Tuesday, March 20, 2012 Freeing the Jetwing from Purgatory

Yesterday (Monday) I received a surprising call from someone at the Airports Commission. In an apologetic manner he told me that they had cut off our lock on our hanger (which we obviously already knew) and replaced it with one of theirs. Since there was also a letter posted on the hanger door stating that our lease had run out, I had assumed that the lock change was done to deny access until the lease had been resolved. But this apparently is not the case. The caller told me that they had to do some repairs to the hanger and had changed the lock because they did not know the combination of our lock. He said that I could get the key to the new lock and they would even reimburse us for the removal of the old lock. Amazing! I told him that I would be up there the next day (today) to get into the hanger, and he told me just to call one of the maintenance people who would meet me and give me the key.
So since the hitch is installed on the car, all that is needed is for me to get a 2” ball and I should be able to tow the trailer home. So after getting the ball at an O’Reilly Auto Parts store on the way to Crystal, I arrived at the airport at a little after 8AM, called the man who then came and met me, and opened the hanger. There wasn’t much in the hanger, since John’s 172 had been taken by the broker who is storing the plane in his hanger to facilitate its sale. There were some scraps of aluminum tubing from the wreckage of the Jetwing which I plan to donate to our church who is having a metal scrap drive to raise money, so after collecting all that, doing some final sweeping, and attaching the Jetwing trailer to the Camry, the hanger is empty and I’m ready to go. Initially the lights didn’t work, but I figured that out in short order and headed down the road.
The trailer and Jetwing is light-weight enough that the Camry isn’t having any trouble towing it, and I am very pleased. Visibility is good; I can see the trailer with the standard mirrors even better than when I was towing it with John’s pickup. The car didn’t seem to notice the trailer and I maintained a cruise speed of 60 MPH on hwy 494 and hwy 12 just to stay conservative. After arriving home, I rearranged the garage to accommodate the trailer and, although it is wider than I had remembered, there’s room for it alongside the car.
So that part of the project has turned out well. Now I can do the final few tasks that need to be done and use the Camry to tow the Jetwing down to Sioux Falls to again try with Larry’s help to get it flying. I figure we can do that in a couple of weeks.