Born and raised in northern Illinois, Jim Beyer is a retired military pilot and accomplished flight instructor, airline pilot and soon to be air racer.  With more than 6000 hours of flight time and 895 hours of combat time over Iraq and Afghanistan, Jim has a passion for everything aviation.  His career has spanned over 27 years flying everything from gliders, to taildraggers, to military jets, and to airliners.  He holds an Airline Transport Pilot certificate, glider rating and is a Gold Seal Flight Instructor.

Jim is the Chief Mentor for the Omaha build of AviationNation which mentors high school aged students while building a Van’s RV-12 aircraft.  The motto for AviationNation is “mentors build the students…students build the plane” and they indeed are doing this across the country in five different locations. Additionally, Jim is a formation lead with the BeechNutz formation flying team out of Kansas City, Mo and recently flew in a 116-ship formation to the world’s largest airshow, EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisc as well as performed a formation demonstration during the 2014 EAA AirVenture airshow.

Jim qualified to race during the 2017 Pylon Racing Seminar and is honored for the privilege to be a rookie jet racer.