Monday, April 30, 2012

Mirror Swift

Ginger and I were outside with the dogs yesterday when a beautiful Swift flew over, dropped the gear, and proceeded to land.  We had seen it working the pattern here at the field before but never knew who it belonged to.  This time they taxied over and stopped.
My words to Ginger went something like this, "Holy cow!  Woooo, look at that polish job.  Who in the world would take that on?"  Then out stepped our friend Dan Gidzinski.  If you knew him, at this point it would all make sense.  Dan is a perfectionist and he produces some of the finest work on aircraft I've ever seen.  Yet, it seems this wasn't all his doing.
Dan bought the plane after it had sat for a while.  One of the last things it had done before being parked was win a polish award at the annual Swift Fly-In.  The previous owner did an amazing job and Dan was glad to take over.  His reason?  While he worked on perfecting and finishing the Swift project he has in his hangar, he really needed something to fly.  This one fit his standards and he now owns the job of keeping the polish up.
What's involved in a job like that?  Well, I won't go into detail but I can tell you that he was able to tell us how each different kind of rag works at each step in the process.  He even knew of several special manufacture polishing towels and he clearly had a favorite.  Like I said, Wow!
When you have a job like that, it pays to have the attention to detail Dan does.  If you live in the area and you see a chrome bullet cross over your house, it's not a UFO; it's likely Dan out enjoying the sunset.

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