Meet the Team

Rob and Sue

Rob and Sue have known each other for over 20 years and have been conspiring for most of that time to improve flight instruction and flight safety. They have worked together on various ventures and, aside from working on the Climb Platform are also building a RANS S-21 taildragger.

Sue Tholen

Sue is an accomplished flight instructor, physicist, engineer, and data scientist. For more than twenty years she has been dedicated to helping others bring their dreams of flying and instructing to life. Her specialties include tailwheel flying, spin training and gliders. She founded a successful glider club and has competed twice in the Air Race Classic.

Sue received her PhD in Physics from Cornell in 1992. Shortly afterwards, she saw a sign for an aviation ground school and signed up. She started flying in 1996 and earned her flight instructor certificate a few years later. She has been an active instructor ever since, while pursuing her other career tracks.

Sue has earned and used every instructor rating for fixed wing aircraft (airplanes and gliders). Sue has received advanced training in aerobatics, glider aerobatics, and flight test. With her background in physics, her spin-training course is sought out by many candidate instructors.

Outside of the cockpit, Sue has worked as a process engineer building integrated circuits, as an aerospace engineer designing parts for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter engine, and as a data scientist. Her inventions have been awarded numerous US and foreign patents.

She lives in northern New England with her husband and a house full of cats. Her desire is to retire as a crazy cat lady.

Rob Montgomery

Rob Montgomery is a consummate pilot, systems engineer, and instructor with a passion for aviation safety. His specialties include risk management, tailwheel flying, towing gliders, flying gliders and instrument training. He is also passionate about using simulation in flight training, having designed, built, and tested several experimental simulators.

Rob graduated from Bates College in 1993. After building a career as a systems engineer and technical trainer in the data communications industry, he started taking flying lessons in 1999, earning his flight instructors certificate in 2002. He’s been an active instructor and pilot ever since.

Rob holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate with ratings for every category of airplanes and gliders. He also holds a full set of fixed wing (airplane and glider) flight instructor ratings. He has flown and taught for a Part 135 / 91(k) air carrier, taught and towed for a glider club, graduated from the only Part 141 Test Pilot School, and has taught numerous ground schools and FAA Safety Team Safety Seminars over the last twenty-two years.

Rob lives in northern New England with his girlfriend, three dogs and two cats. He wants to retire to a small cabin in the Maine woods.