Hey Guys,

Some of you all know I've been good friends with Mike for a long time, actually it was love at first site, well I mean at my first pattern meet (Andersonville, Ga 2005) I saw the lovely Black Magic V1 prototype sitting in the pits. It was brand new, all done up in cub yellow and metallic blue trim. It was true love, I didn't know what that plane was or who owned it, I just had to have it. Well to make a long story short, I ended up becoming great friends with Mike and Melissa. I started building a V2 at the beginning of last years pattern season. Yea, I went though the ups and downs of pattern life with two midairs last year, the last one taking away from me that Black Magic prototype that Mike actually gave me after my first midair earlier in the season. Love can be tough at times. But I learned a lot about pattern, flying and competition from Mike and my other close pattern friends last year.

I was lucky enough to win a sheeted kit from Mike for my districts finish last year and Mike gave me the option of waiting a bit longer for his newest creation. It was a no brainer - I said "yes... hell yes" most likely the best decision I've made in a long time.

I've started my VF3 build last weekend, first I made a "fixture" style jig. Which like Mike says it isn't even needed because you can actually tape the fuse together, line it up on a straight line and hit it with CA. You can build the entire crutch in less than 2 hours including assembling the fuselage sides. Right now the most time consuming part of the basic fuse build is hand cutting the flooring which Mike is considering having laser cut. What is nice about my fixture jig is you can align the wing and stab tubes at the same time. Pete's jig works the same way. I also have Pete's Jig and have built a number of fuses with his setup as well, I do recommend Pete's jig to anyone.

Mike is right, this plane is so easy to build, it's freaky. I am rushing to have my secret weapon done in time for the majority of the D3 comps and Nats. To be frank about it, it's my only hope to have a good districts finish as I am up against some very great pilots in D3.

Here is a couple of shots of my build,

yea it's a VF3 BABY!

cheers all!