Just a few of our members…..
Blaze Cunningham
Casper Wyoming airport was the start of my flying adventures. Learning to fly in the wind and over mountains was a challenge but not impossible. I was a geologist with an oil company and enjoyed the landscape below rich with gorgeous rock formations.
About 1985 my career path changed when Jeannie and I purchased a regional tourist attraction in Wisconsin. Crystal Cave was our home and livelihood for the next 27 years. I flew with Civil Air Patrol for 25 years in Minnesota, Wisconsin and New Mexico. With two partners, we owned a 1966 Cessna 172. It was a great airplane! I now own a Zenith 701 built in 2003. It is a great airplane and I still enjoy looking down at the rocks, hills and valleys.
John Lorenz
John Lorenz is the past president of EAA Chapter 1306. He is a 6000 hour CFII, MEII, glider, and sand-lot acrobatic pilot. He has given over 2000 hours of tailwheel instruction. During the day he is a consulting geologist. He owns several older tailwheel aircraft and gives tailwheel-transition instruction in a 1942 Interstate S1A “Cadet”.
Bruce Hansche
Bruce is a 700 hour recreational pilot with single engine land and sea, rotary wing helicopter, and hot air balloon ratings, and some acrobatic training. He is still flying the Kitfox he built in 1991. (The Kitfox is called “Dragonfly”, the trailer it rides on is “Drag-n-Fly”.) He has an airstrip in his back yard about 6 mi west of Sandia Airpark, from which he can fly the Kitfox when the wind is right. He is an electrical engineer, retired from Sandia National Labs. His hobbies include blacksmithing and metal art, music (banjo), photography, and a bit of RC aircraft.
Dragonfly
Les Krummel
Les is currently the newsletter editor for EAA Chapter 1306. Since being a kid, he’s loved building things, and spent 20 years steadily building a Thorp T-18 from plans only. It’s the “ultimate project”. Based at Moriarty, first flight was 2015, after also building a house and raising a family. As a mechanical engineer he’s recently retired from a career in satellites and launch vehicles, with hobbies including playing guitar, camping, and horses.
Jerry Wymer
Jerry retired from Sandia Nat Lab as a mechanical engineer designing , building, flying large rockets and building nuclear weapons test equipment. In 1986 I started building a 270 hp Harmon Rocket and flew it Aug 2011 after an interrupted build time of only 25 years ! Have numerous hobbies to keep me occupied – playing music in several venues with wife Ellen, motorcycles, skiing, mild aerobatics and currently restoring a 1949 Diamond T truck.
Nelda Duffey (and Tom)
I developed an interest in flying because of the experiences my uncle shared with me and the reading of many flying adventure books when I was a young girl. In brief, my uncle flew B-17s in WWII and designed and built his own single engine aircraft (including engine). It didn’t fly very far, but it did fly!
I got my single engine license in 1975 and flew—with a few breaks —e.g. PhD school, etc.) until I had a bicycle accident and brain surgery in 2012. This event resulted in intermittent vertigo, which makes flying interesting….
Not too surprisingly, I have let my medical lapse. I fly in the right (or back seat) with friends and my husband, Tom. I got Tom interested in flying a couple of years after our marriage in 1977. Among other destinations, he flies to work in Los Alamos. He earned his instrument rating flying back and forth to visit me when I was in graduate school in Lubbock, Tx. We own and fly a Cessna 172 with an upgraded engine.
I truly miss the thrill of being in the sky and in control of an aircraft.