People have been emailing, face booking, and phoning asking me what qualifications I have to spew forth this stuff, so here goes – all about me.
My autobiography.
My fascination with flying machines began as far back as I can remember. According to my mom’s story, when I was 3 or 4 years old, I looked up to the sky as a float plane flew past. I exclaimed to her “Look, pantaloons!” At that young and tender age, I was hooked.
We lived on a dairy farm in the
As I progressed in life, I eventually joined up with Uncle Sam’s Flying Club, The United States Air Force. I was so fortunate to be stationed in the wonderful town of
Funny thing, as I was finishing up the A&P I learned how much – or little – A&P Mechanics earned, so I took a slight detour into auto repair instead. They made lots more money. I started out working in a gas station in Westchester, CA. that is near
I found a very different job at a little company also near LAX called IBM. I worked in the copy center making copies of documents for different departments, and ended up as the office supply room supervisor. This was for the Federal Systems Division of IBM and as they were being phased out, I took a transfer to
Great little car, nimble, fairly quick, and pretty agile. As it turned out I started doing some closed course slalom racing, and naturally things needed repairing from time to time and I became well acquainted with the Toyota Dealer in
Pretty good gig, and
I realized that working for wages was a pretty silly way to go, because the shop was keeping half of the money I brought in, so I rented the service bays in a gas station back in Thousand Oaks; the first of my entrepreneurial experiences. I worked for myself for several years building my repair business, and being self-employed was good. I liked that a lot, no one to answer to except the customers. I tried to treat them well, and they liked it.
As luck would have it, eminent domain would dictate my next move. The new Simi Valley Freeway was being built and they needed the land where my shop was located. Now what? Well, my parents still lived in
We (LeRoy and I) moved into a small rental house in
In the mean time my dad learned to fly and took be for a few flights. He ended up purchasing a Cessna 172, and reported to me that he knew I wanted to complete my certificate so if I would replace the fuel I could use his plane. He also knew a Flight Instructor in
I was just finishing my Private Pilot Certificate when one of my customers mentioned something called the GI Bill. I checked into it and realized that I could fly for darn near free. Good old Uncle Sam would pick up 90% of the total invoice, plane, fuel, CFI,
I went down to a company called Seattle Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle and found that they had these planes called Piper. Hmmm, low wings, they sure looked more sleek that the high wings I had flown so far. After my first flight I was hooked. Now this is what flying is supposed to be like. Sitting up high on top of the wing, instead of being slung under it like a hot air balloon basket, just feels right.
I quickly finished my Instrument Rating, and needed some extra time to qualify for the Commercial Certificate so I did some Cross Country flying. Back to
All this time, my car shop was still going strong, but it had a downside. The location was 61st and
So by now I have Commercial Single and
By now, I was ready for a change of pace, so I went up to
I said before that I really didn’t want to teach, but since I had the certificate, I did take on one student and did a couple of flight reviews. I found out how much fun it was to teach and thought I would maybe continue for a while. It’s funny how some things work out because a few days (it could have been weeks) later I saw an ad for a flight instructor at a flight school on Paine Field in
During the interview, the Chief Flight Instructor (who as it turned out was one of my dad’s instructors) asked me during the interview what my goals in aviation were. As those of you that know me, I can be a bit of a smart aleck sometimes, so after a minute of thought I said “Well, in two years I’ll have your job, and in three years I’ll own this place.” Remember, that I am not very comfortable as an employee, but do pretty well being self-employed. The owner of SkyTrek then asked me how serious I was about teaching there, as I did own my own auto repair business still, so I asked him to give me a week to close my business in
SkyTrek Aviation was a FAR part 141 flight school, and we had authorization to teach and be reimbursed under the GI Bill. Since the GI Bill was in the process of being phased out, (well as it turned out it was only changed around not phased out) we had monthly audits by the VA as well as quarterly audits by the FAA for the 141 certificate. In addition we had a 135 certificate under a different company that we flew banking material to
With all of this, the job of becoming chief flight instructor took a bit longer than the two years as I boasted in the interview because the Chief CFI had to be a CFI for two years to qualify. Then I had to fly a checkride with the FAA and pass an oral on all of the courses for which we had approval. Private, Instrument rating. and Commercial. It actually took about 30 months, so I was six months late. By now, Grumman had produced the first of their twin, the Cougar (GA7), and we were lucky enough to sell one and have it on leaseback. I started flying it some and promptly applied for and received my Multi engine instructor rating. Along the way, I also added Basic, Advanced, and Instrument Ground Instructor Certificates, and with the MEI I qualified for and got the Gold Seal added to my CFI Certificate.
The SkyTrek Management was very innovative in trying to improve the Grumman airplanes, and was getting into the Supplemental Type Certificate Business. This means that we could improve the airframe to make it more aerodynamic, or install a bigger engine, or install a better propeller, and then sell the rights to that modification to customers. Those customers would then bring their planes to us for the modification. It got to be such a big business that the owner decided to get rid of the flight school and concentrate only on the maintenance and modifications. I bought the flight school portion from him, right at the three year mark that I had boasted in the original interview.
I operated the school under the name of Skytrek Pilot’s Association until 1986 when I sold it.
During that ten years, I amassed about 6000 hours of flight time some 5000 as a CFI, and the rest flying in the charter business, and picked up both single and multi engine Airline Transport Pilot Certificates. I never wanted to fly for the airlines, but I wanted to have the ATP so I could better prepare applicants for that Certificate. We did graduate a few ATPs, and one of my ATP students just retired after twenty years with Continental Airlines.
After that, I did some consulting on Paine field, worked for the original owner of Skytrek in his modification business for a while and ended up (somehow) at the Boeing Company, where I stayed for the next 13 years. Back working for the man. It was a good job, and since I was now married and raising a family it was good to have steady income. I did a variety of things there, starting out with a flashlight and mirror as a Quality Inspector. During the interview with the Boeing Company, they asked what inspection experience I had since I was applying as an inspector, so I told them ten years. I figured that a preflight inspection counted…
I worked what they call line Quality Control (QC) for about a year, but got really tired of crawling around inside the wings, and the center section inspecting where the wings join the fuselage, and transferred to a Quality Assurance (QA – Boeing’s new name for quality) administrative position as an auditor. Then moved over to QA Planning where we would write the instructions for the line QA people to inspect. Later, I went to customer planning where we would add inspections to the planes that the customer wanted to see, then functional test planning where we wrote the actual jobs that would functionally test the airplane, control movement, gear retractions, and my favorite, the emergency escape slide deployment. That was fun to witness, but I never got to jump out onto one of the slides. This was all on the 767 and 777. Lots of jobs – I told you I was not a readily satisfied employee – I get bored too easily.
During this time I kept my hand in instructing both in the classroom and as a CFI with BEFA, the Boeing Employee’s Flying Association. Boeing offered after hours ground school to all of the employees that wanted to attend, and I was hired by the education division to teach the course. Cool, because as a SPEEA Represented employee I was paid time and a half for teaching! I would have done it free – but I took their money. I also taught students in the three planes that BEFA kept in Everett, a Cessna 150, a 172, and a Piper Warrior.
My swan song job there was a Project Manager of something called Ship Side Support, back on the 767-400. Typically, the QA department inspects all of the workmanship of the shop and if they find something out of spec, write a rejection tag. The “tag” goes to engineering for disposition, back to QA, and then back to the shop for repair. In the Ship Side Support model, the design engineers were actually on the factory floor, and when the shop ran into a problem, they, QA, and engineering would resolve the problem, correct the drawing, issue new manufacturing instructions and we would drive on, cutting sometimes weeks out of the assembly process. Worked great and saved a bunch of time and money.
At the same time, I started having problems with the BEFA Scheduling system and got bumped from a couple of flights that I really wanted, so in October of 1999 I went out and purchased N1854T with part of my 401K money and started teaching again, just to support the plane. I thought I could fly for free if I would teach a couple of students.
During the winter of 1999, SPEEA the union for engineers went out on an unprecedented strike and being a faithful union guy I walked the picket line. Well, looking in from the outside seemed natural so I emailed my boss and said that as soon as the strike was over I would officially retire. In March of 2000 that is what I did. Free at Last. 13 ok years, retirement paycheck, a fat 401K – life is good
Since I was teaching ground school, and had my own plane to teach in, getting students was pretty easy, and after I retired, word of mouth worked well, as I bribed the person that took over my job teaching ground school. Well, I didn’t really bribe him, but I did encourage him to pass out my business cards.
I stayed busy teaching, and actually bought a motor home to use as a mobile office and kept it at the airport. The management at the airport was not too keen on this as they thought it was unfair to the other flight schools that had higher overhead. I pointed out that I had complied with all of their requirements (of which there were many) and they had authorized me to teach on the airport. Since the motor home was my only way to get to the airport since I did drive it there every day and home every night, they really couldn’t say anything. They conceded. Soon after that I got a second Cherokee, this time a 180 that I had on leaseback. Coincidently they were parked side by side on the east ramp at Paine Field.
By now I was getting pretty busy with students, and I thought that if I had a second CFI to help with the load it would be a good thing. But, since I didn’t want the extra overhead I thought that I could get the new CFI to become authorized by the airport, like I had done then he or she could teach in my planes and all would be great. I put an ad in the paper for a CFI Wanted. I got a great applicant, sent him to the airport and of course they asked “What airplane do you have?” to which he answered “I’ll be teaching with Dave in his Cherokee.”
“Whoa!” says the airport. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck this just might be a flight school. The airport manager then approached me and said that he admired what I was trying to do, but this has gone too far. You see, by now I had four airplanes, as I had purchased a Cherokee Arrow, and Piper J3-C Cub. The airport made me move out of the motor home into an office they just happened to have.
During this same time, I heard about a program called Master CFI. The more I checked into it I found out I qualified to become a Master Flight Instructor, and applied to become one. Here is an excerpt from their website:
To help put this achievement in its proper perspective, there are approximately 93,000 CFIs in the
The Master Instructor designation is a national accreditation recognized by the FAA and industry that is earned by a candidate through a rigorous process of continuing professional activity and peer review. Much like a flight instructor's certificate, it must be renewed biennially. This process parallels continuing education regimens used by other professionals to enhance their knowledge base while increasing their professionalism. Simply put, the Master Instructor designation is a means by which to identify those outstanding aviation educators, those "Teachers of Flight," who are demonstrating an ongoing commitment to excellence, professional growth, and service to the aviation community.
Through their dedication to excellence, Master Instructors have earned their "black belts" in aviation education. They truly represent the crème de la crème of the aviation industry!
Since 2001, I have qualified for and received the MCFI Status the next 4, two year periods. It is a great honor for me.
So that started it – I am now a full-fledged FBO, and soon there after I did hire my first CFI. I’m pleased to say that he is still with me. The next big step was the decision to start doing our own maintenance again with the help of some certified A&Ps. When I only had 54T, I did my own 100-hour and annual inspections but now with 4 airplanes all being worked on by a local shop, charging retail rates it was a bit of a stretch financially. What to do? As it turned out, a charter company in the same building as my office was moving so I carefully weighed my options, looked at the bank account and signed a three-year lease on 14,000 square feet of hangar and office space. My long range plan was to eventually grow into the space especially during the winter months.
It’s been said that God takes care of fools, and I think that may be the truth, because during the first winter, I was contacted by a person that had a contract with Boeing to assemble the tooling that was to go inside the DreamLifter. Since he didn’t have a facility large enough to do the job he asked if he could rent our place. Well, OK! That saved us the first winter. By the next winter, I had subleased half the hanger to a tenant with a Pilatus PC12, so we were good for the remainder of the lease. Eventually I was starting to get some retail customers and the rent was getting paid – every month.
By now, the lease was getting within a year of renewing so I had some thinking to do. Since we already said God takes care of me, He really did it this time. I met this girl at a networking meeting that I attended on a weekly basis, and it turned out she was pretty savvy in the business climate, and since her future was now at stake too (we were now married) we decided to not renew the lease, but instead move the whole operation to the Arlington, WA airport.
Since we made that decision, we needed a place to move into. We found through a friend a facility that was going to be up for lease on January 1st, but our lease with Snohomish County was over in October – Luckily, they let us rent the existing place on a month to month basis. We finally got to start moving near the end of December (during 3 feet of snow on the ground). There was a huge down side because the new facility was in horrible shape. The tenant that was leaving had been there for more than 20 years and didn’t keep it very clean. Remember that the no smoking law is new, so there was a lot of tobacco residue everywhere, carpets were shot, and it was just a mess. Two weeks later we were ready to start setting up the office and shop.
We have been here for a year and a half now, and we really like it. The economy has slowed general aviation significantly, but I think that flight instruction is increasing again, the maintenance shop is filling up, and pilots are renting airplanes. Things are looking up.
Our fleet today consists of 1, Piper J3 Cub; 2, Cherokee 140s; a Cherokee Arrow; and a Cirrus SR20.
Well, that does it. That’s me – and I hope you enjoyed my story. However, just one more thing, here is a bullet list of my resume:
• Certificates
– ATP SEL/MEL
– Commercial SES
– CFI, CFI-I, MEI, BGI, AGI, IGI, Gold Seal, & MCFI
– FAAST Representative
• Experience
– 10,000 TT – 7500 as CFI all GA
– CFI since 1974
- Aviation Community Involvement
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– FAA Safety Team
– Angel Flight
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– Challenge Air
· Most Recent Awards
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· AOPA Special Citation
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