Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

Featured Sponsors

Ladies and Gentlemen:

On Saturday, nearly half the team including Elaine Shadle, Eric and Pam McClain, Marty and Suzy Schenck, Omar Chramosta, and John Drury joined in the memorial for Slim Lawson at Spanaway Airport. Pilots, friends, relatives and teammates shared stories of Slim and how much he meant to us. The squadron of planes in the missing man formation flew over Spanaway Airport at 11:30AM.

Slim celebrated his 89th birthday and 69 years of flying this past February by doing his usual laps around the pattern, then cutting his birthday cake. Today his friends flew those same laps around the pattern and even had a cake in his memory. He was quite a man, a gifted teacher, a devoted father and husband and a skilled pilot. He had 20,000 hours in light planes and 14,000 hours instructing. Slim was inducted into the Washington Aviation Hall of Fame on February 23, 2002.

On May 11, 2005, the FAA presented Slim with the prestigious Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award which recognizes pilots who have demonstrated professionalism, skill and aviation expertise by maintaining safe operations for 50 or more years. Recipients are awarded a certificate and a lapel pin and are recognized with the Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award. A duplicate hangs in the Smithsonian.

On February 16, 2008, Slim came by the shop and we lined up the team according to height. Rich Pengelley, Omar Chramosta, Von Armstrong and of course Slim, who was always the tallest at 6'-6".

In October 2005 Slim hopped into his car and drove to Edwards AFFTC so he could be with us at our test session. In the middle photo above, Slim gave us an emotional speech that had many of us grown men almost in tears. In the team photo above, Slim is standing in the back row, far right.

Slim was a tall man, and one day Ed gave him a call and the two of them drilled, riveted and installed the rear skin common to the vertical stabilizer. Slim bucked every one of those rivets and stopped by many times years later to inspect his work. He was proud of that vertical stabilizer and we were proud to have him on the team. Since day one, when the Eagle arrived at the small airport in Spanaway, Slim Lawson never wavered from his support and enthusiasm for us. When many said no, Slim said yes and let us store equipment, trailers and even the "hulk" when it first arrived over 11 years ago at tiny Spanaway Airport. He even picked out the tree we currently use as our tiedown when we need to run the engine tests. We will miss Slim.

Following the memorial, Tim Finley, Von Armstrong, Gino Sanfilippo, Rich Pengelley, Bill Eckberg, Jon Higley, Dave Selby, Keith Zanghi and Ed Shadle headed back to the hanger and continued working on the North American Eagle™.

Gino drove to the hanger in his new ride: A 1978 Cadillac Hearse!

While Ed and Keith did an interview with the NY Times, Dave, Jon, Von, Gino and Rich worked on a new R & D project for the team. The two installed a Westinghouse J-34 jet engine on a trailer in preparation for some upcoming emission research by Integrated Fuel Technologies.

Integrated Fuel Technologies, contracted with Argonne National Laboratory, is developing new and innovative emissions products. Their focus is on reducing diesel emissions without compromising performance. It has resulted in a revolutionary breakthrough in deNOx (Nitrogen Oxides) technologies.

Team North American Eagle™, along with Eagle Machine, Inc have partnered with IFT to research the same technologies with gas turbine engines. We're excited to be involved!

Bill, Ed and Tim worked on the cockpit panel modifications that will be happening in the next few weeks. Some new gauges and switches will be installed, which will result in an optimized instrument panel layout.

At the end of the day the team headed back over to Spanaway Airport and did a functional test on the J-34 engine. We are happy to say the engine started right up and declared ready for the R&D Labs.

Upcoming Engagements

On April 16 Keith and Ed will be doing their first e-Seminar. Pushing the Edge of Innovation - A Quest to Break Land Speed Records will be a Dassault Systèmes event. You can join the online event by clicking on this link. Steve Wallace will be providing technical assistance during the hour long e-Seminar.

On April 22, 2009 at 7AM, Keith, Ed and Steve will be speaking at COE 2009 Annual PLM Conference and TechniFair. Formerly known as the CATIA Operators Exchange, COE's membership includes CATIA users from all over the world. This year the event is taking place in nearby Seattle WA at the Washington Convention Center.

This will be the fourth PLM summit we have been involved with Dassault Systèmes. We were keynote speakers at the 2007 IBM / Dassault Systèmes PLM Summit in Las Vegas, another COE event. Then at the 2007 European CATIA Forum in Paris. Last year we were part of the Microsoft 2008 Innovation Forum. This event will show the power of the project as we partner with Lenovo to enhance their appearance at COE and their tier one suppliers: AMD / ATI Graphic Cards.

In addition, Ed, Keith, Steve and Don will be in the Lenovo / AMD / ATI booth #215 for the entire conference ( April 19 - 22). On display will be our 7 ½ foot scale model of the Eagle. With miniature decals supplied by Lisa and Thor Holden of Signs by Tomorrow Houston South, it is hard to tell the difference between the model and the real thing! We are really excited because the display will feature the use of Dassault Systèmes CATIA V5 software running on Lenovo ThinkStations and Lenovo ThinkPads, with ATI Graphics cards designing the 56 foot long North American Eagle™.

The booth will use 52 inch plasma screens running looping DVDs of the Eagle and a quad array of 24 inch monitors showing CATIA screen shots and individual components. We will also be bringing one of our Eagle Machine, Inc / UREMET aluminum wheels along for people to see actual hardware. It is looking like a big show and will enhance the partnership between Lenovo, Dassault Systèmes and the North American Eagle™.

Although not an official sponsor, we would like to thank Microsoft for supplying our Lenovo ThinkStations and Lenovo W700 ThinkPads with Vista 64, Office Professional and Microsoft Project to manage our progress.

We want to thank you for your support and dedication to our endeavor. We encourage you to continue spreading the word about us to your friends and family. We have reduced many of the prices on the Eagle Gear Page. NAE™ Team member Tricia Wood keeps the gear page up and running throughout the week.

We know a lot of our fans are on facebook. Now the North American Eagle™ is on facebook! In fact many of our team members are also! It is just another great way to let everyone know what we're up to. We have many of our latest Power-On systems test videos up on the site. Just type in North American Eagle™ and you will find us! Tell your friends! It's fun!

We invite you to add a comment, or remark, about our program or the site.

[Privacy Policy]