Birth of the Flying Wing
Good evening. Eric here.
In past posts, we covered how David T. Carambat (www.industrialobject.com) had turned rough sketches and pixelated screengrabs into professional CAD files, which our amazing airplane construction team can turn into three-dimensional reality, in the deserts of Vancleave, Mississippi.
In this post… a peek of where you begin, in constructing a full scale replica of a Flying Wing aircraft… when you’ve never done anything like this before… well…
We’re so incredibly grateful for our dream team of people to work with… Thank you, David, and….
Well, let’s begin with….
MARIA KATSIMANIS
After a full week working construction at JO Collins, the best contractor on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (Danny & Chuck Collins, Mgmt.)… my dear friend of 20 years Maria Katsimanis enjoys her day off by… working on her friend Hollywood’s project.
I’m Hollywood (don’t ask), and well… Maria is a true friend.
At our buddy Bob's house this sunny Saturday afternoon, Maria can be seen here cutting out templates for thewing's "ribs", of graduating proportion... I think we're seeing the rib for the wing's far end, where it tapers out slim.
Maria had Bob take the picture so people would have a perspective of how large they are.
As my friend Maria said: “It's one thing to say "75 foot wingspan.... and another to build it, Hollywood!”
Exciting and thrilling that this airplane will be a monster. A spectacle of scale and proportion...
Thanks, Katsimanis!!
And for your patience, through the stress of waiting as we secure a local sponsor for materials like plywood… This is aVERY tightly budgeted production… and --
This just in, our local sponsors for the materials with which to build the airplane is…
OCEAN SPRINGS LUMBER
Thank you, Fred Moran, Charles, and everyone at Ocean Springs Lumber!! Because of your support – we can START CONSTRUCTION!
Meanwhile, the majority of the construction of the Flying Wing is supervised by Mark Spain,working with both JO Collins and his crew and friends over at the metal shop over in Gulfport -- Register Metals (www.registermetals.com).
Special thanks shout-out to the AMAZING team at JO Collins
To Clark Mathews – who figured out how to give Maria a full size template of each rib in the plane’s wings!
To Buck Batton, who is making the landing gear!
To Danny & Chuck Collins – for running such a top-notch outfit, who can handle “unusual jobs”.
Mark and his amazing team in future posts… Plus, pictures, I’m sure. Documentary crew is covering the construction ofthe airplane… special time lapse camera set up in the metal shop!
Meanwhile… who can take on constructing both the front and turret cockpits for the Airplane?
Next blog post -- peek into the progress of the front cockpit!
