Dean,
I was impressed with your canopy when I thought you masked it by hand, then you mentioned your technique and I thought, oh man he cheated, then I was even more impressed that you figured out a way to do in five minutes what would have taken me a full evenings work. Outstanding

Broken record alert:
I just want to take a second and let all of you guys know how much I appreciate everything, from the free tech support (without the Indian accent), the helpful hints, the encouragement, all the way through the trailblazing trial and error work that keeps us hacks from suffering through it alone. We sincerely appreciate the guys that put in all the hours designing and flight testing so we have great planes to fly every year.

Arch was right, I am in very good hands up here. I can not tell you how many times during the build I completely screwed (pronounced with an F) something up just to have Mark cock his head to the side like a dog looking at a computer and say "what the hell did you do"? Then proceed to fix something I struggled with for hours in 2 short minutes.

Long but funny story:
It was a typical Sunday work session, We had sheeted all 8 wing halves and stabs the session before and were cutting out the elevators and capping leading and trailing edges. Mark had written all the measurements for cut lines on the plans and I had just about finished cutting and capping one of my stab halves. It came out pretty well and I was feeling groovy. It was getting about time to wrap it up and the second football game had ended so it was time to head home. I decided to take the stab home with me and finish it before our next session. When Mark is watching me build I am like the nerdy kid strutting around the playground with his jock big brother beside him, I fear nothing! At home it is a different story. He had given me the plan sheet and I had gone through it once so I thought how hard can it be? Well, first off, I cut through the sheeting on one side, then the other, but somehow, despite measuring four times and cutting once, I still managed to miss by a mile. I sawed my way through and looked at the trailing edge of the stab, the balsa was all jagged and the foam had a kind of V shape to it where I struggled to make the individual cuts meet in the middle. Funny, the other one didn't look like that when I did it at Mark's house. No problem. I got out the T-Bar with the 80 grit paper on it (don't laugh it seemed like a good idea at the time) I figured that a couple of light passes would true that up nicely. By the time I finished sanding the leading edge of the elevator and the trailing edge of the stab, the balsa and foam were both pretty smooth. Little did I know that they were now a completely different shape, and the combination of missing my cut line and sanding away had miraculously shrunk my stab half. I got out the tape, wood glue, and balsa strips and was ready to get back on track. I glued it all up and it didn't look bad, but something just wasn't right hmmmm. Next build session I proudly showed Mark my work. I told him I had some issues but a little sanding fixed it right up. He took one look (the look I mentioned earlier) and dropped his signature phrase. He got out the ruler and started measuring, shook his head and said "why is this stab half a quarter inch smaller than the other one? Upon further inspection we realized that it wasn't even that simple, it was 1/4 inch smaller in some places, 3/8 in others and somewhere in between in others. To make matters worse, it was completely the wrong shape, glued at an angle, and cocked out toward the root end. We live in a three dimensional world and I managed to get my stab half wrong in all three. He thought for a minute and said, OK, this is what we need to do to fix this. He put down what he was working on and grabbed an exacto knife and went to work. When the balsa dust cleared it looked better than new and he went back to working on the three airplanes he was building.

That is the kind of guy he is, and the kind of help I have gotten along the way. It all seems like such a long time and a lot of lessons ago. If I started now, it would take me about a month to thank everyone that has helped me since I started flying pattern. It is difficult to think about without getting at least a little emotional. The concept of people, often people I have never met, willingly stepping up to volunteer their assistance restores my faith in humanity. I think that is why I feel it when we lose friends in the pattern community as we seem to do every year. I feel for all those that have struggled or that we have lost. You guys are more than just guys playing with the same kind of toys I like, you are family and that means the world to me!

Thank you
Anthony