Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

June 28th, 2007

Ladies & Gentlemen:

Keith Zanghi stopped by the Starfighters Air Exhibition Team headquarters in Tampa, Florida, and met with Mike Robinson, Sean Freitag and Dave May.  Mike is the team’s life support engineer.  Dave and Sean are the crew chiefs on the C and D models respectively.  While there, Keith contacted Ed Shadle and Bill Eckberg by phone and had a conference call with the F-104D crew chief Sean Freitag.

The three gave Keith a tour of their incredible hangar and the beautiful F-104C and D models parked inside.   Rick Svetkoff, team leader and pilot of the two seat F-104D coordinated the tour and Team NAE™ will benefit from technical expertise gained from this fine organization.

The Starfighters Air Exhibition Team is flying at several East Coast locations this summer.  Contact their website and look for the current schedule.  The F-104 to this day can out perform many maneuvers of F-16s and F-18s flown by other air exhibition teams.  If you get a chance to see them in person, you won’t be disappointed!

Meanwhile, back in Spanaway, WA, Saturday's work party was spent mostly on rearranging the hangar. Mike Thoe and Bill Eckberg finished up the actuator arm and valve assembly for the new steering system.

On Friday, Ed had picked up the new steering box assy from McVay Mobile Welding and transported it to Eagle Machine in Canada for finish work. Bernard and his uncle Sam has layed out the design on CAD so it will be easy to finish the modifications with accurate dimensions.

Tim Finley finished installing the new pressure transducer for the engine oil pressure guage. Additional team members, Russ, Rob, Von, Sean, Rich and John Winchester kept busy with their various assigned tasks.

Eric Helpenkell, President of Pretorian Services stopped by to meet the team. Eric's company will be providing fire suppression support while we are on location in Nevada. Eric also gave us an update on the condition of the playa at Black Rock. He was out there last week and is very familiar with the region. His company provided support for the Thrust SSC team back in 1997.

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