Of course, once again cherry drying season has come and gone without a helicopter and I just keep kissing those 20K contracts goodbye. It's getting really annoying, especially this year since all the growers seem to only want the light ships; R22, H300, etc. We even tried getting the 500 on but no dice, too heavy, too expensive!
Hopefully here in the next couple weeks I can get around to updating the blog. Perhaps if the guys at the factory actually see I'm ready for a canopy they'll get around to making some more??
I guess I should have bought the one they had last fall while I could but hey, at least it went on a production ship. 
On the mechanical side, the cylinders are finally done...to the tune of $3700. Ouch!
At least it's with all the right parts this time. Sal even upgraded me from the 7/16" exhaust valve to the 1/2". Next up is sending the case to Divco for machine work then buying all the bearings and fiddly bits. Mags went off to the local mag shop last week. Quite a cobbled together affair they were too. Kind of reminded me of college days rummaging through the U-pull-it yards trying to find parts to keep the old car running. After all this I sure do hope it runs purdy. 
I'm spending the week wiring a local shop's 172 panel. They had a trade going with the local interior / avionics shop to swap work but the avionics guy threw out his back. I'm hoping to trade my work in exchange for them doing my interior [crosses fingers
] Somewhere in the midst of all this I need to break down the hub so I can send that and all the rest of the metal parts out with another shop's parts to be cad plated. It's a deal I picked up working with some guys who rebuild DC-6's for the Alaskan bush. Hey, I may never be rich but at least I'll have lots of diverse experiences.
I think I may wait till next month to order the stick grips. I need to cut and drill the cyclics before I can send all the parts off to the chrome shop to be plated. On the plus side, John was good enough to show me the drawings a couple months back so I can send my swashplate guide out to be re-chromed without having to replace it. The local shop is expensive but they do work for Boeing just across the field so it's all MIL-spec.
I had a local guy do a few re-paints of my preferred paint schemes for the B2-b model for flight simulator so I guess till I get this thing flying I'll have to content myself with flying that. All the rest of you that are flying yours, just know that I am green with envy!