By Callie Taggart

Nate Ellison knows how to impress a date.

Instead of driving his date to dinner in Ogden, he flew her there.

It was a sunny, snow-shimmering day in January when he and his friend Clint Demaris flew their dates to Ogden in an old single-engine, four-seater Cessna 172, with red, orange and yellow stripes on the sides. They landed at the Ogden airport and rented a car to go out to dinner at Applebee's. Then they drove back to the airport and flew back over the whipped cream mountain tops and Sardine Canyon to Logan, all the time watching a passion-fruit-orange melange sunset.

"It was the first time for a lot of us in a plane that small," Demaris said.
"The best part was when [Ellison] decided to scare everyone by doing a free-fall. Everyone was screaming and I think his date just about wet her pants. Not to mention everything in the plane was floating."

Ellison, 22, has been flying for six years.

When most kids are 16, their parents teach them how to drive, but when Ellison was 16, his dad was also teaching him to fly an airplane.

"We did some steep turns, climbs, and descents," he said as he recalled his first flight in a small plane his family used to rent.

For blue-eyed, blond-haired Ellison, flying is life.

His dad is a commercial pilot for Delta Air Lines, his mom has her private pilot's license, his older brother flies in the Air Force, his younger sister has her private pilot's license and his youngest brother is learning to fly, too.
Ellison got his pilot's license when he was 17, but didn't decide he wanted to follow in his dad's footsteps and be a commercial pilot until he was on an LDS mission in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and had some time to consider his future.

"I've seen my dad do it my whole life, and as I thought about it, I decided that's the type of lifestyle I wanted for my family and for me," he said.
Ellison said his dad is gone about three days out of the week and then home for four. He works nine to twelve days a month and then he is home for the rest.

"My mom loves it because she doesn't get annoyed with [my dad], she just says to herself, ëoh, he'll be on a trip soon'!" he laughed.

And when Ellison's dad isn't on trips, he is home to help out around the house. And since his dad gets so many days off his family has been able to go on lots of backpacking and camping trips.

"We've also been able to tag along with him to some neat places for free."
This weekend, the Ellisons are going to Hawaii.

These are just a few of the reasons Ellison, a junior at USU, is working to obtain his degree in aviation technology.

"I always thought it would be cool to be a commercial pilot, but it's a lot of work to get there, and [at first] I didn't want to do all of that. You don't just get a degree and immediately go to work, you get a degree and then put a lot of money into it for about four years before you can be a commercial pilot."
In fact, you have to have competed about 1,500 hours of flight time.

"And right now I have about 120 hours," he said as he thumbed through his little black pilot's log book, in which he records all the dates and details of each of his flights.

"People think once you get your pilot's license, you're done," Ellison said.
There are many ratings for type and category of aircraft. According to USU's program description for aviation technology six ratings are required for those wanting to be professional pilots: Private Pilot, Instrument, Commercial, Certified Flight Instructor (CFI), Certified Flight Instructor Instrument (CFII) and Multi-Engine. The ground schools are taught on campus and actual flying is done at the Logan/Cache Airport.
Ellison has his private pilot license for single engine land, which required 65 hours of flying. He's working on his intermediate and instrument ratings, and said he should have those by the end of the summer, which he will be spending most of in the air.

"The instrument license allows you to fly [using] the instruments, even in clouds, when you can't see," Ellison said.

The commercial pilot's license is next, with multi-engine ratings. Once he has that license, Ellison can fly and get paid for it.

His favorite part of flying is landing the planes.

"Anyone can fly a plane, but it takes a pilot to land one," he said.
Ellison remembers a recent scary landing was when he was coming into the Logan airport and a huge crosswind came when he was just barely above the ground. When he went to turn, he overcorrected.
"I could have easily crashed. I was so shaky after that," he said.

Ellison also recalls the first time he went flying by himself and he hit some seagulls.

"That was scary. They were at the end of the runway and so I had to dodge them. They were sitting there freaking out, and I had to fly around them and so that made me kind of nervous. If I would have hit them, my propeller would have stopped going and I would have had to do an emergency landing," he said.

Ellison also loves the rush he gets when he's flying through canyons. He smiles as he thinks about the best flight he's been on in awhile. It was last Saturday, when he was flying to Hailey, just south of Sun Valley.
"The airport is right up a canyon and as you come in and you're flying over the mountains and you have to descend really fast so you don't hit the mountain!" Ellison said.

Ellison usually flies three times a week, to airports in Bear Lake, Wendover, Ogden, Salt Lake City, or Idaho. He likes the time he has to just sit and think by himself, without any distractions.

"But you also can't fall asleep as you listen to the humming of the motor!" he said.

When he gets tired Ellison gets on a frequency and talks to the air traffic controllers, or opens a window for air. If he has to go to the bathroom, he said he just holds it.

"Flying is relaxing for me," Ellison said. "You fly with really gentle controls, and light gradual movements with just one hand." Ellison will soon complete his farthest flight--he'll be going 250 nautical, or 300 statute miles to St. George.

Each flight costs him quite a bit of money, though, because he has to pay to rent each plane he flies.

"The cheapest airplane is $50 an hour," he said.

Ellison said multi-engine planes cost even more--about $200 an hour, and you have to have about 200 or 300 hours to get your multi-engine license.
"In the end, the degree costs about $40,000," he said.

But it is worth every mile and dollar, Ellison thinks as he recalls his last cross country trip to Sun Valley last Saturday.

It's also worth all the time spends studying a fat white book of flying regulations, and doing all of the sometimes tedious preparations for each flight, like checking the plane, preparing his map, plotting his flight beforehand and making records of all his flights. But in this business, you have to be meticulous or you could end up way off course.
"But I don't ever get worried anymore about flying. I always say a prayer before I go," he said.

Ellison proudly shows his friends the two model airplanes sitting on his dresser in his bedroom--one is the F-15 his brother flies in the Air Force and the other is the commercial plane his dad flies. His mind takes him back to when he was six-years-old and his dad was a flight instructor. Ellison loved it when he got to go flying with dad--although sometimes he fell asleep in the seat of the little plane! He looks forward to teaching his own kids how to fly and to the day he will be a commercial pilot for Delta Air Lines.

"[Flying is] a lot of work--fun work," Ellison said.

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