Good morning, all. After visiting the link at Ron's site, I was very happy to discover this list, and even happier after reading many of the posts in the Web archive. It's good to see a more specific Fly Baby discussion than the general wash of rec.aviation.homebuilt, although that's a pretty good resource, too. It looks like some here are tackling exactly the sorts of construction challenges that I'm looking at. (The tailwheel spring deal is very interesting to me at the moment, and I'm going to want to go over that again.) My Fly Baby is currently in the garage in several large pieces. Well...mostly. The right wing is in my studio on sawhorses so I can work on details where it's warm. There's a brief note on my airplane at Ron's site, which explains a bit about its history. The short story is that it's been in construction since 1969, and has never even been covered. My appointed place in the universe is to complete the build and fly it. I brought it home from Indianapolis on a truck last August. All major airframe bits are virtually complete, with the most notable exception being the landing gear. The fuselage belly stringers aren't in yet. I need to make an aileron hinge. Elevator control details aren't done. No instruments, fuel tank, rudder pedals, and I've yet to acquire all the wires. I'll very likely buy the landing gear axle assembly and steel fitting bits from the Replicraft catalog. I've glued up a landing gear vee with spruce and T-88, which was an interesting experiment in something I've never done before, but it's not right and I'm going to start it again. (That whole saga could be the subject of a rant on a particular local materials supplier/A&P with whom I'll never work again, but I'll let it go to say that I probably should have simply ordered the wood from Aircraft Spruce and saved myself eight weeks of waiting for him to put together an order that, in the end, didn't meet the specs.) The engine is its own matter, of course. I have this Franklin 65hp. sitting here that virtually everyone is saying should either be straight-up junked or polished for display on a museum stand, but I can't quite give it up just yet. Once that issue is settled one way or another, I'll need a prop. Maybe you can see where I'm at... which is just about far enough along that I understand there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I still have a fair bit of puzzle-piecing ahead of me, and I'm at the point where family & friends have stopped asking when it'll fly. "When it's finished," I've told 'em over & over, and they're starting to get it now. As for me, I'm completely gripped in what can only be described as "The Fly Baby Mystique". I dream about flying this machine, with a clarity that will only ever be surpassed at the moment when the wheels lift off the runway. For a 48-hour student pilot who logged his first-ever hour in a Bellanca Citabria, that's saying something. That's a great airplane, but I'm talking about the low-wing open-pit wood-&-fabric throwback which is the object of our mad affections, here. I fully expect it to be the finest day of my life, when I lift it off. Nobody on the field, no matter what they fly, will hold a candle to what I'll have going on, on that day. Okay, that's it & me. The only other thing I have to say right now is that I do have a 3-D AutoCAD drawing underway, as alluded on Ron's Website. As it lays right now, it's just the fuselage box trussing, with dimensions on their own layers, etc. Anyone who would like to see it and work on it is welcome to it. Just e-mail, and I'll send it right along. (Dave: I've read here about how busy you are, or I would have sent it to you.) That's it, then. I'm happy to have found this list. Billy VRWC Fronteer http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/promise.html