Saturday was cold and clear, a typical Minnesota winter day. I decided to go back up to the airport for a second time and try to get the Kawasaki engine off the carriage. My foot was still far from 100% and my back had been bothering me, but I thought I could still go up and accomplish something.
I was there about three hours, and did accomplish what I wanted—removed the engine. It was hard, especially in my state of physical condition. About noon, I closed everything up and headed for home. I had some pain in my chest that I attributed to indigestion or something and even pulled off the freeway to look for a little store to get some Tums or something. Failing to find anything, I continued home. But as I got closer and closer, the chest pains, nausea and loss of equilibrium, and general sense of malaise intensified. But I made it home, about a 20-minute drive. However, as soon as I saw the bed, I collapsed on it. But I knew there was something terribly wrong. I got up and stumbled into the other bedroom where Sandra was, dizzy and literally sliding along the walls, using them to steady myself to keep from falling. Grease stains on the walls that are there even as I write this attests to my inability to maintain my equilibrium. Sandra sensed that here was a serious problem and immediately called 911 for an ambulance. To make the story short, I ended up at Methodist Hospiital in the Cardiac “cath” lab and after the insertion of a second stent (I had received one on 2006 at Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse), I felt much better. My change of feeling was a night-and-day experience. They found that one of the arteries feeding the heart had a virtual total blockage, and the stent was now providing a passage for normal blood flow to the heart. The physical exertion at the airport probably did not help the condition, but this situation had been most likely developing for some time.
More Research
I have been asking for help from anyone who is willing to give it from Yahoo UL groups, of which there were several. One guy, Dave Engle, in New York, also owns a JetWing and has been willing to get dimensions of the parts that will need to be replaced. He’s great! He also has an owners manual and I have asked him to go have a copy made at my expense and send to me to help with the rebuild.
There are several other guys who popup on the internet when I ask questions. Jerry Pridemore, Ted Bailey, and Mark Overton have both answered questions and provided help and opinions about the project.
The Next Step
I think I need to go back up to the airport and do some further analysis and begin to disassemble the carriage. One important thing that needs to be done is to put the wing together and check out its integrity and see if there’s any damage to it. I know the keel is damaged because I found part of it in with the chopped-up pieces that the EMT’s destroyed. But I don’t know what else might be damaged. I haven’t put it together since the accident. The rebuild decision will be dependent on how many good pieces remain. If there’s substantial damage to the wing or the engine, I might be resigned to deciding it’s not possible to rebuild. We’ll see.
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