I got a surprise e-mail from Korrey, the owner of Kolorfast yesterday. He will be painting my RV-8. Originally, it was supposed to go in for paint sometime in February. Then he said that they were behind schedule, and they wouldn’t be ready for me until March. But yesterday, he said that they were ahead of schedule, and he wondered if I could bring it in ASAP. Someone else must have cancelled at the last minute.

The sooner it goes in, the sooner it comes out, and I’d rather have it down in the winter than in the summer, so I decided to go for it. I’m taking the next two days off to do a few odds and ends that I need to do before it goes in for paint. This weekend I’ll remove the control surfaces, fairings, etc, and Tuesday AM I’ll push it a few hangars down the taxiway to their paint shop. It should be out of service for six to eight weeks. I’ll miss flying it, but it will be nice to finally get the painting done. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it looks in the Golden Hawks paint scheme. I’m hoping it looks as good as Hawk One, which is the Vintage Wings restored Canadair Sabre (a Canadian built variant of the F-86 Sabre, with a higher thrust Avro Canada Orenda engine).