PROFILE
relief in Milwaukee in early 2000,” Freeman shares. “Flight For Life had bought another used BK117. It was a program that Omnifl ight had started in 1983. The program director, Dan Burns, asked me if I would bid on the completion. I told him I hadn’t quoted one in a while and would need some time. He said it was sitting at a completion facility in Dallas, TX and they had doubled the bid. He didn’t tell me what the original bid was. So I gathered up my Omnifl ight friends and came up with a 4,000 man-hour bid for a complete refurb, and Flight For Life accepted it. That was in May 2000. The next month, we got a Quonset hut on the airport, and the aircraft at the same time. That was the start of Helicopter Specialties.” That fi rst BK117 project that Helicopter Specialties did for Flight for Life helicopter included: • Full paint job • Upgraded cockpit with new avionics and medical radios
• Full custom medical interior to include probably the fi rst Stryker stretcher
• Custom-built medical equipment mounts
• The fi rst custom medical LED lighting The project took fi ve months. Then they got another BK117 from Milwaukee for refurb shortly thereafter. “Those fi rst ten months were critical,” Freeman says. “We made money on that fi rst aircraft. We didn’t borrow any money. We got all the bills paid and we got all the insurance down paid for the following year. We also bought more tools. That’s what got us going — the Milwaukee program and becoming a vendor to Corporate Jets.” We asked Freeman what the biggest transition was from being a mechanic/avionics technician/pilot to running a business. “Now I had
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employees and needed to keep the ball rolling. After two years in, most of our work was with one customer. By 2002, we had our repair station certifi cate and we had OEM service center approvals — Eurocopter (now Airbus) fi rst, and then we added Robinson, Enstrom and Bell in 2003. There were huge challenges along the way including adding staff and capabilities while striving to keep the FAA, OEMs and of course our customers happy.”
PILOT/MECHANIC We asked Freeman if he thinks having his pilot’s license with both fi xed and rotary wing ratings as well as being an A&P/IA and Avionics technician has helped in his career. “Defi nitely,” he says. “They always say, ‘Jack of all trades, master of none.’ In our industry, if you have knowledge in a lot of diff erent disciplines, I think that helps. I’ve worked with a lot of great mechanics over the years. Most of them couldn’t troubleshoot avionics at all — it’s just a very diff erent discipline like paint or fabrication. I was a better avionics technician than mechanic, because I enjoyed avionics better. I could still do maintenance, but not as good as my mechanic friends — that was their disciple of choice. I wasn’t a pilot by trade, but I was a technician that could fl y. I knew pilot talk and how to deal with pilots when they were reporting a problem. I think being multi-faceted has helped me out a lot. We have a few of our employees who are pilots. I encourage young people to get their pilot’s license now if they want to do it because it doesn’t get any cheaper and it helps round out their career.”
TURNING WRENCHES Freeman says that when Helicopter Specialties fi rst started, he was often on the fl oor turning wrenches. “I got
beat up quite regularly for wanting to be a technician,” he says. “I got called a micro manager — that was the nicest thing I was called. In a small business, everybody works. And you need to stay engaged — you can’t just shut your offi ce door. As a technician and a inspector, I still had those skills to off er. I had a lot of experience to share with our new recruits. As we grew, my participation on the fl oor decreased. Most of my energy needed to focus on bringing in work, staffi ng, facilities, tooling, training, etc.”
NEW EMPLOYEES We asked Freeman what he looks for in new hires. “We want people who want to learn and come to work on time,” he says. “We have hired military veterans and also hire new mechanics right out of school. We want people willing to wear several diff erent hats. We encourage our employees to learn several diff erent disciplines. We have avionics, painting, composite repair, structural repair, custom fabrication, custom machining and we travel to customer locations for support.”
SO, YOU WANT TO BE AN AVIA-
TION ENTREPRENEUR In closing, Freeman gives advice to anyone in the industry who wants to be an entrepreneur and start their own aviation business. “Listen to outside business friends and mentors, because it’s going to help. All of the aviation experience I had helped immensely on the day-to-day of doing the work. On the business side, I invested all extra money in facilities, tools and training — I always put the company and customers fi rst. In the end, running a business isn’t that diffi cult as long as the customers are happy, the quality is great, and the bills get paid!”
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