Commuting in a Sonex

[fastj22]

So I recently took a job near an airport 12 minutes flight time from my home. The office is 2.5 miles from the ramp. I take Uber right now from the airport to the office and so far its working great.
So today, I'm at the office and get an email from Josh P. that he's on a short layover at KAPA and wondering if my plane was around to come look at. Well, I had meetings but told him it was tied down at the end of the line of my old flying club. He selfied this pix.
We are a small world us Sonex guys. So, sorry I missed you Josh, but glad you got to meet my Waiex!

[samiam]

So I recently took a job near an airport 12 minutes flight time from my home. The office is 2.5 miles from the ramp. I take Uber right now from the airport to the office and so far its working great.
So today, I'm at the office and get an email from Josh P. that he's on a short layover at KAPA and wondering if my plane was around to come look at. Well, I had meetings but told him it was tied down at the end of the line of my old flying club. He selfied this pix.
We are a small world us Sonex guys. So, sorry I missed you Josh, but glad you got to meet my Waiex!

What a great excuse to get up and fly every day that the weather is nice!

[N265DF]

Hi John. You and I have a connection in that you hauled a canopy back from Osh for me several years back, so I'm using that as an excuse to comment on the practical use of your plane, and a homebuilt at that. I'm guessing you're cutting close to an hour off the drive from CO15 to KAPA.
To expose a bit of vanity, I experienced the practical use of a Cessna 120 more than several decades ago. My father purchased the 120 in 1947 to use in his appliance (one of which was Maytags) business. Much of his service area was in the Nebraska sandhills where accessibility by road was difficult. The 120 cut a 3 hour drive to 20 minutes. My flight instructor was also a repairman in the business. One time we flew to a ranch to repair a Maytag, in spite of the TV portrayal that those machines never need repairing. But this was when the automatics first came out in the '50 and there were some teething problems. Turns out that my instructor could not repair the machine on site. He thought about it a bit and said, "suppose we could put the tub of the washing machine in the baggage compartment of the 120 and take it back to town?" We indeed did that. The only way it fit in the baggage compartment was to unhook the seat back and lean it forward, which meant we had to lean forward also, which presented a slight problem with control wheel clearance and perhaps slightly exceeding the 40# baggage limit. In spite of antics like this my instructor lived quite a few more years, I think into his 70's and didn't die in a plane crash. Well, and here I am also.
I'll also take this opportunity to let you and Jeff know that I plan to come to the Rocky Mtn Flyin. I'm just about done with installing the carburetor and carb heat/mixture/choke cables etc. on the ancient #265. I'll probably need to pester u and others with questions on wiring, which is pretty much what is left (let's see that about 90% right?)
Darrell Frey

[jp352]

That's me!

I want to thank both John Gillis and Gary Motley for allowing me to check out their wonderful machines! Gary was so generous with his time a couple of days ago when I visited Rocky Mountain Metro, spending about 90 minutes letting me ask questions and sit in Hound Dog. John's Waiex is just beautiful and looked very content waiting for him to return to give her some more work for the flight home. I have yet to have my first ride in one, but I am already thinking about buying :-)

-JP

[EdW]

Back in the sixties I was working for a now defunct company called Central Airlines (they were bought out by the old Frontier). I was based at Garden City, KS KGCK, and did a lot of fill-in work at other stations. Since I was spending several days a week away from home I suggested I fly to these other stations. Management said they didn't care, since I was expensing miles. I had a 150 on call, so I got to log many hours flying to Dodge City, Liberal, Russell, Hutchinson and Great Bend, all in Kansas. All except Dodge City were ex-military bases.

Great memories!

Ed

[ScottM-Sonex1629]

I just read this list again...thanks for the recent reply. I thought the guy in the photo with John’s Waiex looked familiar! Josh is a NetJet pilot and was in Columbus during the 4th of July holiday and I took him up for a hop in my Sonex...Josh took a selfie before our flight.