It was a cold and windy morning, but we got the race number decals applied to the fuselage and underside of the wings without too much swearing. We then wandered down to hangar 21 where Verne and the other race mechanics were conducting the mandatory airplane inspections. There was a line of planes building up, waiting their turn.Below are Kelly and Erin, Classic 7, working on their Beechcraft Debonair; and Cynthia and Mary, Classic 25, working on their Cessna 172M.
I called my friend Ian Critchley, who lives in Boulder. The last time I saw him was when I visited Boulder for the 99s Convention a couple years ago, and so it was great to hear that he had the time to pop over to Centennial despite the short notice. Mary and I headed over to the restaurant at the Denver Jet Center for lunch, then she headed off to do a girl scout event while I caught up with Ian.
We headed back over to the airplane around 230pm for our own airplane inspection. Mary taxied the plane over and conducted the static runup check; then the mechanics took off the cowling and looked through their checklist of items to make sure we had not performed any sneaky or race-illegal modifications on the plane. It seemed to go much faster than last year! The one bummer was that it turns out that since our black race numbers were stuck on over the brown and orange fuselage stripes, there was not sufficient contrast and we really should have got ones with a 3 inch white outline. I was kicking myself for not having thought of this when I ordered them, but we were certainly not the only team in the same predicament. Fortunately Terry Carbonell had the forethought to bring a roll of white contact paper for just such a contingency, and we were able to cut out and stick on forms to provide the required contrast. However I don't think either of us are going to be winning prizes for arts and crafts any time soon - our work might look OK from 200 feet below, but does not stand up to close inspection!
