Eagles Take Flight

When a juvenile bird leaves the nest, it has to be pretty confident before taking the leap or else pay the price. For students at Maple River, the curriculum might prepare students intellectually and socially for the real world, but there is no Aviation 101 on the course registration list to take in preparation of becoming a pilot. Yet there are several graduates who have earned their wings and are now flying machines that range from small crop dusters to the “Titans of the Sky.” 

Cale Hansen (Class of 2024)

For recent graduate Cale Hansen, his experience in aviation is just getting started as a student at South Dakota State University. “I have been flying for two semesters and going on my third. I got my private pilot license in the first two, and my third semester will be working on my instrument rating. I’ve had a different CFI (certified flight instructor)  each semester but some people have the same instructor for multiple semesters. My training consisted of lectures in the class room, ground lessons with my CFI and flights with my CFI and some solo.” Hansen remembers dreaming of being a pilot and credits a flight taken during his sophomore year in high school for providing the inspiration. “I remember thinking that the pilots get paid to do this? And knew I would never work a day in my life if this was my job.”

While Hansen has his sights set on becoming an airline pilot one day, it is still several steps away from becoming a reality. After realizing his career direction, he found more opportunities during high school to fly more places and test the dream’s possibility.

At SDSU, he’s recently taken steps toward his dream. “After I completed the necessary training,  I had to take a final test for my school which is called a stage check, then once that is completed we get on a check ride list and take the checkride. A checkride is just the equivalent of a drivers test for the government.”  Although he isn’t enthused about the cost of an aviation program, his love of flying balances the costs. “I love the freedom of flying and know it will never get old. There’s so many opportunities and like I previously stated I don’t think it’ll ever feel like working. 

Elisabeth Nelson (Class of 2022)

Some dreams are big, some dreams are glamorous, and some dreams are…tropical. While many of her classmates were picking career paths and colleges, Elisabeth Nelson didn’t even have a plan as she entered her senior year at Maple River, but a family trip to Puerto Rico sparked her imagination. “We had to fly to this little island off the south east end of Puerto Rico. We took this little Island hopper, or this little plane, that was so small and a little rickety, and we got on and it took us from one island to the other., I remember that vividly because you could see everything, you could you could look down, you could look out either window and see everything around you. And it was like actually flying versus like stepping on an airliner and sitting there waiting to land.” With a clear vision for her future, Nelson managed to get accepted to the University of North Dakota in January of 2022 and by that fall, she was in the air.  

Three years later, she doesn’t yet own her own “Island Hopper” charter business, but her time at UND has sent her into a unique direction. Like Cale Hansen, she earned multiple certificates on her aviation path and currently competes on the Aerobatics team. Nelson recently flew to a competition in Canada where her team performed feats of acrobatics, but instead of a gymnast on a mat, Nelson did her tricks in the air. “There's only nine of us on the team, and basically we learn extreme Upset Recovery. It's actually super safe, because if I were to get in any situation, I would know how to recover from it, because I can control the plane, like inverted rolling spins, like vertical towards the ground. I know how to react to situations like that. So it's a huge learning experience. And I think it's actually super important to be able to know that, and I feel way safer being able to recover from that.” 

With hardly any flight hours prior to joining the program, Nelson has steadily gained those hours and certificates, but her lack of prior knowledge stunned her early instructors. “immediately, you get your flight lab, you get your CFI, and you're flying three times a week, and you're thrown into it basically. My first flight was a day after my birthday freshman year, and it was pretty rough. I remember my first flight instructor was from South Korea, and he was so smart, and  I was just so behind. Basically it got better from there.” Now the student is about to become a teacher, and this fall, she is taking a rigorous course to qualify as a Certified Flight Instructor. When her training program is complete, Nelson has dreams of working in Florida on a seaplane. “If I don't decide to do the seaplane, I want to do air like mail service in Alaska.”

Laura Caldwell (Class of 2017)

For Laura Caldwell, flying was in her blood and she credits her father for producing two pilots. “He did it as a hobby for a while back then, it was something he always wanted to do. And then he got me interested. He got my brother Brad interested, and then Brad went off to make it his career. And my brother actually taught me and got me through my private license.” Unlike Nelson and Hansen, the Caldwell family has always been partial to helicopters. Her brother Brad Caldwel turned the interest into a career in crop dusting while younger sister Laura took the passion in a completely different direction. Like Nelson, Caldwell attended the University of North Dakota and worked her way through a rigorous program to get her licenses on various levels. 

“I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do as a helicopter pilot. I figured I'd probably be starting off in tours. That's kind of the next general step. And then I always assumed that I'd be doing EMS. That's what's around the country and that's a lot of what the helicopter jobs are in Minnesota. So that was my plan after I got my hours.”

But after grinding her way through the hours, an unexpected opportunity arose. “I had two options. Mostly, I could either do tours in Vegas with Maverick Papillon, or I had a friend out in New York City who was doing tours and charters out here. And basically, my husband and I, we just got married, and we're like, well, want to go west coast or east coast?” Caldwell’s decision to go to New York turned into quite a lifestyle change for a kid from Blue Earth County. Working for ZIP Aviation, a private charter company, she commutes to work from New Jersey and works seven days on and seven days off. Most of her tours feature the Hudson River and tours of the city as well as trips to Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, and “everywhere in between.” When the call comes in, Caldwell never knows who she is driving, but she’s now seen her share of celebrities. “Leonardo DiCaprio (he's my go to), Stephen Colbert, Sia, Duane Johnson: it's a good time. I normally just say ‘hello, welcome, how’s your day going?’”

As 1 of 26 pilots working at ZIP Aviation, Caldwell has worked up the seniority ladder to be able to focus on charters rather than just scenic tours. Time in the cockpit has also let her go from a Bell 206-L4 and 407 to a Sikorsky S-76 Twin Engine. After Caldwell spoke about features such as IFR, she gave a simpler explanation. “Basically, I can fly in the clouds in bad weather, so I can get more flights done and everything. So it's a bigger helicopter. A lot of buttons. It looks pretty cool. It's a two pilot crew, and then we can fit up to eight passengers in the back.” 

While you can take the girl out of the country, you can’t take the country out of the girl. Caldwell certainly loves the spontaneity and the thrills her job brings. “Oh my gosh, I got some pretty good views. Really good views. Yep, so I can land. I've been landing on heliports, any of the big class bravo airports. I land at Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark, all those. I get to go land in mountains. I land on the rooftops of buildings, doing EMS stuff. I get to land in somebody's backyard.” Despite the thrills, Caldwell sees another path down the road. “I love the charter world. You get to do all these different things. But eventually, we would like to move back home and buy a house. So sometime in the future, we'll probably be moving back to Minnesota, and hopefully probably getting an EMS job.”

Nick Osmundson (Class of 2012)

Unlike the other three aviators, Nick Osmundson headed off to college without plans of being an aviator. Having filled his resume with athletics and activities, Osmundson finished his time at Maple River as one of the top students in his class and went to the University of Minnesota with plans on being a civil engineer. Life had other plans. “It was kind of out of the blue. So I was going to UMD to get my degree in civil engineering, met my now wife and her family, and I just kind of was feeling that I wanted to try something new, right? So her dad, a retired colonel in the Air Force, kind of got his backstory, and I figured, you know, what the heck. Why not give it a shot? I was too late to join ROTC, so I was going into my junior year and then put in an application. Didn't just get selected, but got selected to go to pilot school as well.”

So in 2018, Osmundson hit the reset button and started all over to see where aviation in the Air Force would take him. “They sent me to Pueblo Colorado to fly the DA 20. And I probably got 40 hours or so. It's essentially like a lawn mower with wings. It is so small. But they teach you the the fundamentals of flying and kind of how the Air Force runs their program, so that you can be set up for success when you go to actual pilot training. So that was probably two months long. And now that was a mixture of academics and flying the whole time. And then after that, went back to Del Rio, and then I started in the T6 and then we started going through the simulators, and that took probably another two months, and then probably three months of flying in the actual airplane.”

With his skillset as an academic, Osmundson had little difficulty with the scholarship, but he worried his stature might limit his options in the Air Force. “Because I'm so short, I had to get a height waiver going in. Height waivers are now gone, of course, so I went in thinking that I could only track a certain direction, and that's just where my mindset was. So I kind of knew that I was probably going to fly some sort of heavy aircraft. Unbeknownst to me, I found out as I was going to track that direction, whether it would be fighters and bombers or heavy aircraft.” The small pilot now flies one of the largest crafts in the sky. Nicknamed “The Sky Titan,” the C17 Globemaster is powered by four turbofan engines, has a crew of three, and can transport up to 102 troops or a cargo weighing up to 170,900 pounds.”

Even though his life as an aviator was unplanned, Osmundson found his choice to be a rewarding decision. “As an aircraft commander, you are in charge of your aircraft. And I like the freedom. I like seeing the sun rise or the sun set, you know, even if it's dark and gloomy on the ground. You get to go amazing places. You get to actually do some amazing things, and be a part of things much bigger than yourself.”

While Osmundson and his family have moved to several Air Force bases during his time in the military, he is beginning to make time for life afterwards. “My ultimate goal? I would love to go back into research in academia. So I worked for a professor for pretty much all four years when I was at UMD, that was more environmental engineering stuff, but I am getting my masters in ag science, so kind of filling in some gaps. So I would love to kind of get into that realm of things. But obviously, I have engineering as a backup. I have some teaching experience in aviation as a backup.”

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