Smiles sweat and tears. Part 2.

The work is progressing despite the heat wave, we protect ourselves as best we can, we quench our thirst abundantly, we sweat, but despite all that nothing can stop Tony and Joseph. The lower part of the Radom is under the Barnum and JP can start cleaning the fiberglass plates that make up the faces of this geode.

The assembly of the upper part of the Radom is also progressing very well.

The Building Permit having been posted in the rules at the entrance to the Museum, the work of preparing the site begins immediately during the closing days and outside the part frequented by visitors, with the friendly help of LOXAM for the construction machinery site and our team of super motivated workers that even the heat wave will not prevent from moving forward for the final realization of the project.

To everyone's surprise, on Tuesday, July 26, a "fire safety instructor" from the Paris Police Prefecture showed up, accompanied by two police officers, ordering our president to stop work immediately with the argument that the Building Permit had not been instructed by his services and that if the work continues he will close the museum for good.

How to explain the feeling we had when we arrived at the museum and found our president on the verge of tears. She tries to explain to us the stress she has just undergone following the visit of the three officials who have come to threaten her with closing the museum.

We are all stunned and we immediately inform the representatives of the city who suggest that we close the museum temporarily, because we do not have the financial resources to erect palisades separating the work area and the passage of visitors to the Concorde as requested by the civil servants, a priori the ribbons and the posters "CONSTRUCTION PROHIBITED TO THE PUBLIC" seem to them insufficient.

We also ask ourselves questions, is it the role of a fire safety instructor and prefectural official to act in this way vis-à-vis our president a volunteer and entirely devoted to the operation and survival of our museum despite the harsh pandemic period that we have just experienced.

In fact, this whole story goes far beyond us, because it is only a question of territorial competences, for which everyone claims their unique competence.

The museum is located on the cadastral plot which is under the territorial jurisdiction of the town of Athis Mons, commune of Essonne, and at the same time on land belonging to Aéroport de Paris, which legally is under the territorial jurisdiction of the department Val de Marne and in addition like all the Parisian airports under the jurisdiction of the Paris Police Headquarters.

We have requested the Building Permit from the town planning department of the town of Athis Mons, which is competent to investigate this type of file and obtain all the agreements from the Essonne department, but due to the particularity of our land, the request to Val de Marne services was transmitted with a little delay, which caused this Kafkaesque situation.

If you haven't understood anything about this story like us, know that we are in France and why make things simple when you can make them complicated.

Two days later, at the police station at Orly airport, we learned that the Building Permit instruction was "within the response time" and that if we put palisades or wooden pallets (recovered at Carrefour Supermarket) in as a separation from the construction site, it will be possible to resume the visits….

With a heavy heart, we still decided to close the museum until further notice despite the many reservations that we had to cancel (for which we apologize to our visitors) and on which we counted so much to help us continue the financing of the works.

Now that the museum is closed, the team is back to work hard and it's starting to take shape.

As provided for in the Building Permit, a new parking space is made by the team.

Follows the apron, and despite the scorching temperature, our team will not stop until late in the afternoon.

The next day will be the sidewalk that will connect that of the Concorde to the Radom.

Now that the major works are finished, the race against time begins, cleaning all the triangles and repairing the elements cut out during the dismantling of the Radom.

We contact the company “Métallerie Lillette” de Guberville in SOS and without hesitating for a second, its manager accepts, despite a large construction site being finished, to carry out the work for us before the annual closure of the company.

Hats off gentlemen, three days later JP was able to recover the 5 triangular plates just before closing, ready to be reintegrated into the upper part of the Radom.

At the end of August, their reassembly will begin with the base on the site.

As soon as the concrete has dried, it is on this beautiful site that we will be able to carry out the final assembly of the Radom and thus complete the first phase of the Building Permit.

And we hope to finally be able to shed a few “tears of joy” this time around.

To be continued…