Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

April 29, 2006,

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Present at today's work party were Ed Shadle, Keith Zanghi, Jon Higley, Russell Garlow, Didi Boyington, Bill Eckberg, Rich Pengelley, Bernard McVay, Patricia Wood, Von Armstrong, Sean Rondestvedt, Rob Martinson, Scott Robertson, Earl Gratzer, Omar Chramosta, Ryan Mower and Sparky (Bernard's pomeranian dog).

Ryan Mower was going through his Culminating Project papers with Keith Zanghi to meet his graduation requirements. Ryan will be presenting his Culminating Project in May to a board of review as part of his graduation requirement from Sumner High School. Our visitor to the hangar today was Skip (below), a neighbor of Rob's.

The two tasks worked on today were to remove and free up the front steering wheel that the team found last week would no longer spin on its axle, and to test the hydraulic system's speed brakes and magnetic brakes.

The front wheel removal process took a while, but we managed to extract it from its steel box without removing the box itself; a considerably more formidable task the team was happy to avoid. Once out, the disc brakes assembly in the center of the wheel was removed and found to have siezed from the alkaline of Rogers Dry Lake of last fall and the moisture in the air over time. After cleaning it up properly and making sure everything worked correctly, it was reassembled and reinstalled into the steering box. One down, one to go.

Meanwhile, Bernard was busy making some custom hydraulic fittings for the rear axle. At the same time, Patricia was working once again on internal components for the computers in the hangar at the data center. Mysteriously, an odd "No Zanghi" symbol appeared on the project's new vise that was recently installed on the work bench.

Over on the other side of the hangar, Didi Boyington opened "Dido's Dry Lake Travel Agency" on the tailgate of Jon's pickup truck. Being the coordinator of the travel arrangements for the coming test runs at El Mirage in June, she collected payments for expenses from team members present and printed out receipts. Meanwhile, her fiance' Russ spent time on the new NAE™ model used last Thursday at the SETP presentation in Seattle. He replaced the nose cone with an improved set of canards that won't break off as easily. He also put on the metal pitot tube into the nose cone that his dad, Doug, had machined for it. It looks beautiful! Keith was kept busy with a jack and the fuel pump, and away from the vise.

With the project now "going green", biodiesel, which has been provided by Seattle BioDiesel, one of our newer sponsors, had to be transfered into 50 gallon drums for the trip south. Keith Zanghi, who had picked up the 250 gallon container of biodiesel, transfered it with the help of Ed Shadle and Von Armstrong. The NAE™ will be testing a 50% kerosene - 50% biodiesel fuel mixture in the engine during our coming test runs.

The biggest task of the day was testing the newly modified hydraulic system for functionality. Unfortunately, the team met with considerable frustration on this task as it was found that the two newer valves, installed for controlling fluid to the magnetic brakes independently, were not properly functioning. The speed brake door worked fairly well, but the brakes on the rear axle never got fluid coming out of the lines when cracked open next to the cyliners. So, once business opens Monday, Scott and Bill plan on going to Seattle to check out what can be done to remedy the problem.

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