215 – Vacuum Pump Adventure with Clark, my Airline Captain Friend

Airplane Owner Maintenance - By Dean Showalter

Clark and his family came to Virginia to visit his mom recently, and on the way up from Florida, the right vacuum pump quit working… as often happens when a vacuum pump quits, the drive shaft had sheared off, saving the engine from catastrophic damage.

In times like these, a good question to ask is, “What does this make possible?”

In this case, it made it possible to tackle a maintenance project with a good friend!

You can listen to the audio in this week’s podcast to hear about how I got to know Clark, and how he became the kind of friend I would want to go the extra mile for, whenever I can.

We changed the broken vacuum pump, installed new filters, and got him all set for the trip back home. (Ask him if he got to fly much on the trip… the answer would be no, because his wife is learning to fly and she took over the controls for most of the trip

It’s always fun when you can get an airline captain turning wrenches! Clark is very mechanically inclined, and I think the whole experience put a big smile on his face.

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Another highlight recently on a Saturday morning was when I took my mom for an airplane ride… she’s 86 years old and still very happy to get in a little airplane and go flying! We had a great time flying around the beautiful Shenandoah Valley. You’ll hear about this story in this episode as well.

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And finally, my wife Maria and I have an exciting trip planned in just over a month from now… we’re going to Hawaii for the first time! Our friends, John and Leslie Caubble, operate a flight school on Maui, so we’re going to visit them and I get to help work on the flight school airplanes… we’re super excited about this adventure!

You can learn A LOT more about John and Leslie through their two podcasts, The Aloha 360, and Fly Maui. They are simply GREAT people!

https://www.flymauihi.com/blog

https://www.thealoha360.com/podcast

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