Sorry to hear about the health issues. Know the feeling very well. You know that vicoden works much better with Jack Daniels? Just be careful on the mixing of things...
This looks excellent! I like the old style lettering much more, as well as the Aeronca script that they put on the Sedans.
Joe,
thanks for the compliments, if you (or anyone else for that matter) has a graphic you'd like to see done,
take a "clean", close-up, straight-on photo of it and email it to me.
I'm doing some really nice N numbers for Dennis (up in Mountain View, AR) I'm sure he'll tell you about
the product & personal service when he gets 'em.
jkvincent wrote:Joe,
thanks for the compliments, if you (or anyone else for that matter) has a graphic you'd like to see done,
take a "clean", close-up, straight-on photo of it and email it to me.
I'm doing some really nice N numbers for Dennis (up in Mountain View, AR) I'm sure he'll tell you about
the product & personal service when he gets 'em.
Crown Royal's my "poison of choice"
Jim
Jim,
Thanks and I am stuck in Tripoli Libya with a broken airplane. Hope to be back home by Monday night and will try to get some photos for you next week.
Regarding the CR... I have to "introduce" you to some special elixir that I brought back with me from my last trip to Scotland... If you make it to Middletown may bring some with me.
joea wrote:
Thanks and I am stuck in Tripoli Libya with a broken airplane. Hope to be back home by Monday night and will try to get some photos for you next week.
Joe
I recall you were stuck in Berlin with a broken plane earlier. That doesn't speak well for your maintenance crew and manufacturer.
Nothing like being far away from home with a broken airplane.
Different airplanes but understand what you mean. Problem is that I usually fly brand new airplanes right off the assy line and often we find things that were not corrected in the test flights before delivery to the customer.
The issue in Tripoli was the #2 engine blew an oil seal and all the oil exited the engine in flight. Normally this would be a simple engine change but as Libya is embargoed by most countries in the world, getting spare parts shipped in there, not to mention a complete engine is going to be difficult. This was on an airplane with 35 hours total time.
Libya is one of the more difficult places to be stuck. Very conservative Muslim and very little Western influence, its really interesting. Of course having very little in Western foods did not help (am not into African foods that much) as neither did the fact that booze of any type is forbidden.
Oh well, am about 4 hours away from take off here in London and heading back to Arizona! Cannot wait to get back home!
Joe, have you read Flying North South East and West; Artic to the Sahara? It's the biography of Terry Reece who flew a C-130 for Interior Airways/Alaska International through the artic and later Libia, Sudan and other points of question. It's a pretty good read, although I guess your living it right now. Be careful.
My parents spent some time in Libya at Banghazi in the '70's. There were 6 Americans total, my parents, an aircraft mechanic, and 3 pilots. He was contracted to train the Dept of Ag on seeding and fertilizing the desert. They used Cessna Ag Trucks. This was before Libya and the US were at political odds but Colonel Muammar Qaddafi was in charge.
Dad had a Cessna 185 assigned to the project. Every night it was filled to the brim with fuel. Plans for the Americans to meet at the plane if something unsavory happened and they had mapped out the low level flight to Malta if they needed to escape.
Mom didn't like it too much so she spent a lot of time in Milan, Italy. She didn't like having to be covered up and not being able to drive. But the Ag Dept assigned a driver to her if she wanted to get out.
All of us living in the middle east had "official" escape plans. Many of us who had lived there for a while had our own plan. It would, however, be extremely difficult to get out of country if they were "after you". There are road blocks everywhere, even in the middle of the desert. By the way, the Arabic word "Sahara" translates in English to the word "desert".
My wife and I along with another couple once traveled from Cairo up to Alexandria, turned left and headed west to Marsa Matruh near the Libyan border. We planed to camp on the Med. About 11pm, we were surrounded by the military, locked and loaded. They checked us out, took our passports, told us we could stay for the night and posted guards. They said smugglers out of Libya used the beach and our camp fire would be a signal to them. We decided to go into town and get a room. The next morning my wife was walking our Boxer on the beach and noted that she was being shadowed. When I went outside, I was met by a military person who said that they had a military convoy ready to escort us out of town. So we departed south with our convoy, paralleling the Libyan border, down to the Siwi Oasis. After a couple of days camping, we departed east across the desert to Cairo via Bahriyah. My point is that every road block we went through knew we were coming. They keep track of "ho-ag-ga's". (foreigners)
There was another time I had to leave very quickly. I sweated through passport control at the airport in Cairo. I did not feel safe till I was outside Egyptian air space. The way to safely get out is to move quickly before there bureaucracy can gear up to look for you.
Having lived there for 8 years, I got a lot of stories.
Know what you are talking about very well. I did one tour in Saudi and had the gold and $10,000 stashed in the hootch within a month, it was standard evac plans.
What the Saudi's did not know was that we all had two passports issued by the DOS (and still do!). They were fairly lax as they kept our passports in a safe at the airport, thinking that this would keep us in control. BS, as we all had the second passport in our safe at home, and as well we did the same thing that Robert did, fueling the airplane for a 3 hour journey every evening "just in case" and had routes mapped out to "get the hell out of Dodge" if needed.
I do not need money that bad to work in a country like this again. We went there for a one night stay flying a VIP. Sadly the engine on the airplane did not understand this and puked all of its oil out while we tried to get out. We all would have been a lot happier had it lasted 20 minutes, then our go/no go decision would have landed us in Malta.
Good to hear you are back home. All the time I was in the middle east I always wondered if I could get out anytime I wanted out. You are so very correct about cash. Bribes are a way of life. I can not tell you how many cops I have bribed. I had a console full of piesters just for that purpose.
It was always good to get home and to be an American, God Bless the USA!
Bribes are a way of life in many parts of the world. With luck, you can get out if needed and you are ready.
I have lived in 7 countries in my life, and the USA is still the best I have found. Other countries have good and not so good things there but its hard to match being back home.
Just be careful on the mixing of things...
Be careful.