A Trip To Glo

It's two and a half hours from Dewitt Spain to Northwest Regional airport near Fort Worth, Texas. This is where I accompanied Bill Snapp a few weeks ago to drop off his RV-8A for its paint job. This morning, Bill and I ferried him back to pick up the finished product. Nice morning for flying - not a ripple in the air. Grady at Glo Paint did a nice job. We took a few air-to-air photos on the way back.

Checking Out SPOT

I couldn't resist ordering a SPOT (satellite personal tracker) after seeing it on Doug Reeves' website. This little gizmo sits up on the glareshield of Juliet Charlie and tracks our progress by GPS coordinates. It will send a signal which causes an email or text message (or both, if you prefer) to any number of people or mobile phones that you designate when you set up your account ($99 per year plus 49.95 for the optional tracking function). In addition, it has a "911" function which will summon emergency help and a "help" function which will send a predetermined message to another designated list of recipients.

So I flew my daughter, Rachel to Tuscaloosa today and dropped her off at Bama Air to visit with some old friends for a couple of days. When I got back, I checked out my message page to show the track that I had sent via SPOT.

The Garmin 396 also got a workout, helping me navigate around some scattered thunderstorms.

Tomorrow I'm ferrying my friend, Bill Snapp to 52F (near Dallas) to pick up his newly painted RV-8A.

Banging away at the canopy frame

The RV-7 project is going sooooo slowly. I understand that the canopy is probably the toughest part of the whole project, but it's agonizing how you have to massage everything to get the thing to fit. It seems I'm having better luck with it than some though. I was reading on Doug Reeves' forum this morning and came across a post which made me feel real compassion for one of my fellow builders. Here's a quote from his post....

All I've learned is that there is a significant difference in the first weldment and the second one. I've about got it finished and it looks much much better but the rear skin is probably 1/16" high. I'm gonna go back out in the garage after supper and finish riveting the last of the canopy re-inforceing kit. Please pray for me....

I respect these guys so much. No one who has not built an airplane knows how much effort, stamina and dedication this takes. I'm impressed if you have done this. You're my kind of guy.

My neighbors, Steve and Barney finished their rebuild of Barney's RV-3. Here is the one-day camo paint job they did on it this weekend. Looks good for what it is. They're thinking about a shark's head on the front.

I gave an RV ride to Bud Smith, an RV-8 builder from Palm Beach, FL. He's in town with his daughter who is visiting Rhodes college. It's great to talk with builders who are half way through their projects. I hope the ride gave Bud some motivation. He seemed to enjoy it. I don't think he had ever been upside down in an airplane before.

The Spezio Tuholer

My friend and neighbor, Steve Price, brought his Spezio Tuholer to Dewitt Spain after losing his hangar at West Memphis. He let me fly it after about two minutes of ground instruction. This is a sweet little airplane. Too bad he's selling it. I would buy it myself if I had any hangar space left to store it in.