Progress Post

Thursday, doping the tapes gave the boys bad enough headaches (hint: wear your darned respirator! Even if the girl is, too!) that they decided to not come in Friday while I continued doping. My IA was unaffected, and it was a strangely quiet day at the shop. Productive, but very quiet. Around 5, I was completely exhausted - dope doesn't give me a headache, but it wears me out worse than biking up hills in twenty-first gear, and breathing through a respirator is sneakily tiring with every extra effort for every breath. By 5:30, I was ready to pack it in for the day. My IA noted he couldn't afford another day with all of the mechanics gone, so would I please come in after the boys knocked off for the day?

So I did, today. The upside: I got to sleep from 10pm to 12:30pm without feeling guilty. (Dope really wears me out.) I got to spend time with my hosts, and do the dishes and laundry. Time, precious time to do errands. (Though I found out that the bookstore doesn't have a US road atlas. I'll have to find it elsewhere.) Went into a wonderful military thrift store called The Dropzone - you could call it army surplus, but unlike the tourist-friendly, high-priced, neatly organized "army surplus" with barely any military gear downtown, this one had a staff full of nice, well-muscled young men with millimeter-long haircuts who addressed me as "ma'am" by reflex and were very friendly, if opinionated, about the best thermal underwear for flying down the alcan, and I will be bringing a gun if I'm doing this alone, right, ma'am? Well, they had a very small section of non-military clothes, tucked right by the socks and the hemocrit bandages - 5.11 gear.

Then back to the hangar for doping edge tapes,



cutting out the strut attach brackets, ironing the fabric down, and doping patches on.


Then, I laid out inspection rings and seaplane grommets for tomorrow - aside from one small tape I overlooked putting on earlier, I only have the tip bow, leading edge, top of the aileron cove edge, and three tapes on the top to do. I think I can get almost all, if not all of the inspection rings and seaplane grommets on after I get the tip bow taped tomorrow.



As a side note, I have a new tailwheel tire, and half the tailwheel replaced. See why?