In the winter, Joe Angle likes to grab a friend and put in a long day of ice fishing at one of Northwest Montana’s backcountry lakes.

And in his light sport aircraft, the amount of time he’ll spend getting to a remote lake can be less than most people’s daily commute to work.

 “Instead of putting in hours and beating up your truck, you can be there in 15 minutes,” he said.

Through his business, Big Sky Light Sport Aviation, Angle is hoping to offer more Northwest Montana pilots the chance to do the same. Angle is a certified light sport pilot instructor; he also offers assistance with purchase, building or maintenance of light sport aircraft.

Angle emphasizes that flying is not just a rich person’s hobby. The FAA’s light sport designation for pilots, created in 2004, allows pilots to secure a light sport license at up to half the price of the cost of getting a traditional pilot’s license, which usually runs $10,000 to $12,000.

The light sport category includes planes that can only hold two people, with a maximum weight of 1,320 pounds.  The models are relatively inexpensive to purchase and maintain and much less complicated to fly than traditional small aircraft.

“I’ll have the average student landing without my assistance in three to four hours,” Angle said.

Light sport planes can be hardy and maneuverable. Angle said the wheels on his first light sport plane “saw pavement three to four times. The rest of the time it was landing on dirt or grass.”

When he lived in North Dakota, his quarter-mile long driveway served as his runway.

“That was my airstrip,” he said. “I pulled my plane up and parked it next to my truck.”

Some light sport planes will cruise at 150 mph and go up to 1,200 miles on one tank of fuel. Angle’s Challenger II plane is more typical, with a 500-mile range and average speeds of 75 to 85 miles per hour. Light sport aircraft can be flown up to 10,000 feet, or 12,000 feet if cruising over a 10,000-foot mountain.

Securing a light sport license requires a minimum of 20 hours of flying time, 15 of those with an instructor. He said prospective pilots often end up flying more hours than this because they take so long between sessions that they have to spend part of their time relearning what they did on the last flight. The hours logged for light sport instruction can be put toward a commercial license, Angle said.

Angle says the optimum way to learn is to “take a vacation, book me for two weeks and spend three to four hours a day in the air.”

Though people have the option of waiting two years after the written test to master their flight skills, “if you’re really serious, it can be done in a couple of weeks,” Angle said.

The license requires a written exam and a practical test with a Federal Aviation Administration examiner, who has to be someone other than the instructor. There is no medical examination necessary to secure a light sport license.

Angle points out several ways to make flying an affordable pastime. He said a light sport plane can be purchased anywhere from $3,000 for a used model to $45,000 for one of the higher-end planes. The typical ultralight plane runs around $10,000, and Angle encourages and facilitates partnerships in aircraft purchases.

Angle even said extras, such as plane skis, are quite affordable for light sport models. His cost around $600.

“With a Cessna, you can’t make the skis yourself, you have to buy skis certified by the FAA that cost $12,000,” Angle said. He also has purchased a set of floats for spring and summer lake landings, which ran him about $1,200.

 A special light sport aircraft, or SLSA, has to be maintained by a special light sport mechanic. An experimental light sport plane (ELSA) can be maintained by the owner who has taken a class, or the owner can hire someone such as Angle.

The difference in maintenance costs from a light sport to a traditional small plane is huge.

“A typical rebuild of a Cessna engine is $20,000 to $25,000,” Angle said. “I can rebuild my engine for less than $1,000.”

Angle is a retired Air Force aircraft mechanic. After he left his long military career, he worked for Raytheon for eight years doing modifications to military aircraft on bases throughout the country. He’s been flying since 1981, and earned his light sport instructor certification two years ago. He said the light sport instructor course was almost as rigorous as for those who are teaching commercial pilots.

His charge for hourly flight lessons is $90, which includes the use of his plane. A half hour of ground time on either end of the flight gives students a full two hours of his time and expertise though, Angle said.

Ground school, which prepares a pilot for the written exam, can be done on the Internet, Angle said, or with him for $35 an hour.  

Angle believes he is the only registered light sport instructor in the state of Montana, and he doesn’t know of any light sport instructors closer than Moses Lake, Wash. So far most of his students have been from other Montana cities or Idaho, and he knows of few people with light sport licenses in Northwest Montana.

“I’m hoping to change that,” he said. “I think a whole lot of people gave up on getting to fly when all there was were general aviation licenses. It priced a whole lot of working-class people out of the air.”

For more information, call 212-6428 or visit Angle’s website at www.bigskylsa.com