Steve is not the youngest kid on the block anymore. An opportunity came along to sell Great Plains to Marty Roberts that was good for both of us. Linda and our son Scott will continue to do the landing gear, wheels, brakes, tires and tubes (OKeefeAero.com). Linda and I both have a desire to do a little sight seeing around the US with our F350 and 5th wheel, and the sale of Great Plains to Marty will allow us to do that.
Marty is pretty well up and running. He has all the parts for direct drive engines and most of the parts for flywheel drive engines (not to be confused with rear drive where we had the housing and dampener). He only has to have some hubs made for the flywheel drive. He has all the individual engine parts, bearings, cases, heads, Force One Hub kits, dual ignition, etc... and of course the Diehl Accessory Case Components. All the parts that Linda and I carried - Marty has or will have them also. In October of 2014, we sold all of our Sonerai parts to Fred Keip. Fred has been the Sonerai Newsletter Editor for many years and has built and flown his Sonerai II for well over 1000 hours, VW powered of course. Fred has the same products that we sold for the Sonerai Family of aircraft, so it was a smooth transition also. Linda is updating the Great Plains catalog and it will be back on line in a couple of weeks. It was out of date - price wise and did not match the shopping cart prices. Linda and I are in the background, helping Marty and Ellen (Marty's wife) do as smooth of a transition as possible. Our goal was to transition the parts to individuals that would continue to support the homebuilt community. Too many times when a sport aircraft company is sold, the new owners fail and leaves many homebuilders without support of the product/s they purchased from the company. We did/do not want that to happen. Steve Bennett
