Toys

And this was my other toy, a 1987 Spectrum Beaver ultralight aeroplane that I bought in October, 1987 which was originally equipped with a 50 hp air-cooled 2 cycle Rotax 503 engine. In 1990 I bought a Rotax 532 water cooled (but still a 2 cycle) engine off Fred Glasbergen. This engine was replaced by a new Rotax 582 in March of 2000 after the gearbox fell off the 532 in February. I replaced the sails in the fall of 1995 after flying it 8 years on the original sails. I flew it on the Puddle Jumper floats from 1992 to the summer of 2006. My total time on the plane was approximately 1,145 hours. This is me sitting on my floats at Barnston Island about 1999.

This picture shows my original Spectrum Beaver Ultralight Floatplane C-IGSI sitting in front of my Glen Valley Hangar in October of 2004. In July of 2006, I landed on the Glen Valley Airfield canal and attempted a downwind takeoff with disastrous results as follows:

This is me coming in for the landing.

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Here I am speeding to my doom!

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Roar!

This was the result of my stupidity. I hit the east bank of the canal and flipped over into this grassy field.

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We had to flip the plane right side up to get it back to my hangar.

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The plane was then towed from the crash site by this tractor.

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Nearly back to the hangar. You can see that the boom tube is very much broken. Many of the tubes in the cockpit were also broken and the floats were destroyed by the collision with the east bank.

Here she is back in my hangar. I sold it shortly after for $1,000 and bought the plane shown below for $7,800.

This is the Spectrum Beaver Ultralight Floatplane C-IDPR that I flew for the next year until September, 2007 when I sold it and retired from flying.