Rainy greetings from Oregon...

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kayakertom
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 10:43 pm
Location: Lake Oswego, OR

Rainy greetings from Oregon...

Post by kayakertom »

Hi,

Just starting to become a sport pilot. Have lived in Alaska and flew in a number of bush planes there as a passenger, also have gone gliding.

Am looking for recommendations for a good F.I. in the PDX area.

My educational background is in physics and now work in engineering. I've done a lot of electronics and have done a wide variety of interesting projects: videotaped the aurora with low light tv cameras; built a solar vehicle; built a human centrifuge and a pitch/roll chair for studying the interaction of vision and the inner ear; did low temperature (liquid N2 and He) anti-ferromagnet research; have helped with numerous earthquake engineering structural projects.

For flying, my plan is to visit a number of the smaller airparks around PDX and meet potential F.I.'s and do discovery flights in different planes until I get enough understanding of what is best for me and find a good F.I. match.
Fltsimken1
Posts: 2
Joined: Sun Aug 16, 2009 4:10 pm
Location: Salem Oregon

Re: Rainy greetings from Oregon...

Post by Fltsimken1 »

kayakertom.

Hi. My name is Ken. I live in Salem Oregon. I don't know your flying status but let me tell you about my experience here in Oregon.

I wanted to become a Sport Pilot too. The only school was TakeWing Flying D enterprises.
They are located in Cresswell Oregon 70 miles south of Salem. I took out a loan from Pilot Finance
of $5500.00 and started my training. I got as far as my 1st. solo in a Comos Ikarus C42. A really
cool little Sport Plane with a 100hp. Rotax. Then I got my 1st. instructed x country flight in and then my funding ran dry. I had 23 hr. of instructed flight. The very next day I went to work and got laid off my job. :-).

Before all this started I had visited Nutsch Aviation out of Independence Or. Wayne Nutsch is the owner and he and his wife Deborah run the FBO there in Independence. At that time he quoted me $5500.00 to $6000.00 to get a Private pilots license. The reason I did not do it was because
at 53 years old I was concerned about the medical. I have a huge alcohol past from 20 years back.
I thought there was no way I would be approved by the FAA to get a medical.

After regaining employment I decided to go for it anyway. After going thru the hoops and much trouble I was granted my 3rd. Class medical. So off to Nutsch Aviation I went. This time I paid as I went. I was able to apply some of my sport training to the private. All I had to do was to get used to yoke and rudder rather than center stick and rudder. That only took 3 or 4 hours. After my
almost going off the side of the runway my 1st. attempts at take off.

Long story short. I passed my check ride on 07/15/2012 and the total cost at Nutsch was just
under $3000.00 including check ride. I think that is great.

If you haven't already started pursuing your flight training I would highly recommend Nutsch
Aviation and just do the drive. I'm positive he will treat you as he treats everybody. Right now he has an excellent instructor named Kelly Greene You can find his web site Nutsch.com. Read his bio.
You will be impressed. Not to mention he is just one swell guy. Very reasonable if not the cheapest.
And totally professional. Independence is a great place to fly out of as well.

Ken
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