Archive for February, 2007

Frank’s Sky Chief

Tuesday, February 20th, 2007

Sky Chief

Frank D. surveys his resurrected airplane.

“It’s a Sky Chief,” he says, his Irish accent still flavoring his speech. “It was the second plane I owned. It’s over 30 years old.”

He built and flew it those many years ago in Ireland.

Frank remembers an ad for the Sky Chief that said it was the kind of plane you’d want to fly high, so you could see the sun shining through its wings. He remembers flying it high and thinking how true the ad was.

(more…)

Tools of the Trade

Wednesday, February 14th, 2007

Tools of the Trade

Monday, the wind was blowing sideways. From the east, not the usual north wind. And it was bubbly, fluttery, irregular. So flying was weird.

My wing, which I fly almost every day, felt like a plane I’d never flown before.

Oh yeah, I also didn’t sleep much Sunday night. So I was strung out, feeling strange.

Wind. Weirdness. What could possibly go right?

I flew anyway.

(more…)

Frequent Flyers

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Morgan Hurler

The six guys pictured on my home page — labeled Frequent Flyers — are the people I fly with the most. (I’ve redesigned the site since I wrote this. The six guys are Doug Traub, Mike Nadler, Dave North, Bruce Crawford, Gary Morgan and me. You can see most of us at the bottom of this page or browse the Faces pages to see everyone.)

Most weekday mornings, Doug, Mike, Dave and I fly together at Baylands (except in winter, when Doug rents a cabin in the mountains and skis). The others show up once or twice a week.

Bruce has to drive an hour to get to Baylands. Gary has a day job: he runs a CNC machine shop. Bob has other stuff to do.

(more…)

Our East Coast Correspondent

Sunday, February 4th, 2007

Glider in the Sky

Norman writes, “Graupner Cumulus, a 1960s design long out of production. Hobbico came out with a later model which resembled it, but not in the same class performance-wise.”

I started this blog for the same reason I often do things: I couldn’t figure out why people write blogs.

Writing a blog, it seemed to me, is like standing blindfolded on a soapbox in a public park, shouting things into the air. Maybe there’s a crowd here. Maybe not. I wouldn’t know.

But this same sort of puzzlement led me to start a computer bulletin board back in the last century. Why do people devote their computers to things like this? I wondered. So I dedicated a computer, wrote an amusing welcome message and started a few discussions.

(more…)