This is how the Panther looked the last time I gave you an update.

Are you ready to see it now?

Are you sure?

Seriously, are you ready?

Okay, so it still doesn’t look like much, but there has been a LOT of work done to this. I’ll give you a picture montage and then butt in when I feel that a little more explanation is necessary.

Progression starting with the last post update:

This is testing the fit of the nose gear on the panther to make sure that it’s going to lay flush enough for the gear door to be seamless.

In this picture you can see how the skin of the fuselage is formed by cutting balsa into strips and gluing them to the airframe. Up close it looks a lot like they were planks that were laid next to each other.

Once you have them all glued in place you then begin shaping by using a steady hand, a blade and sandpaper.

The wings are under construction, too. You can see that Jay has already cut the aileron out and he has also marked the spots for the various servos that will need to be installed on each wing.

This isn’t technically part of the Panther, but since it’s RC related I wanted to tell you this story. I keep telling Jay that he’s damn good. This proved it…

We went up to the hobby shop on Saturday because Jay needed a few more things to replenish his stock. Whenever he goes to the hobby shop he has a rough list of what he needs, and then he adds a LOT of extras to it. He literally walks around, pulls things off of the hooks, and tosses them on the counter if it catches his fancy. He doesn’t keep track of how much the stuff is adding up to because he’s too busy looking for what else he might need. The thing is that he always seems to know just how much his tab is going to add up to. This past weekend he took a bunch of cash out of his wallet, laid it down on the counter, and then picked up $10 of it and stuck it back in his pocket. The guy was adding up the total (this is very old school in that it’s all written down on a receipt and then added up with the adding machine). This is a game that Jay plays all of the time. He doesn’t keep an eye on the calculator, either. So the guy helping him out gets the total and asks Jay how much money is laying on the counter. Jay tells him and this guy’s jaw nearly breaks open as it hits the floor… Jay was within $.20 of the total! That’s including tax plus the guy took a bit of a discount off of a few things in Jay’s order. It was quite impressive! lol