Inventorying the Feather Lite Order

1 May 2012 — Today I tore into the downstairs room that will become the second of two shops here in Germany.  The main build shop will be in the single car garage.  The glass cutting, prep and small layup shop will be downstairs in my house.  It has a fairly large window that vents out to the outside, so ventilation is ok.

I have three (3) large boxes from Feather Lite currently sitting in this room.  I cracked the boxes open not only out of shear curiosity, but to ensure all the pieces were there and make sure there wasn’t any visible damage.  Two of the large boxes contain the foam cores for all my Long-EZ’s flying surfaces:  Wings, Upper & Lower Winglets, Roncz Canard & Elevators.  [This order also included the Main Landing Gear Bow, which can be partially seen in some of these pictures]

The third large box contains the Upper & Lower Carbon Fiber Cowling halves that were originally designed by Mike Melvill and made off the composite plugs he designed.  The CF cowling weighs around 13 lbs, so its almost half the weight of the original glass cowling.

Included in the large boxes were smaller pieces for the cowlings and the instructions on how to configure the cowlings to maximize engine cooling.  It’s cool thinking how these cowlings have such a significant part in the history of the Long-EZ!