Last Thursday, May 1st, my friend Sean Thomas (RV7A fuse) and I dropped off the plane to Grady O'Neal at GLO Custom. GLO is located right on the airport at 52F (Northwest Regional Airport) in Roanoke, TX (just outside Dallas). Also home to Doug Reeves's VAF and the "Van Cave". As we flew in, we passed right over the Texas motor speedway where we will be watching the Red Bull air races in Sept.
Grady has a nice setup with two adjoining hangars. One is used for assembly/disassembly/etc, while the other is the paint hangar. He tries to average about 2 planes a month throughout the year, which he does by staggering planes. The RV12 you see was in its final stages as mine came online. With this setup, Grady said he is closing in on his 200th RV painted! Nice history there, definitely the most active RV paint shop I know of.
The flight down, the first outside of my test area, was absolutely picture perfect. We departed Broomfield, CO at just about 6:30am with full (standard) fuel...no need for the aux tanks on this one. The air was as smooth as glass and we had a nice 25-35 kts tailwind the entire trip. OAT was a nice crisp 32 degs and the sun was shining brightly through that glorious tip-up canopy keeping everything but our feet warm (the heater fixed that). A beautiful thing.
There is a lot of hub-bub about joining the 200kts club on VAF...admission is achieved by clocking a 200kts groundspeed (GS) in your RV. For these airplanes, it really should be 250kts to be truly impressive. I joined the "club" on my very first "real" flight as we touched 200kts GS a couple times. Sure enough, my Delorme tracker verified us at 231mph at one checkpoint. Not too bad considering I wasn't even pushing the airplane hard...2450rpm, 8.2 gph, 65% power. I could've easily pushed that up and achieved a faster speed, and fuel flow, but didn't since the airplane seemed to be in a nice sweet spot at those settings. It was pretty damn glorious as we touched down in Dallas just about 3 hrs after we left Colorado. Definitely a magic carpet.
Sean hand flew most of the trip. I kept telling him, I have a fancy autopilot we can turn on, but he enjoyed getting the stick time. I know the feeling brother.
We talked with Grady and Brandon (real nice guys) for about an hour or two...going over the airplane, talking about the painting process, etc. Grady had to depart for another meeting (we laughed that his "meeting" was probably some honey-do's for the wife), so Brandon drove us over to the famous "Hard Eight" BBQ joint. We stopped by the Van Cave on the way out to see if Doug Reeves was around...no joy. Oh well, next time...onward to the grub, everyone raves about this place, so I was excited to give it a whirl. They were not wrong, the food was awfully damn good! I will be back, as I'm now a fan.
We jumped on an aluminum tube later that afternoon and were back in Denver in no time (although, with airport security and waiting around...it was quicker in the RV!). All in all, we spent about 5 hrs in the air...that, my friends, is a good day anyday! In about one month, Sheryl and I will do the trip in reverse to pick the girl up with some color. Grady said he would send some progress pics...but not the completed plane. That, he says, he likes to save as a surprise for the big day! I'm a fan and cannot wait!
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