Now that I had a new sticker that matched the log book, the inspection of the liner began in ernest. In approximately two hours the inspection of the liner with it's two riders was over. Both Don and Hartmut passed the familiarity test and their ability to exit the liner below the time requirement. Don's fire suit snagged on the Halon 13 shut off lever, one of the scrutineers wanted the lever turned so it was more out of the road. When Hartmut made his exit, which was more like someone being shot out of a cannon, he took the skid co2 lever with him. I must have made some remark to Hartmut that it was o.k. that I had heard that he brakes his Vincent all the time and in lieu of that I brought a spare lever assembly. Anyway he gave me a thumbs up the German way, not using his thumb again. We were truly starting to get along well, I thought. The next discrepancy found was that I forgot to drill drain holes in the new belly pan that I had built. I knew of the rule book requirement for the holes, it was just an oversight on my part. The next thing that came under scrutiny was the very nicely done helmet retaining bucket. One of the scrutineers thought I used too soft a foam. One other pointed out that the material used to cover the foam did not have a sticker stating that it was fire proof. I pointed out in my old log book that the four previous times the liner was brought to the salt for tech, tech officials always made a comment about the padding. There was always something that they didn't like. One stated the foam was too hard, one stated that the foam should be held in place with duck tape, which I pointed out goes off like gasoline when a match is put to it. Anyway I got the car scrutineer over to the side and pointed out how ludicrous all of this was and stated that "rules are only made to aid common sense" I handed him a Black Lightning T-shirt. He signed off the helmet bucket portion of the check list with another comment that I was to do something about this before the next meet. Go figure.

The next thing was the parachutes. In the entire history of the parachute deployment system, and I'm talking about liner number one to liner number six, all of which had the same system and never failed. When asked to deploy the chutes "surprise, surprise." The high speed chute left the cannon only about two feet. should have been about 15 feet. The low speed didn't even get all the way out the barrel. What had happened was that when I gave the job to load the shotgun shells with hot glue, I didn't make myself clear enough. When the glue is being placed in the shell casings you have to go slow, giving the glue dwell time to enter the cavity really hot-- so it bonds itself properly to the casings sides. If the glue is too cold the wad does not provide the back pressure to get the powder to burn. The only thing that went off when the trigger was pulled was the shotgun shells cap, not the powder.

We had our scrutineers discrepancy list, so it was back to the pits. Mike loaded up some good shotgun shells and the chutes were repacked. The Halon 13 lever was turned out of the road. The co2 lever was replaced with a spare, and four holes were drilled in the belly pan. That taken care of, I drove back to the tech tent to get a scrutineer to sign off the remaining items. It was closed down by this time, as it was about 7 p.m. The scrutineers were all having a beer and were not excited at all about going to my pit and checking off the remaining discrepancies. I knew that if I didn't get them signed off that day I would have to get back in line the next day. It's amazing what a couple of Black Lightning T-shirts can do. A couple of the tech people volunteered after putting their newlyy acquired Black Lightning T-shirts into their pick ups. Then they witnessed the chute deployment. They came out about 15 feet this time. They signed off on all the items, so I was set for the next day. All I had to do was to show the T-shirt lady my paper work and she would in turn give me my packet, which included a sticker that is placed on the nose of the liner. That Makes you a legal contender and participant of the meet.

We were all pretty tired so we secured the pit area for the evening and headed off the salt to our digs. When we reached the asphalt exit road, we were stopped by the very two people that had signed off the last discrepencies on the liner. They were now clad in Black Lightning T-shirts. The spokesman of the group approached the driver's side of my pickup, beer in hand and said that we were to turn over any alcoholic beverages that we had for safety reasons. Sounds logical to me.