Phantom Works

Posted by Roie R. Black on Thu 11 August 2016

Well, it is official now, there will be no F4 ride for me! So sad! The money is gone!

Instead I have a new shop in the back yard, almost ready to go! It was not quite supersonic, but it went up FAST! Here is the build site at 7AM on Wednesday:

Build site

And here it is at 5PM that afternoon:

Basic Shop building

The entire thing arrived on a flatbed trailer with three workers who pounded it together with little fuss.

Shop on a truck

All the parts were cut to size, and all they had to do was nail everything together.

There is no way the thing will blow away, even though it is just sitting there, on top of the grass. There are about 3 billion nails in that thing, shot in by the constant music of three nail guns firing all day long.

Here the crew is raising the walls after setting up the floor structure:

Raising the walls

And here they are starting to put up the roof:

Installing roof

Today, (Thursday), an electrician came out and ran wires through the framing so I can have power and AIR CONDITIONING! Only half of the building will be cooled, and that will be my robot/amateur radio area. The uncooled part will be for wood working, and other sweaty endeavors!

Tomorrow, the crew returns to install the side door, insulate, and panel the front half of the building. Then I get to move some of my toys in. I still need to get some electrical work done to send power and data to the building, but that will happen soon enough.

Cheryl says we need a nice walkway across the yard to the building, and that may happen after everything is finished.

What is Phantom Works?

The building's name is "Phantom Works". Since I worked at McDonnell Aircraft while in school, and McDonnell basically paid for my college education, I owe a debt to the F4 Phantom II jet I was supposed to get a ride in. Since I cannot do that, I named the building after the research group at McDonnell where new aircraft were designed. I worked with that group one term, but before they adopted that name. I suspect they stole the idea from the Lockheed "Skunk Works" Where Kelly Johnson designed cool ships like the SR-71. In any case, Boeing kept the name alive when they bought out McDonnell. The group still seems to be active in St. Louis today, and I stole the name for my workshop. I plan to hang their logo on the front of the building before it is finished!

Phantom Works logo

I have some work to do yet, moving stuff into the building. But there is sits! Nice substitute for the ride, as Cheryl reminds me! It will also last longer than the one hour ride I was going to do!. Maybe I will build a model of the F4 in the shop. It probably will not be as fast. 1600 MPH is a bit much for a model airplane!

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tags: Workshop, Hobbies