About Us:

The Beach Family. Shawn, Aimee, Ashley, and 1604F in Idaho.

My background in flying is mostly family-related. Grampa flew for the Tigers, dad for Northwest, and brother Ian is a CFI in Boise. And while I have time flying in everything from a Cessna 180 to a Grumman Goose I have yet to recieve one license. Quit buggin' me about it.

Shawn has always been interested in flying so for one of our anniversaries I got him a "Demo Flight" (1/2 hour flight, 1/2 hour ground) at Harvey Field in Snohomish, Washington. Needless to say he was signed up for lessons pretty quick. All of his training has been through Regal Air at Paine Field. After he passed the FAA Private Pilot Exam we spent quite awhile renting from Regal and taking small flights around the area. We took a lot of daytrips around the Puget Sound... Roche Harbor, Bellingham, Bremerton (yummy fish and chips), etc. and had a grand time.

And then came the desire to travel further. "Further" defined partially as The Ranch in Idaho. Doing the math, the 7-ish hour drive to my dad's place could be done in about 2.5 hours of flying. But renting a plane for a single weekend is a pricey endeavor. Here's a bright idea! Let's buy one!

After a bit of research we decided on a Cessna 172 as the perfect first plane. A good deal of Trade-A-Plane and website searching later we found a nice 172 that was being kept not too far from our home. We bought 1604F in November of 2003 and have been more than pleased with our purchase. That is, until we started flying over all these exciting strips that we couldn't visit (04F is no mountain craft). Viola! Sportsman!

Now we spend our free-time building "Rosie" in the garage and flying 04F. Shawn has upped his fancy "Private Pilot" title to that of "Instrument Rated" so he's been trying to teach me how to write down IFR clearances. So look for us in the garage or up in the wild blue yonder! (I'll be the one madly scribbling down cryptic messages that no one can figure out.)