Jason Strong
Posted: Sun Jul 31, 2022 9:08 pm
My name is Jason Strong, and on July 12th I bought a beautiful Red Falco, #1046 N708WC, from the builder, Dan W Dorr.
I took a commercial flight to Santa Rosa, CA, spent 4 days flying all around that area and doing as many TO+L's as possible.
Dan and I began emailing @2018, but the timing wasn't right for me at that time. I'd email him every once in a while, just to make sure he had not sold it, then 2020 hit with all of it's uncertainty and thoughts of buying an airplane wasn't at the top of my list.
In October 2021, I bought a nearly new RV-12 and was a great airplane to help me break the "high-wing" life I had been in since June 1971. The RV 12 is nimble, light on the controls, and economical to own and fly. My Wife and I took it on a few cross-country flights of more than 450 miles in each direction, and it turns out she liked flying for 4hrs better than driving to the same places in 8+ hrs.
There's nothing very scenic about I-95 and I-26 from Florida to NC.
After about 100hrs in the RV 12 (in 7 months), I began to think about a "better" cross-country airplane; I began to think about Dan Door and his Red Falco again.
Around April 2022, I sent him an email asking if he had sold N708WC and he said that he had not thought of selling it for quite a while. I told him about my RV12 and sent some pictures and also asked if he'd be interested in selling his Falco.
He wrote back and said, "If you're serious about buying it, I could get serious about selling it".
I told him I had listed my RV 12 for sale and was VERY serious about buying his Falco. That got the wheels turning. He wanted to complete the annual condition inspection, to include the I0-360 B1E engine, before selling the plane and that would take about 30-60 days because of his work schedule.
That gave me time to get the RV 12 sold and schedule time to fly out to California, train for a few days, and fly it back to Florida.
That's when the "adventure" began. You see, although I had nearly 2,000 hrs (134 of them in the RV 12 in the past 8 months), I really had never taken but one long cross-country trip over 500 miles in the past 20 years, and now I was going to fly a much faster experimental airplane with retractable landing gear, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean Solo.
Flying over 10,000' mountains, endless flatlands, unfamiliar airports, density altitude over 7,500', 95-degree temperatures, then towering clouds, t-storms, rain and high winds .... No Problem, right?
My family and friends were tracking me on Flightaware.com and were even able to text me in the air until I got past Texarkana.
As you might guess, there's a lot more that could be said, but I just wanted to introduce myself to the Falco Community and let you all know I’m very glad to be here.
Dan Dorr's Falco N708WC was the Reserve Grand Champion at Oshkosh in 2005, and his plane still looks good enough to win some awards, although I didn't buy it for that. I give him all of the credit for building and maintaining a beautiful airplane. It handles GREAT, looks GREAT, and is a wonderful cross-country machine in all kinds of weather; and I've been in a bunch of it with all of the "bumps" since day 1.
To summarize: KSTS - KMFR - KPIH - KBFF - KELK - KTXK - KEDN - KARW to KSFB (abbreviated route):
Note: from KPIH - KBFF - KELK - KTXK ... 7hrs 58 min. That was a long day.
18.5hrs
2729 NM
8 stops (mostly due to WX)
13 states (again, mostly due to avoiding WX)
ps, my Wife has already made me buy a "Be Kool" portable AC for the plane. You know how much fuel I could have bought with that money???
I took a commercial flight to Santa Rosa, CA, spent 4 days flying all around that area and doing as many TO+L's as possible.
Dan and I began emailing @2018, but the timing wasn't right for me at that time. I'd email him every once in a while, just to make sure he had not sold it, then 2020 hit with all of it's uncertainty and thoughts of buying an airplane wasn't at the top of my list.
In October 2021, I bought a nearly new RV-12 and was a great airplane to help me break the "high-wing" life I had been in since June 1971. The RV 12 is nimble, light on the controls, and economical to own and fly. My Wife and I took it on a few cross-country flights of more than 450 miles in each direction, and it turns out she liked flying for 4hrs better than driving to the same places in 8+ hrs.
There's nothing very scenic about I-95 and I-26 from Florida to NC.
After about 100hrs in the RV 12 (in 7 months), I began to think about a "better" cross-country airplane; I began to think about Dan Door and his Red Falco again.
Around April 2022, I sent him an email asking if he had sold N708WC and he said that he had not thought of selling it for quite a while. I told him about my RV12 and sent some pictures and also asked if he'd be interested in selling his Falco.
He wrote back and said, "If you're serious about buying it, I could get serious about selling it".
I told him I had listed my RV 12 for sale and was VERY serious about buying his Falco. That got the wheels turning. He wanted to complete the annual condition inspection, to include the I0-360 B1E engine, before selling the plane and that would take about 30-60 days because of his work schedule.
That gave me time to get the RV 12 sold and schedule time to fly out to California, train for a few days, and fly it back to Florida.
That's when the "adventure" began. You see, although I had nearly 2,000 hrs (134 of them in the RV 12 in the past 8 months), I really had never taken but one long cross-country trip over 500 miles in the past 20 years, and now I was going to fly a much faster experimental airplane with retractable landing gear, from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean Solo.
Flying over 10,000' mountains, endless flatlands, unfamiliar airports, density altitude over 7,500', 95-degree temperatures, then towering clouds, t-storms, rain and high winds .... No Problem, right?
My family and friends were tracking me on Flightaware.com and were even able to text me in the air until I got past Texarkana.
As you might guess, there's a lot more that could be said, but I just wanted to introduce myself to the Falco Community and let you all know I’m very glad to be here.
Dan Dorr's Falco N708WC was the Reserve Grand Champion at Oshkosh in 2005, and his plane still looks good enough to win some awards, although I didn't buy it for that. I give him all of the credit for building and maintaining a beautiful airplane. It handles GREAT, looks GREAT, and is a wonderful cross-country machine in all kinds of weather; and I've been in a bunch of it with all of the "bumps" since day 1.
To summarize: KSTS - KMFR - KPIH - KBFF - KELK - KTXK - KEDN - KARW to KSFB (abbreviated route):
Note: from KPIH - KBFF - KELK - KTXK ... 7hrs 58 min. That was a long day.
18.5hrs
2729 NM
8 stops (mostly due to WX)
13 states (again, mostly due to avoiding WX)
ps, my Wife has already made me buy a "Be Kool" portable AC for the plane. You know how much fuel I could have bought with that money???