Goings On at Sequoia Aircraft

This appeared in the March 1999 issue of Falco Builders Letter.

I have any number of flimsy excuses to explain why this newsletter is so dreadfully late.

For one thing, in the first part of this year, we've never been busier. Sales for the calendar year are up 75%, and much of the overall change took place in the second half of the year where we had a huge jump. The change is massive and is across-the-board, with dramatic increases in kit sales and, most importantly, plans sales and new starts.

Then I was waiting for photos from Ian Ferguson, and an article by Juliet.

We are also presently in a big re-order cycle. Susan has been keeping on top of that, and constantly bugging me to crank out updated drawings. I haven't yet figured out how or when to integrate the new drawings into the set that we send out, but I now have a lot of new drawings on my computer.

But I suppose the best reason is that we were waiting to get the Falco shirts and hats ready. This is something we've planned for a while, but I never thought that such a little thing would take so long. I hope you like what we've done. In putting this collection together, we picked as many people's brains as possible. All the experienced people said to stick with golf shirt and caps as the most popular items.

As you can see, we have two basic views of the Falco embroidered on the shirts and hats. Each year, we plan to alternate the designs on the shirts and continually rotate through various colors and cap designs. While we will always have a white and black golf shirt available, you can be assured that you'll never see the exact combination of color, embroidery design and lettering color repeated. So it's going to be an ever-changing assortment of garments. That's the way Versace does it, so why not Sequoia as well!

I tend to get involved in little side projects from time to time, and sometimes the word 'side project' with me can mean a bit more than that! My latest side venture is a little music business selling CDs on my brother-in-laws music over the Internet. If you have access to the web, check out www.Talkeetna.com for what's up at Talkeetna Records. And if you look carefully, you'll actually find some music by me in there as well.

At this point, I'm about 75% of where I want to be with the Falco website. I plan to do a lot of work on the Falco Store and the kits, with a shipping ticket for each kit and an a photo of each part. I find, from time to time, that people have great difficulty envisioning what part is what, and they're great at giving us fuzzy verbal descriptions when what we need is a part number. I'm also looking for ways to improve our website, so please don't hesitate to send me a suggestion if you have an idea for the website.

Meredith and I plan to be visiting our daughter in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, for the week before the West Coast Falco Fly-In, and I hope I can get down to join you all for a day or so. I may need to bum a ride, however.

Alfred Scott