Howdy everyone,
I'm Ryan and hail from Suffern, NY. I'm currently in the process of buying N974EZ from Charles Bretana in Arizona. Flying out commercial next week to take possession of the plane, get some dual instruction from Charles, then flying it home. It's going to based out of Greenwood Lake Airport (4N1) in New Jersey.
I'm currently a commercial single with an instrument rating. I quit my cop job last year after 8.5 years and decided I want to follow my dream of being a commercial pilot with the current end goal of ending up at the airlines. I got my private back in 2020. In the last 12 months I've gotten my instrument and commercial. I started studying for my CFI stuff when I had a conversation with my wife about how I'm going to spend my time over the next 1-2 years getting my remaining 1,200 hours for the ATP.
She works full time and is financing this career change. We decided it would be better for our family situation with two kids under 3 years old, with the possibility of adding another one in 2024, for me to purchase a small, fuel efficient aircraft and build my hours that way while maintaining complete control over my schedule. As opposed to working sunrise to sundown every day as an instructor seven days a week and leaving her to work and take care of the little ones. I used to be an instructor at my previous job and really enjoy teaching, but my wife is already doing a lot to support me with this change and if I can make it easier on her I will.
I know there's various ups and downs to doing it this way, but we have the finances to do it and keeping my family happy during this transition for me is very important. Once I get to 1,400 total time I'm going to work on my commercial multi then ATP-CTP and get my unrestricted ATP on my own. Then I'll start job hunting. I know the whole family situation will change again when I'm a working airline pilot, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.
I've loved aviation as long as I can remember. I joined the Marine Corps Reserves at VMGR-452 in Newburgh, NY and was a KC-130 CrewMaster (loadmaster + flight mechanic for the uninitiated). The plan was to finish my bachelor's degree and become a pilot in the USMC, but I diverted and became a local cop instead. I'm very obsessed with experimental aviation. I want to build everything. Hopefully in a few years when I have a good career and a good workshop, I can finally start building stuff for myself.
When I set out to buy an airplane, while very aware of the Rutan Long EZ, it wasn't what I was looking for initially. I started looking at cubs and rotax powered stuff. Bretana's plane wandered into my search results and I decided that for a few extra GPH compared to a rotax, having 50 gallons of fuel, and an autopilot would makes things way easier for building 1,000+ hours on my own.
Anyway, thanks for reading. Hope to talk and see more of the canard community as time goes on.
-Ryan
