Saturday, January 9, 2010

Hangar booked

Today I met with Jerry Alves who owns and leases many of the hangars at KCCR.  By fortuitous coincidence, he also owns a Baron.  This is most fortunate for me because Jerry is not only a great guy, he also knows a ton about Barons and I now have a local contact who seems more than willing to help out a newbie like myself.  He showed me his hangar where he keeps his plane.  The hangar is the same size / layout as the one available.. here it is with his Baron inside...




Yes, his plane looks a heck of a lot like mine!  The big thing for me about the hangar is that it's powered, and I also think KCCR is the airport for me.  Easier TSA restrictions, my flying club NRI is based there, I have some friends who fly out of there, etc.  The hangar faces out to runway 32 which is nice because I can toss a few chairs in there and watch planes land.  Jerry is a great guy and I'm super psyched I connected with him... he even took me for a quick ride in his plane.  What a blast... we were at 3000 ft before the end of the runway on the downwind leg.   The acceleration on the go was more than impressive.  His plane is also a Colemill conversion, although he has the 550 engines so an extra 50 HP.  Wow, these planes perform.  Here is a short video from the flight.




Jerry then took me to his hangar and showed me his other plane, a freakin 421!  How cool is that.



Cabin class and FIKI... nice!  I think (hope) I'll be happy with the Baron for awhile... this thing is a whole nother league!



Here is the hangar location on the east ramp.  It's the east side unit on the very last row.  Being on the east ramp is cool because it's also where the NRI planes live, which I'm used to and I already have a key for that gate.  The only risk I see is that some jackass might try to runup with his prop blast pointing right into my hangar.  If I have the plane opened up at that point it could be disastrous, so I'll have to watch out for that. I was so sold on the hangar and also on Jerry that I called the hangar owner on my way home and said "I'll take it".. turns out that she has some stuff to clear out of it first and was willing to start the lease Feb 1.  Perfect!

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