Last month Joe Shepherd, an old friend of MATA Executive Director Gordon Bakke, made an extremely generous donation to MATA -- his Cessna 182! Gordon has known Joe for years and has done the annual inspections and maintenance for this plane. Last March Joe allowed MATA student Harlan Lloyd and instructor Jason Gibson to fly his C-182 on a 2,400-nautical- mile cross-country trip to
Joe handed over the keys to his beautiful, well-maintained aircraft on December 11th to Gordon. We were all overwhelmed by this awesome Christmas gift to MATA, with its low-time engine, like-new paint, and leather interior. MATA will certainly put this aircraft to good use training our pilots for missionary service. One practical application is MATA students can earn their High-Performance Airplane endorsement, which is required to act as Pilot-in-Command of airplanes with an engine larger than 200 horsepower. Additionally, we plan for advanced MATA students to use this plane for mission service in
