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The Whirlwind propeller arrived today and it is beautiful. I opened the box just to look at it despite not being able to do anything with it for at least three months.

Meanwhile, I got news that the finish kit will arrive at the freight terminal next Friday. It weighs 411 lbs and is 98″ x 49″ x 30″. The shipping charges were $770.00. If I had had it delivered to the house it would have cost an additional $70. I wasn’t sure when I was going to be home so I decided to just have it shipped to the terminal and then I can rent a trailer to go get it.

The panel is still being built at SteinAir. According to Nick, the panel has been cut and painted, but the technicians still have 4 to 5 panels in front of it. Still guessing it will be mid-April.

I was putting in a small number of AACQ4-6 rivets to hold the plastic guides for the rudder cables. Apparently, my pop rivet tool was not tightly against the side of the tunnel and I ended up with a bad rivet. Normally, not a big deal — just take it out and put a new one in. Except I had exactly zero AACQ4-6 rivets left. Oh well, a call to Van’s to order $8 worth of rivets and a small assortment of other stuff I needed…

Yup, we decided to move it to my basement so that I could more easily work on it whenever I had some free time. The challenge was getting it into the basement. I determined that taking a window out would allow me to move it into an unused space in the basement that from this point forward will be referred to as “The Airplane Factory”.

Don’t worry, I will be able to get it out in a few months when it is ready for the engine and landing gear.