By Rusty Aileron | AuxBeacon News Contributor

[Editor’s Note: At Rusty Aileron’s suggestion, AuxBeacon has been continuously compiling helpful tips from the membership on how to become a Civil Air Patrol pilot.]

1. Buy a Nomex flight suit complete with Civil Air Patrol patches and a pretty silk scarf.

2. Get yourself a nice pair of Ray Ban sunglasses or even the ones from Randolph Engineering and be sure to have them hanging from your low-zippered chest while you speak authoritatively with your hands on your hips.

3. Get photographed reading FAA Handbooks, Advisory Circulars and FASTeam Safety Briefs. The more briefs you have around you, the better.

4. Take Ginko-biloba to improve your 60+ year old memory and eyesight. Checklists slow up play in the air and on the golf-course, where we soon expect to be landing to make a hole in one.

5. Life is short, at least for you, so be sure to lie on your FAA medical. You can always carry the drugs you might need in the cockpit.

6. If you have a wife and children, they take away time you need for studying for your CAP Form 5 and the procedures of the G1000. We recommend you find a young girl who has daddy issues and offer her a job and residence as a live-in baby-sitter. If you use the word Au Pair, especially here in Louisiana, it won’t sound as creepy as it does in Washington State.

7. If you are not good with blind cockpit procedures, you can practice blindly sucking [redacted] in our Civil Air Patrol program. It is a fact that Civil Air Patrol has a surprisingly inordinate number of [redacted] suckers and those willing to make use of the service.

8. Are you uncoordinated on the ground and in the air? Watch episodes of Gomer Pyle USMC and imitate his finer points. By being somewhat ambiguous in Civil Air Patrol, commanders and check pilots might think twice of getting in your way.

9. Find the nearest unpopulated mountain and slam into it. It will help the CAP remain relevant in SAR