August 2019 - Maybe My Last Airplane

Last month's saga continues:

A most welcome note from the northern reaches of Indiana ... an airplane once thought sold was available once more and was I still interested? The capital letters flew from my keyboard: Y E S !! And with that I was on an airliner to Indiana. 

There was a blizzard the first time I talked to someone about the airplane; this time it was heat and thunderstorms that all but washed out the county fair that was going on but the rides were ridden, the 4H ribbons were won and the Queen was crowned. The Queen also raises champion turkeys. There's nothing like rural Indiana. Solid people, honest people, in a place where old fashioned craftsmanship is the measure of a man.

The airplane is one I fell in love with about 15 years ago at a little fly-in in Florida. The owner/builder spent winters there and showed it to me with well-justified pride. He was a tool and die maker, had his own good sized company after starting out with a pencil and an easel in his living room. He was a hard worker and judging by the quality of workmanship in this airplane, likely the most meticulous airplane builder whose work I have had the privilege to admire.

Stoddard Hamilton Glastar

Sadly, the owner/builder passed on but I will thank him every time I have a chance to fly and work on this airplane. The  paperwork hurdles from the inner workings of the FAA were something else again; conflicting information abounded.  In the end I decided if I could wait all this time for what I believe could be my last airplane, I could surely wait a little longer.

Here it is, the end of August and I've been tracking the progress of the FAA Aircraft Registration Branch online. Every day they post their progress by the date paperwork was filed and finally my day arrived! I was joyous. Triumphantly, I searched my N-number only to be confronted by a notice that my airplane's status was questionable. Phone call to FAA: what's going on? I had copies of all the paperwork on the computer screen in front of me - it was all there and correct. The lady I spoke to was very nice and after digging further said the problem lay in a missing Bill of Sale from the executor to a person whose name rang no bells at all - there was no such person in the chain of ownership. A call to the title company with this news caught them completely by surprise but after a lot of back and forth the problem was rooted out and fixed. A simple clerical mistake could have thrown me back to the end of that 4-6 week line but for a persistent title company representative and a service oriented FAA examiner. I finally have clear authority in writing on an FAA form to operate the airplane until my hard copy registration comes or 120 days and that's ok by me.

Now: It's time to FLY! But . . . . .

Wouldn't you know it? It looks the same for the whole week. Thank heaven for little things that can be played with in the interim.

At the end of July 2019

July 2019 was quite a month . . . a week or more of ferocious heat (shared with our neighbors in the northern tier of states), then very pleasant days and cool nights. Oh, it did rain some ... washed away half of Louisiana to hear tell of it, but that was nothing until it reached the network news centers in New York and Washington. Oh the humanity! You'd think the world was coming to an end.


Back in January there was a spate of cold - blizzards in the northern tier. Someone, somewhere must have done something really, really wrong to deserve this kind of a swing in weather.

As it happened, an airplane I fell in love with some 15 years ago came on the market. The owner had passed away and the airplane was in the hands of his executor. This was back in January and the aforementioned blizzard was in full swing in northern Indiana where the airplane was hangared. I couldn't get there in the teeth of that awful weather but I reached a deal over the phone to send a deposit to hold the airplane until I could make the trip. Their lawyer was supposed to contact me with wiring instructions to an escrow account. That was a Thursday. I didn't hear from the supposed executor's lawyer on Friday so after breakfast with the airport crew on Saturday morning - photos of the new airplane shared and appreciated - I placed a call to Indiana only to learn the airplane had been sold to someone else! I was crushed.  In a few days I sent a nice note - no hard feelings but if the deal did not go through for some reason to please let me know.

Fast forward to July. I received an email note from Indiana that the airplane was still for sale - was I still interested? I wrote back immediately in all capital letters: Y E S !! There had been a mixup and this time I was put in touch with the real executor of the estate. Needless to write, I was on an airline flight the next morning. 

During the six months between January and July, the FAA Aircraft Registration had expired and cancellation was right around the corner. Those are significant words. Expired certificates have about 90 days of grace during which the airplane cannot be flown while the application for registration renewal goes to the back of a 4-6 week line for processing. Cancellation, on the other hand, means I own a paperweight. This is a big deal. 

Long story short, I checked the airplane out thoroughly and a trusted mechanic who had been tending it for several years did a condition inspection (it's an experimental category airplane). Paperwork and electronic dollars flew all over the place, and we closed the deal through a title company.

Not the end of the story.

A phone call with the FAA Aircraft Registration Branch on Monday reassured me about the paperwork process and I would have my registration in 4-6 weeks. Then the lady on the other end of the line explained that the airplane couldn't be flown on a copy of the application for a registration when the registration had expired. This was counter to what another FAA Registration Branch representative and the title company had told me before we closed the deal. Quick scramble and the airplane took up residence in the back of the hangar.

More next month .. stay tuned.