William Cope:  

I Left Highland Springs High School in 12th grade, back in 1976, to pursue a short 4 year career with the US Navy, where I was stationed in Little Creek, Virginia, at a place called Harbor Clearance Unit Two (Now called Mobile Diving and Salvage Unit Two). The navy immediately made me finish up high school by having me take the G.E.D. test. After my tour of service, I left the Navy and moved to Wisconsin in fall of 1980, where I attended Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. There, I obtained my associates degree. I worked at various jobs from mobile security patrol, sporting goods sales, and manufacturing, eventually landing a job in 1986 as a machine operator at a paper mill operated by the James River Paper Company. I worked there for 6 years and after some brilliant motivation from a co-worker, I decided to leave James River and take technical training at Shields Aviation in Jacksonville Florida. Shields Aviation was a FAA Part 141 abinito flight school that specialized in accelerated flight training. While there, I was only a private pilot for two weeks, before I knew it I was well on my way to becoming a certificated commerical pilot and flight instructor. After 9 months in Jacksonville, I graduated from shields in 1993 with my SEL CFI, CFII, MEL COM, MEL INSTRUMENT FAA flight ratings and returned to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Since I had graduated in the middle of a dearth of flying job opportunities, I soon found my self flying skydivers on the weekends for flight hours. That Fall, A friend of mine by the name of Colin Ball called me, we had been very good friends during flight training at Shields Aviation. He had a proposition for me to work as a instructor at a school in Beaufort, South Carolina, teaching accelerated flight training at a small flight school by the name of Executive Flight Training. Executive Flight Training is still operated to this day by its owner, Doug Carmody, a former US Airways Fokker 100 Captain. This job helped keep me employed for most of that winter and gave me great experience with some really exceptional people who came to learn how to instrument fly or obtain other flight training in an accelerated training environment. I experienced no student failures while teaching at Executive flight training and it is still a great place to obtain excellent flight training experiences and FAA ratings. This flight instruction job ended by springtime and I moved back in with my wife up in Green Bay, where once again I found myself between jobs and back flying skydivers in Shiocton. Fortunately for me, my brother in law had a job lead for me at a place called Green Bay Engineering, where shop foreman Ron Gerber hired me to be an apprentice in the field of machine building and mechanical assembly. Eventually, they had me wiring machines, installing electrical motors, bearings, drive systems and drives and bending aluminum pneumatic lines. By the time I was finished working there two years, I had become skilled enough to follow one of my machines to Brooklyn, New York, where I installed it and facilitated the owner's employee training in operating the dental bib folder machine that I had assembled from blueprints to completion. After about two years of working at Green Bay Engineering, a layoff occurred and I had promised Ron Gerber that if anyone had to leave that I would volunteer to be the first to go, as I had career aspirations in another field. Flying jobs were a little scarce, so I found myself employed yet again in Green Bay at a fantastic place called Fosber America as a mechanical assembler in their production department. Fosber was a premier manufacturer of highly automated machines used in the production of corrugated boxes, such as slitters, scorers and corrugated knives. In the meantime, I had become partners with two other Shields Aviation graduates in the purchase of a Cessna 320 Skyknight for the purpose of building much sought after twin engine flight experience. The Cessna Skyknight is a twin engine, turbo supercharged, retractable landing gear, all weather airplane, capable of speeds of 200 miles per hour and 1,200 mile legs, with six seats and a non-pressurized cabin. It was a handful to fly and other than the fact that it was expensive to own, it was a joy to have it. Fosber, being a very progressive and open minded company, soon realized the potential of my flight experience and access to a twin engine aircraft, so I soon began flying myself and other employees to destinations where we would hit the ground and go to work. It was very exciting to be in this opportunity of great value to Fosber. I also had access to a six place single engine aircraft called a Cherokee Six out of Oconto, Wisconsin. This plane came in handy for trips where only I or another worker were tasked with a field service trip, or for when the Skyknight was down for service or busy with a trip with my partners. All flights flown by me with Fosber were operated within FAA Part 91 rules. I was still building flight hours as both a jump pilot and chief pilot at a drop zone in Shiocton, Wisconsin. Which helped me accumulate about 2,000 flight hours flying their Cessna 182 skydiving modified aircraft for the Wolf...Expand for more