I really hope you didn't take my little idiotic run at convention to be a personal affront, I just saw an opening to poke a little fun at sundry conversion factors.

Heavens no, Jack.  I save my emotional reactions for more important things – like choosing flavors of ice cream.  It was a bit of diversion; a sort of tempest in a teapot, as it were – the volume of which is undoubtedly measured in imperial fluid ounces (8 drams, actually – yes, with a “d”), not to be confused with US fluid ounces, or otherwise “real” ounces.  Had we had a chance to sit around with a pint (that would be 4 gills) we could have covered the whole matter in about 5 minutes and half dozen chuckles.  But such is the consequence of only the written word.  Were we to get together a number of times, we could perhaps finish off an entire firkin in a fortnight, a firkin being actually only half a kilderkin.  (Not kidding, these are for real).  And I haven’t even mentioned the slug (a unit of mass).

And Dale, and others, my slight of the fluid oz by reprimanding it to the kitchen and the measurement of 2-cycle oil was a bit of tongue in cheek humor.  I have no doubt that the fluid oz is in the dictionary, but I always avoid the dictionary and the newspapers when a highly technical matter is involved.  Hey; sometimes even my wife doesn’t know when I’m teasing.

Given the choice, I’d go metric.  I’ve had a mixed past always hassling with conversion.  My undergrad mechanical engineering was in British system; but I did a minor in physics (all metric).  My graduate studies in nuclear engineering was a complete mix (mess); physics/engineering, metric/British.  In the nuclear engineering business everything in the reactor core was in metric; the rest of the plant in British units.  NASA contracts were all done in metric (Von Braun and company in Huntsville).  But I digress.

What's your schedule for completion and flight testing?

Schedule?  Ah-h-h, I thought these projects were solely for our amusement, er, education.  I didn’t know we had schedules.  But if I get untangled from the mass of wiring behind the panel, I’ll work on interior finish, and then decide to final paint – or not – and hopefully get it to the airport sometime in the fall.  Flight should occur perhaps a two to four fortnights after that.

Happy anniversary.

Thank you.

Al

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