USMCFLYR,

You are correct in that it is quite a project. Fuselage, tail, and horizontal stab almost complete. Working with a friend to make the axle box for the landing gear - yahoo!

I like your "rekindle the old feeling". On another forum we were discussing the first flight in a WW1 replica. Stuff like "chair flying" and visualizing going through the motions in the cockpit. That's when it hit me, ANTICIPATION. In our modern airliners the computer FMS is flying the autopilot as well as the airplane for hours on end, we have stopped anticipating that something will go wrong. Everything is so reliable (which is great for safety - bad for pilot complacency). Lets face it the WW1 pilots and the "between the wars" barnstormers knew something was going wrong and always planned on it.

So the question is how do we control the complacency? Maybe hand flying the jet from top of descent whenever we can - I don't know. I want to leave the systems operator mentality and return to the pilot mentality.

C'ya
Eagledriver