Bit the bullet

As much as I wanted to come get it myself, I bit the bullet and hired a pro. With my work schedule I'm on the road right now and working... there is a 2 day weather window that looks great, but I figured by the time I got finished working, got out there and got ready to go, the next set of ice storms would be settled in and I'd be assed out for another 3 weeks. I decided to bite the bullet, pull out the big guns and coordinate an extract operation to get the plane the hell out of there and closer to me, ideally south away from those eastern seaboard icy clouds. Since it takes a fairly long time to get to to Lebanon PA, I needed a guy who lived in the area, familiar with the crap weather patterns out there, and who could get it out as soon as a weather window hit. 

So I found a local highly experienced pilot named Darryl to do the maintenance flight and to ferry it out of there to a more major hub where my instructor Todd and I can fetch it and take it south.  What a coordination exercise this has turned out to be.  Darryl got to Deck yesterday to do the Mx flight, but it turned out that the Advantage guys had taken out the armrests!  Why?  Here is the note from Advantage:

Thank you so much again for the gift card. We went to Outback a few times with it, and it was amazing. I love that place and really appreciate the gift. Also, I don't think I had mentioned, but we often have issues with painting rubber/flexible armrests (because the paint cracks when it flexes). We used a new vinyl paint on your armrests that was supposed to resist the cracking, but when we went to install the middle seats at Deck airport, there was already evidence (from the flight over) that the paint on the armrests wasn't going to last. We then pulled them, brought them to our shop, and covered them with ultraleather (to ensure that you won't have any issues with them).

Great, I'm glad they fixed the armrests but now Darryle has to fly back to N71, get those installed before taking it anywhere.   On top of that when he got to the field the battery was dead... apparently someone had left the master on.  He didn't have time to wait for a charge so he'll have to do the maintenance, the flight to N71 and the ferry flight tomorrow... phew. If I ever buy another airplane, I will buy one from my local field!!