Awesome John.

Very cool! Love it. Can’t wait for more stories

Congrats, John; keep the stories and thought processes coming, please!

Here's something that struck me as a little bit peculiar on this thread:
I don't feel the least bit of jealousy towards BTers with nicer airplanes. Marc, Allen, John, Clint, Dave, Jason, Mikex2, etc. I'm intensely curious about their experience, capability, and how they use them, but I don't get even a whiff of a sense of jealousy.

On other forums (and when I was younger), I did get jealous of people with nicer home theaters, better Porsches or classic Mustangs, etc. I wonder if it's me getting older or if there's something particular about BT that lets me see things differently?

My only question John is - why didn't you get an Avanti?

With the way he lands, he cannot afford new landing gear every 12 cycles

+1 on that - keep 'em coming John and many congrats on the new time machine.

With the way he lands, he cannot afford new landing gear every 12 cycles

John, spoke with Mark, he purposefully bumped his camera up so that it appeared you hit hard.........I will attest that John lands ANY airplane like he's got butter beneath his wings.........even Mark's better half did not wake up...........I heard that Mark's landing in Scottsdale a few Saturday's ago woke up half of Phoenix...........rumor of course.........

Thanks Jim... I'd rather keep a low profile than create jealousy. But you guys are my friends and I figured that you'd want to hear about it. It's been a 30 year dream come true!

I've been plunking the KA in for years now, then Bill U came along and greased it on and my cfo won't let me forget it - thanks Bill.....

It's hard to mess up a landing in the CJ, the trailing link gear even makes me look good.

Yes Sam I seriously considered it, I even went and got typed in the 550's and flew a trip with Mark H. I think I learned my lesson from the KA. In the end, a PC 12 would have been less expensive to own even though it is more expensive to buy. I feel like the legacy/CJ decision is much the same. The Eagle conversions rely on Sierra for some parts and I'm not confident in their long term so I decided against that and I wanted to avoid an ACM if I could.

Way to go John. Working/flying the dream!

I'm at a loss for words in trying to explain what GA enables for our business but I'll give it a try. No doubt that I stretched our finances to make this happen but without even considering my love for aviation, when property leveraged these planes are an incredibly powerful tool to propel a business like mine and many others. I could justify owning this on just the value of connecting my employees with our customers - I have a rule that I rotate and bring each and every one of my team members to customer meetings even if they don't play a part in the meeting. I want them to know how their work affects customers and to create connections. These connections eliminate "we can't" and instead create "I'll find a way". My incremental cost for this is maybe $500/trip and my return is immeasurable- I just get to fly around and repeat this until we create a huge success - I am a lucky man because my job isn't really much harder than that - aviation creates the magic and I just steer the plane.

That's a great takeaway... seriously, I get what you're saying. Creating that kind of ownership mentality in your workforce is the difference between you needing to work "in the business" vs working "on the business".

I've found that to be the the hardest thing to master in my own modest ventures... I know that I can do it, but getting out of the weeds and finding ways to enable/empower/motivate others to see things the same way has proven vexingly difficult. I need to grab a beer with you some day.

You say a lot John. service, a feeling of actual cooperative ownership; going to kick tires on a Stallion today. Though for the price delta its hard not to consider the Eagle II.