Conversation With Gene Sheehan
- Details
- Category: Quickheads BLOG
- Published: Wednesday, 23 July 2008 15:57
- Written by Dan Yager
- Hits: 2576
I had an intersting experience today. Over the course building this website and my airplane, I have developed a research technique to help me locate the address and phone number of the people who have had a hand at some point in the construction or sale of my airframe.
As you can tell by the FAA paperwork log that I'm keeping, I had some difficulty locating the chain of owners in order to establish the Bill of Sale neccessary in order to eventually register my airplane again. However, once I discovered the method that I now use, I was easily able to use the internet to make contact with every person in the sales chain. Best of all the method is free.
I worked my way back until I eventually spoke with Marcus Cooper, who is the "original manufacturer" for the Q-200 that I now have sitting in my garage. If you look throught the pictures section of this site, you'll see that his name is still written on the side of my plane.
At any rate, along with building the plane, I'va also managed to accumulate a great deal of original Quickie AIrcraft Corporation memorabilia, marketing documents, pictures, slides, and videos from some of the QAC dealers. I'm very much interested in documenting what happened to all of these people that were part of QAC's history.
To that end I decided to use my "super internet research method" to find the address and phone number of Gene Sheehan who was of course one of the original founders of Quickie Aircraft Corporation. Well it worked very well, and I ended up with his direct cell phone number! So I figured "what the heck" why don't I just give it a try.
When I dialed the number, Gene picked up immediately. I explained that I was creating a website about the history of QAC and that I was building a Q-200 in my garage. I asked him if he had any materials that he would be interested in sharing for the website. He simply said, "I can't think of anything that I'd really like to part with. Why don't you try looking up some old magazines or something?" He then, of course, wanted to know how I got his cell phone number, so I explained what I did. Nothing fancy.
Basically he ended the conversation by saying, "Minutes cost Money." I was going to suggest that he purchase a cell phone plan with unlimited minutes, but I thought it best to just let sleeping dogs lie! So needless to say, I don't think my phone converstation with Gene Sheehan was as warmly received as I would have hoped.
I made a post on the Yahoo Q-list about the converstation and the replies I got basically said that that's how he is, and that my hope that we could have a more meaningful converstaion at a later date was unlikely.
It's really too bad. I'm sure he has a wealth of experience to draw upon and I still hope to be able to share that with him at some point. Perhaps the whole process of losing the Quickie Aircraft Corporation has left him bitter. Perhaps we'll find out later.
I can still hope can't I? 