About Us:

The owner of Custom Flight Systems, Wade Schmidt, has been in the Aero-Space Industry for 30 years managing assembly and manufacturing operations. He has been flying LSAs (Light Sport Aircraft) since 2000. Two years later, with his love of flying firmly in place, he purchased a Hiperlight SNS-8 by Thunderbird Aviation. He has followed his passion for flying into general aviation and now has received his private pilot's license.

Through the years Wade flew with many challenger owners, who complained about their stock landing gear. He started developing a trailing link suspension to deal with landings on rough terrain. This system had to hold up on unpaved landing strips without damaging the gear or aircraft. The trailing link suspension was first tested at a local flight school. The gear held up to the hard landings of new students and smoothed out the impact.

Wade's daughter, Jessica Schmidt, received her bachelors degree in 2006 and joined her father in developing the trailing link suspension into a small business. She designed our online website and continues to update it. She has also developed and maintained the online sales and marketing, while handling the day to day activities and customers, allowing Wade to devote his time to the manufacturing of our current landing gear designs and developing new designs.

Custom Flight Systems was established in 2006, with the sole product being the trailing link suspension nose wheel landing gear designed for the Challenger by Quad City Ultralights Aircraft. Before the end of the year, the website was launched and thirteen units were sold.

Things started to really pick up in 2007 and we even had a booth at the air show in Arlington, WA. We expanded our market out of the continental United States and shipped to Hawaii and Puerto Rico. We learned the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) creates easy exporting of aircraft parts to Canada and Mexico, using this we expanded our market and have sold units to Canada. We have also had interest from South Africa and France.

We created a lighter version (See: Light) of the Challenger design by machining out additional material. We widened the design to adapt to the Excalibur by Excalibur Aircraft. We increased the size of the design and added a steering shaft and linkage (See: Heavy) to use on the Mark IV by Avid Aircraft. Before the end of the year we had sold another 28 units. That bought our two year total to 41 units. 2008 proved the need to expand our business and start plans for a larger facility to meet the demands of the market and to continue adapting the design to a larger variety of aircraft. We have started testing on a castor version of the Avid design that we hope to start producing sometime in 2009.

We are starting 2009 excited to be working with a local business to manufacture a larger quantity of units. They are precision machined, using CNCs to produce our units with quality first in mind. The first production run is done and we are happy to put our name on these well done units. The best news is this will open up time for Wade to work on some of the new designed units that are still in the testing and development stages.

Custom Flight Systems L.L.C.

Owner: Wade Schmidt

509-765-1870

Ordering order@customflightsystems.com

Information & Technical Support info@customflightsystems.com