Last Day in Hill Country

Denisa loves factory tours, so she was excited to find a company that builds single engine airplanes in Kerrville, Texas.  She was even more excited to find out that they already were giving a tour on Friday, and they would let us come along.  So we were up early, in order to drive to the Mooney Airplane factory near the airport for the 10:00 tour.  We were joined by a group of 30 members of the US Pilots Association.  In fact, one of the pilots on the tour bought a new Mooney airplane 14 years ago from this factory.  At the end of the tour we saw a line of planes that were almost finished.

After being in the Toyota plant that produced a new pickup every minute, this tour was totally different.  They are currently producing one airplane every month, with plans to double to two planes monthly.  When we found out they had around 170 employees, it was not surprising that these little planes start out at $650,000 before options are added.

This plant literally makes each plane and each part by hand.  Considering that there are over 7,000 pieces needed to make each airplane, there is a lot of work to be done before you even start putting the pieces together.  Every metal piece of the airplane skin is formed in the factory.  Here is a hammer press that bends a flat piece of aluminum into that 3-dimensional shape you see.  This is done by a huge hammer that falls on top of the template.  It was a very loud job!

Denisa is smiling because she is standing next to a hydraulic press that made its curved piece by a much quieter hydraulic pressure process.  It's amazing that they made each piece of that airplane one piece at a time with real people (instead of robots) running the machines.  Since we were on the production floor, we all got to wear very fashionable eye protection goggles.

This table contains some of the wiring that will be used inside a single airplane.  Again, a real human being is cutting the wire and bundling it together.

Here is Mark standing beside a work-in-progress airplane cockpit.  He knows he could never afford an airplane, so he will have to settle for piloting the motorhome instead.

After a very informative factory tour, we had errands to run in the afternoon.  One of those errands included finding a very good phone repair shop in Kerrville, that replaced the camera in Mark's broken phone.  So we are back in the business of adding blog pictures!

We never know who God will bring into our lives, but we have been blessed by many new friends already.  When we were sitting in the DMV office on Monday, we struck up a conversation with a gentleman that was renewing his license.  We were surprised to see him again at the Elk's Dance on Wednesday.  He gave us his phone number, and he and his wife invited us to their home on Friday evening.  It was great fun getting to know Richard and Mary Jane, and we enjoyed the meal with them.  The picture is the deer that were also enjoying a meal in their backyard.

It has been a successful 5 days in Kerrville.  We passed our Texas driving test, we went dancing, we made new friends, and we had a great time exploring the area.  As we drove back to our home, the Texas Hill Country gave us a beautiful good-bye sunset.