Done Part II

Well, here she is....post paint shake-out flight...

During the paint down period I:

1) Installed the new vernier throttle and springs
2) R/R new dimpled carb floats
3) Re-did panel with carbon fiber overlay and installed new autopilot panel and sky view touch on right side
4) Did 1st oil change (figured might as well)
5) Re-checked a lot of things (angle and torque on prop, etc)
6) Ended up painting my own wheel pants as my painter got evicted and subsequently disappeared....(long story)...which went pretty good till the second coat of clear over the acryglo metallics....got a lot of orange peel....

colors are SW jetglo matterhorn white, black velvet metallic and copper gold metallic acryglo (with clear on top)

7) Updated everything to 12.2 (Van's...)

A couple of things to note with the new panels -

The auto-trim, once calibrated seemed to work pretty nicely and leveled off accurately at the selected altitude. The trim message would come on and then as it trimmed itself out, the message would go away. Not yet a Boeing or Airbus, but I am pretty impressed with the level of autopilot functionality in expert mode out of the box!

ADS-B was working fine and then stopped about 30 minutes into the flight, I re-updated the ADS-B file (although it was the same number and date as 12.0) and it seemed to work fine from then on.

I added the RV-bits fairings over the RV-8 gear leg (bar) fairings and these seem to add 3-4 KTAS (or it's my imagination, YMMV, I'm still below 120 if anyone asks....), the brake lines to do this were by TS Flightlines and they fit nicely inside the RV8 leg fairings and RV Bits attach fairings. Also did the stab tips and engraved fuel cap (2 actually since my painter lost my original one!) by Aircraft Speciality.

N-number was a custom vinyl job done copper with drop shadow white by Bruce at Nnumbers.com.

Re-weighed in at 772 after paint and all the trimmings, which wasn't too bad I thought.

After 2 hours of flying - no gas smell - finally! (I think these floats are keepers!)

Still to do:

1) Striping on wings (ran out of time....)
2) Canopy seal kit install
3) Final buffing and waxing of some of the small paint issues

Looks great, John!

Rich

Nice job John. I might even copy that paint scheme but it sounds like I won't be asking about your painter.

I notice that the Skyview on the right is a Touch. The left is not labeled as a Touch. Is the left one an upgrade to Touch and they do not add the label? If not, why haven't you swapped the screens?

JerryH said:

Nice job John. I might even copy that paint scheme but it sounds like I won't be asking about your painter.

Click to expand...

He was a good painter, but not good at business I think.

If you want the best, probably Don Copeland in Eloy, Gus in Wickenburg is closer to you.

Bill_H said:

I notice that the Skyview on the right is a Touch. The left is not labeled as a Touch. Is the left one an upgrade to Touch and they do not add the label? If not, why haven't you swapped the screens?

Click to expand...

Long story, but I had already installed the left screen and I am on the wait list for the upgrade, I figured I would follow the instructions to get it right first.

Also, some of you may have noticed that supplied black screws that Dynon supplies aren't the best, I swapped them out for hex heads from Ace (look better I think) and I removed the nut plates on the second pass, and replaced them with nylocks - an anti-theft tip I picked up from a suggestion on the theft of the AZ historical copper license plates on cars, all but the dedicated thieves might be deterred from a quick score....even if they have a hex head, they won't be able to get it off as it will start spinning with the nylock....pain for removal, but how often do you remove your Dynon screens? Also I made sure I can remove the top panel with the canopy still attached.