Fast Lane

It's 2:10 am Sunday. I'm online doing email and all the activity that it spawns. Spent the afternoon and evening with a good old friend Ken Baker. Ken is definitely one of the good guys. There is nothing he couldn't do or would be afraid to attempt or learn to do... and do it RIGHT! He grew up in the 50's building things standing on a milk crate to run a lathe. He turned flywheels for the big kids who were building go carts. Went on to cars and worked for some time in a machine shop. Drove 18 wheelers on the side while teaching in vocational school. Spent 20 years or more as an airplane mechanic (where I met him), owned and operated Baker Aircraft Technology out of Kent State Airport, 1G3. I remember him saying he'd never computerize his business then one day he called me wanting to know all about computers and what he might need. Then he learned how to program them to an extent. Always interested in radio controlled planes in 1992 built a 2 cylinder 61cc engine for quarter scale planes. He's still building them manufacturing 90% of the parts himself. Casting cylingers, crankshaft, connecting rods, the original work on the case which puts it all together and the electronic ignition. Everything he does is either a work of art or bleeding edge technology or both. This afternoon we replaced the digital display counter that displays rpm of the motor that runs the cdi ignition test stand which is used for both development work and product testing. Each ignition is burned in for hours on the test stand. He wanted my help with this cause I helped him 20 years ago do the first one. I can barely remember doing that. Just before dinner I was trying to figure out how to program the module... after dinner Ken figured it out. Working with Ken is such a challenge and fun. If you know more about what what ur helping him do, he knows more about it when we're done. I definetly miss not seeing him and his family in the shop at the airport on almost a daily basis. There was never a dull moment at the shop. With every plane that came in might be something new the figure out how to fix. I got involved with electrical things. One time Ken called me about a problem he was having with the electric prop boots on a twim. The cables that connected the boots to the slip rings were constantly going open and the boots would fail... they wouldn't last a year. The flimsy replacement cables cost $250.00 Ken told me what he thought the problem was and how we might fix it. He went home and I stayed into the evening re-wiring the boots on ONE of the engines. When the new wiring outlasted the wiring on the OTHER engine we did that one too! We never had to mess with it again. Cessna would send customers to Kens shop when the others were stumped. I remember an old straight tailed 182 came up from somewhere down south with a flap problem. Nobody could fix it... In less than 20 mins they discovered someone installed the wrong flap cables... Something simple but overlooked by so many...

I need to visit Ken more often. He has 10 years on me and he just lost his good friend Miles Reed who had about 13 years on him. Life is definitely too short so live it fast, hard and never look back. And TREAT PEOPLE THE WAY YOU WOULD WANT TO BE TREATED!

As things have been going lately I definitely feel overwhelmed. JUST TOO MUCH TO DO!!! I need to retire... Five more years to work... a miracle if that happens. I blame the internet. With email, Yahoo groups, SKYPE and the tons of information that you can look at... I SPEND TOO MUCH TIME THERE! I got tons more stuff done before the internet.

Hoping tomorrow to get start working on trackers again. It's been great doing all the other things but last I heard there were 5 on order and I bet that number had doubled. So I hope to get 10 out by weeks end. Gould just ordered 100 more cases so we will probably use at least 80 for built trackers.

More as it happens got to get some sleep... the internet just took 49 minutes away from sleep time.

Have a great Sunday!

Mike