Press release: For immediate release.

Progress report on “Blue II”

For November 2008

 First and foremost, the entire Blue Crew wants to wish our friends, fans and sponsors a very Happy Thanksgiving.  This team has so much to be thankful for.

 Product support from Andair has been non-existent concerning their electronic fuel valve.  Our only alternative was to disassembled and reverse engineered the valve.  Blue II crewmember, Fred Roscher, has designed a controller for the valve so that fuel management can be integrated into the rest of the aircraft electrical system.

The most significant accomplishment this month is the mating of the wing and fuselage.  After several days of alignment adjustments and securing the two structures, we were successful in what we hope is near perfect alignment with a wing incidence angle of  .5 degrees.

If the weather had been a little better, we would have taken Blue II outside for some photo ops in the sunlight.  It was much more comfortable inside so the first pictures of Blue “ON THE GEAR” are taken indoors.

The items we had to complete with the aircraft assembled, such as the seat locations, arm rests, center console, rudder pedal location and flight control connections, are complete and we are now ready to demate the fuselage form the wing again for installation of the electronics and avionics. 

We are using the next generation Motec M600 ECUs.  Assembling the harness that integrates the ECUs with the new Air Data Recorder will be much easier to do with the fuselage separated form the wing.

All the interior items accomplished have been photographed for documentation but are not very impressive pictures, so I have not been included them in this report.  You will just have to see the interior for yourself.

 The photo at the left is of the cargo door latch and release which was finished as one of the “Round Tuit” items.

Jan and I, along with the Blue Crew hope all of you are having a Happy Thanksgiving~ because we are.  Next month we will have the electrical system well under way and some photos may look like Blue II is having a bad hair day.  We may have some of the external parts like gear doors painted as well

I will have the December report out by New Years, but if I do not have it out by Christmas, we wish everyone a very Merry Christmas.

 Thanks again.

Blue Thunder Air Racing