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April 26, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Following an incredible week of media blitz on the North American Eagle™ things returned to normal at the tiny hanger in Spanaway, WA as Tim Finley, Jon Higley, John Winchester, Omar Chramosta, Russ Garlow, Gino Sanfilippo, Rich Pengelley, Steve and Libby Wallace, Von Armstrong, Keith Zanghi and Ed Shadle met once again to bring the Eagle a little closer to our goal of breaking the 763 mph world land speed record.

The week was filled with an incredible display at the 2009 COE and TechniFair Conference. Located in the Washington State Convention Center in the heart of beautiful downtown Seattle, thousands stopped by to see the 7.5 foot long scale model of the Eagle with authentic miniature decals provided by Signs by Tomorrow. The booth was sponsored by Lenovo Computers and ATI which manufactures the graphic cards for our Lenovo D20 ThinkStations and W700 ThinkPads.

On Wednesday, Keith and Ed appeared live with Bill Hemmer and Megyn Kelly on FOX News America's Newsroom show.

On Tuesday the team was featured in the Science Times insert of the New York Time. The Guy Gugliotta's story was picked up by numerous papers as far away as Australia including a front page story in our own Seattle Times!

That same day Steve Wallace did a radio interview on the local Seattle station KOMO with host Jim French. On television, The Science Channel ran our very popular Mega Builders Show - World's Fastest Wheels. Since the original air date of September 22, 2005 the show has been seen all over the world and has aired in the United States over 100 times!

The hanger had several visitors this week. Nick Beckman stopped by to drop off videos of the FOX News America's Newsroom to the team. Nick was behind the scenes when Ed and Keith did the live broadcast to New York last week. It turns out Keith worked with Nick's Dad and brother Mike at Boeing! It is a small world!

Jon gave a presentation to a group of six race car enthusiasts (Ward Carter, Jason Carter, Glenn Ranton, Kurt Olden, Ric Lambert & Warren Wilkins pose w/ Ed) who stopped by the hanger to see the 56 foot long Eagle. All were impressed as smiles and photos seemed to be in abundance.

Russ, Steve and Ed removed the front wheel assembly and made a template to be used as a pattern for a new aerodynamic panel surrounding the front wheel assembly. Jesse James from West Coast Choppers would be proud as the three shaped the pattern to a perfect fit. Next week the pattern will be transferred to the permanent piece.

John did some refinements on the parachute deployment system. Our live fire functional tests last month were very successful, but John continues to make small refinements to ensure 100% reliability. Gino helped out everyone this week, but over did himself once again by feeding the crew at lunch. Rich tackled the job of sorting through our several hundred tools and separating the 6 pt from the 12 pt sockets. Anyone who works with tools can appreciate the value of this exercise. During the sorting it was found that we are missing some key tools, so we will replace those in the next few weeks in anticipation of our upcoming test session this summer.

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.

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