pstraub
Well Known Member
Well, almost a year to the day after my first flight, my RV-12 is finally painted! A huge thanks to Synergy Air, they did such a great job. Nobody will believe I built the plane, it looks too good! I flew the plane home from Eugene, OR on Friday afternoon, about a 3.5 hour flight down to my hangar at Lodi, CA. For anyone that is interested, I can highly recommend Synergy Air, the painter is just an awesome guy and super talented. BTW, I received ZERO compensation for saying this, just a super happy customer!!
As most of you probably know, Synergy Air has been building the SLSA version of the RV-12 for years (they are also a major 'builder assist' center for all Van's models). The painting was always outsourced to a local custom painter in Eugene (cars, bikes, motorhomes, etc). Last summer at Oshkosh, Vaden (Synergy owner) shared with me that they were ramping up to bring the painting in-house for better control. I was really excited about that, given their expertise in working with the RV-12. So I asked him to keep me posted since I was planning on painting my -12 in early 2018. He let me know when they were ready, so I scheduled everything and flew up there to start the process.
The entire experience was great, I stayed a few days to finalize paint scheme and colors, and also assist with taking my plane apart so I could do the stabilator and AST Service Bulletins in their shop (which allowed all the new hardware to be painted). I came back up after the painting was complete and performed my annual while everything was still apart. Kudos to Vaden and the entire Synergy team, all of them were a pleasure to work with, super professional and fun to be around. I am posting pictures, but they do not do justice to the paint job. Everything is painted, the logo, N-number, placards, checker, etc. (no vinyl)!! In a couple of the pics in their hangar, you may see the white buffing compound because he was still polishing.
As most of you probably know, Synergy Air has been building the SLSA version of the RV-12 for years (they are also a major 'builder assist' center for all Van's models). The painting was always outsourced to a local custom painter in Eugene (cars, bikes, motorhomes, etc). Last summer at Oshkosh, Vaden (Synergy owner) shared with me that they were ramping up to bring the painting in-house for better control. I was really excited about that, given their expertise in working with the RV-12. So I asked him to keep me posted since I was planning on painting my -12 in early 2018. He let me know when they were ready, so I scheduled everything and flew up there to start the process.
The entire experience was great, I stayed a few days to finalize paint scheme and colors, and also assist with taking my plane apart so I could do the stabilator and AST Service Bulletins in their shop (which allowed all the new hardware to be painted). I came back up after the painting was complete and performed my annual while everything was still apart. Kudos to Vaden and the entire Synergy team, all of them were a pleasure to work with, super professional and fun to be around. I am posting pictures, but they do not do justice to the paint job. Everything is painted, the logo, N-number, placards, checker, etc. (no vinyl)!! In a couple of the pics in their hangar, you may see the white buffing compound because he was still polishing.