The Cheetah Finds A New Home

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote anything for this blog. The Cheetah has been sold, finding a new home with a gentleman from Madison, Indiana by the name of Ralph Rogers. Someday I’ll write up that story, probably entitled “Ralph Rogers Rides Again!” because it is quite a story and he’s an interesting character. We sold the Cheetah to him several months ago for a whole Twenty-Four Thousand dollars.

It turns out that we actually did have the Cheetah finally fixed, though it would take Ralph to discover that. The heavily loaded airplane departed here on a hot, summer afternoon loaded with Ralph and two middle-aged “students”. It staggered into the air, slowly disappearing into the east as my wife and I watched.

“It’s not climbing very well,” she said, as we watched the Cheetah fly away.

“DUH!” I jeered. “It was loaded with full gas, three guys, their luggage, the maintenance manuals, and it is almost ninety degrees. No surprise there!”

But they got it all the way to Virginia before they stopped for the night. The next morning, after the engine had been run hard for six hours, the oil temps we had never seen run in the normal range did. In fact, they climbed the airplane to 9500 feet, something we had never done, and the engine’s parameters stayed in the green.

Whoda’ thought?

We are and were happy for Ralph. I haven’t talked to him since I called him right after we got home. I hope he’s still enjoying the airplane. We’re happy that someone’s getting good use out of it, and Ralph seemed to be interested in fixing her up. That’s the kind of fate we were hoping she’d find, especially after spending over thirty thousand dollars on her trying to fix her up. Finishing the job is something we would have liked to have done, but Fate had other plans. We had done our stint with her and were glad to be over it, no matter how it had turned out.

As for us, we’re flying again in our own little airplane. We’ve traded our four seats for two and eight and a half gallons of fuel consumption per hour for five. We’re into Light Sport now, and an airplane known as a CTSW.