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I've been on the road most of the time since 13 Jul 00, so I haven't made too much progress lately. I had a very interesting two week trip to southern Argentina at the end of July, one night home, then off to Green Bay, WI and Wichita, KS. I was back home for two weeks, but had to take care of a lot of other odds and ends, so I didn't spent much time in the garage. Then I went up way up north to Churchill, Manitoba for some flight testing where we needed cool temperatures, then down to Wichita again. Whew!

Before heading on the road, I started fitted the horizontal and vertical stabilizers to the fuselage. This was a very finicky process, as you have to get them properly located, and at the right angle, in all 6 dimensions (3 for position, and 3 for rotation in all axes). It is a matter of clamp, measure, unclamp, move, clamp, measure, etc. Yesterday I built two of the three elevator pushrods and fitted the front control stick. Today I discovered that the pushrod that goes between the front and rear sticks binds on a weldment. This is a common problem with the early fuselage kits. I'll get Vans to send me the updated part that fixes the problem.

My finishing kit (canopy, engine mount, wheels and brakes, etc) arrived while I was on the road. That canopy sure is a huge piece of plexiglas. Note that I didn't buy the cowling yet - I still considering using a cowling from Sam James, and a plenum chamber type cooling system, in a an attempt to decrease the drag from the cooling system. See Randy Lervold's web page for pictures of what I'm talking about.