Heading South

Looking forward to seeing all of our old friends, and making plenty of new ones, down in Lakeland this coming up week at Sun ‘N Fun!!! To avoid “burying the lead” I wanted to start out by letting you all know we will be at Booth N68 right outside of Buildings A and B this year with the COMPLETED P-36 Litefighter!

It has been a hectic two months trying to button up all of our open actions on our whiteboard to get to first flight, as well as playing whack-a-mole with new ones (since when does two day shipping take two weeks!?). But on Tuesday this week we finished the last few items, turned all of the systems on and off, did our preflight walk through, paused for a quick celebration, and the proceeded to start disassembling the aircraft so that we could load it into the trailer to head down to Sun ‘N Fun. Sam and Karen are already en route with the truck and trailer, making a pitstop to help one of our Verner customers to help get his engine up and running. I will be flying down in a few hours, and Scott and Shin will be joining us later this week.

Two final things: (1) Wednesday was Sam’s birthday, so if you see him this week, wish him a happy birthday! (2) Sam is a perfectionist and would want me to add the disclaimer that the plane isn’t technically complete, we still have to install the second generation canopy latch and replace one bolt which is the wrong length in the landing gear. But other than that, we are ready for our first flight after Sun ‘N Fun, and are looking forward to a great week!