Paying it back

Time for the annual trek to Sun 'n Fun, paying it back to everyone who got me here. Behind the Rope Line, a Day in the Life at Sun 'n Fun Air Ops.

For the last several years I've been working in the Air Boss Tower, trying to anticipate problems and take a load off Air Boss George Kline. I had been thinking about becoming an Air Boss, but decided against it when I weighed the time required vs my spare time, and I have no regrets. 

Years ago I had trained my backup, LAFFR, who I knew was impatiently chomping at the bit, wondering when the old f---- was going to retire. For some reason, after Tuesday's show I decided I had had enough, and it was time to hand it off. It was a great call. I knew I was burned out, wasn't having fun anymore, and it was Joe's turn.

 

And I went back to working hard, being a line dog.

 

An airshow visitor might go for the planes, but for those of us who volunteer our time, it's about the people. Seeing everyone year after year, accomplishing tasks together and making the show run, talking about it later over dinner, it's why we do it.

It's about talking to Thunderbird 8 and seeing him going nuts over a dog after a long time on the road...

or escorting some parents out to see their daughter in her F-18 for the very first time. She'll always be their little girl.

 

Yeah, we had some shit weather, but nothing like 2011. 

 

A common joke in Air Ops is seeing people come down from Oshkosh to observe us and hearing "That's not how we do it at Oshkosh." While we cooperate and many people volunteer at both shows, there's also a good natured rivalry between the shows. This year I decided to take some inspiration from Chuck Jones and had some stickers made up. 

I will neither confirm nor deny the many places they turned up, but always with the permission of any aircraft owner. I can't show you the really cool ones, but we had fun, and they are legendary. (The EAA booth crew kept finding and taking them off, no matter how creative/sneaky we tried to zap them.)

I didn't know Sun 'n Fun's new boss was from Oshkosh, but he was a great sport about it,

even posing with our Ops Shack poster and his family.

Pilots are cool but without mechanics and ground crew, they're nothing. Thanks to the Thunderbirds ground crew for taking a few minutes at the end of the Sunday show. ThunderShaka!!

And this was something we had done a few years ago, and got to do again. Sun 'n Fun claimed the highest, fastest, and quietest flyby in airshow history when the International Space Station flew by during the night airshow, 254 miles up (Flight Level 13,411) at a speed of 17,500 mph.

Just as the SOCOM jumpers landed the station flew over, and talented photographer Erik Kuna caught it. 

 Sun 'n Fun claims the record!!!

 Pics proved it DID happen

A poignant note, a key member of our Air Ops team missed the show, he's still deployed overseas. Miss you, Booger.

I'm getting better at making panels

  

 

The hardest part of the new rudder blocks was removing the old nylon ones. The Dremel tended to catch in the nylon and could quickly spin out of control, so it was cut a trial of patience to cut them out a little at a time. 

Worth it to finally have them done, and the nose reassembled. 

Another thing to undo was removing unneeded carpet from the avionics area, there's a reason for that we'll get to later. Long hours tediously scraping carpet glue off with a few cutting blades, no other way to do it since the glue would heat up and quickly gum up sandpaper.

After that came running the extra wires for the wig-wag landing lights, something I hemmed and hawed about when Jim built my harness. Word to the wise, just include a few spare wires when you build your harness. Yeah, it's weight, but it's worth it. Tying off the wires also cut the hell out of my hands, but I found another use for duct tape. 

Since I now had to make so many tieoffs I decided it was time to open up one of the windows to make it easier to get to the  harness as it comes up behind the turtledeck arch.Big step to open her up like that.

The avionics tray got nutplated. 

And it was time to cut another panel. This is the 3rd metal one (groan), but I've learned so much from the others.  I am NOT doing it 1,000 times. At least, I hope I won't have to. 

One thing I realized from misalignment of the others was that I had assumed the blanks were cut square, but the were probably not. This time I made sure. 

And cutting commenced.

The Dynon also got nutplates.

One thing on the previous panels that always bugged me was How was I going to repair any wiring problems in the densely crowded area under the radio that contained the backup fuel pump switch, flap selector, gear lights and selector, and gear CB? Sure I was planning to make them removable, but getting to some of them,especially the upper gear lights, was going to be a pain.

So I've decided to make it a removable sub-panel. I could easily make it an overlapping panel that would sit on top of the main panel, but because I like to make things as difficult as I can on myself, I'm going to try to make it sit flush. THAT should add a couple months to the build!

 

But we're on the right track. Second star to the right and straight on 'til morning.