Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Helping Hands

I never cease to be amazed at this little aviation community of ours.  We had had some new engine mounting brackets manufactured -but this time without holes to join them to the fuselage.  How do we go about getting them right this time?  Brian and I thought that if we did one bracket, fixed it in place and installed it, we could then work out where the remaining brackets needed their holes to be drilled.  Our mentor was of a different opinion. But how to do it? After Brian had left another of our little fraternity, Mike Nichols happened to pop by and get involved in the debate.  "Come with me", he says and we go to his hangar where he fossicks around and finds a large piece of thick aluminium sitting around doing nothing.  Back we go to the fuselage and with some fancy footwork, bits of masking tape and a pen, maps out a template on the aforementioned aluminium.  He then drills the holes and - voila! the engine mounting complete with bolts fit in 'just like that'.
We are so lucky to have such people here.

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