The GOOD news thread
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valentine (10-04-2022)
#592
I took my 2019 WRX into the dealer for a pre-inspection ahead of me turning it back in on the new car next week. All was good. and they liked the clean condition of the car. There is one big door ding on the car from some asshat who parked too close to us one day in a parking lot but the dealer doesn't care. I offered to fix it but they will do it, so pretty good deal on that. It has been six months since we ordered the new car so the buyout is now a good bit lower than it was 6 months ago, and more money coming back to me for that. We also got to put another 10k kilometres of driving on the current car since we signed the purchase deal on the new car, and they don't care about that either. They kept the market value of the car the same despite the higher miles, so that is pretty cool of them. It seems like dealers are still starved for vehicles.
The following 4 users liked this post by zeroptzero:
#593
It may seem very odd to select the Good News thread to talk about someone who just died. But when it is someone truly special I think it is the place to talk a little about him.
My MG friend was a master mechanic and a pilot. To be honest, I think he loved airplanes more than he ever did cars. He was a true craftsman building remote control planes - perhaps his greatest love of all his hobbies - where he could build his one-of-a-kind creations. Some of his works could take years. He would order the blue prints of actual planes and then have them shrink them down to the scale he planed to build. He never built kits. His attention to detail was awesome – carving entry doors with tiny hinges and tiny door handles that worked. He would carve out pilots (for example, a pair of New York Police pilots in one plane), and cockpits, and on an early WWI type plane I recall a machine gun that the pilot could fire through the engine’s blades. Triplanes, biplanes, or single winged. All were just a challenge he would master. Some of his planes had wing spans of 5 feet or more. No matter the build time and pride of building, he tried to fly them all. And did. Some with heart-breaking results. On one flight he crashed a beautiful plane and a person in the RC club bought the broken pieces for $400. I now wish I had taken pictures of some of his best.
Here is a picture of the one he was working on taken a year ago.
And this is the same plane one year later, just weeks before he passed away.
His son told me he plans to finish the plane. Can you imagine 100% of that plane was hand built from balsa wood, except for the motor.
Neil was a true craftsman as one might suspect after seeing his home shop which included a shearing machine and a brake machine for metal work. When I took this last photo he knew his days were numbered, he was 97, and he wouldn’t make his goal to live to 100. Still, he was an iron-man right to the end. He had pain but still managed to take me into his man cave to show me his latest projects. All the time smiling and joking. God love him.
When he wasn’t busy building models, he did oil painting, arts & craft building, gardening, and landscaping. Besides being a good friend his best feature aside from his personality was his willingness to help anyone on any project without being asked. No matter what he was working on he would stop to help others. Little surprise that the church today was over-flowing with people. I only met a few people in my life that I truly admired. Neil was one of them.
My MG friend was a master mechanic and a pilot. To be honest, I think he loved airplanes more than he ever did cars. He was a true craftsman building remote control planes - perhaps his greatest love of all his hobbies - where he could build his one-of-a-kind creations. Some of his works could take years. He would order the blue prints of actual planes and then have them shrink them down to the scale he planed to build. He never built kits. His attention to detail was awesome – carving entry doors with tiny hinges and tiny door handles that worked. He would carve out pilots (for example, a pair of New York Police pilots in one plane), and cockpits, and on an early WWI type plane I recall a machine gun that the pilot could fire through the engine’s blades. Triplanes, biplanes, or single winged. All were just a challenge he would master. Some of his planes had wing spans of 5 feet or more. No matter the build time and pride of building, he tried to fly them all. And did. Some with heart-breaking results. On one flight he crashed a beautiful plane and a person in the RC club bought the broken pieces for $400. I now wish I had taken pictures of some of his best.
Here is a picture of the one he was working on taken a year ago.
And this is the same plane one year later, just weeks before he passed away.
His son told me he plans to finish the plane. Can you imagine 100% of that plane was hand built from balsa wood, except for the motor.
Neil was a true craftsman as one might suspect after seeing his home shop which included a shearing machine and a brake machine for metal work. When I took this last photo he knew his days were numbered, he was 97, and he wouldn’t make his goal to live to 100. Still, he was an iron-man right to the end. He had pain but still managed to take me into his man cave to show me his latest projects. All the time smiling and joking. God love him.
When he wasn’t busy building models, he did oil painting, arts & craft building, gardening, and landscaping. Besides being a good friend his best feature aside from his personality was his willingness to help anyone on any project without being asked. No matter what he was working on he would stop to help others. Little surprise that the church today was over-flowing with people. I only met a few people in my life that I truly admired. Neil was one of them.
The following 10 users liked this post by dlq04:
buckeyesue (10-04-2022),
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and 5 others liked this post.
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valentine (10-05-2022)
#598
Thanks robb.
Gene in WWII he was a mechanic on B29's after being drafted during his first semister in college. Between the AF and Guard he served 17 yrs. He was a flight engineer for the environmental institute for Univ. of Mich. where he developed special devices to study our surrounding from planes. Oh by the way when he was just out of high school he flew a bi-wing from Mich to Calif.!!
Gene in WWII he was a mechanic on B29's after being drafted during his first semister in college. Between the AF and Guard he served 17 yrs. He was a flight engineer for the environmental institute for Univ. of Mich. where he developed special devices to study our surrounding from planes. Oh by the way when he was just out of high school he flew a bi-wing from Mich to Calif.!!
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valentine (10-05-2022)
#599
A real renaissance man, for sure. I have known a couple guys like him and I really respect them.
Last edited by jukngene; 10-04-2022 at 02:13 PM.
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valentine (10-05-2022)
#600
We had the high voltage wiring servicing our office building stolen a few weeks ago that I posted about in the bad news thread. It turns out that the thieves have been caught by Police. They are currently sitting in a hospital as they were electrocuted at a building just down the street from our property. Karma was a few weeks too late, but it did get them.