Howdy Everyone, 10-17-95 Forth in the series. Well here is the stats so far (all numbers in Hours): Ani (Mom) Steve(Dad) Dave(brother) Jim May(prep) 25.5 106 36 32 June - 96 45 37 July 1 72 54 60 Aug 1 32 32 22 Sept 6 77 45 47 As you can see we are over the estimated completion of 500 hours. And I'm up to 12 hours of TV since June 1st. I'm actually doing better than I thought in this department. The progress has been great, and it has been hard to take time off to do computer stuff. Both wings are 'sealed', and are just about ready for final paint. Haven't decided weather to paint in little sections or just wait for a big paint weekend. The elevator trim tab is bonded, holes cut for the hinges for the elevator are completed. You can never have too many C clamps! Although 2 roles of DuckTape and a few bags of lead shot do a great job. Since my company was sold and the equipment will evaporate on 1-1-96 I've had to start on the electrical harness early. We have nifty wire cutting and stamping machines that will save me some time. (I got an official OK to do this after work). Completed the joystick harness tonight. That was the simple one. The drawing for the main harness was drawn 1:1, so the sheet of paper is 15' long and contains over a hundred wires! I will have to have pure mind to tackle that. Even the most careful people have their little oopses. Like that big chunk of steel went right through the canopy. That was a $2000 oops! We have the new canopy already, and this one will stay in the box. Good thing we have a sense of humor around here! We have hit the another little gotcha. All the rivet_nuts are metric and it requires a metric riv_nut tool. The English version is $54 the metric version is $242. I refuse to pay that! I rather spend 10 hours whittling out conversion pieces than pay $242 for something that looks like a pop rivet gun!! I know it doesn't make sense from the time spent but I can't reward robbery! The Zigan gene pool has been pretty good in the chemical resistance department. But Dad met his match. He got some epoxy on his fingers during the first bonding of the first wing. No big deal we thought since we had played with epoxies before. So to get rid of the stickiness, he wiped it off with acetone. That was the big mistake! The acetone was the perfect volatile to drive the epoxy into his skin. The following day his fingers swelled up 2X, then all the skin fell off. Truly gross. :( Dad's hands are now so sensitive that he wears 2 pairs of rubber gloves since his fingers will re-swell with only 1 pair just from the vapors. Well I guess if this stuff eats your skin, it should be great stuff! Remember when you could eat the paste in kindergarden? Don't try it with this eventhough is looks exactly like white cake frosting. I've been setting up a camcorder to record our building/bonding processes so that future builders can look at these. Hmmm I wonder how much I could sell a set for? :-] Jim -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=