Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

January 28, 2006

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Attending today's work party were Ed Shadle, Keith Zanghi, Jon Higley, Steve Wallace, Sean Rondestvedt, Tim Finley, Meeko the Moocher, Ed Drumheller II, Von Armstrong, Earl Gratzer, Omar Chramosta, John Zambrano, Aaron McVay, recently recovered from his broken arm. The main task today was extracting the engine from "the beast".

Visiting the hangar today was David Cutarelli; a fan who decided to come by and see what was happening. He couldn't have picked a better day to see some action.

Sean came early today - 6 A.M. - and got a start on disconnecting hoses and wires. Next, the parachute tubes were removed. Then, the tail cone was taken off from over the engine and placed into the back of the trailer.

After putting together the McVay Gantry, the team placed the engine cart underneath the back of the engine and slowly pulled it out onto the cart. This involved a considerable amount of jacking both the rear and front of the car, but it came out relatively easily.

Steve Wallace did some power supply checking and testing while Ed Drumheller II continued work on the high speed chute bags. Aaron McVay began work on organizing the team's toolbox. Keith spent most of his time behind the video camera collecting more documentary footage of the engine removal.

After repositioning the engine on the cart, Matt Moller arrived in the afternoon to perform some non-destructive testing using an Olympus IPLEX videoscope system to inspect the interior of the main fuel cell. Ed directed the lens inside and one spot was found to need some filler material to seal up the leak which had developed during the last test runs. While he was there Matt sent the borescope down the compressor section of the engine to find everything looked good. What is unique about the Olympus IPLEX Videoscope is the entire inspection was  downloaded to a hard drive, then transferred to a DVD.  Copies can be sent to all of our engine specialists for review.  Even more exciting is the entire sequence was video taped and will be used in some future television documentary.

Next weekend the team will take care of some minor improvements in the engine bay, as well as some hydraulics modifications, and get "the beast" ready for engine installation the following weekend.

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