By Cassidy Peterson
Staff writer
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Brian Bird grew up in west Texas, and always dreamed of flying.
When the Hutchinson Community College science professor was a teenager his community formed a gliding club, and Bird decided that he wanted to try it, as you could fly a glider at 14 in comparison to a plane at 16.
He asked his parents and they told him he would have to make the money to pay for lessons. Bird delivered newspapers every morning until he had enough money for lessons. A few years later, he got his pilot’s license.
Bird chose not to pursue aviation as a career due to his eyesight and the state of flying at that time. Instead, he studied mechanical engineering at Texas Tech University. While in college, he got certified to be a flight instructor, and he did that throughout his schooling. Once he graduated, Bird found himself in need of a full-time job.
“I figured I would probably go work in the oil field, but there were no jobs like that and they just happened to be hiring there at NASA for the space shuttle program, which was just getting started. This was in 1983,” Bird said.
He concludes now that he was given the NASA job due to his aviation background. His first position at NASA was in flight design. His job entailed calculating how much fuel it would take to fly a shuttle mission, and what the weight and balance of the shuttle would need to be to successfully complete its mission. He worked in this position for six years before switching to crew training for 10 years.
“I thought it was a lot more interesting and more fun to me. Because then I was working as a simulator instructor and working with each flight crew. And so in that case I was working on an assigned mission,” Bird said.
Bird said he enjoyed this position, as he was able to instruct a flight crew with about five others. His area of expertise was in fuel, propulsion, and guidance systems.
“It was kind of a cool thing, I was teaching these guys, who are basically test pilots, literally teaching them how to fly it,” he said.
Bird began to take night courses through NASA to earn his master’s in planetary geology during this time as well.
Around 2000, Bird and his family moved to Kansas, as the opportunity had arose for him to fly as a career. He bought a crop dusting business and did aerial spraying for several years. In 2003 he decided to work for HutchCC as a physics, geology, and physical science instructor. He said that working at the college gave him some extra income and benefits while still allowing him to have his business and work in the summers.
Bird ultimately sold his business, but still does crop dusting every summer in northwestern Kansas.
“Here in about two more weeks, I will pack up my stuff and I live in a hangar out there,” Bird said.
Bird usually spends two or three weeks at a time in northwestern Kansas, and then flies home in between. In a good summer, he covers 20 to 30 thousand acres of land and works up to 13 hour days.
Often flying at speeds of 140 mph and low to the ground, he describes it as, “… very intense, it’s like if you have ever driven in a blinding snow with icy roads.”
Bird is still a flight instructor and also likes to spend his free time on his engineless glider in Yoder. He plans to retire from HutchCC at the end of this semester. When asked what he wants to do in retirement, he says he would like to keep giving flight lessons, travel with his wife in his new plane, earn a special license to be an airplane mechanic, and potentially teach an online geology course through HutchCC.
Bird remarks that in his retirement interacting with the students will be what he misses the most.
