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It Flies!

JakeLewis22

Well Known Member
The pile of parts that's been going together in my garage for the last 4 years, 9 months is officially a "flying machine". The first flight on Saturday 9/1/2012 was uneventful. The airplane flies straight and level without any need for trimming. I'd like to thank the VAF community. Many of you unknowingly contributed to the project through the search function on this site.

I have to say it's a bit surreal. How long does it take for it to sink in that the plane is flying? (Notice I didn't say finished, I know it will never be finished)

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AWESOME!!!

Jake,

CONGRATULATIONS!!!!! How awesome. Its continuing to see guys like you making their first flight that really keep us motivated!!!!

NICE PAINT JOB....fantastic!


YOL BOLSON!!!!!
 
Excellent!!!

Enjoy the fly off time so the real fun can begin!!

Congrats and good luck.
 
Congrats!!!

Congratulations on the new fledling.

Vans Hobbs meter has been getting quite a workout lately:D
 
Thanks!

Thank you for the congratulations, compliments and well wishes. As I said before, the VAF community can take some of the credit. There were countless times I came to the search function on this site unsure of how to proceed and discovered that many builders before me had encountered the same exact problem. That's the advantage of having nearly 8,000 builders ahead of you.

Since I'm passing out thank you's, I'd like to publicly thank my son Nick. About 4 years ago we had plans to go out to dinner and I had about 30 minutes to kill so I picked up the air drill and started match drilling a wing skin. When he arrived he made the mistake of saying "I'm not that hungry yet, do you need any help?" He ended up drilling and deburring about half the holes on the airplane and operating the rivet gun on almost every "shot" rivet. Thanks Nick!

SWEET!
I may steal that paint scheme; love it!
Feel free to steal it, I stole it from a red & white RV-7.

For those of you thinking about painting your own airplane:
Painting was without a doubt the most physically demanding step in the process. I didn't realize how physically demanding it was until the morning after the first day of painting when I could barely get out of bed. I also underestimated how much time and work goes into masking off a multicolor paint scheme. BUT, it was also one of the most rewarding parts of the build.
 
BEAUTIFUL job, Jake! I'm contemplating painting mine, too. I'd really like to have it done before it flies. Do you have any notes or build log online anywhere? More pics, especially of the painting process you went through? What kind of paint did you use? Base coat, clear coat?

Have fun flying, you've done such a beautiful job!
 
Awesome ! ! !

All those pictures on your picture site that you shared with me, came together very nicely!

Congratulations and have FUN :) :)
 
BEAUTIFUL job, Jake! I'm contemplating painting mine, too. I'd really like to have it done before it flies. Do you have any notes or build log online anywhere? More pics, especially of the painting process you went through? What kind of paint did you use? Base coat, clear coat?

Have fun flying, you've done such a beautiful job!

Hi Bruce,

I agree, I wanted the airplane to be finished before it flew.

I started out posting pictures to photobucket so my brother could keep track of my progress and it turned into a quasi builder log. Click on the link under my signature below. The pictures are organized by date and the painting pictures run between 2012/05/05 and 2012/07/18. If you click on the thumbnail pics they'll enlarge and you'll be able to see captions under most of the pictures.

An auto painter friend recommended I use BASF's RM Diamont base coat, clear coat. He also offered the use of a spray booth at an auto body shop on the weekends. I contacted BASF's tech line and they confirmed it would be good for an aluminum airplane and recommended the best primmer to use (EP569 Chromate Free Epoxy Primer). They also emailed me spec sheets for using Diamont on aluminum aircraft.

My friend coached me through the first few parts and then I was on my own. There were no surprises with the paint but as I said before, I underestimated the time needed for masking.

It worked out best to apply the primer Saturday morning and spray the white Saturday afternoon. I'd leave the white parts in the booth to dry overnight and start masking the 3 color pattern around 8 am on Sunday morning. The masking would take all morning and I usually wasn't spraying the gray until early afternoon. When the gray was dry (30-45 min) I'd mask it off and spray the black. Then mask off the black and spray the blue. After another 30 minutes for the blue to dry all the masking came off and I'd shoot the clear. The base colors are flat so they dry pretty quick but I found it was best to let the clear dry overnight before handling or I'd end up with finger prints. Once again I'd leave the parts in the booth overnight and pick them up Monday morning on my way to work, before the body shop opened.

After six weekends of that I was wiped out.
 
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