I saw Paul Poberezny still driving around in his VW bug on the grounds today. It’s great to see him still so active.
Seminars I went to today were Burt Rutan’s presentation on the future opportunities in commercial space, and Mark Moore from NASA spoke on Advanced Electric Aircraft Concepts. I’ll post summaries on them next week, or during my train trip back on Sunday.
I also went down to the Ultralight area today. Besides some of the new Part 103 legal planes, there was a very interesting DC3. Since there are so many DC3s on the site, they couldn’t be put in one area, so they are scattered around. One in that area isn’t the prettiest, but it certainly is the most authentic on the site. It underwent a very rapid clean up and complete inspection and was given the intensive repairs that were needed from the derelict condition, and the lack of maintenance log books which required performing or verifying all airworthiness directives that were applicable to this aircraft. From mold growing on the plane, to the removed engines laying on pallets nearby, the massive amount of work resulted in a great plane coming back to the sky instead of turning into soda cans. I’ll post some photos from the inside later on.
Tomorrow, most of the day will be spent at the electric airplane symposium. I hope to find some new applications for battery power.