Well, we didn't get to do nearly as much work on the plane this last week as we had hoped... I was on travel Mon/Tues, then Wednesday we were both pretty tired and decided to skip a day. Then Thursday our friend Martin offered to give us a ride in his Bonanza to MCW for
"Third Thursday" fly-in BBQ and had a blast. It was our first visit to this event, we'll be back next month for sure! Fridays we usually take off from building, and then this morning we went up to IIB for a fly-in pancake breakfast at
Walter Aviation. Unfortunately, only Sarah got to actually fly up due to one of the two rental planes our group of 6 was using had a dead battery due to the previous renter leaving the master switch on (aaarrrgh!). Have I mentioned before we can't wait to have access to our own aircraft?!?!? Really frustrating. So we ended up re-shuffling the group and the 4 lightest people still went in the one operational plane. That left me out :-( but I still drove up and re-joined the group for some pancakes and hangar flying. Sadly, shortly before we got there a Cessna 195 had ground looped on landing (~15-20kt direct crosswind) and although the airport remained open, the mood was soured a little bit due to that incident, and we didn't stay and chat as long as we sometimes do.
A sad sight to see, just glad no one was hurt!
No one was hurt thankfully, but it's still a pretty bad day when you wreck a very beautiful and sought-after (not to mention expensive) aircraft.
Anyway.... after we got back home, it was time to shift focus back to the project!
Our friend Alec stopped over again to hang out and witness the "joy" of proseal. We installed the remaining ribs and stiffener into the L tank, which almost perfectly finished off the 3.5oz bottle. So far, four bottles have gotten both tanks to the same stage: ready to install vent line, fittings, and inboard ribs. Hopefully, we'll get to that tomorrow! For now, here's a few pics from Alec, who was on photo duty for the day :-)
Sarah and I posing for a perfect "action" shot building the tanks
Our dogs Dag and Mesa watching the fun
Alec and Sarah being silly... he loves to peel the blue cellophane off the parts, but apparently if he does it too much it gets stuck to his glasses...
