Progress

Today was supposed to be nasty as far as the weather is concerned.  Noblesville was having a fly-in breakfast, but I had a student this morning who has been trying to get in and fly forever.  The weather held out, so we went on up and got our flight in.  It went really well, and in fact he's one flight away from both a tailwheel endorsement and his first solo in the airplane, if it goes as safely/well as today.  So that was really good.  The rest of the day a group of us worked on BOB, the Big Oily Beast, aka the C-45 or Twin Beech.  I only did a few small things, but I like being able to actually help.  I never mind helping, I just have minimal talent at mechanical things and don't usually know what to do.  But today there were some things I could do, so that was good.

We needed to get an aileron cable through a small hole within a small inspection panel on the wing, and I had the smallest arms, so I was able to get in and do that.  It was still tight on me, and ended up bruising and scraping up my arm some, but it's sort of a badge of honor, and at least it won't leave a scar like the PT-26 and 340 have.  The ailerons and flaps were hung, aileron trim tab, hinges, the flap range was fixed, and some work was done on the interior floor panels too.  Good stuff.

Steve and AE were down in Columbus at the air show there.  He was airbossing, and said it went well.  He got to spend some time hanging out with some of the air show people we get along with and enjoy, and AE ended up helping one of the guys load rides in his T-6.  The guy is a "competitor" of ours, but we still promote him and help him too, which amazes him, because another of our competitors is very, very, well, competitive.  He gets territorial, makes deals and then backs out on them, gets everybody else to charge a certain amount and then undercuts them.  Not cool.  He ditched Columbus a week before their event, for what he thought would be a better opportunity, leaving them scrambling for a ride airplane at the last minute.  You can guess he won't be invited back there again in the future.  Anyway.  We are not like that, and neither is the other guy who came in to Columbus to do rides, and we get along juuuust fine.  Just how we like it.

Oh, one other kinda funny thing happened today.  A lady contacted me about flying the CAF T-6 in Dallas for footage for their WASP trailer.  She's a super nice lady and a great person, and I'm not offended, but it was kind of funny to me that she asked if I was checked out in a T-6, and said basically if not, how much tailwheel time did I have and they could always put me in the front to be the visible pilot and put an approved checked out T-6 guy in the back seat for the video.  She didn't know if I was checked out or not and that's an option for their video, I understand, but basically what that says is "we can put you up front to look like a girl is flying and put the real pilot in the back seat and just not show him on the video."  I kindly let her know that I am indeed checked out in a T-6 and we could do this.  I also thought...if they want a girl to sit there and look pretty while someone else flies from the back seat, they could pick someone younger and trimmer who looked better in a flight suit for their movie.  lol  They didn't want to do that, to be fair, she was just saying it was an option if I couldn't really fly the plane.  They still have never had a woman pilot fly their woman pilot's airplane yet.  All dudes.  I'll be the first.  If it ends up happening after all. We shall see.  The director is supposed to contact me as early as Monday to set up a time which they said would be "shortly".

I feel better today.  I even lasted the whole day without wearing out, and went flying for an hour and a half.  So whatever I had was not a typical cold, but it was like the speed dating version of a bug.  Maybe I already had a little immunity to whatever it was, so it knocked me down for a few days, but I recovered pretty fast.  Now I just have to do a couple things before going to Fargo...and I need the weather to cooperate so I can do them.

Me in the back of the PT.  I think it's funny how my feet barely fit on the rudders if I keep my heels on the floor where you're supposed to.

You can't see most of it, but there's part of where BOB chewed on me today.

I like this view from this seat.  I'm looking forward to being PIC in this airplane. :)

Nathan works on a flap while we wait to help where we can.