Nothing built today but I made some real progress anyway. After trying a few different machinists about getting some required pieces built, I found the ideal person. Pierre is a machinist, welder, mechanic, and engine guru. His background is building race cars and components for race cars. He's built some components for aircraft in the past so he doesn't shy away from that. He's got an amazing shop set up for his needs, including an engine dyno. He spent an hour with me showing me his facility and capabilities. While wandering through, something caught my eye. It was a telescoping shaft with a long splined section and a universal joint. Of course! It's a steering column and it, or something like it could be incorporated to replace the damaged torque tube and universal joint for the retract gear. The solution to my problem was lying on the table. It will end up being slightly heavier than the aluminum pieces that it's replacing, but it will be ideal for the application. If I had unlimited budget I could rebuild this plane to original specs, whatever they may be. Since I'm going to have to make some changes anyway, I'm treating these changes as further development of the airplane.

I wasn't allowed to take pictures of the shop area as there were too many race secrets lying about, but I've included a couple of pics of the dyno area.

Pierre is going to start by fabricating some new pins for the landing gear retract mechanism and then weld up some new forks for the gear itself. You know you're reached the right guy when you discover that he has sheets of 4130 in his inventory.