In April, the Jetwing flew for the first time since its rebuild. But the pilot was not me, it was Larry Miller. He proved that my Jetwing flies. That was a joyous event, but now it time for me to fly it.
Since the maiden flight by Larry Miller at Luverne in April, the Jetwing has inhabited dormant in the garage. Seems like there’s always something to prevent me from getting out to the airport and making my initial flight.
But since it has become a priority to find a hanger, I have called around and visited numerous airports nearby to find something I could use or share. Buffalo, Glencoe, Molnau (Waconia), and Winsted were the initial candidates. Dick Molnau is the owner and operator of (surprise!) Molnau Airport, the closest airport on Airport Road in Waconia. He told me in no uncertain terms that ultralights were not welcome at his airport. I don’t know what prejudice he holds toward us innocent little fuzzballs, but that’s the name of that tune, and he probably has his reasons, as fair or unfair as they may be. A guy at Buffalo called me and said I could share some space for $175/month, much too high a price at this point.
Glencoe Airport, which is owned and operated by the City of Glencoe, had space available for $90/month, which seemed very promising. I scheduled with the airport manager and went out there to see the available hanger. It was beautiful; spacious, clean, and much more than I needed, but who was I to argue?!? I had visions of sub-leasing space that I did not need, and possibly coming out with hanger space with little or no out-of-pocket expense. I called the lady at the City of Glencoe to discuss signing the lease and closing the deal. She e-mailed me a copy of the lease, which looked fine to me; not overly restrictive, and as I was about to fill it out, sign it, and send them the lease back along with some money, I received a call back from the lady. She apologized and said that the lease she had sent had just been superseded by a new lease which had just been released by the city attorney, a copy of which she would e-mail. I was a little concerned, but assumed it would not be a show-stopper. Soon the new lease arrived. Buried in the Appendix were specifications for required insurance, a whole section that had been added to the previous lease. In summary, the conditions stated that I would have to include a hold-harmless clause coupled with a half-million in liability and property damage coverage naming the City as beneficiary. I couldn’t even imagine the cost of that, so I called the City Attorney directly and after a couple of days of dancing around, finally got in touch with him. I asked if there was any way to waive the insurance requirement, to which he responded with a definitive NO, and that was the end of my dreams of a hanger at Glencoe.
I had been to the airport at Winsted several times, talked to several people, and had wandered around, getting the lay of the land. I had also seen a sign on at least two hangers there that had FOR RENT OR SALE, with the same telephone number. I talked to a number of people on the field and no one knew of any available hanger space, except for the afore-mentioned signs. I put in a call to the phone number and got messages, but no reply. Finally, Tom Casey called back. He had been travelling and had been out of touch so it took him awhile to answer my phone messages. He was kind of curt and not easy to deal with. I asked about hanger space and told him I had a small aircraft and would be willing to share space, provided that there would be cost consideration. He said that he had two hangers, one large one and one small one. The small one had furniture and “stuff” that his kids were storing, and would not be appropriate for me. The other hanger was large and would probably not work either because that hanger was really design for large corporate aircraft and he thought he had someone would be moving in soon.
I asked him if I could look at the small hanger, and he agreed to let me do that, but that he was sure there would not be space for my aircraft. He said he would send his son there to let me in to check it out. So the next day I went out to Winsted Airport and met up with Tom, Jr. He was working on the hanger door, which tended to bind when it was raised and lowered, but it was up and I looked in.
The hanger was indeed small. I don’t know what airplane could fit into it, maybe a Cessna 152 or something like that. And it was certainly stuffed with junk, two large snowmobiles and a bunch of furniture. It looked hopeless, but as I examined it further, I began to formulate a plan to reorganize it and if I could fold the Jetwing’s wing, I thought it would work for me. I asked Tom, Jr. if I could bring the Jetwing out to see if I could fit it in, and if so, I would commit to renting the hanger. We had not discussed the rent; Tom, Sr. had initially said “…around $100/month…”, but with the situation of sharing and the general condition of the door and otherwise, I wasn’t interested in $100/month.
Two days later, I took the Jetwing out to Winsted. Tom, Jr. had given me the combination of the lock, and I opened the hanger and surveyed the situation. One obstacle was that the height of the opening was only about 8 feet, so with the wing attached and the kingpost raised, there was no way I could roll the Jetwing into the hanger. But I had seen that before and assumed that with the after-cable of the kingpost unattached, the kingpost would lay down to clear the height of the opening. It looked like it would, just.
The ideal setup would be to be able to store the trailer in the hanger along with the aircraft. I spent some time rearranging Tom’s kids’ stuff to clear a space in the center of the hanger. Along with the 8’ height restriction, I needed an 8’ space for the trailer laterally, and enough space in depth to allow the Jetwing to sit in front of the trailer, with the wings sitting folded on the trailer. I rolled the trailer into the hanger all the way to the back, which seemed to work, and the trailer new resided in the hanger, tongue forward.
The next step was to get the wings to fold to a total width of no more than 8 feet, which was the available space horizontally. I wanted to be able to fold the wings with the battens inserted, which would make things only slightly less convenient than having the wing fully deployed all the time. My main concern was that I did not want to put any tension on any wing parts when the wing was folded to avoid any damage to the wing. Since my Jetwing has a modified nosewheel bracket, there is an ideal place to rest the control bar which would allow the height of the wing to just fit under the top of hanger door and still allow the Jetwing to be rolled around on the wheels. I found the wing would fold to 8’ but that I would have to figure out some way to keep the wing tips from dragging on the ground. That was the least of my worries, however, and I was very pleased that the wings folded with the battens fully installed.
I rolled the Jetwing into the hanger, rear-first, with the folded wings resting on the trailer as I had planned. Although there were still some issues to be resolved, I was confident enough with the situation to go ahead with the renting of the hanger. We agreed on $90/month, although that was more than I wanted to pay since I was sharing the space, but I would accept it. So I have hangerage, and am very pleased with that. I have redeemed my garage back, and the aircraft is actually stored on an airport site; very cool!
No comments:
Post a Comment