Flight School

As Paul Horst looked at ground charts to prepare for his flight to Huntington, Ind. on June 20, his instructor, Curtis Lentz, said something unusual for a pilot to hear. \n“You are going to get lost tonight, I guarantee it,” he said to Horst’s immediate laughter. “No, I’m going to make sure you do.”\nHorst, a recent IU graduate, is working on fulfilling the requirements for his private pilot license at BMG Aviation, Inc., which offers flight instruction and aircraft rental and maintenance. Although IU doesn’t offer an aviation program, Horst is one of about four to six IU students and staff members who pay around $6,000 to take flying lessons at BMG Aviation at any given time, Lentz said.\nAfter he came to IU, Horst said he started to seriously think about flying and finally decided to take lessons. On Aug. 24 of last year, Lentz took him for his first flight over Bloomington.\n“We came back in early, as I recall, because I got sick,” Horst said, adding that becoming nauseous cut his flights short for a while. “I eventually got over it.”\nThe list of requirements for getting a private pilot license is long and detailed, Horst said, including being able to do certain takeoffs and landings, stalling and recovering the plane, flying “cross country” from airport to airport and wearing “foggles,” which gives the illusion of flying through fog.\nWhile it may sound like completing all of the requirements would take a long time to do, Assistant Women’s Soccer Coach Woody Sherwood said he finished the program and received his license June 18 after only a four or five month process. His family had a history of flying planes.\n“Both of my parents flew – not as a profession,” he said. “I knew at some point I was going to end up doing it.”\nAfter soccer season ended last year, Sherwood decided to learn how to fly, scheduling about three or four flights a week. \nSherwood said he read up on flying and planes enough before he started lessons, so nothing really surprised him. Horst, on the other hand, said he hadn’t realized how little control there would be – he always assumed every airport had radar and air traffic controllers. But only one control tower sits at the Monroe County Airport, next to which BMG Aviation is located. \nWith news stories about crashes involving small planes every so often, including one in which five Jacobs School of Music graduate students died in April 2006, Sherwood said many people think the probability of going up in a small plane and crashing is high.\n“I’ve been surprised at how many people perceive this as more dangerous than it is,” he said, adding that he knows it’s still important to keep safety a priority.\nAfter finishing up the requirements and taking written and in-flight tests to get his license, Horst said he plans to fly his uncles’ planes in his spare time. Sherwood said it’s still in the works, but he wants to fly to games around the country in order to recruit new players for the women’s soccer team.\nAs the sun set at around 10 p.m., Horst and Lentz checked the plane before climbing in, yelled, “Clear!” and kicked the engine on. Dogs barked and the smell of gasoline filled the air as the plane lifted off the runway, making its nearly two-hour trip to Huntington and back. After the trip, Horst said Lentz did not, in fact, drive him off course.\n“It went well,” he said. “We got all the way there and back.”