Julian Dorsey, born April 28, 2000, attended Silver Ridge Elementary school in his early years and later on moved to middle school. One day during an ACE class at Ridgetop junior high, Julian soon decided that he’d want to fly planes for a living. After asking him who motivates him the most, he told me, “Everyone to be honest with you, but specifically myself.”  This really inspired me to really motivate myself to go on and do what I really want in life.

I spoke with Evan Van Pelt about his relationship with Julian and what he’s seen in him with his journey on becoming a pilot in the military. “I’ve been friends with him for 5 and a half years and he’d talk almost everyday about how he really wants to become a pilot in the Air Force. He has his own set up at his house where it’s a simulation of what it’s like to fly planes on his computer. He’s shown me a few times what it’s like and I have to say it’s confusing with all the switches and gauges lighting up and moving around constantly.” I also spoke with Brooke Stahl and she could tell how motivated Julian was to become the pilot he is today. He would constantly talk about his plans with his flying career and would always tell us about how he wants to fly the big planes Boeing has”

I asked Julian about some of his trips and he told me about his scariest time in the air, “It was about two weeks ago and there were a lot of planes in the traffic pattern, and that can make it hard to tell which plane is which on the radio. One of the other pilots wasn’t communicating on the radio correctly and he ended up right under me about 100ft.” Another time, “I tried to start the engine and shock charges were coming out of the circuit breaker in the middle of a flight, but at the same time we were practicing forced descents along with emergency landings. My instructor and I both witnessed the shock charges, he said it was fine, but I didn’t hear him and I thought he told me to execute an emergency landing. I thought it was real, so we basically just descended really fast, but it wasn’t necessarily a nose dive.” I found this really interesting while talking with him because of course it’s serious and very real, but I think it’s funny because Julian mistook his orders and performed an emergency landing.

Even though the sensation of flying a plane can be euphoric there’s obstacles that can get in the way of being able to become a pilot. I spoke with Julian about some challenges he’s had to deal with. “The recent government shutdown has been a huge obstacle I had to deal with. They haven’t been able to issue me my third class medical which prevents me from being able to fly on my own. I also have school at OC full time and work two jobs so it’s hard to try and squeeze flying in”.

With all the challenges a pilot has to face, there’s also the feeling of accomplishing something. “One of my biggest accomplishments while flying so far is completing the first page of my log book. It’s been all I’ve been able to do since the government shutdown has been going on”

“Some planes i’ve flown are cessna 152, cessna 172 which is what I am flying currently, the piper cherokee, and the vans rv-6. But my favorite plane that I have flown so far is the Cessna 152.  A plane I wanna fly in the future is some sort of fighter jet or a cargo plane or one of those big boy Boeing’s”.

But with everything people do they obviously start somewhere, so I asked him about his experience flying a plane for the first time. “I was super scared the day of the flight and I remember it was at Bremerton airport. But by the time I got to the top it wasn’t super bad but the G force i felt was crazy, it felt like my face was melting”.

It’s amazing to see how something as simple as a flight simulation can inspire someone so young to pursue a career in flying planes. Whether it’s for an airport or for the military it’s amazing to hear about the journey people go through to achieve something they have always wanted.