Blue Thunder Air Racing January 13, 2008 Report:

Within a week after the loss of Blue, the Team started collecting and inventorying the Thunder Mustang parts we had collected as spare parts.  By air race time, we had a stabilizer built.  December 5, 2007 saw the delivery of Bob Garrison’s complete Thunder Mustang kit, which provided us with the entire Papa – 51 parts.  You all know that Blue had many updates to her, and Blue II will have even more.

To date, major progress has been made on the wing.  All the parts have been trimmed, ribs and spars installed, MLG installed along with the flaps.

The hydraulic system will be powered by an Oildyne power pack greatly reducing the complexity of the system and some of that plumbing has been installed in the wing as well as the brake lines.

The fuel system will have the same capacity, but the plumbing is modified to eliminate all fuel lines and fittings from the cockpit.  We are waiting for our electronic fuel selector to arrive before any additional fuel plumbing is done.  We expect the selector sometime in February.

Our accountant, the firm of Grant Thornton of Reno  has put the loss of Blue at one million dollars.  The bad news is that it will take about that much to complete Blue II.  The good news is that through the very generous contributions of good, services, parts and money from all of our friends, fans, supporters, and sponsors, we are at least 50% back to the million-dollar objective.  The road ahead is a lot of labor, along with the purchase of parts not supplied in the TM kit.

Next month I will be able to show some changes in the control systems we are working on and maybe show you the new electronic fuel selector.

A $5,000.00 payment to the TBG for the new PSRU cover plates for Blue and Blue II was due last week.  If anyone is interested in helping out on that payment, don’t hesitate to hit the PayPal button on our web site.  Any amount is appreciated.

John Parker

Blue Thunder Air Racing