Hi guys,
I’m back on the grid again.
I had the Virus 100% checked out ready for fly for Tuesday evening. Instead of flying, I ended up working until 4am trying to cobble together a rather lucrative automation quotation I’d been assembling on for the last two weeks and that was due Friday. Stupid late suppliers and other issues had me to the ropes. I have no back up so I was pissed.
Wednesday night was the last chance.. and as it turned out my #1 copilot, ground crew, mechanic and buddy and probably one of maybe 4 guys in Canada who might know how to start the thing - had to take his dad to the hospital. I was a worn out sack of **** from the last few days as well.. so I just threw in the towel. At that point I knew spring was the next time I’d have this thing out.
So… my neck surgery was on the 17[SUP]th[/SUP] (C3-4-5-6 fusion – now I have 4 vertebrae vs 7, but one of them is extra long now. Owls have 14 IIRC.), and I’m getting mobile enough to crack out an email or a piece of toast, or take a short stroll with my wife on my six, etc. Really sore still, and need to take it pretty easy. Off work 6-8 weeks for sure.
I’m not prepared to let anyone else maiden this thing – that’s part of the whole experience. I know maybe two people I’d trust with that. But if things go well over the next three weeks and I feel up to it, I may have a solution. I will still be in a neck collar and pretty limited in range of motion, and not able to lean back my head to higher elevation angles or turn more than maybe 10 degrees. This as you can imagine is something you’d expect to need to do while piloting a pulsejet, like watching a giant ping-pong game.
But I can situate a swivel chair right by the runway intersection, which is where we’ll launch from , maybe I can compensate. So we’ll try this out in a dry run, but with a bar across the back of an office chair so a helper can turn me if needed, and on a firm flat sheet of plywood.. might be able to do it! I sure do not want to wait until spring. Winter kicks in at different times but a couple of years ago we only shut down the glider field on Nov 16.
Sorry to keep y’all hanging, I nearly made it. But there was a lot of crap in the background doing it’s best to thwart my plans. I found myself looking forward to surgery as a break from my job. Gonna try to fly this thing this season yet.