Sounds like you're in good hands. Hope it sorts itself out quickly, good luck!

Depending which route you fly through Canada, I'm not far from Grande Prairie, CYQU, and if you need a place to stop just send a message. Have lots of room here. If its on a weekend Id love to fly along beside you for a hit of the trip. Always looking for good excuses to fly.
David

David, thanks very much for the offer. Will wait and see what the weather is doing when we get the paperwork sorted out. If we do end up on your side of the Rockies, we will probably be on our way to Toad River or Fort Nelson, but will try to post our intended itinerary if I have a chance before we launch.

Well Troy , any luck??
Doug

Documents have been prepared for signature and sent to involved parties...waiting for them to be received back in OKC. Hopefully I'll get the Buffalo to Wenatchee portion drafted tonight.

We had launched fairly early from Kansas City because we wanted to make sure we got to Buffalo with enough time left in the day to relax a bit. Getting in late then leaving early would have made for more fatigue than I really wanted to deal with. But leaving Buffalo, we didn't really need to be early. We were heading to Wenatchee to visit my brother Shane, and planning to spend a couple nights while we waited for the registration to get finalized in the FAA's Oklahoma City offices. I wanted to make sure we had enough leeway to account for unexpected longer-than-planned stops and still arrive with good visibility, but we didn't really need to leave early to accomplish that according to the flight planning I was looking at with the assistance of Skyvector. It seemed hard to believe that the flight time to Wenatchee could really be less than seven hours, but I plugged the flights into Fltplan.com and got similar results even when the winds were accounted for. That also seemed optimistic, as the Tri-Pacer that lives within Fltplan.com is a pretty speedy beast, but the Island Girl seems to be pretty speedy compared to our previous plane, so maybe it would be accurate. I was especially unconvinced because I had previously flown from Buffalo to Omak, Washington. That took three days. The first day was 6.8 hours just going from Buffalo to Missoula. Then most of a day spent waiting for maintenance and a dash to Coeur d'Alene, then a short flight to Omak. But the flight planning sites were suggesting that the 6.8 hours would get us all the way to Wenatchee...seemed too good to be true.

But every way we looked it claimed that we were going to be having no trouble getting to Wenatchee. It was obvious in our planning, but the reality of having the longer days coming was really paying off. Last time we were dealing with October daylight, losing ground every day. This trip we had already found more than an hour of extra daylight per day, and more every day that passed.

So we elected to sleep until we woke up, then had a wonderful breakfast with our amazing hosts, and enjoyed the lovely Buffalo morning.


We didn't dally all day, not because we needed to get moving for daylight reasons, but because I wanted to get in the air in Buffalo before the density altitude got too high. It was such a nice day that it warmed up quick, and we were taking off with DA of nearly 6,000 feet. The wind had turned around overnight, and again it wasn't really blowing much, but it was just enough, at 7 knots, to make it worth planning the takeoff into the wind. This despite the fact that we would be taking off on the slightly uphill runway that we had used last time we flew out of Buffalo. After that event, I had been pretty sure that I would take the downhill runway the next time, but here we were and the uphill runway was the better option, so I ended up doing it again.

This time, we set off down the runway after leaning for power, and as I started to feel like pulling back on the yoke to ease us into the air, I looked down at the airspeed indicator and we only had about 45 mph indicated. Felt like 60, amazing how much different things feel when the density altitude gets up there. So I waited, and as we moved past 65 indicated I started giving some back pressure and we floated off the runway. Instead of dropping flaps when we reached 80 mph, I held the flap handle and let the flaps out over about a 10 second span, slowly...slowly...

That worked out a lot better than the previous day's departure from Torrington, so I was happy with the improvement. I left the airplane in a climb configuration and we headed along the Bighorn mountains, flying northwest toward Helena.


Everything about the Bighorns is high, so I wasn't really sure we would be attaining an altitude to cross over, but we kept moving up and soon were at an altitude to cut over a little finger of mountains that stuck out toward Banner, Wyoming. We kept going, and soon reached the point of deciding whether to fly on around the main range, or follow some drainages across near Duncum and Sheer Mountains. I've been doing a lot of direct flights over mountains in Alaska when the weather is good, so I started across. But the ever-ready auto-rough kicked in as soon as I realized I had put myself out of glide distance of a road...the road over the mountain didn't take the direction we were taking...

This plane is new to us, so the auto-rough feature is more noticeable. I haven't got the familiarity of long hours in the shop looking over every aspect of it. I gave it one of the better preflight inspections of my life before we left Clintonville, but all of a sudden I had a burning desire to know where the closest airports were.

Not close.

So I payed inordinately careful attention to the gauges, kept climbing until we hit 10,000 feet (yes, that's right, I have now made it to 10,000 feet, with a fairly heavy load, in a PA-22...) and found ourselves coming down off the other side of the mountains. We still weren't over any decent roads, but the terrain looked a lot more landable, and the auto-rough shut off as we got a nice view of Bighorn Canyon.


By now, Cedric was getting groggy and preparing for his morning nap, and we were well on our way to Helena, and obviously going to make it with no problem unless some real surprise popped up in terms of a headwind. And to make it even better, the air was butter-smooth.

I had initially intended to try a flight over Yellowstone. But the needed altitudes for that flight had concerned me, so we had abandoned that plan. And the previous night, while flight planning, I had checked out the weather in the area and there was turbulence forecast pretty much over the entire park. So if I had any inclination to change my mind, it had been ended by that forecast.

As we flew along, north and west of the Bighorns now, I could see over the range that included Yellowstone. And the entire mountain range was blanketed in clouds, occasionally with the tops visible and the clouds just above them, but it looked like active air movement over there. No thanks.

Then the active air movement started hitting us. The butter-smooth air was traded for burbles that pushed us around a little, though not too bad, as we made a beeline to Helena, knowing that as we moved north we should be getting out of the bumps. When we went past Livingston, I tuned in the weather there and the surface wind in Livingston had not yet hit the gusty peaks they were forecasting for that airport. But as we flew north another 15 miles, the air got rougher rather than smoother, so I tuned in Livingston again, and sure enough we were there right when the wind got there. But another 15 miles and it was starting to get better.

Bozeman was on the other side of the mountains from us as we sailed on toward Helena.


We finally dropped across the mountains above Canyon Ferry Lake. The air smoothed out again, and we started descending to prepare for arrival at Helena. I looked left, thinking of the last flight of Sparky Imeson, but we went on toward Helena and the weather was so calm and traffic so light we got cleared for a straight-in arrival from five miles out, landing on 27. The landing felt great, probably in part because we were at substantially lower altitude here than we had been at Buffalo, and as we taxied off the tower controller started asking us question about the airplane.

"Out of curiosity, how many seats does a Tri-Pacer have?"

"It is a four-seat airplane."

"And, if I might ask, what sort of engine does it have?"

"This one has a 150 horsepower Lycoming O-320 engine."

"Very good, thanks very much!"

I can't remember anybody ever asking over the air about my airplane before. I thought it was kind of fun. So here we were, in a little over three hours, having made a flight that took a stop in Billings and a lot more time to make last time. We still had to take off from here and climb pretty good to get across toward Missoula, but that seemed like it might be less of a challenge with this plane than it had been with the last one.

After filling the tanks we were ready to launch for Coeur d'Alene. Last time we had tried this, the wind was coming from the west and we were given a takeoff on 27. We then had to turn, fly back across the valley to the hill next to Canyon Ferry Lake, and ride the updraft next to the hill to gain altitude so we could make the climb needed to get over the pass west of Helena. This time, there was a little west wind aloft, but not much on the ground. In fact, as we checked the ATIS, the wind was reported calm. I called up departure to ask about departure procedures, but they seemed mostly baffled that I had asked, so I switched over to ground and requested a departure on 9, and was cleared to taxi to 9 for takeoff. We did our runup next to the hold short line, then contacted tower for departure. We were sent on our way with permission to turn left for a westbound heading, and as we were rolling a business jet called in for a straight-in on 27...

They were a ways out, and we were climbing out at our comparatively anemic rate, but I started a turn to the left to get out of the way and off we went. I wondered how wide I would need to swing to get the altitude we were going to need, but the improved power and climb were still new to me...we set a course for Coeur d'Alene and as we neared the mountains we were sufficiently high to make the first crossing. There were some pretty high mountains ahead of us though, and it looked as though there was a variety of problematic clouds ahead as well. There were some very dark patches ahead...

We scooted over to the alignment of the highway so we would have the lowest pass to duck down into if needed, and started hitting some updrafts and downdrafts that warned of the potential for a lot more fun ahead. I was starting to expect that this might be the flight leg I had been hoping to avoid. After a couple good bumps, the air slowly settle down and soon I had stopped thinking about the bumps and was just watching the clouds. For the most part, we managed to scoot beneath or around everything of consequence without even coming close to it until we were past Missoula and headed down the long pass to Coeur d'Alene. As we left Missoula behind, it started looking like we were going to get wet. In fact, perhaps quite wet.


We were going to be flying through that. Not the cloud, the heavy gray precip beneath it.

Of course, a little rain never hurt anybody, right? But as we started getting a good dose of water on the windshield, Cedric pointed out to me that the airplane was leaking! The water was wrapping right around the windshield, going back to the door post, then wrapping right around the door post...and trickling down the door post onto his leg...

"Good thing I let you sit over there!"

"Thanks a lot, Dad!"

"Hey, don't mention it!"

On the other hand, I might want to sit over there some time, so maybe I better have that sealed a little better.

After we passed through the first rain squall, we found another couple, then the clouds brightened and we flew along past fantastic could formations that came down on either side of the pass, but left a high ceiling above us. I've seen similar effects in Lake Clark Pass, where the clouds lift in the center of the pass but hug the mountains on either side. Beautiful, but a little weird.

To either side, the mountains were carpeted with trees and had timber sales spread across the tops. The most amazing thing about that is that it suggests there must be roads to the tops of all those hills...wow.




The sky continued to lighten all the way to Idaho, and as we were nearing the end of the mountains, we passed over a beautiful little airport in the valley bottom. Shoshone County Airport. If I had done a better job planning my fuel stops with AirNav, I would have stopped down there for the $0.45/gal cheaper gas...but in my blissful, and somewhat expensive, ignorance I had set in my mind that I would be getting fuel in Coeur d'Alene, so we flew on and spent a bunch more for the privilege. That should teach me not to pay attention to fuel prices!


Arriving in Coeur d'Alene is like dropping off the edge of the mountains into a bowl fairly precipitously. Tri-Pacers give up altitude in a hurry, so we had no trouble getting down and setting up for a landing. The wind was persistently about 30 degrees off the runway heading, and was enough to be a good crosswind practice, but we had a nice smooth landing and rolled over to the scenic but expensive self serve to make a quick turn and get on our way to Wenatchee.

We didn't hang around Coeur d'Alene, we pretty much just stopped, refueled, walked a couple laps around the airplane to stretch our legs, and got back in to blast off for Wenatchee. After all, it really wasn't very far now, and the weather was reported as being pretty fine all the way. As we taxied out to the ramp, the wind had become enough of a crosswind that we elected to use 20. When we had landed, we had come in on 24. There was a Cessna in the pattern, so we waited for him before crossing the runway, then taxied down, did our runup, waited for him to do another touch and go, then taxied out and took off. We climbed out to the west, aiming to stay north of Spokane airspace.

A direct route would have saved us a couple minutes, but would have taken us within the surface ring of Spokane Class C airspace. While the air traffic controllers might have authorized that, it didn't gain us much time and we would have better emergency options if we stayed north to avoid being over the city proper, so we passed over Mead Airfield, then flew along the Spokane River for a little bit before turning a bit south and heading toward Davenport. The edges of the river are steep embankments, with flat plateau lands on top, mostly in agriculture.


As we flew, I realized that I really was enjoying getting the hang of the Garmin 295 that came in the plane. The plane was rigged with a little pop-in dock for the GPS that sat on the dash. In my slow march toward being electronically up to date, I started flying a year ago with one of the charting apps on my Android phone. I had my phone up on the glareshield, and the Garmin, and I realized that this may be as much of a glass cockpit as I ever see.


I appreciated the utility of having both of them up and running, as it gave me two sets of tools, not quite the same, and I had found that each of them had particular advantages. Together, they made in-flight situational awareness pretty easy to maintain, and information I wanted was pretty easy to obtain.

Some farms were active as we flew over, with machinery in the fields at work.


We had seen machinery at work in the midwest before we got to Wyoming, but I hadn't managed to get a good photo. But as the evening set in over eastern Washington, with high active clouds, it was a pretty stunning sight to see the tractors working, dragging huge rakes behind them, starting the working of the soil to prepare the ground.

I knew we were heading for the channeled scablands resulting from the great glacial dam-burst floods of Lake Missoula and Lake Columbia, so I started showing Cedric the patterns on the landscape of big water movement. Some of it is pretty easy to see...


I asked Cedric if he wanted to take a little detour and go by dry falls, but he was ready to see his Uncle, so he said he'd rather we keep flying straight.

So we did.

But in flying straight, we got a wonderful view anyway.

I had grown up driving through this country and seeing it from ground level. But I had not ever flown over it. The closest I had come was the time Quinn and I brought the other plane through Omak on our way to Canada, and we had seen the Columbia River and Omak Lake, which appears to be part of the scabland formation.

This time, we flew over all the main scabland channels as we headed toward Wenatchee, and finally we flew over Moses Coulee. I honestly don't know if I had ever seen Moses Coulee before, but boy was it an amazing sight from the air.


Flying across Moses Coulee and then over the rim of the Columbia River canyon, we suddenly could get radio reception from Wenatchee's Pangborn Field ASOS, and we needed to start a pretty good descent to lose the altitude we had. But the wind was mostly favoring runway 30, so we started working on losing altitude, slowing down, and getting set up for landing. I felt like I needed more landings to get really dialed in, but I wanted to try this one a little different. So I set up for a little slower airspeed, which resulted in a pretty nose-high attitude as we came down. In the end the landing was fine, but I was dragging it in a bit with the nose stuck way up in the air. I knew there would be a lot more experimenting before I had a consistent approach that I liked. I'm very fond of short-field, soft-field approaches, I just need to sort out all the ways to get a short and soft landing in this plane then choose the manner of doing it that I like best...

But for now, we were down, rolled out to the Wenatchee General Aviation hangar, and my brother Shane was there waiting for us. So we tied down and greeted him and his oldest son, then headed off to terrorize them for a few days. Or a few weeks...as the story ended up nearly being...

Great photos, dialogue. While it is fresh in your minds when you get home, or in the Wenatche Library, it might be worthwhile reading J. Harlan Bretz' book on the Great Missoula Flood. It would well explain all of the landforms you just traversed.

Awesome trip report, Troy. Thanks for the updates! This is great.

Arriving on a Thursday, we anticipated little likelihood of getting our Flywire, the expedited registration that would allow us to land in Canada, before the following week, so we didn't really plan to do anything except hang out and play with my brother's kids and generally visit. So the following day that is pretty much what we did. I did call the FAA in Oklahoma City and ask about the status of our registration, but they told me to call back Monday afternoon.

On Saturday, my brother dragged me out for an 11 mile run, which was great because Wenatchee has a lovely loop trail down along the river.


I was not so great because it was 65F, and that is just plain hot after spending the past 20 summers in Alaska, as well as the past 15 winters. So I was sagging pretty good by the end. The last time I ran the loop, the only other time I ran that loop, I ran it twice, during the Wenatchee Marathon. That was a completely humbling introduction to the bonk, where I ran the first loop feeling like a hero and the second loop wondering why I kept finding myself walking. I didn't fare that poorly this time, but it was a good thing we didn't go for a second loop.

I had been trying to figure out how I was going to fit in a quick visit home to see friends, and Cedric and I decided we had better make use of Sunday or we might be out of luck. We started by flying early Sunday morning to Chelan to visit and go to bible study with friends that had come to see us in King Salmon in December. Launching out of Wenatchee we had a beautiful view of the confluence of the Wenatchee and Columbia Rivers, with East Wenatchee in the foreground, Wenatchee on the other side of the river, and the Cascades rising behind...definitely a pretty nice day.


The Columbia River has been transformed into a series of lakes, so there was no whitewater other than at the dams, but it is a striking ribbon of blue in the desert.


I wanted to show Cedric Lake Chelan, so we flew the old highway 97 route and came out over the lake where we had a good view of the lake snaking up into the mountains. Not too unlike the view of the Columbia River itself, but this ribbon of blue is a lot deeper. Lake Chelan is one of the deepest lakes in North America, after Crater Lake and Lake Tahoe.


As we came over the town of Chelan, we were still not in sight of the field, which is just around the rocks ahead, so we were pretty close in when we first saw the runway.


The field has a nonstandard CTAF of 122.95, which seemed surprising, but it is a Unicom frequency, and the weather reports out over the Unicom periodically, or you can key up the mike to trigger an update. Interesting.

After bible study and lunch, I contacted DavidB, and he was out at his hangar so we stopped in on our way back out of town. He has a nice Champ project and motorcycles in various stages of work, from completely stowed away in totes to minor tweaks to his daily driver, all over the shop.




He shared an interesting perspective on how to get to Johnson Creek from Chelan. As you might guess, it involved a motorbike. From Chelan. And nearly the entire journey was offroad...now that does sound like some fun right there...

The wind was so light that we launched off of runway 2, which is almost never the takeoff runway at Chelan, and headed straight out, and DavidB came out to document our departure.


By this time it was hot, really hot to us, at 76F. Airplanes don't even feel happy at these temperatures...I tell you it needs to cool down out there! But hot and all, we had a beautiful afternoon flight up the Okanogan Valley to home, I mean Omak, where I grew up.


We were met at the airport by a family member of a friend of mine that I had never met. We tied down the airplane, threw our stuff in the car, and went to meet my friend.

Much like these pilot websites, running forums are full of interesting people that like to go places a little differently, only this time on foot. My friend Nancy is a runner that kept posting about places I used to run...pretty soon it turned out that we had a bunch of connections, so when I made plans to try to visit Omak she invited us over. So I met my friend and her family, we got to eat a fabulous meal with them in the evening (it was easter after all, so that worked out pretty well for Cedric and I...) then made contact with relatives and stayed up late talking.

The next morning, we visited relatives, then I went for a run with Nancy. She was in the taper phase for the Yakima River Canyon Marathon the following weekend, but she took me out and hammered up Kermel Grade, a famous hill that beat me up many a time in high school. I survived, barely, but she pulled out the camera after we got up onto the flats to document our run...be warned...it was hot...and I'm not tan...


Told you. You shouldn't have looked. There are worse ones, but I'll spare you.

After the run, I called the FAA to get the Monday update. The lady in Oklahoma City had an update all right.

"Yeah, we processed those documents this morning and sent out a rejection letter this morning."

"Excuse me?"

"Yeah, it shows here that we rejected the registration application this morning."

"Could you give me some information about what the problem is?"

"Let me see here..."

She proceeded to look through the documents..., "Oh yeah, they messed this up good. The seller that sold you the airplane is not the same as the buyer that last bought the airplane, and the buyer from that previous transaction is a problem, so that is also an issue."

"So what do we need to do?"

"You need the bill of sale to be set aside from the previous purchase, then have a new bill of sale for that purchase that sells it to the same entity you bought it from."

"How do you arrange for a bill of sale to be set aside?"

"That is all in the documents we mailed this morning."

"Well, can you email them to me?"

"Oh no, we can only send them official correspondence, it has to be by mail."

!!!!!!What??????

"You can't be serious, I'm thousands of miles away from my mailing address, how am I supposed to get those and deal with them in a timely fashion?"

"Well we can mail them to another address if you give me one."

So I gave her my brother's address in Wenatchee. Now I was pretty freaked. I had determined that the seller needed to fix their registration, and we had talked that over some. They were messing around trying to get an LLC set up and had never got it all sorted out properly. But they had called the FAA to make sure they knew exactly what they needed to do, then, supposedly, followed those procedures to the letter. And you know what? Maybe they did. But if so, they didn't pan out very well. I was now trying not to panic, as I had the remainder of the week off, but not the following week...and I could see the week escaping before my eyes.

I had a work conference call I had to dial in to, and after that call I alerted my boss to the predicament to try to see what latitude I had, whether I needed to buy tickets to go home and come back some other time. I had run a quick search, and Cedric and I were looking at $1200-1300 per person to go home then come back and pick up the airplane...that's a lot for us. My boss suggested that the following week was probably one she could let me be out for, so I at least had some time to work with.

The one thing that became immediately clear to me is that we needed to go somewhere where we could be set up in work mode. Although we were going to have lots of time, I needed to have the chance to be uninterrupted and deal with logistics and try to get the mess sorted out. My mind was fuzzy and I needed it to be clear...so Nancy and her husband took us out to the airplane and we loaded up to head back to Wenatchee so I could hole up in my brother's house and figure out how to extricate myself from this hole I had made.


It was a good visit, and nice to get back home, but it was also time to go. So we launched out of there and headed back to KEAT. Omak from the air is pretty nice in the evening light.




It is amazing how deep the Columbia River canyon is...and then on top it is nearly flat. Beautiful country, bizarre and beautiful.


We made it back to Wenatchee and were met, again, by my brother. Only this time we weren't just coming for a quick visit, this time we were stuck. And I would spend the next week trying to get us unstuck.

Really enjoyed sharing the journey with you both. Thankyou for taking the time to post.

I see you as the really thing Troy! Glad you share your insight! Definitely a motivating thread.

Thanks Troy for the Trip Report. Its great, the TriPacer is great too. DavidB's skunkworks hangar looks cool too. I'll be waiting for future installments

After getting back to Wenatchee, I spent a bit of time in the evening looking up aircraft registration expediters. It seemed obvious that somebody deals with this sort of thing for a living, and right then I was thinking I wanted to have them working with me as they could, at the very least, tell me if the situation was so dire that I ought to just park the plane and fly home until it was sorted out. I found a couple businesses that obviously dealt with title and registration issues, based in Oklahoma City, which is the hub of FAA bureaucracy, and decided to start the next day getting things in order.

In the lottery of my mind, I elected to call Aero-Space Reports, somehow deciding that of the options I had uncovered, they were the first one to try. So Tuesday morning, early in the day, I called and was referred to Jeff Snowden, one of their staff that apparently was the right person to deal with people like me. When I asked him whether I should fly home and come back later, he was fairly encouraging about getting the mess cleaned up within a week, depending what he found when he looked at the paperwork, so I took some deep breaths and decided to wait for him to get a look.

"I'll walk over there and look at the file and we'll see what they are saying needs to be done."

Cool.

I was working a lot, as there was a lot of work to do and with a computer and a phone there is a lot of my work that I could accomplish while away from the office, but I kept expecting a call that didn't come, so I called him back later in the day.

"I haven't seen anything back after I emailed over there. The FAA offices are closed already, but in the morning I'll call and check in again."

Okay, hopefully something will come of this?

So we were making progress. I celebrated by going for a run in the most perfect flying weather imaginable.


Well, perfect other than it was too hot, but great flying weather, regardless. Started the run with a shirt on my back, had to finish with it on my hand.


The next day, he called me early in the morning with the scoop. And do you want to know my favorite part? He got it by email. They wouldn't send me anything that wasn't, "official correspondence," but they sent my file by email to a random guy across the street from them who says he is working on my behalf. I am actually a little hesitant to even write that, because I am hoping that, in the eternal wisdom of bureaucracies everywhere, they don't immediately notice this hole in their defenses and stop sending emails to companies that can help. Because something tells me that they aren't about to start sending emails to the affected parties, and at present at least there is a way to get the information quicker...

...So what was the issue?

"Well, it looks like the seller on the bill of sale doesn't match the buyer on the previous bill of sale. And there are a couple issues with that previous bill of sale because it has two individuals listed by name, then says they are doing business as (DBA) an LLC. But that LLC is Island Girl, LLC, and the one that sold you the plane is Island Lady, LLC.

"Based on what they say here, we need to prepare a setaside statement for the prior bill of sale, that will have to be signed by both individuals, a designated manager for the named LLC, and the seller himself. The seller will then need to fill out a bill of sale to the same LLC that sold you the plane."

I was trying to keep up, "So how do we know what needs to be in the set aside statement to make sure it doesn't get rejected next round?"

"Oh, we will prepare all the documents and get them sent to you electronically so you can get the proper signatures sorted out. I'll have them to you this afternoon. We will deal with the submission issues, get an affidavit for international operations submitted on your behalf, and that will move the registration to the front of the priority queue."

In the afternoon, I hadn't seen anything, and was starting to get concerned again, so I called and he didn't answer. I left a message on his voice mail, stewed and fretted for a while, then called the front desk and asked if I could speak with Jeff.

"Oh, I'm sorry honey, he went home sick, would you like to speak to Chris?"

..."Sure..."

Chris Sanford was happy to try to figure out where we had left off, so he went off to Jeff's desk and found the file, then started working on documents to piece everything together. Later in the day, he sent me drafts of the two documents that the FAA had told us we needed, but he had a question...

"How do we know which of these LLC's is the right one, and that it has legal standing?"

..."I don't know...what do you mean to suggest?"

"Well, it seems like they didn't really have the LLC all set up, and if they did get one set up that is fine, but we need to make sure we know which one. We wouldn't really want to have an owner listed on the chain of bills of sale that could claim a possessory interest in the aircraft."

Hmmmm.

I used my mad internet skills to Google the two LLC's that were in the paperwork. Island Girl, LLC returned no hits of any apparent substance, there didn't seem to be an LLC registered to that name that I could see. Island Lady, LLC, which was on the bill of sale to me, was a real, registered LLC.

In Florida.

With a primary contact I had never heard of...

So I responded to Chris that I thought he was right...maybe we better look at whether we could get the LLC's removed from the chain of custody of this airplane...

So Chris now started work on redrafting the documents he had sent, and drafting new ones for a new bill of sale to me and a setaside statement for the bill of sale to me. Meanwhile, I called and checked in with the sellers to make sure they were okay with removing the LLC's from the paperwork.

It turned out that when they bought the plane, they had intended to start an LLC, but hadn't formed it yet, as the story went. So they put down the name of the LLC that they hoped to form. But when they submitted paperwork for the LLC, they had to put down some alternate names, and it was one of those that was accepted, which is how the names ended up different. I didn't ask what the FAA had specifically told them or anything else, I was mostly just wanting to find out if they were okay getting rid of the LLC's on the paperwork...and they were.

Phew!

Chris sent me revised documents, but in reviewing them there were a couple things that needed fixed, and it was very late and he had already gone home by the time I reviewed them and sent back comments...so Wednesday ended and we still didn't have documents in hand.

Thursday dawned with more revised documents from Chris, and these looked complete and good so I sent them on to the three individuals with specific instructions for which documents each of them needed to sign. They all got theirs done and sent Express Mail. My aunt came down to take a cousin of mine to the airport, and she took my document and got it sent next day UPS, as we weren't sure whether the Express Mail from rural Washington would get there late enough to hold everything up and didn't want to risk it.

Friday, I heard from Jeff again that my documents had made it, and they were waiting for the rest. And thus ended the week.

Saturday I went for a good run again, since I was stuck for the weekend I figured I may as well make the most of it. After bible study Sunday, I walked over and took a photo of some of the beautiful blooming orchards...after all by the time this is over I may never get to take vacation again, so I figured I better try to appreciate the time I was there!


A full day of eating and visiting followed, but Monday morning, I was ready to get it all done. I called Jeff.

"We got all the documents, walked them over, got them turned in, and you should be getting your registration in seven to ten business days."

!!!!!!"Excuse me?!?!"!!!!!!

..."Oh...we were supposed to submit another affidavit for international operations for you weren't we..."

"Yes!"

"Right, okay, I'll send it to you, fill it out, scan and send it back, and we will submit it as soon as we receive it."

"Okay."

So I did.

When we had spoken initially, I understood the affidavit to be something they were going to complete for me, and since the signature line does not suggest it has to be filled out by the owner or operator, I had assumed they had that in hand. I should have filled one out and sent it in with the other paperwork.

Hindsight.

By the time this occurred, the FAA offices were closed, so it had to happen the next day.

So I went running.

Tuesday morning, at 9:30 am, I got an email saying they had filed the affidavit and I should be hearing something in a couple hours. Four hours later when I checked in, they went to check and the affidavit had not been linked to my file, so I had still been on the slow track...but now that was fixed and I should be hearing, "soon."

What is soon? The FAA offices were due to close in a few minutes, so I was wondering how soon was going to look, as a Tuesday departure was advantageous. I had already filed eAPIS with the Customs and Border Protection site the night before (oh, what an optimist I still am!!!), so I was wondering if by some miracle it might show up?

No.

I called around 5 pm Oklahoma City time and the office I was dealing with was closed. Sigh. Unpack the bags I had packed, and go check the weather again.

Apologize to Cedric for making him pack up only to unpack.

Go for a run. This time I went uphill until I found the canal path, and it was a lovely run. Much quieter away from the street.


The views were nice too, with orchards blossoming and the valley in the background.




We don't get many views of evening lights, so in the evening I got a photo of the night landscape in the area.


Meanwhile, the weather window was closing on me. We had been in Wenatchee for some of the most fabulous flying weather imaginable, but not flying. Over the weekend the weather had been a little less peachy, but Monday and Tuesday had been very nice again.

The forecast for Wednesday was much less nice. Between Wenatchee and Kamloops there would be an area moving through of very high winds, low ceilings, and low visibility. If I left early, I could get out of Wenatchee before the winds picked up, but would be trying to get to Kamloops through the murk. If I left late, it might be quite late, and we wouldn't get very far.

So this morning, when I got up, I started checking my email, looking for the elusive flywire.

Still no love. But Chris Sanford affirmed that it was in, that the FAA was working on my file, and that I should have something today.

So here I sit, catching this rough draft up to date, waiting for the miraculous little piece of paper that makes my airplane fly, and letting Cedric sleep because goodness knows whether he will have a need to wake up anyway.

But this is a good time for reflection. I have had invitations to stop and visit in many places, from people I've never met, who have been following this saga, and it is heart warming. Thank you again to everyone that has contacted me.

Today, I received an offer for tickets to get us home if need be from an airline employee who has passes available. Again, an incredible offer, thank you very much.

I'm not giving up yet. But I am certainly ready to get back in the air.

Especially since my brother's kids are ganging up on poor Cedric. He is having a really tough time of it...okay, not really, he's probably never been happier to be stuck in his whole life and have these two cousins to play with.

I've loved reading this adventure and wish I was along for the ride. Glad I didn't have to deal with the FAA paperwork nightmare though!
I see from his spot locator he's into Canada now, that must be good news somehow.
Can't wait for the updates, what an adventure.
Kenneth

Is he head to Chetwynd or on to FT ST John?
DW

According to his SPOT he made it to Fort St. John today. I'm terribly impatient and want to see his pictures. It's just such a cool adventure to be watching. It sure is making me want to be out flying.
I'm hope Troy remembers his SPOT is linked to the bottom of his signature.

Lostmaniac wrote:According to his SPOT he made it to Fort St. John today. I'm terribly impatient and want to see his pictures. It's just such a cool adventure to be watching. It sure is making me want to be out flying.
I'm hope Troy remembers his SPOT is linked to the bottom of his signature.

Maybe he can visit my plane there. It would be happy to see another American and an Alaskan to boot.

Troy and son arrived Thurs evening in Fort St John,I was checking on his spot page and low and behold he was just outside of Fort St John so I surprised him by meeting him at the airport and flagged him down gave him a place to park for the night and had him stay at the house. Got him back to the airport for an early departure and off they went into the blue sky.He must have missed starting his spot in FSJ. I'm glad to see he getting a good long distant flight in as he was maybe going to try for ANC today if the weather cooperated, we have that extra amount of daylight right now as the day are getting longer.