Boy its HOT!!! 101F here today and I'm NOT at all motivated to go into my 110F garage and bang on my kitplane parts! I guess I'll wait till after the weekend to get back to work on the bulkheads & ribs I'm making.

Here's what the forms/patterns & molds look like for the basic structure of the Prowler's fuselage bulkheads & ribs. These are all the original patterns George Morse used to make his first/original Prowler. How did I get them? Well, George is now in his mid-70s and elected to get out of the manufacturing business (he just sold Prowler Aviation Inc. to a guy in Michigan who will move to Redding, CA., to start up the production line of the Jaguar Kitplanes). In the process of doing this, he had found his original patterns/forms/molds/jigs and offered to sell them to me. I couldn't refuse since it is also a piece of history of the airplane design now. I accepted (of course) along with a bunch of other completed parts, to include two tails (one completely assembled) in all about 75% of a complete kit (excluding the engine)and manufacturing tools too! I would need to make all my own bulkheads, ribs & skins, but for the most part, most all the other parts are already there.

At the moment, I have completed all the fuselage bulkheads and am starting to cut out aluminum for making the ribs. Once all the ribs are complete, I'll take all these parts down and have them heat treated & tempered to a "T-3" rating. After that I can begin actual drilling and rivetting of parts together. Normally, customers are told it will take an average of 2000hrs of building time to complete a kit. I am assuming (due to my work schedule) it will take me at least 5 years to finish the project when I start rivetting parts together. I expect to start actually assembing parts by the end of summer (around end of September) since I have a few other obligations as well...

First thing first though - I first have to finish the Annual Inspection of my 1940 Piper J-3F-65 "Cub". This is my "Fly by the seat of my pants" - for fun - flying Go-Kart!!! Gotta fly it this weekend!!!