Various forces of virtue and wickedness have conspired to keep me grounded for some time now. In the dark corner; inappropriate weather at appropriate times and the usual spectre of empty pockets. In the the corner of righteousness, an engineering team with wisdom far more persuasive than my impatience to fly.
The delay in getting the Luscombe signed off centred on paperwork. The aeroplane was sound but there was a potential gap in the paper trail of the near 70 year old machine. It took longer to fill the gap in the file than any of the actual engineering work for the Permit Renewal. Unfortunately the days are shortening rapidly and now the opportunities to carry out the Pemit test flight are getting scarcer by the week. The contributing factor to the overall delay is that my engineering inspectors are not based at my home airfield...in fact they're several hours away.
Selecting such distant expertise seems like it has been quite a foolish choice but it was one of those situations where making the correct decision with not a lot of experience sometimes requires a large degree of compromise. I knew little or nothing of aircraft ownership when I bought my Luscombe but I knew it was easy enough for my ignorance to land me in a barrow load of woes and bills. The only way I to avoid that was to find engineering expertise I could trust. That expertise had to be that of the father and son team that looked after my flight school's aircraft.
Before I ever laid eyes on my own pride and joy, I had seen them at work, hard at work. I talked aeroplanes with them, learned from them, visited their farm strip and discovered over tea and biscuits that these guys were real aeroplane people. I then got the opinion of the flight school's owner and others who had dealt with them. All of them told me them same thing and it was what I needed to hear – whatever they'd do, it would be done right with no shortcuts.
Now there is no question; this permit renewal might well have been easier if I'd found a more local engineer. I'd certainly have been in the air sooner with less consciontious engineers who didn't view paperwork as safety items. There again, being a pilot is never about the easy choices - it's about making the right choices.
I'm going to have to work hard to get my flight skills back up to scratch but when the Permit to Fly comes through the post and I finally push the starter button on the Luscombe I'll know that everything that could be done on the ground to keep me safe in the air was done. And done right. Thanks lads!
Love the layout! Thank you for sharing!
It is amazing how quickly time goes! I have not touched my pages since June, but seem to be coming up with ideas that I hope to remember when I have that next moment...
Thank you again!
Posted by: Justin Bieber Supra | October 13, 2011 at 07:49 AM