Changing of the Guard

[4-Shipp]

The last two days have been bitter sweet. Yesterday I took off from our back yard strip a half hour before sunrise and headed south east for McKinney Texas where I picked up a good friend. Glenn and I departed McKinney about 0745 and headed east. Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and finally Sumter, South Carolina. The weather was perfectly clear and we never saw more than 5 knots of surface wind for 936 miles. We flew below 1000 feet for all but a few hours in the afternoon when the convection bumps grew tiresome. We landed in Sumter a half hour after sunset, fueled 9CP and put her in the hangar. It was a perfect day of flying shared with a dear friend who is as passionate about these opportunities as I am. We both knew this was perhaps a once in a lifetime type of day and we each savored every minute. This trip ranks up in the top two or three best days of flying I have ever enjoyed!

This morning I finished the checkouts for Nine Charlie Papa's new owners, Mark and Dianna Klein. Mark and Diana will be great caretakers and June and I are comforted knowing that we are leaving our faithful friend of 10 years in excellent hands. The Klein’s are already association members and you can look forward to them becoming avid participants in the forum and the association. Please welcome them as they will bring a lot to our organization.

Their parting act of kindness was being gracious enough to let me take 9CP around the patch one last time by myself before I left. I caught an American Eagle jump seat back to DFW and was home by 11:15 pm.

I still plan on hanging around the forums and look forward to seeing another large gaggle of 170s this year at Oshkosh. I want to say a very sincere thank you to everyone here who has offered help and support on everything from pre-buys to hangar doors to avionics to language and grammar lessons. We only plan to be airplane-less for a year or so and will keep our strip mowed in the interim. We still plan to host a fly-in this year and will make sure you all get an invitation.

Thanks Mark and Diana for adopting our girl. We wish as much joy of ownership as we have experienced the last 10 years.

Bruce and June Shipp

[GAHorn]

Has it been ten-years already???
Wow! Time flies when you're having fun, Heh?

What's next ?

[4-Shipp]

Hey George, next is to pay off the house! That should be done by May or June and then we start saving for something new. We loved the 170 but realized that there are many different airplanes we would like to experience owning and it will be a few years before we can be a multi-plane family. Next will likely be a Cub of some flavor (J-3, Super, PA-11). Then we'd love to have a Great Lakes or Stearman - something to go upside down in on a regular basis. When the grand kids show up in a few years we will want a good traveling machine depending on how far scattered the boys and their families are. There may be a 170 in our future as well but it will have a big engine this time. Maybe someone will resurrect the IO-360 STC someday. We may entertain the idea of building or more likely restoring our way to our next flier.

So, lots of dreams and we are excited about the future. However, none of this was going to happen with a mortgage on the books, so we decided the sooner we move back, the sooner we can move forward. Fortunately, I have some good friends (the best kind) that have promised to keep me flying. I also will use this sabbatical to catchup on some great model airplane projects that have taken the back seat to the 170 for too long.

Mark and Dianna are well on their way to their first oil change and are having a blast. The only thing holding them back is the snow in South Carolina.