Sep

Wings: Arrived!

corey

Last Tuesday I took delivery of a very large crate (well, 1 big one and one sorta big one) from Fedex Freight. My Quickbuild (partially pre-built) wings had arrived! (Several thousand dollars, months, and $600 in freight bills later).
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I had made a stand of sorts to hold the wings after they were taken out of the crate, but my “cradle” is a bit wider than it should have been – requiring chunks of foam to hold the wings upright. Once I break the crate down and get rid of it (a huge chore in and of itself!) I will modify that cradle to hold the wings more securely – they will be in them for about a year or however long it takes me to finish the fuselage.

Speaking of fuselage, I had just started the first steps of that kit last week. Unpacking and sorting everything took a whole day. You can see a picture of almost everything here:

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That last picture is of my firewall. On the otherside is where the engine attaches, this side is inside the cockpit and will have the longerons (the long shafts that go from nose to tail) attaching to those white braces in the corners. As soon as I get the crate out of the garage I’ll be finishing up one of the major bulkheads that the wings attach to.

I’ve started school again, taking AES 1800 (Instrument/Commerical Flight textbox learning) and ENG 1020 (Metro’s research paper class). Hurray for 20pg research papers!

I’m also on Active Duty and have been since August started. I’m doing a funky shift: 24 hours every 3 days. It’s not bad, because you work during the day (usually 7am to 1-3pm) and then hang out until bed time. I’ve gotten pretty good at foosball, but no where near as hardcore as some of the guys.

Being on alert means we have to be on hand to launch our F-16s within 10 minutes of the siren. It hasn’t happened yet, and it probably won’t as I only have a few more weeks left – then I go back to my regular job. I was hoping to use my 2 days off between alert shifts to bang out some work on my fuselage, and it has to some extent, but with school and the less than stellar timing of the arrival of my wings it seems like I haven’t gotten all that much done.

Ah well, gotta keep plugging away or it’ll take forever!