On her way home

It's time. The nosedeck is prepped by attaching the glareshield and carpet.

The epoxy putty had dried, and the headset jacks were installed.

The harness and panel were carefully removed from the jig.

Attaching the panel to the nosedeck was an exercise in geometry. We decided to leave the tray mounted in place, and flip the panel and nosedeck upside down. Looks more awkward than it was.

Except for a couple bolts in the center. Luckily, Jim's new helper Juan has small fingers.

A real surprise: Jim took a sound card from bigdawgspromo.com (like would be inside a musical gift card), hooked it up to a voltage reducer and an unswitched audio input to the intercom, stripped the audio from some of the commercials in youtube, made a mp3 out of them and Voila. Now when the Trunk Monkey switch is thrown it plays the commercials over the intercom. Freakin' hilarious!!!

Looking over the crate, I still can't figure out what caused these marks on the way out. I'm just glad I overbuilt the thing. 

Jim's dad stopped by, and together we came up with a plan to crate it all up.

The jig was in the back of the shop with indirect lighting, this is the first time I've seen the panel fully rigged in full on daylight. I'm very happy.

Question: how much stuffing is too much? Guess we'll find out in a week with it should arrive in Bellingham. It's scary how much that crate is worth (and insured for!)  now.

In the meantime, Tropical Storm Andrea blew outside. Go figure: it stormed all day while we were working and sweating in a stuffy hangar, 30 minutes after we were done and everyone left it stopped raining and was beautiful. (I never did see the 4' gator in the lagoon.)

While I'm looking forward to the next phase of construction and doing it at home, I have to admit I'm going to miss going to Florida and working with Jim. We didn't always see eye-eye but we worked it out, and he's a patient teacher. A true professional, and a gentle man.