One Battered Chipmunk !!!! Or "First...Lance Armstrong..Now This !!!!"

Worked a deal with some of my buds here to net myself a slightly gnarled Cox Chipmunk for restoration, followed by some re-gnarling at the end of some Spiderwire!

FIRST OF ALL...THIS IS NOT AIMED AT YOU, SO DON"T EVEN START WITH ANY APOLOGIES OR SUCH !!!! THIS WAS NOT YOUR FAULT---AS EVIDENCED BY YOUR GALLANT ATTEMPTS AT ARMORING THE POOR THING FOR SHIPMENT!!! I JUST GOT TO VENT A BIT...THEN I'LL FIX THIS SUCKER !!!!!

Anyway, the postman and I arrived at my house at the same moment, and my highly-trained-model-airplane-nerd-sense immediately detected skullduggery afoot !!!!!

I'm not sure if it was his sheepish, generally guilty demeanor, the boomerang-shape of the box, or it's hemorrhaging of packing peanuts that gave it away, but I knew SOMETHING wasn't right!

Upon my challenge that he had assaulted my barely-claimed property, my gallant government-supported purveyor of packages replied that his supervisor JUST HAPPENED to be riding with him, and that I could take up the matter with him! (This is the kind of weird crap that probably made Howard Hughes start collecting his toenail clippings in matchboxes, and storing his urine in milk bottles!)

Mr. Supervisor simply brushed me off with the statement that since the package was uninsured, there was nothing that he (or I) could do...even-though they could tell that it had obviously been damaged by their own cherished organization. These two living examples of government efficiency then exited my driveway, probably to dump the rest of their troublesome cargo in a ditch somewhere (it happens here).

Damage Assessment:

Wing is bent and broken in several places.
Left stabilizer is also bent.
Elevator horn is freshly and neatly snapped.
Empenage has a nice bend to the left, to counter the rudder's correct sway to the right.

So...the plan is to slow-epoxy an arrow shaft across the underside of 'munk's wing and park a toolbox on it 'till after the Tach Race, heat-bend the bent parts back to somewhat straight status, and figure a way to re-attach the elevator horn to that shaft-like elevator center piece.











Ahhh...now I feel better !!!!!