TRF4EVR,
George had 2 very large qounset huts near Spartan A&P school, full of spares he bought up from San Angelo when the factory shut down, and had enough new major components to complete 10 airframes.
It was a vast complex that was spilt between Air 1St and I-jet on his death.
I don't remember that, I recall we hit a flock of mallards on descent into DFW took out Comm 1 Antenna, the L/h Gear Pod fairing, R/H tip light, both landing lights and a bird through the L/H engine. He came out and said Harley Davidson finance Corp. & the insurance co were gonna love his bill for the repairs. He might have depending on how full his red dixie cup was.
All spares owned by Sidney #1 Corp. (his cat) and sold to IBA. So the usual route was out the hangar loading bay a short trip across the road to the warehouse and since the warehouse was technically not a part of the shop. The mechanic just issued a 8130 for the new part he pulled out of storage and walked it across the road into service. He bought, sold and brokered by the parts manager's count 340 Mu-2 over the years.
I can remember sitting in his office, listening to him haggling with a seller about an airplane, finally he said " look you SOB i have owned that airplane about 8 times now and i'm not going to offer you more than X for it, you can keep it cause it needs a major inspection and i got all the parts here, all the other service centers are going to have to call me for the parts so its either sell it to me or take it to Dodson's or White's and part it out either way, I'll still own pieces of it in the end"
He reopened IBA in 1992 as living the retired life in Destin, Fl was getting to him and real estate wasn't his thing ( they developed condos on 200 acres of beachfront, his wife had a lovely little place on the beach with a 2000 sq ft master bedroom suite with elevator, he always down played it and the few of us that saw the place,he swore us to never mention it at work, and that was the least he could do after the fortune he had lost in the bankruptcy) He ended up going from 2 airplanes to 38 by his death in 2002.
Chuck was just as bad with sunflower seeds, man could he make a mess of a cockpit in just one night. i remember the cussing we got bringing a ship into MTC and the seat tracks where jammed full of seeds courtesy of Chuck ( he ate them in lue of his 2 1/2 pack a day cigarette habit).
Stinky flew us through an area of level 4 & 5's and stripped the paint off the nose & leading edges.
Last edited by Ag2A320; 1st Mar 2010 at 05:18.