Greetings,

Well, we survived Ivan, and there's plenty of damage, though things could certainly be worse.  We had sustained winds of 100-110 mph Wed night, and gusts of 130+. House damage is as follows:
- screen room down about midnight (got some video because we still had power)
- new vinyl privacy fence down
- about one third of our shingles gone (minor roof leaks and ceiling damage)
- 3 oak trees down (not on house amazingly) The power is out for an estimated 3 weeks to 2 month (!!!) because the generating plant was also damaged. 3 weeks is probably the most reliable estimate, but fortunately, my RV-8 buddy evacuated to Arkansas, and he brought me a 3800W Honda generator and a chainsaw (the kind of friend everyone needs). At least we can preserve the freezers, and get some basic conveniences back.  Phone is in and out, both home and cell.  Sat phone works though :-)  At the moment, DSL is even working.  Now, what you really want to hear, the airport: Sigh...  2R4 is significantly damaged.  The T hangers have doors that face north, and south.  ALL the south facing doors are gone.  They were sucked out at the bottom, folded over the top of the hanger, and blown down wind.  Most of the south facing planes were damaged by doors, and some were even sucked out of their hangers onto the ramp.  Almost all of the South facing doors were blown out at the bottom, but usually, they stayed attached at the top rollers.  My hanger faces North, and 2 out of 4 of the door panels blew outward at the bottom.  If that's all that happened, it would have been fine.  Unfortunately, the south wind entering the doorless south facing hangers offered another problem.  The eastern wall that separated me from the south facing hanger next to me was pushed in.  The wall pushed my workbench, and shelves into the right wing of the RV-3, but fortunately, this caused no damage.  Unfortunately, an entire steel panel from the rear portion of that wall blew off, and struck the tail of the RV-3, then the nose of the Kolb Slingshot.  The rudder on the RV-3 will have to be replaced, but I think that's the only real damage.  Amazingly, my cowl was laying in the middle of the floor, and didn't even move.  Go figure.  The nose of the Slingshot will have to be replaced, as well as the fabric on the fuselage, and the canopy.  I believe there was some wing damage as well, but I need to fold the thing up and bring it home to see how bad it is, and to get it out of the way for hanger repairs. If there's as much overall damage as I suspect, I'll probably consider the plane scrapped for parts, then rebuild it with some changes that I wanted to make, and re-register it. Just don't know yet.  So that's it. Could be better, and could be worse.  Rusty (won't be online as much as usual, so John's still safe)