After reading some blogs written by young men and women learning to fly, I got out my old log book and started flipping the pages. Taking a trip down memory lane if you will. I am certainly jealous of these youngsters just starting out. Feeling the rush for the first time. Wishing I could be with them and watch their faces as the flight unfolds. Feel again the light footed walk across the ramp after a particularly good or exciting flight. I am also a little concerned.
In a way they have many more challenges facing them, what with A airspace, B airspace, control zones, TCA's and so forth. They have much better, or at least more high tech, to help them with these challenges. I was at the airport not long ago and had many opportunities to gaze at some of the high tech instrument panels being placed before the general aviation pilot today. flying a single engine aircraft today is like flying PlayStation. Everything is computer generated graphics. I was chatting with a pilot (young) one day and he was talking about way points and GPS and graphic displays that show his course, true course (track) and winds and temperatures at altitude. I asked him if he had an E6B. I have never seen a more blank look.
And here is where I start getting concerned.
I wondered to myself what would happen to the panel if they encountered ST. Elmo's fire and all their graphic displays suddenly went blank. It can happen. It did happen to me. Night time en route from SPS to DAL. Tstorms all around. Static electricity discharges. St. Elmo arrived. Nothing but static on the radio and my VOR was haywire. I am starting to get nervous. But I still had visibility and I knew where I was and where I was going. Then I started to see a weird kind of blue glow and the static was getting worse. I had heard about St. Elmo's fire but had never seen or experienced it. I was freaked. Then there was this loud pop or a zap, like what you hear when you walk across a carpet and touch a door knob and get a static spark. The radios got quiet and the VOR steadied up and (just like I knew what I was doing)...there was Dallas Love.
I mentioned this encounter because I am curious. What would a static discharge do to a computer chip or the graphic display? I'm sure they would be OK. Wouldn't they?
But let's leave that alone.
The young people just starting out still have the same joy and excitement of learning to fly that Orville and Wilbur discovered.
Some aviation authors describe an old and experienced pilot by describing the lines around his eyes from gazing into the far blue for many years and many miles. They rarely mention the laugh lines around the mouth. These are put there by the joy of flying. They never loose their love of it.

I never have.