Warbird Information Exchange

That is fantastic, Congratulations on your retirement!

Thanks! Robin and friends -- and the crew -- made it such a memorable flight that I wanted to document it properly.



Anyway, we found North America -- big target -- and arced-in from the North and into YYZ on a fine summer evening. A friend of Robin's was in the tower and got these shots. They are of John's landing, which was very smooth (and I was totally happy taking credit for it later!)

As we switched to Tower at the FAF, they delivered a very nice "Happy Retirement" speech. I was surprised and touched. But when I got through Customs and walked through the sliding doors into the terminal, I was gobsmacked! These guys were making a heck of a noise!



A Piper! A Drummer! I had no idea!



Robin and friends had achieved perfect surprise! I looked behind me to see who was the famous guy!

As it turned out, I knew both musicians. The piper has a strip just south of Alliston, and flies a Skybolt and a Navion there. The drummer was a fellow I hired to lay down percussion on the aviation album I've got nearly finished. It was terrific that they drove down to YYZ and did this.

Anyway, as I thanked the welcomers, Luis S (whom I checked out on taildraggers years ago) attached a string of balloons to my flight bag, and as I walked through the Arrivals level to our Briefing Room to hand back the company documents, I felt like John Cleese trying to look dignified in a Monty Python sketch.



After that we adjourned for a Debriefing at a bar on the Airport strip, which carried on until last-call (there are no photos, fortunately), whereupon they kicked us out. And Robin drove the car home. In fact, Robin HAD to drive the car home...

Anyway, many thanks to Robin and friends. I would have slipped away from my airline career quietly, and that would have been a mistake. What they did was far better. It made a life-memory I will treasure forever.

Wonderful, just wonderful! Bravo to Robin and everyone involved for making this a day to remember.

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Zac in NZ
#avgeek, modelbuilder, photographer, writer. Callsign: "HANDBAG".
https://linktr.ee/zacyates

"It's his plane, he spent the money to restore it, he can do with it what he wants. I will never understand what's hard to comprehend about this." - kalamazookid, 20/08/2013
"The more time you spend around warbirds the sooner you learn nothing, is simple." - JohnB, 24/02/22

HI, I started reading your thread last night and could not pull my self away, it was like a good aviation book, you have a subtle but humoruos style, most enjoyale.
I do hope you have an book in the works on your life adventures including the flying Hadfields.

I did start on page one on this thread but the photo links are broken - so I skipped to the end and am now reading your posts backwards.

Congratulations on your retirement from AC!
Looking forward to more of your stories on this thread.
cheers - ken k.

Well thanks. Nice of you to say. Yes, I should write an aviation memoir, because my career has spanned the change at AC from "Viscount High", and Crown Corporation, to the free-for-all we have now. And I've been part of the whole VWoC experience. And the brother-in-space. Lots of material to write about. But it isn't over yet. I tallied it up the other day and I've flown over 70 times since I retired 6 weeks ago.

No way I'm an addict. I could quit any time I wanted to

As for the pictures, yes, it's bloody Photobucket. They recently held all their clients up to ransom. "No third-party picture hosting unless you pay us $300." All my early photos were hosted there. Later I hosted them on my own website, so those links are intact. But I am NOT going to pay the ransom, so now I have to go onto the photobucket site, move all the pictures over to mine, and make new links. Which sounds like a winter project to me...

Dave

My father is a Collector of old vehicles. Every other year or so he puts on a Show of them all, inviting member of the various car-clubs he belongs to. They congregate at his farm and have a day in the pasture, walking about admiring the vehicles and trying to not get fresh horse-buns on their shoes.



I brought the Fairchild. Dad pulled out his 170. (The Stampe is away being restored.)

Chris pulled Tour Duty in the 1942 Willys.



We even sang, all my siblings up on the Model T Truck and performing old favourites. Here is my mother introducing us.



That truck, BTW, is an exact reproduction of the vehicle in which my great-grandfather re-immigrated into this country from Michigan in 1928. He later became the Regimental Sergeant-Major of the Highland Light Infantry of Canada, in Galt, which was a brilliant choice because it meant he had a job and paycheck all through the Depression.

My dad likes Internationals. (As long as they're pre-1953.)

Back to airplanes...

Cleo never exactly liked flying. But she liked being left behind even less. Sadly, this was the last time I got to take her up in the Fairchild -- and surprise people at airport ramps. (She was 15, and her back end failed, and I'll spread her ashes over our property from the Fairchild sometime soon.)



You meet the strangest people at the fuel pumps...



And sometimes you get asked to lend an Armstrong Starter. (This J-3 is parked across from me at Alliston.)

I do a lot of Model T wrangling, so really like seeing them in the pics! Very cool shot of the Hadfield String Band, too; may I ask the guitar picker's name at far right? Don't think I've "met" him yet. Love the TT, I drive one of them too.

_________________
Cheers,
Kurt Maurer
League City, Texas

PIC, Ford 6600 pulling Rhino batwing up and down the runway

Kurt, That's my brother Phil. He's a 787 Captain for AC.

And in the photo my sister Pat is on the left, and AJ on the right.

As for brothers, here we are, Chris, Phil and I. It's fun once in a while to pretend we're 18 on-the-farm again, and get our clothes dirty.



Yes, Dad has a few Ts. He has a 1917 Tourer that is nearly totally original, almost never driven -- a "barn find" in the 1960s.

And in the tractor-line photo, that first one is an Auto-Track, which as you know is mostly a T turned into a tractor on-the-cheap.

Dad, Chris and I had a hangar built at the farm strip near where we have our cottage. What a huge luxury it's been this season! A wonderful thing. It's big enough for the C-170, the Fairchild, and an RV6, and maybe even the Stampe if we squeeze in tight.



No door, no concrete, no electricity -- it's just a shed -- but it's SO great to get out of the sun and wind when you're working on an airplane in July. And that part of the world (Sarnia) sees some horrendous thunderstorms every summer; they funnel between Lakes Huron and Erie, and grow into monstrous lines.



That's a Farmall C we're using as a tow-vehicle.

Had a great day of aviating a month ago -- there's this great roadside diner just off the Goderich airport. It's on the highway, but you can taxi to the east end of the airfield, park in the grass, and walk over -- the place is called "Flippin' Eggs". I arranged to meet my Dad there in the 170. He had my sister AJ on board.



It has a great reputation -- good omelettes. The parking lot is always full.



Goderich is a historic airport -- it was a Navy training base of the BCATP during WWII. Andy Carswell, whose son John sponsored our Lysander for 2 seasons, trained there.

Then, full of nutritious, healthy, natural-fibre, low-fat food (bacon-butter-wheat-sugar-and-cheese -- delicious), we climbed back in. The plan was for a formation flight back to the new hangar at the cottage.



Formation rejoin...



And AJ got some great down-sun shots, over the beaches of Lake Huron's east shore.