Hello Everybody! Despite the fact that the weather can’t decide if it wants to be fall or winter, there has been a lot of progress made on the jet this week.

First of all, though, I want to really highlight the progress that has been made on this jet. When you see it every day it’s hard for you to realize just how far it has come along. Even when you see it every weekend you often don’t realize the progress that has happened. Here is a picture from just a few weeks ago (I think 10-23-11):

And here is a picture that I was e-mailed a few days ago:

How great does that look??!! I was so excited when I saw the picture because it shows that the wing spars are together and holding as they should. I can’t wait to see this jet’s maiden flight! It’s going to be awesome.

This is what the wings look like without the fuselage on them:

As you can see, the wings were a bit chilly so Jay put its slippers on. You don’t remember what I’m talking about? These are the slippers that I showed you last week:

This week you can also see that Jay added the Points of Death!

Okay… okay… so they really aren’t the Points of Death. They are just fancy filigree things that go beside the fuselage to make it fancier looking. I think that the Warthog is hoping that it will distract people from looking at the tumors on its backside. I hate to tell it this, but it didn’t work. *sigh*

Another part of the jet that was worked on this weekend was the gun. A warthog has a gatling gun on the front of the nose that can do some serious damage. Here is the scaled-down model:

Isn’t that the cutest little gun that you’ve ever seen? Jay did a really great job on it.

The nose gear was worked on this weekend, but I don’t have a picture of the deep well that was carved into the jet. You see, this afternoon the fuselage received its layer of wood:

Do you see that little notch underneath the eyes in the front? That’s where the nose gear will be going, but I didn’t want to pick the plane up and turn it over because I would have felt guilty if I had somehow caused more work for Jay. Just take my word for it that it looks like a deep well for the nose gear to sit in.

One other thing that was worked on this week, and that I don’t have a picture of, is the APU. This stands for Auxiliary Power Unit and on a real Warthog is used to power up various systems before the actual engines are started. Here is a link to what an actual APU sounds like when it’s starting up (you will need to wait until about 36 seconds into the video) : APU Starting. Jay intends to enter this jet into a Scale contest to be judged on how accurate his scaled model is to the real thing. If he can get the APU just right it will blow away the competition. He programmed another motor that he had to sound just like the APU. I think that he’s so smart when it comes to these things! I just want to brag to everybody about how smart he is! 🙂