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John Spurling's Fly In

October 2004

WoooHoooo! What a great time!

Special Thanx! once again to John, his family

and their neighbors on the airport who supplied us with electric and water once again for all of our RV's.

Most of these pics were provided to us once again from Joe Hudson,

Thanx Joe!

Thursday

October 7th 2004

Wayne cooking up a storm

Friday

October 8th 2004

We got there around 10:30am or so Friday morning and were immediately whisked off to lunch at Judy Ann's restaurant lol. We rode up there in a truck and I flew back with Gator and Joe's wife in Gator's Hiller and Donna got to fly back with John Spurling in his R-22. Now flying back with this bunch isn't just flying back to the airport in an inline flight path. We flew with the whole gang of helicopters all over the area for about an hour and witnessed some beautiful sites along the way. Once we got back to the airport and got the bus setup for the weekend it was back to having more fun with everyone.

Lunch at Judy Ann's

The gangs all here and ready to eat,,,magin that lol.

Mike and Yours truly
outside Judy Ann's Restaurant

Pictures I took from Gator's ship on the flight back to Westport airport

Pictures Joe took from Randy's ship on the way back to Westport

Back on the ground after the flight

Can ya hear me Now!

This is Stan Maige and his lovely Wife Yassi

Stan flew their ship all the way from Parker, Texas, which is around 272 miles by road (I'd guess about 250 by air).

Stan has made this a trip several times in his 162 F Pro helicopter and if I'm not mistaken once Stan gets back home from this trip it will make 3 times he made this flight back and forth from his home bass to John's.

Stu and Kathy's Safari helicopter

John and Michelle Spurling's Son Travis and his sweetie pie Crystal

The K-9 Crew

you sure can tell these critters get lotsa luvin lol

Party Time in Oklahoma

Friday Night

October 8th 2004

Once again Our Hosts John n Michelle

This is a shot of the band called "Waiting on Paul"

who played well into the night.

Turns out we were their very first audience that they have ever performed in front of and they did a great job and had the whole gang dancing in no time at all.

Dancin' in the moon lite

Now we can't have a band that doesn't sing Brown Eyed Girl now can we lol.

Fellow Rotorhead Nut, Randy got up and sang a few songs for us.

Results of the Poker Run

A couple fellows both named Larry won the two prizes, pretty big coincidence huh lol.

Larry #1 won the poker run event with the best hand and Larry #2 won the black jack hand for the I Com hand held radio that was also given away.

A few of us pondered how Chris and Greg painted this X in the air.

Saturday's Lunch at Judy Ann's

We brought along our secondary unit so John and everyone else could witness it.

John cut a couple of notches into the upper pillow block and pryed it apart snaping the block into two parts. Once it came apart we just lifted the upper part of the shaft out of the 2nd bearing with ease.

This is the Secondary clutch unit out of Donna and I's ship.

I've been itching to take this thing apart every sense it happened in July.
You know I've seen quite a few of these broken shafts but let me tell you it sure hits home when the one your looking at belongs to you.

Now heres an interesting site to behold.

If you look very close in these pictures you can see what looks like several symmetrical rows of U shaped scratches. They seem to be in rows of 3 around the entire circumference of the shaft where the upper bearing covered the shaft. I'm not sure but I think these marks were made upon the initial factory assembly and may have attributed to our shafts early demise. We'll let you know what RotorWay says when we get a chance to ask them about it. Matt Doc was at John's Saturday but he got away before I had a chance to ask him what he thought so I haven't got anything to report from him either.

Saturday Night we said our "well cya's soons" to everyone so we could hit the road as early as possible Sunday morning. Saying cya's later to this bunch of folks isn't any easier this time than it was the the first time we had to do it, they sure are a good bunch of people and sure have made a difference in both Donna and I's lives.

Miscellaneous pictures of the Trip Home

Sunday October 10th