A summer glider camp ended up pointing Civil Air Patrol cadet Austin Dillow in the right direction when the then-14-year-old soloed a sailplane over an Illinois countryside. “That really sealed the deal for me,” said the 2016 Aerospace Education Cadet of the Year. “Once I was able to go up in one of those gliders by myself, I realized that’s what I wanted to be doing.” Dillow soloed in a single-engine land airplane two years later, on his sixteenth birthday, and earned his private pilot certificate when he turned 17.
Source: aopaCivil Air Patrol honors aerospace cadet