Pat and Ep's 50th Wedding Anniversary!

Great reason for a get together in Michigan. Most of the senior men were all Michigan State Fraternity brothers and part of the wedding 50 years ago. Here's a family shot.

Miscellaneous Winter of Content

Lots of routine stuff happened since the last update but then most of you probably know all about it anyway. Kids are doing great and each got straight As on their mid year report cards. Aaron is playing tennis, number 2 singles, and having a great time. Rachel's flying lessons are going really well. She's under the care of a new flight school that uses the venerable Cessna 152 instead of the Taumahawks. She likes the differences - especially the electric flaps. Spoiled I tell ya...Today I went to take a look at Robin's Sonex build project. He's doing excellent work. It's going to be a showplane if he keeps it up.
Works busier and more tedious than I'd like but it's better than the alternative. However, I thought being the boss was supposed to be fun and rewarding but so far it's just a lot more work. We were going to go to Florida for Spring Break this week but Chris is only just not getting back from another Abu Dhabi trip that went a week or two longer than planned so she's burnt out of travelling. Guess we are staying local and that's got Aaron annoyed. He LOVES going back to his 'home' state of Florida. I'm not getting to fly nearly as much as I'd like due to Wx and work, what else is new. Can't wait for summer! Here's a pic of a work buddy, Rich, in his first 'real' fun airplane ride. I think he's hooked, oh yeah!

Ketchup - Some Mustard too

Summer included an Oshkosh trip by Aaron and I, another trip or two by Chris to the UAE, Aaron joining the Macintosh laptop cult (not a bad thing though), a trip to Michigan, tennis, flying, etc. Some recent news is Rachel received the first Fred Kacena private pilot flight training scholarship from EAA240 along with student material and a couple of extra free flight hours from New Garden airport. Very nice and now that her HS tennis season wrapped up she will be getting to work on the flying lessons soon since the PSAT test is next weekend. Stay tuned for that. Both kids also got a couple of sail plane flights in. The glider instructor was amazed how well Aaron could fly correctly behind the tow plane. Hmmm. Yesterday Chris and I went to

Block Island with Rich and Pat. Up the Hudson one way (click here to watch a 7 minute video of the Hudson) and down LOOOONG Island on the return. Click here for video of the landing on runway 28. The RVs made the round trip on one tank of gas. 1.6 hours up and 1.5 hours back. Amazing. Click here for more Hudson River and more BI pics.

May/June so far...

School's out (straight A's for both kids so we broke down and got them Samsung Instincts for atta' boys since we're currently hooked into Sprint and Sprint just came out with a terriffic family share plan with unlimited internet, data, texting, music, gps, & TV in the offering), Chris went to the United Arab Emerites for work and there's been some flying done. She had a great time and was impressed with the people and facilities but 2 weeks was a bit much and they didn't get the contract signed so they'll have to go back in July. Homes seem to be pretty large, if you can afford it, to facilitate large families where the men and women intentionally spend time in separate rooms I guess 'cuz that's what seems to be the norm. There's a lot of interesting cultural tid bits. Just ask Chris about BMOs and the new Upper Darby in the UAE. Click here to see about 200 pictures of the visit. Yesterday Aaron and I flew (here's video of the new RV-8 paint scheme on arrival) to Lockhaven for the annual Piper (mostly Cubs) pilgrimage to tour the old factory and museum. Pretty funny going to a major fly-in and only seeing 2 RVs. I still haven't flown in a Cub or Vagabond! I've logged time in different versions of champs and Taylor Craft but have escaped the Cub lure so far. Here's a typical ground ops scene video next to the grass strip. Everitt flew the Wildcat there and here's a video of it landing. There's a low quality and high quality version, watch the high one. Here's another one of the Wildcat doing a slow flyby. Finally, one of the items that really caught my attention was a model of the LST set up to launch cubs back in WWII. I read about this before but the model really put things in perspective.

One up, one down, one undecided

The 8 came home yesterday! I feel the project is complete and time to move on the next big project! I've been itching to start it but needed to wait until the 8 got painted for closure on it. The new guy is a Secret so don't pester me. I haven't told you up 'til now an am not going to cave in ;-)

The Expedition made a 'very bad' metallic, mechanical/engine sound on the way home from the airport and died in the middle of the busy road. It had to be towed to a Ford dealer. After only 143K miles of the easy life which didn't include towing or heavy loads on the "much ballyhood" Triton 5.4 liter V8, it let go internally and froze up! Dealer says engine needs to just be replaced. I was reminded that Ford stood for Found On Road Dead. Perfect. Good thing we had the next car picked out anyway. It's a Honda. I should have stuck with a Honda when I got the Ford. I went against my better judgement at the time and part of the rationalization was "Heck, with that big V8, it should last 20 years". Ha, jokes on me. The Accord that was "old" when I got the Ford is still alive and well and has 173K miles on it and doesn't make any of the aggravating squeeks and other noised the Ford was making lately. How do they stay in business?

The Nagel Grandparents are in town so they came out to New Garden to take a look at the plane and there's a lot of family stuff going on like Aaron's Confirmation and Baptism today....so here's some random photos from this week so far including one where my 4 month late Birthday cake is trying to singe my eyebrows off, our EAA240 chapter breakfast and a picture of Jim Russell who painted the plane and Rich Zeidman who flew me down... Since Jackson's birthday is in a couple of weeks we decided to embarrass him too with a photo of him behind a cake but notice how he takes to it so well? Proof birthdays like your 16 one is a hell of a lot more fun than one like your 40 something one!

Surprise!

Rich's 60 Birthday celebration was last Sunday. It was the place to be so we were! Here's a link so some more pictures. A lot of flights were had on that day. We had to ground Rich from having fun flying to cut the cake. This is the first time I've seen Rob & Dale, Doug and Rich's planes all together at once. All painted by the same shop in Vermont and look great. Mine on the other hand, currently looks like a beginner graffiti gang took at it as you can see here.

April's happennings

Two of our babies are getting "Dolled Up" this month. Friday, Rachel (baby #1) and Liza spent 20 hours getting ready for the 4 hours of the event that was the Soph Hop at the HS. It was the sophomore formal.






Saturday, the 8 (baby #4 behind Aaron and Dakota) was delivered to Jim Russell at Chorman to finally get painted! It's been over 2 years since first flight and almost that long since the day I called him and asked when I could get in. It's a 16 month wait! I had some awesome help from Mike Parry, John Leslie and Rich Zeidman. It took us 3 hours to disassemble what needed to come off. It's going to be 2 full days getting it back together when I pick it up in 2 weeks. Notice I don't call it a her or a him or have some goofy ass name for it? Well, I figure you either are or aren't the type that does that sort of thing, nothing in between. I am not and it seemed dorky when picking out the paint scheme to even consider going that route and getting some nose art along those lines. It's an 8. I provide the soul when we fly and I like it that way.

Aaron's freshman tennis experience is an eye opener. He is playing #3 dubs. He was thrown in with the JV ranks the first week of practice while the varsity went to a different complex. It took a week to rise to the top of of the JV scene and get moved up to varsity but by then the coach, who according the couple of kids I talked with pretty much had his mind made up before the season began who was going to play what from last year, didn't give the 2 or 3 kids that moved up with Aaron much of a chance to vie for the top dubs in direct real 2 out 3 set challenge matches and no chance at singles. They didn't get to challenge anyone at singles, which is where he, like most, plays better. The first school match was after the second week of practice so he had one week at the varsity level and then the show started. He and his dubs partner did pretty good the first couple of weeks but then became beatable in close matches, along with other dubs teams and the coach felt he needed to rotate players around in the dubs world halfway through the short season. At practice, one day after his one match at # 2 dubs with a new partner where they won against Marple Newtown 1,2, they lost a challenge match to the new #3 dubs and got shellacked. So he's back down to #3 dubs again and won't play in the playoffs as only 3 singles and 2 dubs play. Hopefully it will motivate him to play more tournaments and get his ranking up where it should be since that's what the coach seems to care about before the season begins next year so the coach will consider him seriously for singles. It seems the coach has his mind made up mostly well ahead of time and the very few challenge matches are for confirmation more than for open mindedness when it comes to singles even though in Aaron's case the coach has never seen him ever play before, probably doesn't know who his private coach is, doesn't know his year around tennis schedule, who he plays, what the results are or how much he plays weekly etc. 2 of the singles players are seniors so he'll have a real chance next year now that he won't have to waste the first week in JV tennis and he'll be able to get in on the singles challenge matches right after the bat. Like I said, it was a real eye opener but I think he's stayed pretty positive and for sure he really likes being on the team and likes that camaraderie. It's been good for overall for him for sure. We'll have to take some pictures next week at a match. The school took some but I don't know where they are.