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Adventures in Moving to the Airport

Dan Langhout

Well Known Member
Saturday was a big day - time to move the plane to the airport for final assembly!

The first problem was getting the fuselage out of the garage. Turns out that the horizontal stabilizer on an RV-7 won't fit straight through a 9 foot garage door. Quite a bit of fiddling around to get the tail to go through at an angle was required to finally get it out on the driveway.

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The wrecker driver showed up right on time at 8:00. Fellow builder and neighbor David Edgemon did the honors getting the plane strapped down on the truck. This is the third one David has moved, so he has it down to a science.

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Its off to the Courtland airport (9A4).

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Once at the airport, we ran into the first of two problems. The normal access gate was broken so another, normally closed gate had been opened. Problem was that the opening was just barely wide enough for the truck to fit through! The driver had to pull his mirrors in to get clearance and the horizontal stabilizer only had a few inches on each side (it overhung the width of the truck bed a bit).

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Once at the hangar, the unloading began.

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About this time the second problem became apparent. The electrical power was off for the whole airport! (probably why the normal, power operated gate didn't work). But it also meant that my power operated bi-fold hangar door didn't work either. Fortunately, it is possible to open one of these doors with a manual chain mechanism built into the operator. It only required about 1.5 million cycles of pulling on the chain to get the door open enough to get the plane inside. We took turns at the chain to get this done. Got our workout for the day.

After a bit of a rest, it was time to put the wings on. I was lucky enough to have three folks present to help, so with four of us the wings went on easily with no drama. The frozen and anti-seize lubricated close tolerance bolts went in with just a bit of persuasion from a large dead blow hammer.

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My thanks to David Edgemon, Brian Smith, and Eric Bale for helping me out with this task. Just a few more assembly tasks and rigging and it will be time for first engine start and the AW inspection!
 
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Congratulations!!

Dan, congrats on the move.

It wont be long now;)

Good luck with the final inspection.

Did you paint it yourself in the garage??? Really nice looking paint job.
 
Yep

Dan, congrats on the move.

It wont be long now;)

Good luck with the final inspection.

Did you paint it yourself in the garage??? Really nice looking paint job.

Thanks. Yes, I did paint it myself. I converted my basement shop (it has an outside door) into a paint booth after construction was over. The plane was in the garage for assembly of the tail - which was almost a mistake as it turned out!
 
Congratulations Dan beautiful bird! It looks like you had a great workout on that moving day with airport power off. What's in there undercover? :)
 
Nice RV-7!!

Wow, Dan, Congratulations on a beautiful paint job and a very well built 7! Looking forward to reading the progress reports on the AW and then first flight!
P.S. to Vlad...I know the answer to your question but I am not permitted to tell! :eek:
 
Dan,
Beautiful looking airplane. Congratulations on the move. Shortly you will have it assembled, weighed and inspected and we ready for the big day. I look forward to your next write up as it will tell of the excitement of taking flight.

Bernie
 
I'm curious, too, Dan, about what kind of paint you used and how you managed to get such a beautiful job done at home.

Congratulations on the big move, and on such a fine job on your RV-7! :)
 
Paint (long)

I'm curious, too, Dan, about what kind of paint you used and how you managed to get such a beautiful job done at home.

Congratulations on the big move, and on such a fine job on your RV-7! :)

First - thanks to all for all the kind comments on the plane.

As for the paint details - it's PPG base/clear although it is a mix of their systems. The primer is DP40LF epoxy (from the Deltron line). Basecoat is Delfleet Evolution high solids polyurethane (FBCH) obviously from the Delfleet line. The clearcoat is DCU2002 polyurethane from the Deltron line. Normally I wouldn't cross the product lines, but due to the paint scheme color specifications from Scheme Designers, Delfleet was the only line other than PPG Aerospace paint that had direct formulas for the colors. Also, it is possible to catalyze the Delfleet to get a 72 hour recoat window which is helpful with a 4 color scheme like this one where you have to deal with multiple mask/shoot/dry/remask cycles before you clearcoat. The PPG folks assured me there was no problem using Delfleet with the other products.

I had paint masks cut from the Scheme Designers .pdf file by AeroGraphics out in Colorado. This minimized the amount of "precision" hand taping that had to be done with fine line tape although there was still a good bit of it. Quite a bit more expensive but it helped alot with the time and precision.

For a paint booth I converted my basement shop after construction was over. Basically removed everything in it up to the garage. I have a 20" industrial exhaust fan built into the front wall of the shop that exhausts outside. I was able to construct a temporary enclosure from floor to ceiling around the fan set up with 6 paint booth overspray collector filters. I also built a "plug" that fit into one of the 4' wide exterior doors set up with 6 paint booth inlet filters. The filters were purchased online from a paint booth supply house. This basically provided me with a crossflow paint booth. Performance was pretty good. I had minimal problems with dust and dirt although there was still some.

I wish I could say that I shot perfect slick paint right from the gun - but that wouldn't be quite true :rolleyes: With a base/clear paint job in particular careful cutting and buffing will give you the results you want. See Dan Horton's excellent thread on the subject here. I went a bit anal and expanded his technique into a 6 step process from the 3 step that Dan talks about. In a nutshell, 1500 grit trizac to level the surface, followed by 3000 grit and then 5000 grit. Then switch to the buffer with the cutting compound followed by the polishing compound Dan talks about. I then finished up with Ultra fine polishing compound.

Bottom line is - an huge amount of work. I have basically been painting the plane since last October and just finished a couple of weeks ago.
 
Paint (short)

Thanks, Dan. I think you have answered all my questions about painting.:rolleyes:

Folks, I can "jostle" Dan a little bit since he is one of our TVRVBG* builders.

Don


*TVRVBG = Tennessee Valley RV Builders Group...aka "Sam Buchanan's bunch."
 
Bottom line is - an huge amount of work. I have basically been painting the plane since last October and just finished a couple of weeks ago.

What Dan is saying between the lines is that he is a meticulous craftsman with a huge amount of patience. :)

A beautiful paint job like Dan's is 98% prep and finish and 2% spraying the paint! It is that 98% part that prospective painters don't realize until they have actually been through the process. Also the reason why professional jobs are so expensive. Dan's paint would be high-$$$$ if done in a paint shop.

But hey, Dan restores Corvettes. :)
 
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