I was with VFA-136 Knighthawks out of Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach , Virginia . We operated both F / A 18 Hornets and Super Hornets . I did two multi-month cruises on the USS Enterprise in 2006 and 2007 during my time with the squadron . I visited places such as Lisbon , Portugal ; Split , Croatia ; Cannes , France ; Dubai , U . A . E .; Hong Kong and Singapore . The last two years in the Navy I worked at the base engine shop overhauling GE F404 engines .
After I left the U . S . Navy , I knew I wanted to stay involved in aviation , but didn ’ t yet know what specifically . I started my aerospace freelance writing career under the brand Jet
City Star back in October of 2010 , after attending the second annual Aviation Geek Fest held at the Future of Flight . I started a Twitter account and mainly used that to spotlight aerospace news . This also led to doing some professional writing for various aerospace publications . After doing that for over a decade , I wanted to actually start a new business that would be an aerospace news aggregator , pointing out top aviation defense and space news daily from across the globe . Luckily , as fortune would have it , I wasn ’ t the only person on Earth that had the same idea . I discovered Robin Koenig out of the Bay Area who built and designed a website called HypeAviation . com .
I immediately reached out to Robin back in November of 2021 to find out what his vision was for his website . We chose to join forces and start operating the Hype Aviation together , with me in charge of the news content ( Chief Content Officer ) and events calendar and Robin being the CEO / Designer / Programmer for the site . We ’ ve been operating the site in beta since January of 2022 . We then came out of beta and launched version 2.0 of the website in Los Angeles during an event operated by NYC Aviation .
For me , I ’ ve found my dream job and I couldn ’ t be happier . I ’ ve been fortunate to attend various aerospace events in the Pacific Northwest as well as beyond .
FEBRUARY | MARCH 2023 ISSUE NO . 31 49