Oh, the frustration!!
 

That's it. I have finally HAD IT with winter. For two years I have very carefully researched each and every 337 for sale out there, and then finally made my choice on the one that would win my love and devotion six months ago.

I flew out to her home base in Campbell River, BC to check her out, and after I was convinced that she was the best specimen my money could buy, I wrote the cheque - so, on January 2 2007 C-GKEY became officially mine.

Here's the bummer: it is now more than 2 months later, and I still could not manage to get GKEY home!! All I have, are pictures taken during visits and shop jobs, and a very fond memory of my first test drive that I use to soothe myself to sleep at night.

The Canadian winter (as elsewhere) has been particularly harsh this year. I live in Alberta, and GKEY sits on Vancouver Island, BC. And of course, with the mountains between me and my newfound love. For some reason, the weather just does not want to give me enough of a gap to organize myself and a co-pilot to make it out there AND back. Always some weather cr*p-out somewhere along the route (can I say that?).

Seems to me the first 1/5 of my insurance fees this year was for hull NOT in motion...

Tell me about it. I live on a turf runway, an airpark, and for the last 2 months, the runway has been coated with a thick pile of SNOW, which I firmly believe is a 4 letter word. Right up there with others that we know about. I have diligently cleared the snow from in front of my hangar, but there is so much on the runway that the two folks with pick ups that have plows on the front, can't begin to tackle it.

I can't remember how to start my engine, what to do after it gets started. Adding to my frustration, my annual is due next month, and I'm not certain I'll get it out before April. Though in all honestly, the long range forecast does hold some hope of the snow actually melting before June.

Oh, and to make us both feel better, I was talking with Paul Rooy yesterday, and he's headed for the Turks, south of the Bahamas, for some diving. Sunshine, blue skies, swimming with whales.

Larry and GKey,

My heart goes out to you poor frost-bitten guys. To keep your spirits up, here's a shot of us leaving Ponce Inlet (just south of Daytona Beach - note the lighthouse in the right-of-center mid photo) on the way to Sand Cay, in Turks and Caicos to whale watch last week:

Wow, that worked pretty good - but the pic was pretty large - let's try again with this shot of ERNIE'S ISLAND, which we just happened to overfly on the way to T & C:

Good grief, that one was still pretty big! Let's try even smaller resolution for this aerial shot of a North Atlantic Hump Back Whale from the air in about 20 ft of water off Salt Cay, Turks & Caicos.

Paul & Mary

Boy, still a little big - here goes with 2/10 JPEG:

OK, one more try:

Hey, that's better, eh guys? Just select a 4 inch wide image size in good old Photoshop ... that water looks about good enough to jump into, doesn't it? Well, we did!

Paul & Mary

Hmmm
 

Paul and Mary:

You know I'm crazy about you both . . .

But . . . from someone who hasn't driven a 337 for a couple of months because of wx and mechanicals . . . you suck! I'm jealous, and Allie Cat and I hope to see the likes of similar great beasts from about 11,000' in a couple of months as we cross the small pond!

Keven
________
Body science

Keven,
Makes you sick, doesn't it??

See you all soon.

Hi Paul,

I have found a great solution for posting pics or adding them to an email. It is called an image resizer and is a microsoft powertoy.

Here is a link to their site.

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/d...powertoys.mspx

You need to go down the right handside of the page and download the image resizer. Once you download and run the file all you have to do is preview your photo then right click on it and the option to resize it there with the other options like copy, cut, ect.

Attached is a resized pic.

Good luck.

Ed Coffman
________
FORD FREESTAR HISTORY

Whoops, let's rezize to small instead of large.

E
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Actually, it's even easier. Microsoft Paint, which is bundled with Windows, will do the trick. So you don't have to download anything. You will find the program by clicking on Start, Programs and Accessories. After you open your picture file using Paint, click on Image, Stretch/Skew to size it. When you're done, it's a good idea to "Save As", so that you can save it under a different name, thereby retaining the original (larger) image as well as the new (smaller) image. Tip: if the original was named "airplane", I like to name the new file "airplaneS", so even without opening it I know it's just a smaller version of "airplane".

Please, it's important that you size all the pictures you submit to us. Make it roughly 3/4 the width of your screen. In addition to saving valuable space on our server, it makes viewing the pictures a lot easier. Take one of the bigger pictures above and see how hard it is to get the whole concept. You've got to scroll left, right, up and down to see it all, and even then it's hard to absorb the whole image.

Thanks,
Ernie
Webmaster

Ummm. Ed . . . ?

Is there something you want to share with us about an experience you had forgetting to close a flight plan?

And by the way, if that's the new face of the FAA, I may not even have problem with user fees. :-o

Keven
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Kevin,

What is more fun than flying airplanes?


Ed
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MAZDA LUCE