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After damn near 6 months of waiting, Forum member AKJack came back to sunny SoCal to pick up my... sorry, his beautiful 1940 BC-85 and head back home to Fairbanks. He had stored the airplane a couple hours north of Los Angeles for safe keeping while waiting for the good weather to make the trip.
This morning at about 9:30AM the airplane took off and headed North, equipped with a temporary Transponder lash-up to get through the international boundaries, and about two tons of stuff, fuel cans, tools, supplies and assorted necessities. I'm pretty sure there was a 3 axis mill somewhere in all of Jack's supplies shoehorned into that airplane...
The fun part was when he found that the little Pilot 3 GPS that went with the airplane wasn't performing one or two of the functions it was supposed to. A mutual friend of ours (and Jack's host while in Tehachapi) loaned him another Garmin GPS, which of course SHOULD have fit the same mounting screw pattern if they had thought it through... but didn't. So we did some emergency field surgery to get his borrowed GPS mounted securely in the airplane.
This surgery included some small amount of safety wire and some slightly larger amount of cursing. We of course had on hand the great AC 43.13 book of approved methods and practices, however the book was somehow not quite open to the right page as we twisted the wire through the mounting holes on the dis-similar brackets.
When the angle of the custom aluminum sheet metal GPS instrument panel mount was found to be woefully wrong (the new GPS screen was parallel to the pilot's line of sight, as opposed to perpendicular), we had to do some field engineering of the most Neanderthal persuasion. This involved using a crack in the asphalt under the airplane tiedown as a de facto sheet metal brake, followed by some delicate and gentle persuasion with the hammer Jack was carrying for tie-down pounding. The 43.13 book was out to lunch and unavailable for comment.
This aerospace grade material forming operation created a new aircraft alloy, 6061-T6000, which I was frightened would crack due to normal cockpit vibration in a matter of minutes. However, it apparently did it's job fairly well for the first leg of the trip.
So this Alaska bush pilot, airline pilot, USAF pilot, and all-around first class guy took off on a great adventure, with a great airplane. The Taylorcraft will have a positively great new home, in a private hangar surrounded by some of the most beautiful flying country anywhere. I got a new friend out of the deal. My airplane got a ticket to high adventure, hunting trips, and flying in a place more fun than Los Angeles. It's a win-win-win, save for my tears watching an airplane I love fly away.
You Alaskans take good care of Jack and the little silver sweetheart he's bringing home!
This morning at about 9:30AM the airplane took off and headed North, equipped with a temporary Transponder lash-up to get through the international boundaries, and about two tons of stuff, fuel cans, tools, supplies and assorted necessities. I'm pretty sure there was a 3 axis mill somewhere in all of Jack's supplies shoehorned into that airplane...
The fun part was when he found that the little Pilot 3 GPS that went with the airplane wasn't performing one or two of the functions it was supposed to. A mutual friend of ours (and Jack's host while in Tehachapi) loaned him another Garmin GPS, which of course SHOULD have fit the same mounting screw pattern if they had thought it through... but didn't. So we did some emergency field surgery to get his borrowed GPS mounted securely in the airplane.
This surgery included some small amount of safety wire and some slightly larger amount of cursing. We of course had on hand the great AC 43.13 book of approved methods and practices, however the book was somehow not quite open to the right page as we twisted the wire through the mounting holes on the dis-similar brackets.
When the angle of the custom aluminum sheet metal GPS instrument panel mount was found to be woefully wrong (the new GPS screen was parallel to the pilot's line of sight, as opposed to perpendicular), we had to do some field engineering of the most Neanderthal persuasion. This involved using a crack in the asphalt under the airplane tiedown as a de facto sheet metal brake, followed by some delicate and gentle persuasion with the hammer Jack was carrying for tie-down pounding. The 43.13 book was out to lunch and unavailable for comment.
This aerospace grade material forming operation created a new aircraft alloy, 6061-T6000, which I was frightened would crack due to normal cockpit vibration in a matter of minutes. However, it apparently did it's job fairly well for the first leg of the trip.
So this Alaska bush pilot, airline pilot, USAF pilot, and all-around first class guy took off on a great adventure, with a great airplane. The Taylorcraft will have a positively great new home, in a private hangar surrounded by some of the most beautiful flying country anywhere. I got a new friend out of the deal. My airplane got a ticket to high adventure, hunting trips, and flying in a place more fun than Los Angeles. It's a win-win-win, save for my tears watching an airplane I love fly away.
You Alaskans take good care of Jack and the little silver sweetheart he's bringing home!
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