Mar 25 -- Pick up Wing Kit

Does this time count towards building hours? :)

Picked up the Wing kit at Van's Aircraft, just south of Portland, OR. Went down the previous afternoon via Amtrak (bullet train from London to Paris could teach these dudes a few things...). Next morning I rented a U-Haul and picked up the wings for the drive back to Seattle.

Will leave the U-Haul saga out of this (executive summary: U-Haul #FAIL), other than to say that as the photo indicates, there was not much inside the truck. Needed a 17 ft truck in order to accommodate some long pieces such as fuselage longerons.

Once home I inventoried the loot over the weekend. Came up with some errors on Van's part, so it definitely pays to spend the time looking thru the kit. Going to be a while before these parts get used: still need to finish the empennage, and the reality of business travel is also setting me back.

One great delay though: NASA invited me to a Shuttle launch in April. I'll be one of 100 people at a TweetUp. Can't wait!!!

Mar 5 -- Elevator Trim Tab

Lots of "enabling" work today.

Started by melting plastic off the outside skin of the elevator, then drilling and deburring both the skin and trim tab rib. Didn't even bother with clecos before match drilling, because when I lined parts up it was obvious that once again CNC had everything spot on.

But most of the time was a matter of cutting foam for ribs and also some wood for forming blocks. Once again the miter saw came in handy with its clean cuts. So did the table saw.

Total Time: Can you believe that I burned over 4 hours on this?