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ao.frog

Well Known Member
Hi folks.

Just want to share some pics with you all, because another milestone is just passed: the paintshop has just finished painting our plane!

In these treads, I showed you a few pics during the move from home to the paintshop:

wings:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=97856

and fuse:
http://www.vansairforce.com/community/showthread.php?t=100127



It's taken the paintshop a LONG time to finish (long story but they had very good and valid reasons for the delay) but finally they reached the finishline.

Here's the fuse ready to be picked up:







Soon it was loaded on the trailer and it was time for the nerve-wrecking drive to the airport:





These two guys where VERY happy to see the plane leave, because I've been on their case for several weeks now, asking them to HURRY UP!!!!!...



The owner is the one on the right, and the daily manager is the one to the left.



Here's a couple of shots taken during the 20 min drive.
(normally is a 10 min drive, but today the drive where done in sloooow motion...)







The wings has alittle special story:

A long time ago, we'd decided to use the same scheme as our first -7, but this time we wanted the colours to be mainly in green, since the plane's name is "Kermit".

At first we tried three different shades of green:




A close up:








What looked good in theory, didn't look so good in real life: the wifey and me thought there was too little difference beetween the different shades.

After a little head-scratching, the owner of the painshop suggested that we'd replace the colour of the inner stripe with golden colour, and that made a WORLD of a difference:










It's amazing that the colour of just ONE little stripe can make such a difference??

(continued)
 
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(continued)

Then it was time to install the registration; LN-AKC:






These three letters has a special story: back in Fall 2005 when I started the build, I asked three people for their approval, because all these three had to say YES, schould I be able to build an airplane:

A: myself: Alf (easy question... hehe....)
K: Kjell, my friend and co-builder
C: Cecilia, my wife

When they all agreed; I reserved the letters AKC, and now it was finally time to put them on the real airplane.

PS: the two letters LN are the national Norwegian letters, thus mandatory on all civil Norwegian planes.





Then it was time to load the wings onto the trailer.
First the left one:







Then the right one and tie it all up:










The following 20 min drive to the airport went well so I returned to pick up the wingstand, the HS and the elevators.



Once again the drive went well, so yours truly was VERY relieved when all the parts where safe in the hangar that afternoon!






At the end here: I mentioned above that we have copied our scheme from our first -7 which is looking like this:







It's become a pretty good copy, don't you think?



For the record: this scheme is NOT our own idea; we saw a US plane here on the forum in this scheme sometime in 2007 I think. I contacted the owner and asked if he'd mind if we copied his scheme. SURE! he said and so we did.

We like this scheme so much so we decided to use it once again, and once again the US builder said SURE! Thanks Steve!!! :) The scheme your wife and you made has now TWO Norwegian twins.... :)


So now, it's time to finally start the final assembly. YEAH!!!


PS: you might have noticed that there's no pics of the rudder and VS?
Well, those two parts are not quite done yet, because someone I know is working on alittle special detail on them. For now, I'll keep that as a little secret.... but I assure you; it'll look VERY cool!!!! Great tail-art!
 
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Congrats!!

Having just gone through the painting phase, I appreciate what you have achieved.

Congrats!
 
Very nice. That paint scheme is now in three different colors. I think we're up a to about 5 RV's sporting that paint scheme. I love it.
 
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