Page 5 - Volume 12 Number 12

improved and the satellite antennas became smaller, our business had to adjust and change, so we became a Direct TV distributor with about 5,000 dealers and 400,000 retail customers in the United States, Canada and Mexico. In 1998 we merged with another company that had 12 facilities west of the Mississippi at which time I retired from the business,” Schroeder stated.
Using Aviation as a Business Tool
Having always been a fan of aviation, Schroeder saw the need to learn how to fly in 1986, as his satellite dish business was expanding into other states. “We needed to visit our branch offices and it was taking lot of time out of our schedules,” he said. “For instance, driving from Indianapolis to Grand Rapids, Michigan, was a five-hour drive and about that much time flying commercially.”
Schroeder received his private pilot’s certificate that year in a Cessna 152 and took advantage of the diverse inventory of rental aircraft available to fly at the Indianapolis Metropolitan Airport (KUMP). “I flew every kind of Piper, Beechcraft piston and Cessna
DECEMBER 2018
Mike Schroeder chose to go back to a King Air to y from his retirement home base of Sedona, Arizona, after a 10-year absence from aviation. A King Air E90 was the rst aircraft he owned and before taking a break, he ew a Citation Jet.
(Photo credit: Mike Schroeder)
aircraft available and got my twin rating in the Piper Seminole,” he explained. “I know it sounds cliché but flying became a useful business tool. I could leave early morning, fly to three of the branches for meetings and be home that night; there’s no way I could have done that without aviation.”
He went on to get his instrument and commercial rating and in 1993, the airport approached him about purchasing a Beechcraft King Air. They wanted to add the aircraft to their charter fleet and thought the King Air would meet Schroeder’s transportation needs. He purchased a 1974 E90 model and leased it back to the airport for charter. In 1998, he had a friend working for Cessna Aircraft who convinced him to buy a new CitationJet (CJ), so he sold the E90. After putting about 1,000 hours on the CJ, he sold it in 2005 and wouldn’t fly again until 2015.
A Renewed Interest
During those 10 years of not flying, in 2006 Schroeder lost his wife of 26 years to cancer and moved permanently to a house they owned in Sedona, Arizona. He remarried
KING AIR MAGAZINE • 3