I had an interesting thing happen today. I met a colleague from the Oregon division of my company. He's in town working on a big quote with some of the other applications engineers. Anyway, it turns out that this fellow, Jason, just recently finished his RV-6A after an eight year build and took his first flight a week or so ago. Way to go!!!

After work I invited Jason up to the shop. He was very gracious about not gasping at the mess in the shop and was very complimentary about the project. I've gotta say, I don't think I will be as emotionally even-keeled as he is after my first flight.

After showing Jason the project and grabbing some dinner, I did another hour and a half of polishing tonight. Of the area I had ground down with the black componund on Monday, I was able to polish about 1/4 of that with the green compound tonight.

It occurred to me that I could do a calculation of how long this is taking. By dividing the area I got done by the time I spent polishing tonight, I figure I'm able to polish about 1/2 sq. in. per minute overall. Since the firewall is roughly 40" x 28", I'm going to have about 37 hours polishing just the main part of the firewall. That's not including the firewall recess or the heater box. Actually it's going to be worse than that. If you include a derating for efficiency...say 80% by the time you account for learning curve, changing wheels, etc. I'll probably have around 45 or 50 hours. Sigh.