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Terry and I spent the week just north of Yarmouth, Nova Scotia visiting my parents. This was our first trip back there since the car accident, over a year ago, so they were very happy to see us. At one point I had thought we might use the RV-8 for this trip, but once it became clear that it was going in for paint I decided to plan on using the airlines, as there was no way to predict when the aircraft would be flying again. I do plan to fly back to Yarmouth sometime this summer with the RV-8 though.

My dad and I visited Ron Belliveau and crew - four guys building an RV-10 in Lower East Pubnico, which is a classical NS fishing village south of Yarmouth. They have a very nice looking aircraft, and hope to have it flying in early summer.

It was really blowing this morning, with about 20 kt of wind blowing almost straight across the runway, so I gave up any thought of flying. I should eventually be capable of flying in this much crosswind, but the most I have seen so far is about 15 kt, and that was a long time ago. I am not very current in the RV-8 at the moment, so it would have been foolhardy to risk flying today.

I did work on mounting provisions for the Aera 510 GPS/XM WX device I recently bought. I got the first part of the mount made, but need to do some more work in the basement to finish it off.

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The wind finally dropped off overnight, and I was able to clear off my schedule at work this afternoon. So, I took some comp time, and left at noon to head to the airport. I replaced one of the CamLocs on the oil door on the cowling with the longer one that arrived yesterday, and fixed a fit issue with the canopy.

Then, finally, I got ready to go flying. Ron, who loaned me the scales to weigh the aircraft, took some pictures.

Here you see me getting ready to start the engine to taxi to the fuel pumps.

Doing the run-up.

On the button of the runway, ready to commit aviation.

Airborne! Shortly after liftoff.

I flew for about 35 minutes, checking out all the avionics and systems, did a quick stall and a flutter check at 200 kt. Then it was back to the airport for three touch and goes and a full stop. It was wonderful to be flying again.

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The reassembly phase took longer than I hoped, but I finally got all the bits back on this evening. Fred, an amateur photographer happened by as I was installing the wheel pants, and asked if he could take some pictures.

There are still a couple of final items to be added to the paint scheme. The missing blue “RCAF” and “Golden Hawks” text above and below the hawk’s head will be added next week, I hope.

It was way too windy for the first flight after paint on Wednesday - the wind was gusting to over 20 kt at 90 degrees to the runway. I’m sure I’ll eventually be flying in those conditions, but I’ve only worked up to about 15 kt of crosswind so far, and it has been over two months since I last flew the aircraft. My schedule is pretty packed today, but hopefully everything will come together to fly to fly on Friday.

Full size versions of these images are available at my image gallery.

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I am finally approaching the end of the reassembly process. Things definitely come apart much more easily than they go together. I’ve had to make some adjustments to the fit of a few items to accommodate the thickness of the paint. I’ve also had to add some clear protective tape to protect some paint from being scuffed. Today I reinstalled the elevators, spliced the cable that controls the electric trim, reinstalled the canopy handle and various fairings, etc.

Late this afternoon I reweighed the aircraft. I was hoping the weight gain would be less than 20 lb, but the scales claim an increase of 28 lb. But, I note that the scales are a month overdue for a recalibration, and the last time they were calibrated they were found to have drifted high by about 1.2%. Perhaps they have drifted high again. I’ll ask the scale owner to tell me when the scales have been recalibrated and I’ll weigh the aircraft again.

I’m very glad that I recently got approval for a 100 lb increase in the gross weight. The new higher empty weight won’t be a practical problem, but there will be a very small decrease in the rate of climb.

The aircraft is almost ready to fly. I need to add some paint-protection tape underneath the edge of the canopy skirt, install the wing walk no-slip area, and I need to finish reinstalling the wheel pants. I hope to get airborne some afternoon this week, assuming this nasty weather system that gave us snow all day today moves off.

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I was out at the airport this morning, reinstalling various pieces, when Lieutenant Colonel (retired) Fern Villeneuve (video biography, including several Golden Hawk formation segments), the first team lead of the Golden Hawks, arrived in his Globe Swift - he had flown to Smiths Falls to meet a friend. His friend hadn’t arrived yet, so I introduced myself, and said I’d like to show him my aircraft, without telling him why he might be interested in it. He was very happy to see the RV-8 in Golden Hawk colours, and kindly allowed me to take his picture by the aircraft.

He did comment that the wing leading edges were painted gold on my aircraft, but they were unpainted aluminum on the Golden Hawks. They had originally painted them gold, but found that the paint would be removed whenever they flew through rain. Rain drops at 450 kt hit pretty hard.

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I was quite surprised today to learn that my Golden Hawk paint scheme had made the news on the EAA site. It must have been a slow news day :)

With all the free publicity KolorFast is getting from my site, the posting on VansAirForce.net and the EAA site, Korrey should be paying me for doing this paint job, instead of me paying him.

Thanks to Ron T. for bringing this to my attention.