tempus fugit

my, how time flies when you are having fun flying!  Or, to quote a Virgil via a student of mine, tempus fugit.  

N76012 now has 25 hours on the Hobbs meter.  It has also been a year since my airworthiness certificate was signed, so I have grounded the plane until the 25 hour Rotax inspection and my annual condition inspection are done.  The 25 hr Rotax inspection is pretty much an annual/100 hr inspection according to my local Rotax specialist.  He’s going to help me do that in a few weeks.

I’m pulling the paperwork and organizing the Service Bulletins before I start unscrewing things and just doing random inspection.  In other words, I am making a checklist and to-do list before beginning work.  Stay tuned.

I also identified a new painter at Marion airport, which is only a 10 min flight from Delaware.  He’s just setting up a new business and has agreed to paint the plane sometime in December or January.  I’m learning a fair amount about the painting business in the process. 

Here’s an embarrassing rendition of a color scheme.  I’ve been carrying around a handful of these 2 view drawings for several months.  Now that I have a painter, I’m finally motivated to choose a paint scheme.  I’ve been collecting pictures of RV-12s and went through my folder.  This scheme (originally in blue/white) kept catching my eye.  I had a few minutes at work the other day and grabbed the crayon set we give to keep kids entertained in the ED and just colored it in.  With only 3 crayons to work with, you’ll have to use your imagination.  The red represents a bright candy apple red, the yellow is actually the beige of the upholstery.  Despite the crudeness of the sketch, I’m pretty pleased with it.

As part of the condition inspection, I will pull the panel and and have it covered in carbon fiber.  Get that done, re-installed and finish the inspection, then fly it over to Marion.  I will take off all the control surfaces and he will paint it. (He says in a week or so!). I then will head back and re-install all of the surfaces, re-tension the control cables, etc. and finally put in all of the carpet.  I will then sign the logbook and take her out of Phase I and into Phase II and find my first passenger!