Steve Payne
Name: Steve Payne
Current City: Henderson
Hometown: McAlester, Oklahoma — I was an Army brat until junior high, when my family settled in McAlester.
Joined LVVSA: May 2012
Ratings & Endorsements: Commercial Pilot — Airplane Single-Engine Land and Glider; CFI-G; Tailwheel Endorsement
Flight Time: More than 1,790 total hours, including 400+ hours of tailwheel time and 170+ hours of glider time, with the remainder in powered aircraft.
Aviation & Military Background: I grew up in the 1970s and practically lived and breathed aviation. My dad was an Army helicopter pilot early in his career, and later I got to ride with him in his Bonanza. I fed my aviation bug by building plastic airplane models, reading countless aviation books, and building and flying radio-controlled airplanes.
I never gave much thought to learning to fly myself until I enrolled as a freshman at Oklahoma State University. There, I discovered a couple of classes that were right up my alley—and even offered college credit: Pilot Ground School, with an optional flight-training lab (which I gladly took), and The History of Airpower. The latter turned out to be a U.S. Air Force ROTC class disguised as a history course. Doh! It’s a trap... don’t do it! But I was hooked. The Air Force got me!
I completed my private pilot ground and flight training and earned my Private Pilot Certificate in May 1981, flying Cessna 150s and 152s. I graduated from AFROTC in May 1984 and entered active-duty service in the U.S. Air Force three months later. For the next 20 years, I pursued aviation through the opportunities the Air Force provided.
My Air Force career included five years working on software supporting the E-3 AWACS radar aircraft, five years testing the E-8 Joint STARS radar aircraft, and five years at Nellis AFB supporting various Air Force test projects. I also spent a year in Saudi Arabia doing non-aviation work, followed by another four years at Nellis supporting test and training range projects.
In the middle of my Air Force career, in 1994, I met Rob Brandt and several other coworkers. The four of us became one-quarter co-owners of a Piper PA-28 Cherokee. We had a great time flying throughout the Southwest and, of course, learning how to keep our airplane happy and flying.
I retired from the Air Force in 2004 and began working for a local Air Force contractor, doing more of the same type of work—a job I continue to this day.
Then, in 2011, my brother called and said, “Hey Steve, Dad’s gonna sell the Bonanza! You’ve got to start flying the Bo to keep him from selling it!”
I replied, “How? I don’t know how to fly Dad’s plane!”
He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you!”
And he did.
I still needed more flight time to qualify for the insurance, though. Enter Rob Brandt again. Rob informed me that soaring counted as fixed-wing flight time and could help fulfill my insurance requirements for the Bonanza. All it took was one visit to the LVVSA and one 1.5-hour sortie with Jay McDaniel. That was it—I had found my thing, and I had found my tribe! And I have never left.
Since joining the Club in 2012, I have enjoyed some incredible friendships and have had the opportunity to fly with a purpose by supporting Club activities—both in the Bonanza and by towing gliders. Most of all, I have enjoyed experiencing the beauty and uniqueness of flight in ways that few other pilots get to experience.
Memorable Flights: There have been plenty of memorable flights over the years, including a night flight home from college to make a Friday-night high school football game, my first glider sortie with Jay McDaniel, teaching my brother to soar and a memorable sortie with Jim Dingess at Tonopah. And then there are the flights that are special simply because of who was in the cockpit: “spinning up” in the Bonanza with my Dad and my brother are some of those memories I will always treasure.
