Today Tim and I went to the hangar to remove
the wings. The wind was howling today. South winds in excess of 20 mph with gusts in
excess of 30 mph. We rolled the airplane
out of the hangar just so the main gear was outside on the apron. The tailcone was still inside. We put the wing rack just inside the door and
removed the left wing and put it on the rack.
Then the right wing. All went
well and we were able to get the wings off without any incident. We rolled the airplane back into the hangar
and removed the flaperons from the wings.
We removed the flaperons and put them on a
work table.
We also stacked all of the parts of the
airplane on moving pads. We left the
hangar so Tim could go back home and get ready for work this afternoon. I dropped Tim off at work and returned to the
hangar to meet Dave Wissinger. I met
with Dave and we went over the color scheme.
He made several notes and marked the wings, stabilator, flaperons and
many of the small parts with tape to indicate how it is to be painted.
The paint scheme is going to be somewhat retro. It is patterned after my Dad's 1960's Piper Comanche. It is straight lines and angles, very unlike
the sweeping curves and swooping lines of today's aircraft paint schemes. That suits me just fine. I need to do a few more things to get
everything ready for paint. I need to
assemble the wheel pants so the color stripes can be laid out on them
correctly. When they get ready to layout
the Piper color scheme on the fuselage Dave will give me a call to have me look
it over to make sure it is the way I want it.
Dave said he would start picking up portions of the airplane on Thursday
and take them to his shop for painting.
His son works with him and they think they can have the painting
completed in a couple of weeks. Since I
have not heard anything from the FAA Title Company on the status of my registration
I decided to move ahead with the paint.
Dave is going to prepare a color coupon with the red paint so I can have
Sign*A*Rama do the new N numbers.
