May 12, 2004

Krista Laursen
Director, HIAPER Project Office

By way of providing you with an update on the status of the GV modification effort, below is a picture I received from Don Henderson of Lockheed this morning. This picture shows the current status of work to modify the belly of the aircraft. As you'll see, the doubler is now in place, and I believe that Lockheed will shortly be ready to begin cutting in the two view ports in the belly of the aircraft. According to Don, the work to install the belly doubler was actually completed about two days ahead of schedule.

I spoke with Don on the phone this morning, and he provided me with a few more pieces of information that I wanted to share with each of you. First, Lockheed is still awaiting the arrival of several manufactured pieces (specifically, covers) from their subcontractor McSwain in Ohio. McSwain currently intends to deliver these latter parts to Lockheed by next week. Work to obtain final approval for the three optical view port rings is still underway and is involving personnel from both Lockheed and the FAA. I hope to receive further information on that effort from Don during our weekly Gulfstream/Lockheed/NCAR telecon tomorrow morning.

On the liquid cooling system (LCS) front, Don informed me this morning that some preliminary tests of several of the system components were carried out this week and that all components are performing to specifications. Thus, the LCS development and integration effort is currently proceeding very well and is still on schedule.

That's all the news for now. Please feel free to contact either Dick Friesen (rbf@ucar.edu) or me (krista@ucar.edu) if you have any questions on the above.