It is still dark when the lights from my pickup play along the sides of the long corrugated metal buildings. The grass is sparkling with a thousand little mirrors of dew, each one responding individually as the headlights sweep over them.

The past few years seem to have been a bit on the boring side yet somewhat of a blur. Sooner or later nearly everyone who stopped by the hangar came up with the very original question, “When you gonna fly that thing?”

Some years ago, after spending decades hanging in the sky providing pilot services for boxes, checks, folks, and serving as Director of Operations and Chief Pilot for several small charter carriers, my life took a severe left turn.

I’m not sure exactly when it happened or how, but somewhere along the line I fear I have lost my “cowboy hat.” After forty years or more in the aviation arena it has finally come to pass that someone offered me an opportunity to fly in something that I desperately wanted to fly in…