Sometimes Things Are Out Of Our Hands

 It's the end of 2024 and what a year it has been.

The flying was sort of spotty - not much going on for me - but I did manage to enjoy some local flights and a few breakfasts at Morristown TN, Triple Tree events and so on. No real travel involved.

Our resident Senior Partner, Sid, turned 92 in May while he wasn't looking and we celebrated with a cake at the monthly EAA chapter meeting. Sid retired as a Navy doctor and built an airplane that he flew across the North Atlantic before such things as GPS came into use. Captain Sid cut his cake with my Navy officer's sword, the first time it has been out of its scabbard in 50 years or more. What a sport.

We started June with a flight to Morristown for breakfast with a couple hundred of our like minded friends. The EAA chapter there puts on a feed on the first Saturday of every month, year round.

Tim made good progress on his RV-12is project, finally moving it from his workshop at home to his hangar at Shelby. 

Leo came up with this sign to announce to the world that our hangar is serving its purpose as a place for relaxation and for hiding when there are honey-do projects awaiting.

The EAA chapter renovated the airfield rest room to bring it up to snuff for the convenience of all. That began in July and ran over into August. 

September started out a beautiful month of flying weather. The EAA pilots flew a dozen or more Young Eagles and the Glastar performed beautifully, as always, to give 4 of those rides. The last flight was for a young man who is older than Young Eagle cutoff age but he's motivated and may have a great future as a pilot or mechanic - he's interested in both.

Then things changed. A hurricane followed the west coast of Florida and ran along a straight line all the way to Western North Carolina. The wind did damage enough; the rain came in torrents and resulted in devastation along both the slopes and low lying areas of the mountains. 

In terms of airplanes, the destruction at the airfield was pretty much total. My Glastar and my hangar partner's RV-8 were under 5'10" of water, measured at the high water mark. All the accumulated stuff in the hangar that could float, floated and ended up in a pile when the water receded.

Every airplane on the airfield was flooded. Insurance covered some, others weren't covered. Some owners elected to take the insurance money, some sold for salvage, some are trying to restore their machines. It was a tough decision but I decided the restoration was more than I could handle.

The good news is a fellow I know who was interested in the airplane bought it out of salvage and will put it into flying order.

When you see sights like this its very hard. This Bonanza was just delivered to its owner and was not yet insured. It was sent off for a complete rebuild.

All of these airplanes were total losses.

Our troubles at the airfield were of little note when compared to the damage in the region to people and property. Comparisons to the Great Flood of 1916 quickly fell away - this was a singular event in our lifetimes and, I hope, longer than that.

But we are rebuilding. 

Mark and I hitched a ride with a fellow on his way to Louisiana to visit his family and looked over this Kolb Mk3 Xtra in South Alabama. It looked good so we bought it and trucked it up to our hangar in late October.

The hangar is coming along fine, too - we've installed a new set of cabinets and a proper counter for laying out food for the huddled masses of pilots who come to the Old Pilots Day Care Center. Our Fairweather Flyers will gather for breakfast and lunch again when the temperatures permit and there will be peace once more.

So that's the way it is at the end of 2024 and I hope 2025 will be good to us all.

Fly often, Fix strong and Fly Safe.

True Confession #2 - I’m either (a) Lazy or (b) Out Flying: A Quarterly Report

How does it go? Like sands through the hourglass, so too, the Days of Our Lives. Disclaimer: I didn’t write all of that all by myself - I ripped, stole, unashamed from a stupidly addictive TV show. Please don’t sue me.

Winter was not so awful, but the wet and the cold did put a damper on my flying. Plus, Mark and I have been pretty busy putting a new face on the airfield after its purchase by the Western North Carolina Air Museum.

Our identifier is 8NC9; the Hendersonville Airport is 0A7. The runways are more or less parallel but ours is shorter by some 400 feet according to the FAA data. There’s a lot to be done to bring the turf back up to snuff, but it’s happening - little by little.

Along those lines, one thing we did not have, among other things, was a restroom to serve the hangar tenants (of whom we are two). It was a minor inconvenience for us but for any female pilots or passengers it was pretty damned inconvenient. Fortunately, the former owner had one in his hangar (of course) so we made some changes to the entry to that building and - voila! - a restroom! Not fancy, but it’s a start. 

Shifty winds are always a problem at both airfields but more so at 8NC9 (which, by the way, is called Johnson Field in remembrance of the family that owned the airfield). A bit of applied brainpower, a little work by two of our EAA/Museum members (who happen to be retired engineers and active airplane builders and pilots) and we now have a reliable wind indicator - a tetrahedron that is nice and visible from the air and the ground.

 Life just gets, as my children used to say, funner and funner.

We’ve added a paramotor club to the mix here. They usually set out in the early morning or late afternoon when conditions are most agreeable. Careful planning and orientation for both the paramotor operators and pilots has, thus far, led to a peaceful and mutually supportive coexistence. Check out Mark Huneycutt on his YouTube channel for a peek at a whole new (to most of us) aviation adventure.

Now to dry out after a spring rain - more like a deluge - and the flying will recommence!

True Confession #1

The Marquart Charger came to town from its resting place at Marion NC’s Shiflet Field. My intent was to put it back into flying condition and enjoy Red Hunnicutt’s airplane in the skies of Western North Carolina.

Once in place, friend Steve and I divvied up our purchase - he bought the engine for his RV-4 and I had the airframe.

Then, as luck would have it, just as I was ready to dig into the project (after much perusal and many trips to the Marquart Charger website, as well as parts suppliers) a fellow wrote to me out of the blue and wanted to talk about maybe buying it. It was a tough decision.

Long story short, I sold the airframe and it was on its way to West Virginia in the hands of a fellow who will do a much better job of restoring it - an Airframe and Powerplant mechanic with Inspection Authorization - pretty much the top of the trade.

I hope Red is looking down with approval for what I’ve done. He started our local EAA chapter and the Charger was a magnet for new members like me in the early 1990s.