I think we're now the resident experts at FFZ with the most amount of airplane in a single confined space. Or better yet, as someone short on words but deep in thought said when he drove by, "That's 12 pounds of crap in a 8 pound sack, guys!"
Pooner's tape died of fright when it saw the project ahead. All went well staging the beast into the hangar bay, and as Matt noted the disassembly of nose cone and tail commenced. Nose is fastened to the fuselage by what appeared to be 1,000 small bolts. Manual hinted at 40 plus; we suspect there's another 20 or so put in for good measure. Maybe Lockheed paid engineers a bonus to incorporate extra hardware into their design drawings?
We were assured by former operators that dropping the tail and pulling the tank would no adversely affect CG to the tail section. Ah, but it does. I think we found another corporate sponsor - Werner - the firm that makes fibreglass ladders. Had it not been for the placement of the four foot ladder toward the nose bulkhead and a crew member jumping into the back of the fuselage, we'd have had 'Poon on the floor and thru the roof. And that would not have been pretty...
We discovered in the middle of the project the Harpoon has tapered hips. For many months the collective thought was the widest length of our beast was measured from spar tip to spar tip, leading edge. Our measurements showed 19' 8" from this area. We knew we had 20' to work with beam to beam in the hangar. Yup, call us overly confident until we discovered the ever so slight taper to the back of the center section - 20' 3 inches.... insert naughty word here times 100....
Not quite easy to jiggle and wiggle 14,500 +/- pounds of plane into a tight spot. Boeing employee Greg Sisson is credited with saving the day with his suggestion to stagger the beast slightly, close a door, remove a door from the bottom track, slide a door, and ultimately, in she went.
This weekend, Pooner crew will drill more than a few rivets and remove a trailing edge wing panel and a rib. Then a little repositioning and she'll slide back another foot or so into the barn and door movement will be back to normal.
Wow! More than a few gray hairs produced over that one. Thanks to the collective efforts of Matt Gunsch, Gary Hilton, Greg Sisson, Larry and Nathan Welty, Stevie Glenba, Merle Shawver, J.W. Moore, Scott Thompson, Dave Klingensmith and countless other who dropped in and out to push, offer words of encouragement and a plate of cookies - we did it!
Now, just what to do with a much modified C-119 fuel cell - appx. 850 gallons or so - that appeared when the Poon pooped her magical egg? We decided against using it as a ferry tank, but other suggestions included a boat, a submarine, survival shelter or gun range target. Still smells of malthion, so if anyone wanted to store sweaters or wool clothing it it I can personally warranty against moth or bug damage for the next 100 years!
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