I usually like to give Jay something R/C related for Christmas, but with the wedding and house buying that was going on I just didn’t have the extra money or time to determine which new jet he wanted. I like to surprise him and keep him guessing, so I didn’t want to ask him directly. Instead, I decided to get him a gift certificate to the hobby shop so that he could at least get something there that he liked.

Last weekend, gift certificate in hand, he giddily ran up to the hobby shop. I’m sure that there were images of servos, receivers, or possibly motors running through his head. When he got home from his shopping trip (I’d had to go fight with the State Licensing bureau over the fact that it WAS my original birth certificate) I was surprised to find that he hadn’t used his gift certificate for anything that I had expected. Instead, he used it on me. My Sweetie bought me my second plane! (He says that the LT-25 is mine now, so that’s my first)

My very dearest bought a kit for a SIG Kavalier. This is a cousin to the SIG Kobra that Jay built last winter. He feels that the Kavalier will be a good second plane for me, and also it will give him something fun to build. He loves building planes from kits and it’s getting harder to find them. Most guys would prefer to buy an ARF (Almost Ready to Fly) where they might have to glue a few things together, possibly install the landing gear, put their electronics in it and then go fly. Very few guys build from scratch anymore. Jay loves to, and he’s really good at it, so he is building my plane for me.

It’s still hard to believe that this box of balsa is going to become a big plane that I will be able to fly. It’s a plane-in-a-box!

I can keep tabs on this project much better now that I actually live with Jay and can take a peek at his progress every day. And guess what?! I found a skeleton in the workshop. Okay, that was pathetic, but these are the skeletons for the wings. The ability to remain in the sky rests on this pile of balsa and glue. Isn’t it amazing?

To give you an idea of how big this plane is going to be I laid one of the wings up next to the giant ruler that Jay had sitting there. One wing by itself is 27″ long. That means that when you glue them together to create one giant wing it’s going to be twice as long!!

It looks smaller here, doesn’t it? It’s still the same length, though. I double checked. 😉

I have to decide on the color scheme for this. I am seriously tempted to do it in Miami colors since it’s my plane. I might call it Marino 13 (after Dan Marino the most awesome Miami Dolphin EVER). Since the president can have Marine 1, I can have Marino 13. Right?

Jay has managed to do more work on these wings, but I haven’t had a chance to get anymore pictures. Life has been busy! The plane isn’t the only thing that Jay has been working on, though. After he was done building my bookshelves he decided that he needed some nice new shelves, too. Aren’t they pretty??!