Stormville Airport : Stories : Paul Roggemann

Paul Roggemann writes:

I started taking lessons at N69 in Jan of 1990. My wife had given me one of those Cessna certificates for a Christmas present. I was working at IBM, right down the road in E. Fishkill at the time and used to shoot over there for my lesson during my lunch hour.

I soled in Feb of 1990 and had completed planning my first cross country flight when they shut down the school. This was around May of 1990. There were two Norwegian instructors there at the time working on their ATP tickets. One was named Frodde, and my instructor was Trond.

Trond went over to a school operating out of POU where I eventually ended up as a student, renting planes & continuing work towards my private license. I passed my check ride on Labor Day weekend of 1990.

Sometimes I would fly back over to N69 and practice takeoff and landing, often stopping to chat with Pete or have a burger. He was completing work on his bi-plane around that time I think. I'm glad to hear that he is still with us.

N69 had a feel to it that I'm sure more seasoned aviators relish. I can readily see why they liked it so much and I'm glad I got to spend some time there. Every time I drive by Stormville it my brings back great memories.

While I was there in 1990 they had discontinued services and a lot of my practice flying involved flying over to Sky Acres to top off fuel for the C152. That was fun flying into that narrow field.

I recently did a tracking the planes that I was flying and noticed that they are both registered. I think one was in FL and the other in TX.