If you didn't left in time, you would need to change nick to "slow motion".

Wow Jeff, that sounds really interesting, you must see the craziest stuff.

So couple of airplane questions.

How much variation is there between airplanes? For example two 737-800 produced one after the other for AA that should have the exact configuration, do they weight the same within 100#, or is it closer? What about golden rivets, are they all with 1/8" of each other across all planes?

Lastly, reading your post, do you have the best corner balanced 911 in the Northwest? :)

Between you and Captain Ahab, I could read about planes and F1 all day long.

I honestly couldn't tell you about the variation in as-built weights, Neil. I've never paid much attention to that. We get a report that says how much fuel is still on board, what seating configuration is in it, which engines are on it, and stuff like that. We then take the listed weight for that tail number as delivered (we weigh them in our paint hangars) and calculate weight and cg from there to determine our jacking loads. I don't think I've ever worked on two different aircraft of the exact same configuration for the same customer, so I've never had an "Aha - this one is different" kind of moment. They are all markedly different from our perspective.

The golden rivets are surprisingly good. We obviously can't "adjust" station and buttline very readily, but waterline is easily adjusted with jacking loads. I shoot for maintaining +/- .030" from nominal across the whole airframe during tear down and reassembly.

And yes, I do perform my own alignment and corner balance on my 911. Piece of cake after doing it on a 747... ;)