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Homer's Fly-In

July 2005

Chock up another great air show at the Bell Ranch

As usual Homer, Sharon, Stephanie, Rodney and
not to mention some others pulled off another one.

This is going to be a work in progress for awhile
but as usual I thought I'd put up what pictures I did get and fill in the blanks later on over the next couple of weeks.

Due to some personal injuries Donna and I had if the show would have been 2 days earlier we wouldn't have been able to make it this year. About 4 weeks prior to the show we were both involved in an accident on our motorcycle so we couldn't bring our helicopter this year. We had hoped that by show time we would be up to being able to handle the trip with the ship but unfortunately it wasn't meant to be. Despite not having our ship here so we could play in the games with the other reindeers we had a blast. Actually it give us the opportunity the sit and chat with folks alot more then we usually do so in hind sight and to tell the truth that's what it's all about anyways so in the end it was well worth it.

To most of you folks out there these pictures above won't make much sense
but to the many folks whom over the years relied on Charmienne, Marlene, and Mike for our daily vittles they are actually pretty funny lol.

We got word that John and Charmienne along with Mike and Marlene weren't going to be able to make the show this year and our first thoughts were Oh My Gawd!, who is going to feed Scott, Brett and John Spurling lol. A vision came to mind that it was going to be a sad sight watching these guys eating tv dinners all week and after we got finished giggling our ass's off we felt kinda bad for them lol.

"Let me tell you that vision was far from the truth"
as a matter of fact they ended up cooking up a storm not only for themselves but for a bunch of other folks too. This was the first fly in, camping trip, stay in the woods, what ever you wanna call it we had ever spent eating Prime Rib along with all the fixings in a field lol.

5 Star restaurants ain't got nuttin on this bunch lol

Homer Bell

giving the pilots briefing Saturday morning

Mad Jack Kane

giving us a seminar on his new secondary unit and turbine stuff. It was very long and very technical, way over most of our heads, so in reality we all came away not knowing anything more than we knew before it started. Jack did however disclose the names of a few fellows that are being the secret test pilots for his new units, Chris Yule, Mike Mazar, and unfortunately I can't remember any of the names after that.

If I remember correctly the highest time on any of them was 55 hours.

The only real news to come from it was that the recent recall of jack's secondary units are due to
a mistake in using improper parts to assemble the sprag clutch units within them.

As far as the shafts themselves go, that although they haven't as yet gotten much time put on them for one reason or another that the shafts themselves are doing just fine Jack claims.

Another thing I noticed was that Jack evidently goes along with the idea that the 35mm break (NTSB Identification: LAX03LA084) that happened at the Rororway factory last time was infact caused by 2 tail rotor strikes because he used that information in his demo but failed to elaborate about the NTSB findings of fretting corrision causing that break.

If you have in fact been keeping up with Jack's site from its infancy here's a statement that will knock yer socks off lol.
Jack said that" if he owned and flew a RotorWay it would in fact have a Pro-Drive Cog belt system in it".
I'm assuming that means the two sprockets and belt "less the Pro Drive 40mm shaft secondary" but hey who knows lol.

When it came time for questions I asked Jack why he had that "Misleading Quote" on his web site

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Cut n pasted right off of Jacks site on 7/16/2005 on our laptop via cell at Homers.

MORE OKLAHOMA WONDERS: Magic Aluminum, Magic Bearings, Magic Fillets, etc.
These are claims which ProDrive told to me personally, and I'm sure to many others:

1. "The ProDrive tooth belt system won't break the secondary if it is installed properly" BUT the secondary which failed at Homer's (and wrecked yet one more nice RW helicopter) had a ProDrive system which was installed by ProDrive.

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His reply was that he was told that through 2nd or 3rd hand information and believed it to be true, guess that kinda blows the hell out of that line up there, told me personally huh!

Next Jack asked me how I knew whether or not it was true and I had to tell the man that it's because it was our helicopter that went down and I'm pretty familiar with who installed what in it and when.

We asked him how many other things on his site was misinformation to which we didn't get a reply.

My next question to him was where he got the idea Pro-Drive was claiming that he stole their shaft design.

Being in the angry frame of mind I was in, I pretty much babbled that question out but Jack understood and replied that it's something Matt Dock said to him during last years 2004 seminar. I guess I missed that part last year when I was out meeting with the FAA fellow in our trailer while Jacks seminar was going on. Reading it on his web site in a post dated 7/?/05 was the first we had heard about it.

During Jack's 2004 seminar sitting right outside the door about 50 yards out was a ship that had a Pro-Drive shaft installed in it that had already amassed 85 hours so there is no doubt who had what first in the RotorWay Community. Jack's design with the exception of the fillets doesn't resemble the Pro-drive unit as far as I can tell so I've no idea where that came about.

Big Bad John Spurling

holding his seminar about his secondary unit along with his other Pro-Drive components he offers for sale. John asked jack Kane to come up front into the lime light with him and John posed a couple of questions of Jack.

Jacks first statement to John was that he never implied any hostilities toward John or his Pro Drive cog belt and secondary system. John's reply to him was a short and simple question "Jack have you ever read your web site?" LOL.

John then went on to pose other questions of Jack and it seemed the two of them were in total agreement on everything with the exception of John's last question to Jack which was:

If it's true that it's too much load from the cog belt drive system that is breaking the secondary shafts why is it that: the broken chain driven shafts are leaving behind a much larger plastic zone than the cog belt driven broken shafts?

Jacks reaction to that very simple question was a bit of mumbling and to hastily walk off the stage.

As far as I'm concerned that's the million dollar question and I as well as many others should would have liked to hear his answer to it.

John had several more questions for Jack but when Jack walked off the stage it kinda brought Spurling seminar to an end as far as the secondary shafts were concerned.

From there John went onto the other products he offers on market such as the Balancer, electric clutch, tail rotor, and a few other misc. items.

After that came the talk of a source of turbine engines for future conversions John is working on. If it works out right John will be offering brand new units right off the production line from what i got out of it. That stuff being pretty much way over our budget I didn't get to deep into it so this is just the highlights of it all, if you would like more information about it contact John Spurling at Pro-Drive.

Mark Peterson
Rumor has it that the FAA lowered their standards for CFI qualification and Mark is now a full blown CFI
Go Figure! lol