all right matt you worked this is your first fictional aerial vehicle is that correct correct
i'm off camera you were telling me some of the stuff you saw looking at this back
aesthetic panel and i wanted to talk about that sure sure what was it like well i mean like i have
dug through bins at ajax uh uh electronics down in la and pulled parts out to aestheticize stuff
you recognize some stuff here yeah i recognize actually a lot of stuff on it and
and uh most maintenance people if you took a look at that would go hey okay that's what that is
these are plastic caps for uh plugging hydraulic lines right these are actually uh this is the same
thing that's inside this tube to seal the tube and these particular ones these 90 degree ones
you know we used to look for those really they're they're really expensive those little pieces right
just this little piece just that little piece because you do something at an angle you do a
straight one that's really easy but the expensive ones are hard to make and so they charge a lot
more of them and then we've got the lock nuts here we've got nut plates all over the place
these are fabric fasteners that to clip on liners in the ceiling well you know i know
the lights the original lightsaber is a graflax splash handle and i know that some of the old
camera people are a little pissed off about it because it's raised the price on their antique
camera equipment because it's also a film prop i mean are you seeing stuff here that
like would have been really expensive if you needed to find it some of that yeah and then
some of the things that we see like these these fuel these are fuel screens right here yeah
and so finding those now i mean these are the same things that they're that are used on warbirds
and they're really hard to find um and yet this was like pulled out of something
of but this was built you know 20 years ago when they weren't so hard yeah yeah how is it working
on a fictional vehicle as opposed to a real one is there is there some cognitive dissonance when you
first start sure yeah but actually it's a project that needs to go from start to finish and and not
miss anything along the way just like if i was going to do an annual on an airplane or a jet
inspect an engine do any kind of overhaul it's the same kind of mentality that just going through the
project so it is very similar it's very similar um now you your team you guys have to hang this thing
yes absolutely and it wasn't built to hang no it was actually built to sit on the ground this is
it's gravity-wise right this is built to do it this way not this way so what are some of the
challenges in getting it up into the air well first of all we had to uh we looked at each one
of these pieces and each one of these sections has three lift points and that was just each wing each
engine each engine fuselage has two two larger ones and then again three and three over here wow
and so those were really each piece of those pieces weighs about a thousand pounds so mostly
they're only getting about 353 pounds apiece on them so that's not a lot of load on that but we
are you guys aren't going to do 14 pick points we're not going to do 14 pit points we're only
going to do seven pick points we we wanted to get it down to five but then we thought you know what
we just need to have some insurance in there so we added two back in in the seven peg points you're
still distributing the loads out on the wings and the engines to sort of balance it out yeah
we're we built a rigging fixture that goes internally into this and so the rigging fixture is
designed to not be visible except for two small uh points that stick out where we're gonna attach our
fittings right and that rigging fixture we want as best as possible to not change the structure
of course so we've gone in and built this rigging fixture so it's sandwiches around each joint
and then spreads the load across the beam inside there and picks it up from the bottom rather than
lifting it from the top oh interesting i see nice and and that is what we found that on all of these
hoist points out there there all the plates are on the top right and we need that extra
added insurance of course and so uh that distributes the weight out and it ends up being
primarily the weight gets picked in the middle and then the two outer points on each wing carry half
the weight of the the wing itself and am i right it's not just going to hang flat it's probably
going to hang in some dynamic way well we're going to try to put a tilt and a nose down to it
and but we're still determining exactly what the angle that we're going to get because we
have to think about what structure we have in the ceiling to support it uh you know if they're going
to have to put more steel in there yeah and what kind of room do we have with all of the things
that are up in the ceiling and we have to have a minimum distance above the ground above the floor
uh so that the tallest person in the world can't jump it touch it right right you have something
so we have to maintain that now i know that uh uh lucasfilm uh the disney supplied you guys
with documentation about how this goes together etc are you also building documentation about
your modifications to give back to them when this eventually goes back to them absolutely and we're
doing it for whoever comes down the road right because sooner or later this thing's gonna have
to come back off the ceiling right and uh you know i might not be here at that time so we're building
that uh a disassembly and assembly and disassembly plan amazing and uh so that when it goes downtown
we can teach we're not the ones that actually put it together right we have uh contractors put
it together downtown and they come out and work with us and look at it and see how it comes apart
and then when we go down there we stand by and advise them as they're putting it together right
so there must be some cases in which lucasfilm's documentation wasn't 100 correct and maybe you
guys are also modifying some of that well also we are modified rigging stuff yeah that's not
in their document so that's that's all us and we have to make the documentation for that and
the plans for that and throw that into the system so have you am i correct in assuming
that someone had to crawl inside this and do some welding in some very close quarters inside
yeah actually uh we've had two two or three people do it we've had uh one of our other
people bridget and heather uh are the ones that have been crawling inside doing all the assembling
they're they've been the ones installing this rigging fixture because they fit i don't right
well i do but it just you know it's painful and uh we've had kenny our welder and megan our fab
the two fabricators uh have come in and made this stuff they i drew up a plan for the uh for lifting
it and the fabricators just went in and took that plan put the numbers to it put it on the cutting
machine right and came out with beautiful pieces that go inside there and went together really easy
amazing yeah so yeah we we have quite a bit of people that is thrilling um i cannot wait to see
it in the air it's such a beautiful object well we we've done one test pick yeah we're waiting on
some hardware to do another test pick and during that test pick it was impressive to see it and we
only had half the nose down we had almost all the tilt we just don't have the space here because of
the the size of the guns we had it down to the gun was just about an inch above the floor now
i know that in the star wars universe there are no like phillips head screws right things like that
have you guys in the pic points like come up with any futuristic hardware or something like
that right at that pit point are you just using what's uh what's efficacious well
we're using what we normally would use on on any aircraft here we're using jurgen's rings and and
bolting them on there and those are certified so when we put those on
there we've got a certification that says it's been tested yeah uh to twice its strength and
and so those work they swivel uh to to get into the angle and the rotation on it so
that helps us a lot so in that respect we have to look more at the safety side of it rather than the
aesthetic side of course but we try to minimize it as much as possible so that they're not noticeable
so that there's a the illusion is there right that's awesome thank you so much amazing