AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2020 - 32

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PILOT BRIEFING
YOU CAN FLY |

150th flying club recognized
Montana pilots with ﬂying club idea start their own
B Y D AV I D T U L I S
TWO MONTANA PILOTS who didn't know
each other and operated from airports on
opposite sides of Kalispell-but shared the
same idea of starting a ﬂying club-joined
forces to create Bald Eagle Aviation Club,
the 150th ﬂying club assisted by the AOPA
Flying Clubs Initiative.
"Wow, 150, that's pretty cool," said cofounder Kevin Collom, who began ﬂying
lessons in 2018 and recently learned his
club helped the initiative reach a milestone. "I'd read about flying clubs and
decided to check into our area because I'd
heard there was one here years ago."
The city has two airports-Kalispell
City Airport straddles the south, and
Glacier Park International Airport is to
the north.
Mike Whitehill, based at Kalispell
City Airport, volunteered during the 2018
AOPA Fly-In at Missoula International
Airport and attended a "Maximum Fun-
Minimum Cost" ﬂying club seminar. He
hoped to duplicate his Minnesota ﬂying
club experience after a move out west and
met with AOPA Flying Clubs Initiative
Director Steve Bateman for advice.
Bald Eagle Aviation Club operates
a 1957 straight-tail Cessna 182A with a
Horton STOL conversion for better performance at high-altitude airports. Monthly
dues are $150, and members are charged

32 | AOPA PILOT December 2020

a $120 wet rate per tachometer hour. The
initial club membership is $2,050 and is
transferable. There currently are seven
members, and the group has been up
and running for about four months, said
Collom, who added that scheduling the
aircraft among the members hasn't been a
problem despite a ﬂurry of recent activity.
"We just graduated our ﬁrst student about
two or three weeks ago."
Bald Eagle's ﬁrst meeting included a
photo shoot with a banner AOPA sent to
help celebrate the 150th club milestone. An
airplane wash and a hangar get-together
are in the club's future, and Collom said
members are already talking about buying a complex, high-performance aircraft.
"We love all of our new clubs," said
Bateman, who founded his own flying
club in Maryland centered around a 1980
Cessna 152 Aerobat. "They went through
tough times trying to ﬁnd members and
then they made a leap of faith."
EMAIL david.tulis@aopa.org

The AOPA Flying Clubs initiative is one
component of the You Can Fly program
(youcanfly.aopa.org), which is funded by
the AOPA Foundation ( foundation.aopa.
org) and is designed to get people ﬂying and
keep them ﬂying.

http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://www.AOPA.org/creditcard http://youcanfly.aopa.org https://foundation.aopa.org/ https://foundation.aopa.org/

AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - December 2020