Why I Didn't Build a Glasair

Nice looking plane, right?

I might even say "gorgeous." Wonder why I didn't choose one of those to build?

I'll tell you later.

One of my weirder personal traits, at least on the topic of my ill fit into the world of Corporate America, is my tendency to forget to use my vacation time. Before I know it, it's the end of the year and I have a bunch of vacation days left. In the new "use it or lose it" world that many employers have adopted, this causes me to bundle up my remaining days around the holidays, thereby using the holidays as a kind of multiplier. So, over the next couple of months I will have a total of 29 days off. Still without an engine to install, I'm soon going to run out of work on the -12.

But....

Not soon enough.

You may have noticed that the time between work sessions has notably grown longer - this is mostly because I'm not super enthusiastic about the current job. To put in bluntly, I am not enjoying the drudgery of "filling sanding filling sanding filling sanding.... repeat as required" on the canopy fairings. And this is why I didn't build a Glasair: the entire airplane is fiberglass.

Still, it needs done and with the next nine days yawning emptily in front of my like a great chasm of potential boredom, it's time to get back to serious effort. Pete has missed the work too, near as I can tell, so we arranged for a Saturday morning session. He arrived at the house bright and early and ready for action. Just not exactly the kind of action I was expecting. He suggested that we swing by Edwards Meats on the way to the hangar to pick up some of their wonderful smoked beef sticks. I had no objection to this in general, of course, but I did have to note that the airport is only slightly more than a mile from my house and Edward's is, well, more than a little out of the way:

There also the question of whether or not Mr. Edwards will deign to show up and open the shop on any given day, but the unique nature of freshly smoked beef sticks and, if you're lucky, freshly smoked bacon too, justifies the risk of a wasted trip. Well, "wasted" is too strong of a word; the scenery down in the southeast corner of the state makes for a nice morning ride either way.

We were in luck - the store was open!

This is the Bring Your Own Cow entrance:

They had no bacon, but I was able to get a pound of BBQ and a pound of Pepper Jack Cheese beef sticks, along with a pound of sliced jalapeno trail bologna. Yummy!

As we were headed back, I was inspired by the fact that one of the biggest Ford dealerships on the planet actually was on the way to the hangar. And I kind of wanted another cup of coffee. Hmmmm.... Do you think this place might have a Mustang on the lot?

Yep! They had a dozen of them. None, unfortunately, were convertibles, but they did have a coupe in the model and color that I'm after.

The miraculous new V6: 50% more horsepower and 25% better gas mileage than the old V6:

I suspect that the airspeed indicator is somewhat optimistic for the V6:

It's probably the same indicator that comes with the beautiful V8:

The salesman, who I had hoped to avoid because I'm not a serious shopper at this point, turned out to be quite a bit of help. You have to appreciate just how big this dealership is - they actually have two stop lights on the premises to control the traffic. Had the salesman not intercepted us, we would have trudged around for miles looking for the Mustangs. He was able to whisk us directly to them in a golf cart. That's pretty good service! He was very low pressure and seemed to enjoy just standing there jawing about Mustangs, and he was far more knowledgeable than the lackadaisical dinosaur I had encountered at the first dealership that I had tried.

It's good that I liked the salesman because I actually don't like the guy that owns the place. I used to race against him back when I raced karts and he is a rather unpleasant fellow on the race track. Far too aggressive for what was supposed to be fun, gentlemanly racing. Still... if they will cut me a good deal, I have no problem with buying from his dealership.

We finally did make it to the hangar where I sanded off the rough edges from the last filling session. It's actually starting to look pretty good. All it needed after this session was some light filler. Next time I sand, it will be with a finer grit paper. I'm pretty close to the point where I can put on a few coats of thin epoxy and call it done.