Eagle's Lair
Members Roster

May 31, 2008

Ladies and Gentlemen:

On Saturday a large contingent of North American Eagle™ team members assembled in Spanaway to spend Saturday working on the next world land speed record challenger.   Bernard McVay, Bill Eckberg, John Drury, Tim Finley, Rich Pengelley, Gino Sanfilippo, Von Armstrong, Rob Martinson, John Winchester, Sam Yellowbird, Omar Chramosta, Keith Zanghi, Ed Shadle and our newest intern, Kyle Somerville made up this week's team. Kyle is from Washington High School and will spend the summer with us to fulfill his Job Shadow requirements as a senior.

Bill and Rich finished up the windshield mounting.  In the past few weeks you have been reading about the adjustment of our windshield to canopy misalignment.  With all the work that has been going on, the two structures now meet the aerosmoothness requirements.   Omar replenished the Dot 5 hydraulic fluid for the front disc brake assembly.  He then went on to spend most of the afternoon helping John Drury and Gino with replacing some air-brake cans on our LevX Tractor. 

John Winchester, Rob and Von packed one of the high speed parachute assemblies.  Ed did some work on the parachute cans to prepare them for loading of the chutes.

Bernard and Ed worked on the mobilizer.  Steve Green at Eagle Machine, Inc in Abbottsford BC made a custom plastic insert that the front wheel will fit into.  The plastic was molded around the wheel and fits it perfectly.  This now completes our new loading system which will cut our time between runs tremendously.  Using the Paratech Air Bags to lift the car, we will then lower the car into the new cradle.  Bernard had all of our Central Welding Equipment out as he fabricated a custom receiver to fit the new molded plastic wheel cradle.

Bernard also worked on two new AFFF foam fire fighting equipment.   He completed Unit 2 and will finish up the last one in the coming weeks.  When done we will have three complete AFFF foam units that can lay down a steady flow of fire retardant foam.

Keith and Tim converted a waterproof pelican case into a housing to hold the Ecliptic Enterprises Corporation RocketCam™ recorder units.  Mounted in the original parachute compartment on the F-104,  the case will hold three HD recorders that connect up with the RocketCam™ cameras.   Tim is building three new miniature housings at his machine shop that will eventually be mounted to the outside of the vehicle.   Next week will build the wiring harnesses.

Earlier in the week, Tim traveled to Ferndale, WA, to the home of WRS Cover-All Company.  They have built our large 32’ x 65’ shelter that was used for the very first time last October during our Black Rock Test Session.  The shelter has been nicknamed the “Eagles Nest” by the WRS Cover-All Group. Most of the team members traveled to Spanaway Airport and started to sort through all the trusses and brackets.  Next week we will load them up in the number 2 transporter.

That’s it for now.   More sponsor announcements in the upcoming week as we prepare for a test session later this summer.

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