fletchersteel

summer flying up here in AK for lodges or bear viewing does pay pretty good. my 1st summer i was making 5 to 6 k per month but, it is very hard flying. another but, its incredibly fun flying too and a total paradise. some 135 regs here are different due to the short season. normal 135 reg says you must have at least 1, 24 consecutive hr rest period per week which turns out to be 13 per quarter. here ya only need the 13 per quarter. meaning you can work a 14 hr duty day every single day of the week and the employer can give you the last 13 days of the season or quater off and its legal. imagine working your max 14 hr duty day 8 hr flying day 7 days a week for 3 mnths!!! its very tiring, in one day i did 8 hrs of flying, a 14 hr duty day, 40 takeoffs and landings with the longest flight leg of 15 minutes and each leg flown at or near gross weight into short ruff strips!!! that summer i saved $15,000!!!
Alaska is awesome, a must see!
goodluck with the cfi, keep me posted!

hey there, sorry its taken me so long to respond. i had a virus and had to restore my computer.
glad youre working on the cfi! its been awhile since i have known anyone at keylime. most frieght companies have earned the rep for bad maint. alot of peeps think just because the planes are beat up and ruff looking that maint must be bad, not so. thats like judging a book by its cover. most of my friends there had a good experience, 2 of my friends did not. but, it has been a few years and i've been away so who knows??? you might have pretty accurate info.

i dont live in ANC, live in Homer. its an awesome lil paradise about 4 hrs south of anc right on the water.
i fly into 3 bush villages across the bay here year round. during summer we also fly to Katmai (where the "Grizzly Man" movie was filmed) and do bear guiding. not hunting but eco-tours. its a 4 million acre park with an estimated 4000 brown bears (grizzlies)!!! we fly over glaciers, volcanos and ocean to get there, then land on beaches sometimes full of debree and bumpy soft sand. its amazing!
you should look up "Keylime Air" in Denver. they fly freight and do SIC programs. wouldnt be a good idea to load up the fam and leave a good job. but, you could easily spend a summer up here flying then go home.

how long have you lived in COS?

hey there!
i lived all over CO, mostly the west slope. i started in Glenwood Springs. i actually lived in the fbo,a lil apt in the back. then i moved to the Rifle airport, literally! i lived in a county house there and worked for the fbo. on to Vail & the Vail Valley Jet Center where we sold 1 million gallons of jet A per mnth! i myself would pump up to 30,000 gal per day. back to Rifle til my fiance cheated then i ran away to Denver and worked for signature at Centennial. got my cfi i took an offer to instruct for a friend of mine in his 182 outta Montrose & Telluride.lived in Montrose delivered pizza, worked at the airport, fligth instructed ( mountain/backcounrty checkouts) towed gliders in Telluride, flew 210 for an asphalt co, FO in a king air, corp pilot in a C-421 and personal pilot in a C-182rg for some Vegas developer & fbo owner who totally ripped me off! unfortunately all of those jobs were part time except for 2.

2 weeks ago we had negative temps (minus30)then jumped up to the mid 40's! snow has melted up to about 2000 feet on the peaks. another local 135 pilot on our route saw a black bear yesterday! sposed to be sleeping but his home melted!
anyway, i know your struggle man. its a long tough road but, youll make it!
while working on my private i got a job at an fbo and delivered pizza for Dominos. i continued to deliver pizzas while moving around Colorado and working at different fbo's (8 total) eventually getting my cfi and adding that job to the other 2 along with any flying job i could get. have you thought about a job at an fbo? ya meet lotsa peeps really good connections.
ever thought about pipeline patrol?
dont stop studying even if its only a lil here and there. most of the checkride is the oral part. a great book "everything explained for the professional pilot", lotsa good stuff (knowledge). get it
goodluck & keep in touch

hows the cfi coming along?