The project has had a few homes over the years:
I've used or built some special tools on the altitude airplane:
Workshops
The project started in a one-bedroom apartment in Menlo Park. My landlord eventually found out, but not before I'd built most of the pod frame, the tail feathers and control surfaces. And turned the bathroom into a 100degF autoclave. I tried to be nice to the downstairs neighbors by putting the vacuum pump on a pile of towels, but I'm not sure it did any good.:
Then I got a shop! 1400sqft in Menlo Park not far away from the apartment, and it had a shower, ac/heat, kitchen and washer-dryer suitable for bachelor-airplane-builder living. It was just over 42 feet in the longest dimension, which was a stroke of luck since I'd already designed a 42' wing. I got out of the apartment just before the pod structure became a "ship-in-a-bottle".
The boom/cabin/engine/tail assembly moved to the hangar in mid-Feb 2010. The wings followed in June.
Tools