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 Wednesday, July 9:Fly away to Baker City, OR and Tech Session

As I was preparing to go to the fly away at Baker City, Oregon this morning, I thought for a moment that someone was stealing my airplane! It turns out that there are actually two bright orange Navions in the world and we were both at Caldwell! The "other" orange Navion was on it's way to the maintenance clinic and the loving care of Ron Judy.

Baker City, OR is about 84 nm NW of Caldwell. We planned to tour the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center which required being bused from the airport to the center, so we attempted to leave in shifts (the bus could only accomodate about 20 people at a time). I was in the last group to arrive and we ran out of ramp space at the Baker airport so some of us ended up parking over in the weeds by the heliport pad. Turns out no one warned Baker City airport that we were coming but they seemed happy enough to accomodate the sudden appearance of about 20 Navions!

At the Interpretive Center, we lucked out an happened to catch a Bird of Prey specialist from the Bureau of Land Management. He showed us three birds of prey (a hawk, a smaller owl, and a great horned owl). It was an interesting presentation that we all enjoyed (except for the lady who was sitting to close to the backside of the hawk!). The interpretive center is on a hill, so the view was beautiful. There is also a two mile roundtrip hike that takes you to some actual ruts left by wagons crossing the Oregon Trail. For those of us who arrived later, it was just a little too hot for the walk today, unfortunately.

We also had the Tech Session at 4:00pm this afternoon. This year, Chuck Brown and Don Bontz discussed the controversial situation with Sierra Hotel and how it has affected the Navion Society, Classic Aero (Don's company), and a few other parts vendors. This is such an important subject that I hesitate to repeat too much of the conversation for fear of getting any of the facts wrong. I know that the next issue of the Navioneer will contain more information. I can say, that after listening to the discussion and reading some of the correspondance, I have personally decided not to do business with Sierra Hotel for the time being.