"God looks after fools and drunks" or "Not my time to die"

If you've been reading my blogs, you know this first picture is the way we store the Rag-A-Muffin in Dad's hanger. We took about a month and a half of trying to figure out how to hang it from the ceiling. It was trial and error and even a little damage to the airplane, but in the end we figured it out. The winch is mounted on the beams in the ceiling and hooks to an "eye" bolt mounted on the hanging frame that attaches to the airplane wing bolts by carbines and fabricated metal slats. Just in case the winch fails, we have 500lb rope that is secured from the hanging frame to the hanger wall and from the tail section to the far side of the hanger. It all works pretty well.

Today, Dad and I decided to meet at the hanger to try and finish up the radio push-to-talk switch I started installing last week. I got to the hanger before Dad and opened it up. After I pulled the Tomahawk out, I lowered the Rag-A-Muffin. I undid all the safety lines and then I noticed it was a bit cockeyed with the Port side wing touching the wall. So, I got directly under the airplane and pushed on one of the tires to move the wing away from the wall. As I did that, I started to lower the airplane with the wench. Now, the cable on the wench wraps over itself when it winding up, so to see and hear the airplane bang and bounce on the way down doesn't bother us anymore. It did it three times today as I was lowering it. As soon as the plane was low enough to stay away from the wall, I moved out from under it and lowered it to the ground. Easy enough a one person job.

Dad got there not long after I got the rag down and I showed what I had done on the radio last week. Once he was up to speed and we figured out the next step, we started getting everything together to solder some wires together. I didn't bring my reading glasses (getting old is a bitch) so Dad was going to do the soldering. While he was doing that, I started looking at the hanging frame and wondering why the airplane was closer to the wall than it had been originally. I decided the hanging frame had been turned around 180 degrees and it was just enough to move it a few inches closer to the wall. I proceeded to unhook the frame from the airplane and turn it around. Just as I started to spin the frame, I saw it...

The "eye" bolt was just barely a "J-hook." The complete circle that was the eye bolt had been stretched out and it was hanging on to the winch hook by less than a quarter of an inch. I told Dad, "When you get to a stopping point, you have GOT to see this." He came over and saw the eye bolt. I was just amazed at how far it had stretched. Then dad looked at me and it dawned on both of us. I was standing directly under that thing while it bounced and banged its way down just 15 minutes earlier and that quarter inch was all that was between me and a 250 lb airplane falling directly on my head. Holy shit. That's when Dad said, "God takes care of fools and drunks." That's when I said, "See. Like I've always said, when it's your time, it's your time. Whether you are standing under a 250 airplane that is hanging by a thread or sitting on your couch eating potato chips. When your time is up, your time is up." I guess my time wasn't up this afternoon. Even so, you can bet your bippy I'll be checking that stuff each time before I walk up under it again. Oh, and we changed out what was left of the eye bolt for two sections of chain that are both bolted to the hanging frame by aircraft grade bolts.