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June 1, 2009

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Another busy day at the hanger as Tim Finley, Bill Eckberg, John Winchester, Eric Helpenstell, Von Armstrong, Sam Yellowbird, Chris Greene, Larry Martinson, Jeremy Mathews, Omar Chramosta, John Drury, Jon Higley, Steve and Libby Wallace, Keith Zanghi and Ed Shadle spent this past weekend working on the North American Eagle™ in preparation for this summer's appearance at the Black Rock Desert.

Special guest this weekend was 2007 US Aerobatics Champion, Vicki Cruse and friend Lee Behel. Vicki and Lee flew all the way from Southern California to see the Eagle and meet the team. Ed gave them a tour of the car and at the end put her in the driver seat. Everyone was treated to another great barbeque! In appreciation of her visit, she treated the team to a high speed flyby, and headed off into the sunset doing a barrel roll! Pretty cool stuff!

Other guests that dropped by were Dwayne Beckman and his two sons Nic and Mike. You might remember Nic was the cameraman / director that filmed Ed and Keith for the live Fox News broadcast on America's Newsroom with Bill Hemmer. As it turns out, Keith works with Dwayne (now retired) and Mike at the Boeing Company. Following the tour he made a generous monetary donation to the project. Also coming by the hanger were friends of Ed's, Norm and Dempster who dropped off some refreshments for the team and bought autographed photos signed by Keith and Ed. Every bit helps in preparation for our upcoming test session. Rob Martinson's family stopped by to see the Eagle as well.

Bill made some mounts for our UHF and CB Antennas. These will be installed throughout the course for communications while on the lakebed.

Chris, Jeremy, Von, Keith and John Drury removed the front wheel and installed the front disc brake calipers. They then re-installed the front wheel and torqued everything in place. We were out of DOT 5 brake fluid, so that will be on the list for next week.

Steve and Tim finished up some wiring and hooked up the American Valley Aviation M32A-60B Start Cart to test the 28 vDC, 100 vAC and 200 vAC 400 cycle power.

Sam dropped off some more components for a new pit cart he and Keith are working on. When done, it will look very similar to the Snap-On unit above.

Earlier in the week on Tuesday, as part of our NAE™ Classroom Outreach Program, Jon traveled to Forks Middle School on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State to three different classes of 6th & 8th grade students. Thanks to the invitation of Mr. Martin Dillon, Technology teacher at the school, Jon shared with the students of his classes about the science & technology which the NAE™ project is incorporating to achieve its goal of bringing the world land speed record to back to North America.

Two days later, on Thursday, Bernard spent the entire day at Washington Middle School teaching students from six periods that included a the video Hyperspeed, a hands-on magnetic demonstration followed by a field trip to the parking lot where he showed them how a jet engines work using our cut-away J-79.

Bernard arranged for all 350 students to watch the one hour Discovery Show, Mega Builders - Worlds Fastest Wheels the previous day. That way when he meets the kids the next day they are all "jazzed up" and "full of questions" as Bernard says!

On Friday, once again the Science Channel aired our Discovery Channel Show, Mega Builders - World's Fastest Wheels. Since the original air date of September 22, 2005 the show has been seen all over the world and has aired in the United States over 100 times!

The one hour show directed by Dugald Maudsley features the activities leading up to our first successful test run. The show follows the team as they travel to Magna-Force in Port Angeles, WA and see the remarkable LevX® braking system. Then on to Canada to Eagle Machine, Inc to see the building of the all metal wheels and finally to S&S Turbine Services in Fort St John, BC, where the team performs engine test on the 42,500 hp LM 1500 Turbojet.

The North American Eagle has been featured in over eight television shows and every major television network. Recently NBC / Universal video taped the team for a possible pilot.

On the newsstands is an article on the project in the June 2009 issue of FLY RC magazine. The very popular magazine can be found at most grocery stores and all book stores.

We know a lot of our fans are on facebook. Now the North American Eagle™ is on facebook! In fact many of our team members are also! It is just another great way to let everyone know what we're up to. We have many of our latest Power-On systems test videos up on the site. Just type in North American Eagle and you will find us! Tell your friends! It's fun!

We invite you to add a comment, or remark, about our program or the site.

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