Brief Description: Flew to Crewe(W81) to get tires retread
So as I am building my project I was stareing at a pair of worn Michilen aircraft tire cores in the basement. A guy at the airport told me about a place in this small town in Virginia that had a company that produces retreaded tires for many industries including the airline industry. I have had some less than stellar experience on flight school retreaded tires when I was flight instructing a number of years ago and have a generally poor view of retreads.
Anyway Ralph and a couple others swear by this company Wilkerson Aircraft Tires http://wilkersonaircrafttires.com/ so I decided to get the tires retreaded. The cost was only $50.00 each. I figured if they were not up to snuff then they could be used as spares, if they worked good....then all the better. It would be a total of $100 vss about $250ish.
I called Wilkerson and the admin person told me that I could drop the tires off at the FBO building and that they would send someone to pick them up. I got off work after timing out and though hot and humid the weather was good. I headed out to the airport with the tires and flew down to W81. It is a quaint little airport and I took as self tour of the small building since it is unattended.
The little building is nice. Inside I saw the hanging tapestries of shirts that served to record the rite of passage into the halls of becoming an aviator! I reviewed the hanging shirt tails and wondered of the individuals that had rightful claim to a shirt tail and wondered if they were still actively engaged in flying.
The sad but silent commentary of the shirt tail artwork was the fact that most were from the 1980's and early 90's.....only one later was 2005! I think it is an unfortunate microcosm of general aviation overall. Anyway....with tires placed by the door I jumped back in Twitter and headed home! We will see how the retreads look and do!
