Building a Great Lakes Sport 2T Sport Trainer

Great Lakes 2T1A-VR I-ESON
"the Outatime Flyer"

March 12th - 2006
Meeting with Robert Fray, G-BUPV owner

On March 12th 2006, Steve Davis and me drove to Peterborough, UK to meet Mr. Robert Fray, owner and restorer of G-BUPV, an original Great Lakes from 1929.

The story behind this biplane is very interesting nad actually this is the first Great Lakes I've ever seen: during autumn 2004 I bought Geoffrey P. Jones book "Vintage Aircraft over America" on Amazon.com; this book is an overview of many vintage aircraft, and one of the main articles is about Fray's Great Lakes; it was a first-sight love; I really loved the way the Great Lakes looks, and also the fact it is an orignal vintage aircraft which can be built from plans today.

Instead of other rare (and expensive) Vintage biplanes from the golden/silver ages, there are many Great Lakes built as experimental and everybody tell the flight performance of this Sport Biplane are outstanding: finally, my choice went on the Great Lakes!.
As any of the other few times I can see a Great Lakes, I switch on my camera and shop photos over photos. My G-BUPV's directory contains over 150 photos from this day!

Mr. Robert Fray and David Graham
G-BUPV Great Lakes

My first time sitting into a Great Lakes!

While the meeting with Don Sergent on 2005 was quick, this time I had enough minutes to climb into the cockpit and take confidence with the control stick and pedals.
Couriously, Robert has throttle and mix. controls on the right...
BTW, this has been my first time into a Great Lakes!! Robert showed a "step-bystep" how-to-climb-in procedure to enter the cockpit, and....how to get out, off course.
Robert also told us he's not flying so much recently into the GreatLakes as he's building an RV project.
Maybe one day (I hope not so far) we all three will meet somewhere in Europe with our three Great Lakes.

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