|
|
Every time the phone rings I think-and hope-it's the shop calling to tell me the annual inspection is done and I can come retrieve my airplane.
The shop was very good about telling me whenever it ran into problems like a cracked ELT case or stabilator tips that had been stop-drilled one too many times. Two weeks ago I got a call advising me the annual was almost done, that there had been no surprises and that the airplane should be finished early the following week. I began to call in favors for a ferry flight to get to the airport where the annual was being conducted.
But then I heard nothing. That next week came and went; the call never came. I'm a patient man-often frustrated-but almost always patient. Anytime I have work done on my airplane I always assure the technicians that how fast they get the job done isn't as important as how well they do it. Maybe that's a mistake. That attitude might invoke Parkinson's law: "Work expands to fill the time available for its completion."
The Monday following the week during which I had expected the airplane would be ready, I still hadn't heard anything; I called again. Nope. Not ready yet. It had needed a new fuel flow/manifold pressure gauge and when the new one was installed, it didn't work properly and had to go back to the manufacturer. The shop was waiting for the second replacement.
"When do you think the airplane will be ready?" I asked.
"If the part comes in early enough tomorrow morning, we should be able to have it ready by the end of the day."
OK! That would work. I arranged for Robert Goyer to come up the next morning. We'd do the ground portion of his biennial flight review (BFR) over coffee, fly the inflight portion and then have lunch. After we ate, if the airplane was ready, Robert would drop me at the shop on his way back home. It was a plan.
The next morning things looked promising. It was the first real spring day we'd had and perfect for flying, ideal for conducting a BFR and a great day to collect my airplane. We followed the plan. We started by reviewing the regs and Pilot's Operating Handbook (POH) over coffee at Meadowgreens, the restaurant at the north end of the Columbia County Airport, promising to come back for lunch and to help Sarah, the waitress, celebrate her 21st birthday. For the inflight review we worked with the controllers at Albany who willingly slipped us into their traffic flow for some practice approaches. With the BFR successfully completed, it was back to Meadowgreens for lunch. After we'd eaten, I called to see if the airplane was ready. It wasn't. The gauge hadn't arrived. The earliest it could be ready would be Thursday.
