Back To Work- Picking Up an Airplane

One of these days I'll figure out how to arrange the pictures in the order that I want. OK, picking up the plane. Friday,September 9th, a 5 pm flight out of Ithaca, landing Spokane at 10:30 local time. beautiful late summer weather, nothing to worry about, right? Delta airlines decided to give me a run for my money right out of the gate- literally. There are no commercial passenger planes based in Ithaca which means that in order to take a flight out of Ithaca, another flight must first make it into Ithaca. The inbound flight that would become my outbound flight was late coming in but they knew where it was and everything should be fine. That may have been true in Ithaca but now this plane would be late getting into Detroit and that's where the trouble began- just as we were approaching the motor city, ATC gave us a 20 minute hold. Now my entire lay over time was gone. Fortunately I kind of planned for something like this and all I had with me was one legitimate carry one. I ended up in a dead run to my next gate, boarding only a couple of minutes after the last boarding call. Looks like no dinner for me. Ultimately the whole thing was no big deal and I ended up in Spokane as planned. I had booked a hotel room at the closest hotel to the airport terminal that I could find- 100 yards is pretty close. One cold beer and a total collapse. This worked well because by Saturday morning I was fully on Pacific time. The truck rental place opened at 8:30, so of course I was there by 8. A beautiful blue sky day- you could find a cloud if you wanted one. I brought my GPS from home and once I had my destination programmed in it was time to hit the hiway. GPS selected a different route than I had anticipated, but what the hell, I gave it a shot. Hunters, WA does not readily appear on a WA state map- its too small. Northwest of Spokane by about 80 miles, along side Lake Roosevelt. Crushingly beautiful country, golden wheat fields as far as the eye can see. And lodge pole pines as I cross over the hills. Not very many people. In Hunters I met up with my nephew, Kevin Timmreck, who I've hired for the day to help me. Kevin lives in Ione, WA about 60 miles northeast of Hunters. Together we found our final destination. To say off the beaten path cannot do it justice. The sign said "primitive road" and meant it. Good God we were out there. But just a bit ahead, in front of the house, there was Mrs. Sipes waiting for us. She directed us out to the hangar and runway and for the very first time I laid eyes on N5215H- my new plane. I also got to meet Robert Sipes, the soon to be previous owner of the plane and his son Stephan. A quick examination of the plane and the log books and a small business transaction took place. Now she was mine. The Sipes' were great- they made the whole pick up the plane deal work with their great attitude and willingness to pitch in and work. And work we did. Taking the wings and tail feathers off an airplane looks to be a fairly simple affair- on paper. 97 degrees out, 15% relative humidity. You can't sweat because every drop of moisture has been evaporated from your body. I don't think anybody peed all day. Nuts and bolts that hadn't been disturbed in who knows how many years aren't happy when you come after them with a wrench. The left wing made a strong argument to stay right where it was. The horizontal stabilizer didn't care for our plan to remove it. But will, determination and absolute need won out and the plane did indeed come apart. So there we are with a wingless plane and a truck- now how do we get the plane into the truck? Stephan came to the rescue with some massive 4x10x13' planks and then the sheer brute force generated by a small group of hot and tired men put that plane in the back of the truck. The wheel chocks were screwed to the floor of the truck to keep the nose of the plane as tight to the front wall of the truck as possible and the wings were kind of hung on strapping on either side of the truck. Everything else was loaded as best possible to minimize potential damage and we were ready to roll. 6 hours start to finish. Not too shabby for a first time plane in a tuck guy.