Museum Day - Today was the day that we have been working toward since January. Today we hung the Phoenix on the F-14 and it looks great! (See the pictures on the web site soon).

A small group of us met at the shop in Claremore about 8:00 this morning and loaded the rocket onto Joe Grasso's trailer. We then caravanned into Tulsa using 266 to Sheridan Road and then south to Apache and into the the Spartan complex from the west. Even though the rocket was completely open and visible on the trailer, we only drew one inquisitive look along the way. We were even overtaken and passed on the highway by several folks who seemed to not even notice a full-size missile being towed on a flat-bed trailer!

Dave Towers had finished and installed the Phoenix rail/adapter onto the F-14 pylon last week and it was already bolted in place when we arrived. More Club members arrived between 9:30 and 10:00, but unfortunately no media representatives were present. At 10:00 we donned the "gloves of love" one more time and slid the Phoenix onto the mounting rail under the F-14. What a sight! The museum folks were impressed, as were we all.

Many ceremonial pictures were taken, followed by coffee and donuts and congratulations all around. Kim Jones, the museum curator, then showed all of us into one of their classrooms for a screening of Brian Littmann's launch video and Sharon's Ellis' TV interview from Amarillo. I never get tired of seeing those! Kim also expressed his gratitude to the Club for all our hard work and perseverance in bringing the project from a dream into reality. Katheryn Pennington, the Executive Director of TASM, spoke to me afterwards about the possibility of our Club getting further involved with the TASM Space Camp. She has some good ideas concerning ways that we can attract more Club members in conjunction with TASM and this is something we can explore at the next Club meeting.

T-shirts - We delivered a supply of Phoenix t-shirts to the Museum to be sold on consignment through the Museum store. Hopefully some of the young folks who see the Phoenix over the coming months will also want a t-shirt as a souvenir.

AirFest/ZooFest Day - Kim Jones also invited all TARA members to attend their upcoming joint event with the Tulsa Zoo as guests of TASM. The event will take place on Saturday, 9/14, and will feature special exhibits and speakers at the Museum as well as free admission to the zoo. If you are interested, please respond to this email with how many adult passes and how many child's passes you want (children 6 and under are free), and I will request the passes from the Museum.

Crew Pictures - Tom Savoie brought about a dozen copies of the photo of launch crew with the missile at LDRS, and we all signed the pictures. These will be framed and presented to the Corporate sponsors in the next few weeks.

Project Finances - I collected another $50 pledge this morning, so that brings us within about $25 of breaking even on the entire Phoenix project. I still have a few more pledges to follow up on, which I will do over the next few weeks.

Over and Out - The Phoenix hanging under the wing of the F-14 signals the end of Project Phoenix. Everyone who was involved should be very proud. We not only accomplished everything we set out to accomplish, we did it on time and on budget and had fun doing it. I have enjoyed (almost) every minute of the project and I feel like I learned a lot. I have particularly enjoyed working with everyone who got involved in the project and hope you also felt it was a worthwhile experience. We'll do another Club project at some point, just not real soon. :>)

Until then, I'm going to concentrate on some of my own projects for a change. Hope to see you in Argonia over Labor Day weekend or at Leonard the following weekend on 9/8.

Hal