Aerospace courses may be offered at Mojave Air & Space Port in near future

A perfect day for flying with calm air and lots of blue sky welcomed many pilots at the January Plane Crazy Saturday. The flightline in front of Voyager Restaurant was full of exciting aircraft for the Mojave Transportation Museum Foundation's historic display day at Mojave Air & Space Port.

The presentation in the MASP Board Room was well received. The Kern Community College District and Cerro Coso Community College wants to support the aerospace and defense industries in their service area.

Dr. Devin Daugherty, Outreach Services for the Kern Community College District, spoke to a full house at the January Plane Crazy Saturday and presented a plan to offer Aerospace Courses at Mojave Air & Space Port, depending on the response of people willing to take the courses.

He discussed various courses that might be offered, including A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) mechanic classes, basic pilot ground school, avionics technician and air traffic control.

"We're going to start collecting some data. We have a company that the Chancellor hired to help us with our strategic plan to collect the data so we can start getting that information and start preparing for the future, looking at different facilities that we're going to need, type of courses, how we're going to grow and grow and things of that nature," said Daugherty.

Daugherty continued, "Here's the exciting part; the basic ground school for private pilot license was something that Tim Reid brought to my attention; he told me that he wanted to build the general aviation on part of the airport and the only way we could build general aviation here at the airport is by having more pilots and more people that want to come to the airport, fly out of here and so forth and one way to do that is to offer basic ground school. So that way it opens it up, so people can go to basic ground school, then from there, they can go out with their instructor and start getting their hours completed in flight."

When I asked the questions, "Who else is offering this class? How far away are they?" Reid replied, "Fox Field offers it and their waiting list is three to six months."

"Wow! So, it really started to drive the excitement and we will be looking into it. We kind of mapped out what we need to do to offer the basic ground school. The need to get a certificate or an application that would need to be turned in and get certified. Then we've already identified possible instructors that can teach the class; and we've kind of identified a couple of places that we might be able to teach the school here at the spaceport," Daugherty said.

"We're investigating that; we're looking at different options of what it would take to get the curriculum," said Dougherty.

"Tim and I are looking at right now is seeing what the demand is, how many openings we are going to have in the area, who's going to use it and so forth. So, we're having those preliminary discussions."

Daugherty took questions from the audience and concluded by explaining they will offer a meeting scheduled for February 1 at Mojave Air & Space Port for anyone interested in these programs or ideas.

Mojave Transportation Museum President, Cathy Hansen, presented Daugherty with a Plane Crazy Saturday hat at the conclusion of the presentation.