Ryan Gembala pursues career in aviation

He hovered inches off the ground, grass whipping away from the helicopter. The door to the house opened and an older couple stepped out.

Ryan Gembala smiled at his grandparents before lifting the helicopter back into the air.

“I land here a lot,” he said. “Come have a piece of pie or something.”

About once a week Gembala takes a helicopter out of the hangar on his family’s property near Bigfork and flies around the area for practice. He’s building hours so he can really start his career as a pilot.

The 21-year-old rode in a helicopter for the first time when he was 15, and he’s been hooked ever since.

“That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do is just fly helicopters for a living,” Gembala said.

He’s been clocking hours in helicopters since he was 19, when he got his private pilot license. Recently he gained his instructor license.

He’s the third generation of Gembalas to take to the sky. His grandfather got his helicopter license at 61, and his father, Randy Gembala, flies helicopters and airplanes. With his instructor’s license though, Gembala has the most ratings out of the three.

Now he’s ready to start working. “I kind of want to take it to higher levels and do more stuff,” he said.

Gembala said he has about 500 hours in the cockpit, and after a summer of spraying cornfields in Illinois and Iowa this year, he thinks he’ll be pretty close to the hours he needs to really start working.

“It’s not an easy business to break into,” Ron Gipe, a former pilot now living in Lakeside, said. “1,000 hours in the magic number.”

Gipe got Gembala into spraying, and who helped rebuild the Bell 47 helicopter Gembala flies.

Gipe went through helicopter training in the army in 1968 and flew for a year in the Vietnam War. When he returned to Montana he worked for Johnson Flying Service in Missoula, and made a career out of flying.

Health issues have caused his business to slow down, and Gipe now spends more time tinkering with helicopters. He recently built a Bell 47 from the ground up, which he donated to the Museum of Mountain Flying in Missoula.

“I can’t get away from it,” Gipe said. “It’s just a passion. It’s kind of the way it’s always been.”

His nephew, Jordan Gipe, is likely to take over the flying business from his uncle. He flies for the hospital in Bozeman, and will be spraying in the midwest this summer with Ryan Gembala.

Gipe said he’s known the Gembala family for a long time. “They’re like a second family to me,” he said.

Gembala shares Gipe’s passion for flying. And at the start of his career he’s ambitious and eager.

The spraying job this summer will be the first time he’s gotten paid to fly.

“It’s a whole different game when you think, ‘wow I’m getting paid to fly,’” he said.

They will be spraying 20,000 acres of farmlandm, flying low to the ground. It’s more expensive for farmers to hire helicopters to do their spraying, but helicopters have some advantages over airplanes.

“You an do 10 times more things in a helicopter than you can do in an airplane,” Gembala said.

While he’s excited to start working, Gembala hopes he’ll be able to find jobs closer to home. He’d like to fly on forest fires.

“It’s more exciting,” he said. “You’re around a lot more pilots.”

When he flies for fun, he’ll often go into the mountains to Schafer Meadows in the Great Bear Wilderness area.

“It’s really neat to go down there and hang out for the weekend,” he said.

He knows the Bigfork area well, and is used to flying around the mountains. He knows which way the wind usually moves form the lake to the mountains. And he’s able to see things from the helicopter people on the ground would miss.

“Everything just looks a lot different up in the air,” he said. “We watch the lake rise a lot.”

He’s also seen a fair amount of moose, bear and elk this year from his aerial vantage point.

When he spots someone he knows he might drop the helicopter down a bit to say hello.

“When you know somebody you might fly a little bit lower, buzz them or something,” which is one of his favorite things to do when flying, he said.

The Bell 47 he’s been flying recently doesn’t move that fast, topping its speed at maybe 100 miles per hour. And while he can take it straight up from the ground over a thousand feet in the air, he rarely flies that high.

“We say we don’t like to be above the ground more than a scream,” he said. Which is about 500 feet.

Part of the reason Gembala chose flying as a career is the lifestyle.

Gipe said the lifestyle can end up being pretty nomadic, as you have to take whatever jobs you can get to build hours, and you never now when they’ll come, or where you might end up.

“That’s the hardest thing for the young guys to learn,” he said. “You’ve got to take these little jobs to get to where you can market yourself.”

But he said the work is rewarding, and he’s seen some beautiful country while he was flying. Gembala knows it’s not going to be easy breaking into the market, but with the help of Gipe, he’s getting the experience he needs to make it happen.

“The experience is more of the biggest part for me,” he said. “It’s definitely a good lifestyle. I’m really happy I chose it.”

“Ryan will make it. He’s just going to have to put some time in,” Gipe said.