Welcome New Members: Getting to Know Norm, Myla and Nathan Nelson

Welcome New Members, Sid Vandiver, Melissa Laird, Daniel Camper II, Norm Nelson, Myla Gloor-Nelson, and Nathan Nelson! We’ll have proper introductions of Sid, Melissa and Daniel in a future newsletter. Let me introduce, Norm, Myla and Nathan…

This summer has been great for welcoming new members. Norm and Nathan have been regulars at the general meeting along with helping members with new tech solutions (laser cutting templates for composite construction).

Here is their story told by Norm Nelson.

• Myla and Nathan were both born here. Myla grew up in Sequim until age 14, then her family spent 6 months in Arizona after which they moved back to WA state – but to the greater Seattle area, not here in Sequim. However, they always retained their small family farm in Sequim. Myla went to high school in Seattle and moved back to the Olympic Peninsula at age 21, and has been here ever since. I was born and raised in Rhode Island, then lived and went to college in Maine. After college I moved to Seattle and then to lower Sequim Bay in the year 2000.
• Nathan has always had some interest in flying, and we would take him to the airport appreciation days and he would check out all the airplanes and see the Young Eagles booth and ask about it, before he was old enough to participate. He had flown in GA aircraft a couple of times as a young kid (but doesn’t remember it) and then he eventually got his first Young Eagles flight from you in your 172 (Erik in N172BE)! After that flight and the corresponding Sporty’s video series that comes with the membership, he sat down and watched every video. Then he wanted to try a simulator, so we got X-Plane and borrowed a yoke and throttle quadrant from a friend and Nathan did that over this past winter. He’s been lucky enough to participate in a handful of YE flights since then, and a few flight lessons, too. Myla doesn’t have a huge interest in aviation, but she does like flying and going places. I have had an interest in aviation since I was a kid. My paternal grandfather was a crew chief in the Army Air Force at the end of WWII, and later was a private pilot, and owned a J-3 Cub and then a Globe Swift (which he restored) – but that was all before I was old enough to fly with him. He was an influence on my interest in aviation, would bring me to the airport and to Old Rhinebeck Aerodrome in the summer, and helped me get one of my first jobs – which was at an FBO at our local airport (North Central State Airport, KSFZ).
• I joined the Junior Naval Air Cadets at age 15 and attended ground school with them every Friday night for a couple of years. I soloed when I was 16, but then went away to college when I was 17 and never completed my private pilot training. I would love to complete that some day. As I mentioned above, Nathan has taken a few lessons already, and wants to become a pilot. At 12 years old, he’s still a bit young to invest in lots of training, but he has started his own spice mix company and is saving all the profits from that for flight training and schooling. He is also on the waiting list for the Port Townsend Aero Museum youth program, and he’s looking forward to working with them.
• I’m interested in working on or building any sort of aircraft. I’m probably most interested in metal aircraft, but that might be because I spent 25 years in the composites industry and taught advanced composites for a few years… and I’d like to learn something new. If I was going to build a plane for myself, it would probably be some sort of larger bush airplane, like a 4-place Super Cub or a Maule variant, I have seen info on a couple of Experimental ones that look really interesting. Two-place planes are cool, but I would love to be able to fly the whole family to places around the PNW. My grandfather passed long ago, but his J-3 Cub is currently a bare frame hanging in his friend’s machine shop, and Nathan and I think that restoring that could be a cool project to take on at some point – but also realize it would be a big undertaking and a labor of love (ie., in the end, likely not worth the money it would take to get it airworthy)
• I have very little aircraft construction or maintenance experience, other than the composites teaching mentioned above (in which we practiced lots of repairing composite panels for commercial aircraft). Many years ago at the FBO, I did occasionally help with small things – brake jobs, etc. on rental Cessnas (always overseen by the A&Ps), and I have recently helped an IA do annuals on a few planes and got my hands dirty on a radial engine for the first time. I have a bit of hands-on mechanical experience… I’ve always been a tinkerer and “maker”, I was a process engineer, so I’ve worked on all sorts of processes and machines and have designed and built a few of my own.
• For hobbies, Nathan and I both enjoy woodworking, electronics, fishing, the outdoors and many other things. Myla enjoys gardening and cooking, I enjoy butchery and charcuterie. I also have a sawmill and enjoy running that and turning trees into lumber. I enjoy drafting in CAD and programming for CNC machines, too. I like metal machining and have run CNC milling centers and routers as a part of past jobs. Nathan has a small CNC laser engraver / cutter and we’ve been experimenting with that lately at home.
• The only EAA events we’ve attended have been the Young Eagles events. I remember reading about Oshkosh and dreaming about seeing that years ago, but none of us have ever attended.
• We are definitely interested in attending local chapter activities. Nathan has interest in the build-to-fly program, he has built an electric-powered R/C model Piper Cub from scratch out of hand-cut foam board and hot melt glue. He was interested in your 3D printing workshop, but we had guests in town that week and the timing didn’t work out with them here. We would be interested in volunteering to help with the Young Eagles events.
• We hope to contribute by being a part of the club, volunteering to help with club activities, and if any builders need help with certain steps/aspects of their builds, we’d be interested in helping where we can.
• Through our membership with the EAA chapter, we hope to learn more about the local aviation community, and to help strengthen it.