Short Transport Summary:
The transport of the fuselage, wings and horizontal & vertical sections of the tail assembly to the home site is complete. No significant transport problems occurred. Congratulations to Wayne Grippin Construction & House Moving, and Swanson Trucking for excellent execution of these challenging tasks. And a hearty thanks to the many public sector folks and most private utilities for their enthusiastic and skilled support, and of course to the Denfeld family.
The Cornell Road crossing on 31 October 1998:
The fuselage transport from the Hillsboro Fair Complex staging site to the Denfeld's property near Laurel on 6 February 1999:
Road Closure Notice - Obsolete, the task has been completed
Public Viewing and Press Information - Obsolete, the task has been completed
Transport from the Denfeld's property to the home site:
On April 24th and 25th we towed the aircraft out of the low lying pond bridge area and across the length of the plum orchard. It then waited at the border between the Denfeld's property and mine, on the west end of the Denfeld's plum orchard. We also cut and groomed a path through my fir forest up to my home site, and repositioned the mobile home and the freight vans to clear the home site in preparation for the arrival of the aircraft (one freight van had to be moved twice due to a planning error). One walnut tree was moved, another cut down (the stump was then grafted for possibly eventual recovery), and a power pole was removed, to be repositioned later. The final move of the fuselage to my home site had to wait about a month for favorable weekend weather conditions and resource scheduling, (balanced against pressures to release resources such as the house moving dollies, a flatbed truck, and my neighbors equipment and property).
We didn't reattached any of the tail components to the aircraft on the Denfeld's pond site or plum orchard site, where crane logistics were more favorable, due to replacement bracket acquisition delays and personal time and resource limitations.