Monday, December 14 — In at 7:25, light rain and windy. Culled articles from the last of the stack. Quiet day, some business jets but no AKM visitors despite the open door. Phot’d a sharp Lear 45 perfectly parked for through-the-fence photography. I thought it was a 60, but when I asked the friendly pilot walking toward the lobby from the airplane, he explained two major differences: the 60’s tires are larger and there’s another structural brace on the windshield. Nice fellow! 🙂 Started an account with Hobby Link Japan hobby store and ordered 1/72 scale models of two historic US gliders. I hope I can AFFORD these guys. Spent 3,840 yen. How much is THAT? My friend, Chuck B., international 777 airline pilot, tells me about #34.00 a good price. The sale was approved. Was slow and out of sorts all morning. Had a ragged night last night and slept poorly so I napped about an hour in the warm Process Room. Felt guilty about no doing anything so I arose and worked more than two hours NEATENING THE Intake and Process Rooms, a MAJOR UNDERTAKING! Made good progress, threw away a lot of unessential material, including my OLD old brown leather jacket that served me well for years but was horribly ragged. also pitched my ragged camera bag I had used during 22 years of Springfield Air Rendezvous air shows and more. I must make good use of every cubic foot of space out here and spend more time keeping it neat. SWEATED for two hours. Now after taking a half an hour break in the office with a cup of coffee, I’m going back upstairs to continue the project. Worked up there from 6 to 9 and worked up another real sweat but made good progress. I’m still not done. All the heavy work is over but I have a lot of sorting. A far simpler arrangement. I like it a lot. Back downstairs, no guitar practicing. I’m still tied up in knots over the items taken by unknown thieves. It could have been any one of several people I know. How do I stay friendly? Piddled in the office and left about 9:30 for home. Day rating: B+ for the major progress upstairs.
The first picture is of a camera bag I purchased in the 70s and carried every time I went anywhere with a camera and extra lenses. That includes every Springfield Air Rendezvous I attended (22 of the 24) and the National Stearman fly-in, plus a lot of photography and writing for Prime Time, Illinois Times and Springfield Business Journal. During the last seven or eight years of SAR, the broken strap was kept useful with a bunch of rubber bands that held the kinked arrangement together. Soon after setting up AeroKnow Museum I put it away. The cameras and lenses were close by in the office, I had given away and discarded two SLRs (a Nikon to a beautiful friend named Erin) and replaced my decades-old and much-loved Canon AT-1 with a Sony Mavica.) When I found this bag upstairs in a museum storage area, initially I decided to discard it. But the only thing wrong is the strap (rubber bands got old and broke) so I’m going to do what I should have done 20 years ago. Take it to a shoe repair shop and have the strap sewed back together. All my photo gear will fit into it now, and there will be a little less clutter in my office.
The Lear 45 was photo’d during the slow morning of December 14.
Abe Lincoln's Air Force 