Category: Flying

Passive-agressive problems call for passive-agressive solutions

The new president of the flying club has been a member since Orville and Wilbur signed him off for his license. And like a lot of old-fart pilots, he seems to resent any attempt to get him to use more computer technology than just the bare minimum to get a weather briefing. (I should mention in passing that he also seems baffled by the concept of a period (full-stop for you UK readers), and seems to randomly sprinkle the gaps between his sentences with anywhere from 3 to 5 of them. It’s like reading somebody from somebody who mumbles and just trails away to nothing at the end of every sentence.)

Because of some big decisions that have to be made in the club, and the fact that with the shrinkage in pilot numbers probably nearly half the club are either on the Board of Directors or are club officers, I decided to open up the officers mailing list to BoD and asked all the officers and BoD who were not currently on the mailing list to join. When that didn’t work, I used the mailman “send an invitation” function to invite them all, including the new President.
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There’s no such thing as a perfect solution

I’m still trying to find a way to deal with the problem of assigning Canadian waypoints to their correct province. The first thing I did was grab George Plews Airports In Canada data file, which as well as giving me hundreds of new airports that I didn’t have already, also made sure that all my airports were in the right province. But I’ve still got problems.
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Sniff, sniff. Good bye old friend.

My favourite airplane, our club’s Piper Lance, is up for sale on eBay Motors:

eBay Motors: 1977 Piper Lance PA-32-300R – Great Buy, Flies Often! (item 140161831797 end time Oct-14-07 17:00:00 PDT)

Personally I think the reserve is too high, but I think they’re just trying to find out what the market will really bear. It looks like the only bidders so far are dealers bidding less than half what it’s really worth, looking for a totally desperate seller, and we’re not there yet.

But the plane’s annual is due in December, and we were told last year that the engine probably won’t pass another annual, and there just aren’t enough club members willing to pay the surcharge to justify spending the money for an engine and prop overhaul. So this plane is going to get sold, somehow.

So good bye, old friend. I’ll miss your speed, your load capacity, and your outstanding interior room. But mostly I’ll miss the fact that it felt like a good solid honest plane.