The International Cessna^® 170 Association

Heading to Shreveport LA next week. Now you might ask yourself why would I be heading to Shreveport and not to some other metropolis in Louisiana like Toledo Bend or Breaux Bridge. Because Shreveport is the home of Metro Aviation the company that just took over the contract at the medevac base at work at and they are my new employers.

Anything I need to do while I'm in Shreveport or maybe there is something I shouldn't do besides the obvious of course. I'm not sure I'll have any spare time at all between getting checked out on two different helicopters and then flying one home.

I'd hate to go all the way Louisiana and back to find out I was just spittin distance from the cajun experience of a life time.

You'll be only an hour from Ol'Gar and Ronnies place at Toledo Bend. What days you gonna be there? Maybe we can create a reason to roast something.....like Ol' Gar!

(At the very least you could look at a few rat plane candidates so you'd know what a Vice-Grip battery-clamp looks like.)

According to Google it's a 3.5 hour drive to Ol Gar's. I thought I was a safe distance away.

Will be there tomorrow night for a week as it is scheduled now but I have no idea what my training schedule is going to look like or in fact if I'll even be there week.

Well after a bit of investigation it would seem Ol' Gar has been misguiding us a bit by listing Toledo Bend as his address. Google takes you to South Toledo Bend which isn't close to Ol' Gar's. While I couldn't find a plain old Toledo Bend there is a North Toledo Bend and his address listed in the directory is about half way between them. Guess he figures being in the middle makes it plain Toledo Bend and if no one can find him no one can help him clean out that St. Pauli Girl he's got stashed in the back of his 170.

Anyway when you finally pinpoint his real address Ol' Gar is about 2 hours from Shreveport. Unless of course all the fine folk of Louisiana use Gar's method then maybe I'm not going to find myself in Shreveport when I'm at Company HQ but somewhere in close by.

If you use Mapquest and ask for directions from Shreveport, LA to Ammons, LA it will give you directions to his very front yard. (Don't know how they knew about him, but evidently they do.) They claim 2 hrs, but it's about 45 mins in a light plane.

Yes if you knew to put Ammons in Google it works as well. Ol' Gar has Toledo Bend in his forum profile as his place of residence. Probably to throw off the revenuers.

Ha! (For those not familiar, the huge, long lake which separates Texas and LA is known colloquially as "Toledo Bend". It's a shortened version of "Toledo Bend Reservoir", which has become known also as "Lake Toledo Bend"..... all named after the bend in the original Sabine River which was dammed up to create the huge reservoir.) Nowadays, "Toledo Bend" is applied to the entire length of the reservoir.

The actual community in which Ol' Gar resides is an airport-development at "Ammons Field", which is nearest the town of Zwolle, La., which itself is situated in an area previosly known as "No Man's Land"... a very rough and tumble swampy area in which early outlaws hid from the authorities. It has never been much more civilized than it ever was, actually. It is the area through-which many desperados and cut-throats passed on their way to Spanish/Mexican Texas in their escape from civilized society, including a neer-do-well outlawed slave-trader and land-deed forger, recently of Arkansas, named James Bowie, and another dysfunctional personality who was about to be thrown out of congress named David Crockett, along with his fellow Tenneseean and fortune-seeker, Sam Houston, all of whom shared one common trait: they did not get along with others and hoped to gain an easy fortune by acquisition of cheap land and glory in Texas.

Ol' Gar has not progressed quite so far because of the sensibilities of a very nice lady, Deanna.
http://www.airnav.com/airport/5LS9 (Anyone reading this link will recognize the address of the airport association as actually being inside Ol' Gar's log-cabin.

Well Bruce if all else fails you can go contribute to the cities of Shreveport or Bossier City in one or more of their casino's. They would gladly take some of your $$ What kind of helicopters will you be flying with the new employer? We had some folks (Corkey Fortof and others with LoPriesti Systems /and the Fury --nice sports car/plane) at our Saturday EAA chapter meeting and one of the items they were promoting was the Boom Beam lights for aircraft. One thing they mentioned was that some of the Care Flite co's were equipping their helio's with the Boom Beam systems so they could light up the LZ's much better. Have you heard or used such a system in your work? Naturally it is pretty expensive to purchase & install the units. I think the LED's like George & Del put in the 170 would work well enough for most fixed wing planes like ours, but the Boom Beam would be nice for you guys going into all kinds of dark places. If you have any interest in aircraft (military) museums be sure to go to the Barksdale AFB museum on the east side of Bossier City. They have quite a collection of X Air Force planes on outdoor display.

I'll be getting differences training on a BK117 B2. I've flown the BK117A3, A4 and B1 before. Then I will also be getting training on our nearly new and new to us EC-145 which is the latest greatest version of the BK117 but a tad bigger with all state of the art glass inside and a 4 axis auto pilot for single pilot IFR. I have been told I'll be flying either the EC-145 or the BK117 B2 back to PA.

As for lights we currently have an SX-5 night sun on our S76 which is bright as hell and hot enough to start dry grass on fire from about 2 feet. We also have the SX-16 on our BKs which is twice as bright and hot as the SX-5. I prefer the SX-16 in dark areas but it is so big it is to much drag for our faster S76.

Our new helicopter won't have a night sun but people have been throwing around a fancy name for one of the controllable landing lights so that is probably something like the Boom Beam. The reason we won't have a night sun is that we will also be starting to use night vision googles (NVG) at night which no doubt is the better way to go and requires very little light.

I'll check out the museum if I get a chance.

I occasionally drive our local ambulance, and those lights amaze me every time. I don't think my 170b 35 amb alternator could handle one.

Just got an unrelated email from Ol'Gar which happened to have another pic of his runway, approaching from the south. He and Deana live at the approach end just inside those tall pines near the threshold.