Ordered the New Wings

Well with school quickly approaching the end with only 73 days left (who’s counting :^) Well I finally pulled the trigger and ordered my new wings from raven. They will be S-2C tips (quarter rounded) with a 52″ aileron span (approx 3/4 wing) aluminum ailerons. I also plan on recovering the entire plane and installing a new set of elevators and rudder with strap hinges and squared tips. Yes folks again I am taking my plane down for a long time but this might very well be the last for a long time so I will be making it worth it. I have also decided on a paint scheme which is below,  I think its a nice twist on the Yellow/Red and Black we know and love from Mr. Wolf’s hangar

This rebuild should be fun I plan on using Stewarts Systems for the whole plane and the plan is this

1: Graduate USNTPS (Dec, 11 2009)

2: Receive Kit from Raven on or about Dec 11, 2009 (maybe sooner than that but I promised myself no working on it till my final report was in and being graded)

3:  Build Wing and test fit and cover while keeping my airplane in a relatively up condition so as to stay flying while I build the wing

4: take the fuselage home and recover that replacing the elevators, rudder (maybe light sand the fuselage and repaint using the Stewarts Systems

5: re-assembly of fuselage

6: re-assembly of the entire plane and go freakin test fly the damn thing and really enjoy all the mods I have done.

Sound Good?  Well it all starts with Graduating from Test Pilot School easier said than done :^)

USNTPS Update

This a needed entry as to the pure enjoyment of it all on our class field trip:

I have been flying a little but not too much as Test Pilot School has been rather time consuming however i have been flying a lot of cool military jets.  We just completed our class field trip which went to Houston to Johnson Space center got a great tour there then went to Vegas for 2 days to fly the HU-16 Albatross off Lake Meade let me tell you flying boats are freakin awesome.  We then headed down to Edwards AFB and flew 2 different gliders at Tehachapi (DG-1000 , SGS-233A).  We then did Simulated Space Shuttle approaches in the T-38C 23K ft to 100 feet in 7 miles deck angles were like 20-30 deg at 300 knots pretty awesome.  Then we all got flights in the F-16D which comprised of an unrestricted climb at 550 KTS at the end of the runway up to 23K ft (insane to say the least)  We also did a 500 ft 550 kt low level through mountains just south of Yosemite again indescribable.  Followed by 5 different types of High AOA departures (tail slides, roll coupled, pitch coupled fun shit)  and topped it off with a supersonic run to Mach 1.59.  That jet is freakin cool.  While we were up at Edwards we visited Scaled Composites and saw Space Ship 2 and White Knight 2.  The whole scaled composites facility was amazing the staff was really fun to talk to really invigorates me and they were intrigued with what I have done on my Pitts. We also spent 5 hours touring the Lockeed Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, CA which was very cool as well.  We finished it all off with the Society of Experimental Test Pilots Symposium in Anaheim, CA  All in all a great trip loads of good flying in 5 different aircraft in 5 days for a ten day trip thats not bad.