April 2011 Sun n Fun Lakeland
23rd of march we flew to Sun n Fun, Lakeland to the Airshow.On the way to the USA we made a stop in the Bahamas and visited our wedding withness Sue Darcy and had 3 nice days there.
We expected to be in the States for the next week and 2 days more. Two days after arriving to the airshow, a heavy tornado came through. The sky got dark, it started to rain, and suddenly very heavy winds blew across the whole aera. At that moment we were inside a exposition hangar, and it sounded as if the whole hangar wanted to fly apart. We had just one thing in mind: what happended to our airplane? We feared the worst.
After the wind calmed down, we walked through the rain with a bad feeling in our hearts. With water up to our heels and getting cold and colder, we saw planes turned up side down, engines lying around that were flown away, airplanes with broken wings.
And then... there he was our little plane. It was still there, but the rudder was damaged. It meant one thing: we could not fly away from here, unless...
...unless we had some luck. This we had. We encountered Dan Landry, which we met in Yellowstone, and he offered to put an add to ask for a rudder. After some hours we had already a choice of 5 rudders we could fly with. Finally we took Steve Voras´s rudder since he lives very close to Lakeland. Help was given from the Aishow field repair, and at the end of the show we flew to Punta Gorda.
Together with the help of our friends Vic, Larry and Ned we could repair our airplane in Frank Russel`s hangar.
It was obvious that our plane needed a little bit more make up after two years of flying, and we decided to do all this job in Punta Gorda. After all, in the Dominican Republic, we have a hangar but without electricity and without tools.
Lots of work was done, ten weeks of working from 7 a.m. till 7 p.m. Finally our airplane looks again like new.
26th of June 2011. We are back home, in Sosua, the Dominican Republic after 3 months.
Here is still more work to do. To finish the film will take about 3 month more and that means, that we are to late for Europe this year.
We will meet our Europian friends in the spring of 2012.
DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
November 2010
Here we are in the Dominican Republic. Now it is already two months since we are here. Unfortunately we had very bad weather, first the hurricane season, then the rainy season. Sosua lies in the northern part of the island. A small village with some beaches. Not the best ones of the island, for this you have to go to the south part.
In the last year we made lots of pictures and videos, and now we want to make a DVD out of it. It is a lot of work. But now and then, when the sunshine comes out we go to the beach to relax from so much looking at the computer.
Two weeks ago Steve, another pilot, who invited us to bring his motor yacht from the northern part of the island to the southern part. After fighting for five days against the big waves, we said to ourselves: it is much better flying!
We felt like the home page needed a new look for 2011. We hope you like it.
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