Re: French Lick Insights
My nosewheel assembly is off the Green Angel on on its way for delivery to Welch Machine in Kansas tomorrow. Should be back, completely reassembled and ready for installation by next Monday in French Lick, giving a time cushion for my arrival back on Wednesday evening for a Thursday departure, about 10 days from now. Whereas normally I fly these trips, my wife had decided to take a week-long road trip beginning Wednesday going south, and were returning right at that time and coming right though that area, so this turned out to be literally zero inconvenience.
I cannot say enough good things about Curtis Kelley, the local French Lick A&P, Bob Welch at Welch Machine and Bill Kimmel at French Lick Airport. Yeah, Bill broke it, but what a class guy. He insisted on sending that heavy sucker overnight, not 2nd day air, and already made me a comp'd room reservation at French Lick. I told him if he apologized one more time I was going to sue him!
If you have never checked out Welch Machine, go to
www.welchmachine.com and look at their Commander gear assemblies. Beautiful stuff and much stronger than our current magnesium castings. So I chose to look it this as an upgrade.
Thanks to all of you for the kinds words and support. All I had to do was put on a sad face Saturday night and Lonnie, Bernie, Jim, Greg and others(who can remember?) were offering to buy me whiskey ... but even better were the warm, sympathetic hugs from Beth, Karen, MaryBeth, Joanna, Betty, et al. Actually, I was pretty well over it, after about 2 minutes that afternoon (what can you do?) but what the hell, free booze and warm affection ain't bad!
Special thanks to Angelo for the fine and fast ride home in the Super-C, Frank for tapping his knowledge storehouse and sending diagrams to Curtis, (Frank, of course, already knew Welch had the parts on the shelf,) pictures from Sherman (one is attached) and technical advice from many including Glenn, Bill Bailey and Pat Murphy. I made my first call to Pat 11.5 years ago before I bought 43W and Lord knows how many times I have called him since ... Pat, you have no idea how valuable your advice, counsel and friendship have meant to me over the years. Just having guys like you around always makes you feel like everything will work out fine.
Finally, several offered me parts out of their "private stash" and I am not going to blow their cover. Good to have friends in COG is all I have to say about that! No doubt I missed thanking someone important ... my apologies for that.
