Sept. 6-8 Roche Harbor / San Juan Island, WA

I flew up to Roche Harbor for a family vacation with my brother and sister. The trip up was fast! I had 30 - 40 kt tail winds most of the way. The RV14 is a great traveling machine. 

Heading north at 12,000' with 35 kt tail wind component! Over 200 kts ground speed.

Fires in Willamette Oregon area.

Unfortunately, this was all I got to see of the Olympic Range.

Kayaking Neil Bay, San Juan Island

On the ground at Roche Harbor Airport with my brother, Phil and Bec

 High Sierra Fly In

10/14/2023

The Sacramento RV14 group flew to Dead Cow lakebed airstrip in Nevada to view the solar eclipse and watch the bush plane STOL races at the High Sierra Fly In. We flew out at daybreak. After landing we taped up all the openings on the airplanes to keep out the fine alkaline dust that blows across the lake bed. 

It was overcast with some breaks in the clouds so we were able to catch some glimpses of the eclipse. The maximum eclipse happened around 9:20am. The STOL races were fun to watch. Those pilots are pretty skilled.

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Hours: 5

Finished up reassembly of the airplane. I applied HDMW tape around the bottom of the gear legs and foam sealant tape around the top of the gear legs and then attached the gear leg fairings. Hopefully that will minimize paint wear on those moving parts.

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Hours: 6

Today we hung the elevators and rudder and rewired the rudder nav/strobe light. We also attached the landing gear fairings, wing tips and wing/fuselage fairings.

 

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Hours: 6

After letting the paint cure over the weekend, I began reassembling the airplane. I applied new felt under the wing trailing edge flap area to prevent chafing when the flaps are retracted. Then I attached the ailerons and flaps. The painters were still touching up various areas so I wasn't able to get much more done today.

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The red paint was completed and today the paint shop is applying the top clear coat. Almost done!

 

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Since the last visit to the paint shop the gray highlights were painted and work continued on building up the red areas.

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Masking for the red areas was completed and the first tack coat of red was shot.

 

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Next up the paint shop spent the day masking for the red areas of the design. Lots of taping was required because all the red areas are lined with a black pin stripe.

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The paint shop finished applying the stencils and began painting the black areas of the design.

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Evoke cut a set of full size vinyl stencils from the CAD files that Kracon will use for masking the paint. Evoke shipped 2 large rolls of vinyl with the stencils nested on the sheets. The various parts of the design had to be identified and separated from the rolls and then carefully laid out on the airplane. It's tricky to get them aligned top to bottom and left to right. The nice thing about using vinyl stencils is that all the curves and lettering come out perfect. You can sight along the curves and not see any waves or wobbles. The painters weren't sure if the stencils actually saved any time vs tape layout, but the results are very smooth. And there were still areas that had to be laid out using tape, such as the leading edges and the top and bottom of the fuselage.

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The paint shop applied the base white and pearlescent coats to the airplane yesterday. The paint will have to cure for a day before they can start masking for the colors.

 

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Over the last couple days the paint shop acid etched and alodined the airframe. Then they applied an epoxy primer.

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All the fiberglass parts were sanded and any remaining pinholes were filled. The honeycomb sandwich pattern is no longer visible.

Kracon also touched up the fiberglass flying surface tips and did some minor body work to smooth out the various hanger rash dings and dents the airframe had accumulated. They use a high tech aerospace lightweight filling compound that binds well to aluminum and is compatible with aircraft paint systems.