On Jul 17, 4:33*am, buttman wrote:
The only place within reasonable driving distance from where I live
that will do a MES commercial charges $500 an hour in a twin sea bee.
I figure it may be cheaper to spend the money on a airline ticket and
a week's stay in a hotel in order to get it done somewhere in a Apache
or something on floats for $200 an hour...

Also, would it be best to get the SES first (which is a LOT cheaper),
then spend like 2 hours transitioning to the MES, or will I still need
8+ hours of MES time in order to pass the checkride? In other words,
if you already have your SES and your MEL, is a MES more or less a
formality, or will there most likely have to do a lot more training?
Remember, my goal here is to get the rating with the least money as
possible.

Norcal aviation used to do MES training in an Apache. Terri sold the
business and I'm not sure if they are still operating or not but you
might check them. I think their website was norcalaviation.com

-Robert