A little over a week ago, I had the opportunity to appear on an online radio show hosted by a couple of fellow pilots, friends, and great ambassadors to aviation - Al Waterloo (@Al_H2Oloo) and Marc Epner (@mepner). A bit of background on how I ended up in Marc's dining room talking into a microphone for a few hours...

Marc is the president of Leading Edge Flying Club, a collection of great people and great aircraft that I joined a few years ago.  Marc is really the driving force behind a lot of the great camaraderie that us members share - monthly breakfasts, flyouts, or just good ole hangar flying. Al is a relatively new member to the club and brings a vast array of aviation experiences coupled with a great passion for flying (check out his website at SimpleFlight.net for further detail and you will quickly understand what I'm talking about).  Both of these guys have recently taken to the airwaves of ethanolive.com from 8pm til 10pm on Sunday nights to talk flying and do what they can to make aviation better.

My journey to the radio show was through my experiences with SparkReel over the last several months.  For those who don't know, SparkReel is the brainchild of Matt Gibbs (my brother-in-law) and Adam Hirsen.  SparkReel is a developing social media forum that enables users to share videos from mobile devices to a targeted group through a very easy-to-use interface.  My use of SparkReel began when I started a group titled "Flying" and began uploading some of my aviation-related experiences.  Adam is a pilot as well and he jumped into the mix with his own great contributions quickly thereafter.

At one of our recent Leading Edge breakfast meetings, I noticed that Al was pretty versed in recording aviation-related experiences on his phone (he filmed and used iMovie to create a cool video from a recent $100 hamburger trip that he showed to the group).  I reached out to him afterwards and he jumped at the opportunity to add his own experiences.  Check out his contributions at www.SparkReel.com/g/flying - incredible.

Over the course of the past few months, Adam, Al and myself have been sharing / commenting on each others' videos and really kickstarting some great aviation dialogue that ultimately led to an appearance on the radio show.

We decided to congregate at the L'Edge - Leading Edge's room on the second floor of Hangar 5 at KPWK.  What a great place to see an aviation community in action; besides us, three other members stopped by (two who weren't even there to fly) and a lot of great flying talk was had by all.  Conversation naturally evolved over time into many of the areas Al and Marc wanted to address during the show, which put to rest any anxiety I had about what I would say.  After continuing our planning at Ram over some quality pilot food, we headed to Marc's house to set up our 'studio' for the big show.

A few technical difficulties prevented us from going live and interacting with listeners, but that was just a blip in an otherwise amazing experience - we recorded the show and it is available on SimpleFlight or as a podcast through iTunes.

Marc and Al come from different professional backgrounds and have built their flying experiences through different avenues, but I think this makes the quality of their product that much greater. United by a common passion for aviation, they both know what is going on in flying today and recognize a need to change it, to better it and to get more people involved.

I was a bit nervous when it finally came time to talking and had to be told a few times to hold the mic closer to my mouth (I was actively trying to avoid deafening any listeners), but felt like I really settled in over the course of the recording and that we all really engaged in a great dialogue. Adam did a fantastic job clearly spelling out the mission of SparkReel and then bridging the gap to its potential to aviation.  These SparkReel guys know what they want for their project and know how to communicate it.  I'm sold.

Overall, we touched on many possibilities for the Flying group at SparkReel; the ability to unite like-minded pilots in a community (see above for how it has brought Adam, Al and myself together); providing a means for non-pilots to get a glimpse of the world we pilots are lucky enough to see out the front of an aircraft; and opening doors to new forms of aviation instruction (including dispelling some of the many flying myths pilots carry around - see Marc's video of flying an SR-22 into KORD) and inspiration.

I came away from the whole experience feeling very excited about the future.  Marc and Al seem to really be connecting and actively thinking of ways to better aviation.  With their backgrounds and commitment, I'm confident that they will be able to put those ideas to action.

SparkReel has been my doorway to social media and I have very high expectations for the future given all that Matt and Adam have done to bring it to where it is now.  So, to link all of this together, here's to hoping the Flying group can really grow and become something where all types of pilots are motivated to share their experiences.