advancements. What a shame, these poor pilots in training will now all be delayed because they have no airplanes to fly. Not to mention one of the best training facilities in North America has been seriously crippled by these events.
The tornado just demolished the fleet, here is a photo gallery of the damage - CLICK HERE. These images just go to show how damaging the tornados were. They picked up these airplanes and just threw them about. All of these aircraft would have been securely tied down to concrete ancors in the tarmac, but no amount of rope is going to stop a tornado from doing damage.
It just gives me shivers. Not a very merry christmas for these folks.
Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Tornado destroys Daytona Beach FL
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2 comments:
Hi,
I just discovered your blog and its very, very interesting!!
What are the qualifications needed to be a pilot? Would one need to have a very strong foundation in math and science?
Thanks
Hey there,
I'm by no means an expert in either math or science, so you don't need to have a very strong foundation in the subjects, however they are still important. Qualifications depend on if you want to just fly for fun or if you want to fly for a career. If just flying for fun, one can be trained in around 55-60hrs of flight experience and 50 hours of ground school instruction. This can take anywhere from 5 or 6 weeks if you dedicate a lot of time to it, or a few months if you're only able to train a couple days a week or less.
To train to a commercial level you can expect to dedicate a solid 2 years to training. You can have a commercial license in about 200-250hrs of flight training, with a lot of ground instruction as well.
Myself, I started at 17 and getting my "private license" then continuned at 18-20 at Selkirk College with my "commercial license".
Here's an article I found that might help you out further regarding "Becoming a pilot".
Hope that helps a little, and thanks for stopping by. Any more questions just fire away!
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