The Chapter 186 selection as our 2024 Scholar for the Ray Aviation Foundation Scholarship is Kobe Kerns. Kobe has been on numerous Young Eagles flights and soloed on his 16th birthday in January. By coincidence, Kobe wrote an article which is featured in the recent May issue of EAA Sport Aviation and is also available here. Last month in this column I highlighted our current 2023 Ray Scholar, Grant Peterson, with his story about his first solo and his passion for flying. This month we have below a letter from our 2021 Ray Scholar, Tony Crupi, to Chapter 186 updating us on his whirlwind journey through his pilot ratings and experiences of the last couple years. Many entire flying careers do not include some of the things he has done before age 21. The passion these young adults and all our Young Eagles have is inspiring. It is great to see younger members helping at chapter events. We are supposed to inspire our youth but it seems to work the other way too. Here’s Tony…
Hello again Chapter 186! I’m Tony Crupi, your 2021 Ray Scholar. It’s been a while since I have been able to attend a meeting in person, but you’ll be happy to know that I have not wasted any time since being awarded the Ray Scholarship. In 2021, I was able to secure my Private Pilot certificate in roughly five months while working full time as a refueler at Manassas Regional. During that time I refueled many of your planes, kept a tab on every pilot on the field, and sat in every right seat I possibly could. On my weekends I would go to the Flying Circus and work with the ground crew, keeping Stearmans, Wacos, and Cubs running, and then do it all over again the next week. I was even blessed with kind mentors throughout these groups that hammered tailwheel flying into my hard head on those grass fields. I often reminisce about the fog burning away in the sunrise over that green strip while pulling out those biplanes. I think this was the absolute best way to be initially immersed in aviation.
In late 2021, I moved to Charlottesville, Virginia to pursue a Mechanical Engineering degree on a full tuition scholarship from the Air Force. I found immense honor in being able to serve and learn at the same time and envisioned going all the way through to a military flight deck. However, my path would shift once again, and had to take the out in the contract. Maintaining a job to feed myself and still doing all service-related activities was unsustainable. Fortunately, I would be once again given an immense aviation opportunity.
The American Airlines Cadet Academy accepted an application I had filed during my separation from the Air Force detachment in early 2022. I would be flying with CAE-Oxford in the Phoenix region through my Instrument, Commercial, and Multi- Commercial certificates. Touring the partner school with one of my mentors was incredible. Everyone was wearing flight uniforms with their intended airlines displayed, dispatch ran 24/7, and the simulators were just one step under those at American headquarters.
I lost track of time, space and my own existence flying for the next year with the Cadet Academy. We were on reserve for over a year, sometimes flying over a week straight, and other times enduring sizeable scheduling delays. I began to practice for competition in the Primary IAC category with a Super Decathlon, got my high- performance endorsement from a DPE mentor in his North American T-6, and flew that same T-6 in formation all the way to Tucson and back for a missing man memorial.
I did not fail a single check ride in those CAE-Oxford planes, having been partnered with arguably some of the best flight instructors in the country. However, worsening delays saw me depart the standard track that most of my fellow cadets were following to instructor school. I picked up a job like many other cadets who had showed up living on savings to work with the reserve schedule. I worked at Chandler Airport as an apprentice A&P – and much to their middle management’s disappointment – learned, wrenched, and screwed up my way through hundreds of hours of signed-off aircraft labor. There’s a photo of me somewhere on here standing next to an engine I pulled off a 140 on my own during an annual. I can’t express how valuable and rewarding this work was – all while scampering around to comply with reserve- scheduled flights.
I started to get the idea that the Cadet Academy’s partner, CAE-Oxford, would be delayed well past initial estimates for instructor schooling and began to make other plans. A mentor of mine was a glider tow pilot at a sailport southwest of Phoenix – forty years and two owners later, the operation was still in business. A call to that airport netted a visit, which turned into an interview, which involved a loop in a Schleicher ASK-21 glider. To date, it is still the coolest interview I have ever attended.
I am now a full-time instructor and tailwheel tow pilot. I’ll fly Piper Pawnee cropdusters one day, and the next morning be backseating in a Schweizer 2-33A trainer glider with an overloaded student in the front. Around lunch I’ll probably be inverted in our waivered aerobatic box, on board a Grob G103A with a paying thrill seeker. I drive to work in disbelief regularly.
I do not know exactly where I will end up securing my Airline Transport Certificate, but I am certain that my involvement in aviation is due to Chapter 186 offering me a hand, literally from the clouds, and pulling me up. The rest of my success is from my tailwheel mentors making me into a capable pilot, my Cadet Academy instructors making me into a professional pilot, and the glider school making me into a trusted pilot. I am immeasurably excited to continue being shaped into a career aviator. For at least my story, the EAA’s mission can be considered a success. It will soon be up to me, and those like me, to carry on the mission for future young aviators. I cannot wait. Thank you for your trust, teaching, kindness, humor, friendliness, resilience, history, and patience.
Feel free to email me at crupianthonyj@gmail.com if you, a family member, or a friend would like advice in starting out in avation. -Toni Crupi
Blue Skies,
Bob Prange
