October 2001

10/28/01: Today I had a little Lancair ES builders’ gathering at my house today. Mike and Tammy Salzman were in the Houston area this week, and we had made arrangements for them to visit us during their trip to the Houston area. Lon and Pam Kelley joined us, as well as Jim and Liz Nordin ( LNC2 builders with a completed Long EZE ). Jim and Liz live about 2 blocks away from us. We spent the afternoon talking about ES building issues. Jim Nordin showed us the rudder he had just closed out for his LNC2. Lon took Mike and I over to West Houston Airport where N123PK is hangered. Mike and I crawled all over, under, and inside N123PK noticing all sorts of details we had been considering while reading the construction manual, and building our own projects. Later we had a BBQ, and then spent a few hours just visiting. All seemed to have a great time.

10/27/01: Using an idea I got from Royce McKinney of EAA Chapter 12, I have hung the hundreds of small kit parts from wood poles suspended from the rafters in my garage. They are put in alphanumeric order by part number. Items that are too big to hang from the poles are placed elsewhere, but a 3”x5” card is hung from the pole in the appropriate place. The card has the following information written on it ( Part Number, Storage Location, and Quantity ). If I am looking for something, I always go to the parts poles, and I either get the part from the pole, or am redirected to where it is being stored. I should have done this first, and from there taken inventory. The inventory process would have gone so much faster and easier.

10/25/01: It is now official. The N number for OUR plane when it is completed and registered will be N198TD. Some have asked me about the significance of this number. Terry and I were married in January of 1998 ( 198 ), and our first initials Are T and D ( TD ). For those that are not pilots, this registration number will be called out on the radio “November, One, Niner, Eight, Tango, Delta”. I thought that had a good sound to it, and would be easy to say.

10/20/01 - 10/21/01: It became clear that there was no easy way to organize everything so that the some things were substantially in the way in the garage. So, today I moved several large items from the garage to an offsite storage locker we already had. I moved all of the vertical parts of the tail to storage. Not only did this free up space, this removed those parts from the risk of being damaged because they were in the way. I also moved several non-plane items to storage too. This should make it a lot easier to get around. I am building in a 3 car garage. Now that I have stored some parts, it is adaquite. Building an ES in a 2 car garage would be a real challenge. We would have to use the offsite storage solution a lot more heavily than we are.

I also finished removing the peel ply this weekend. I have heard from multiple sources that peel ply gets increasingly difficult to remove as times go by. I have also heard that removing peel ply is a difficult and unpleasant process anyways. So... I wanted to get this job done as soon as possible. I was very pleasantly surprised when I got my kit. I know how much peel ply others before me have had to to deal with. I know that there are parts such as the inside top half of the fuselage still had peel ply in kits that were delivered as recently as a year ago. My kit only had peel ply on the inside of the top and bottom cowling, on the inside surface of both of the main landing gear leg fairings, and on one side of a 4’x8’ sheet of material that would later be used for building the cockpit interior. I finished all of the peel ply removal in a portion of an evening, and in a few more hours on a Sunday afternoon. I am now done with peel ply removal. YEA!!!!!

10/12/01 - 10/14/01: I had to leave town for the weekend because I was having my high school 20 year class reunion. Although I was looking forward to the reunion, it was hard to just drop everything and leave town.

10/11/01: Today I started the long process of inventorying the parts. My father spent the day tearing down the crates, removing nails & staples, and putting the wood in either the scrap pile, or the salvage pile. Both piles were quite large. Pat Sewel offered to have one of his disposal crews to haul the scrap pile away once we were done. That was a very helpful and generous thing for Pat to do. Thanks Pat.

10/10/01: This is kit delivery day. Several people were on hand to help. My father came down from Austin, TX and stayed in our guest room to help receive the crates and to help tear down the crates. Anthony Wilson took half the day off from work ( Home Depot ) to help receive the crates. Troy Rodriguez took time off work to help drive the forklift. Troy did an outstanding job. Lon Kelly and Jim Nordin ( both local Lancair builders ) came over to help receive the crates. Michael Franklin took time off from his business to help. He was the designated photographer for the day. He recorded the unloading in case there were any questions later about how this was done in case something was found damaged. The images would also be used in www.Lancair-ES.com. Later in the day neighbor Pat Sewel came to help move the large parts into the garage. All of these individuals where a tremendous help, and I cannot thank them enough. The day went as smoothly as anyone could hope for. There were two persons that were very helpful for this day, but made their contribution before Oct. 10th. Kay Wilson helped me find out about NationsRent and the forklift that they had that I could rent. Also David Wilks helped me evaluate some of the options that people had suggested for how to unload the crates. David has been a professional auto and boat race driver. He has a tremendous amount of experience with shipping, loading, and unloading very large and expensive loads. He knows a lot about where things can go wrong, and how you can be stuck with shipping damage, but no one taking responsibility. David is currently attending Westwood College of Aviation Technology working on his A&P certification.

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