Hello everyone,
As some of you may remember I had listed 777KB for sale for about 2 weeks and then pulled the plane from barnstormers as I am too attached to my airplane to sell, money isn't real anyways. Her second condition inspection was last month which went very well and I have been spending a lot of time with the airplane learning how to do minor corrections, fixes and preventative maintenance. Nothing needed to be replaced, we tied up and supported the oil lines better, minor things like that. The wheel pants are off as we still need to repack the wheel bearings and fix the brake line rubbing on the metal leg fairing but ive put a small cushion there until we get to that. The propeller was corroding to hell too, the shop that overhauled the prop in 2020 never put any primer on it.... wtf? Paint bubbling off all over with the leading edge looking like complete crap. One of the buds at the glider club helped me clean it off and rattle can it for now but the plan is to remove it and IRAN it next annual and get it repainted as the seals leak a bit too; but they've always done that (small grease streaks on back of prop). Random things breaking like the transponder squawking 0000, replaced the engine instrument so that the CHT reading works again, also discovered the main tank has a flop tube (but no inverted oil system).
Anyways, awhile ago something cut the bottom of the fuselage and tail in 6 inch sections; I have no idea when or how it happened. Pictured here is the rip in the fuselage but the one in the tail is similar on the horizontal stabilizer. I have it covered with some heavy duty speed tape I got from my old 145 repair station, I'm not sure what the exact PN is but its what they put on Boeing and Airbus parts. Needless to say I will have to add fabric repairs and painting to my list of skills, but Ken's documentation when building the airplane was poor and I have no idea what the paint color codes or type of paint used was. The paint appears to be rather flexible as it has not spiderwebbed in its 45 years attached to the fabric with minor cracking along parts that see a lot of movement like the side of the fuselage. From what i gather this might be an acrylic based paint like poly-tone? There are paint cracks i would like to repair and touch up to make look better, i covered the cracks on the side of the fuselage in a non-permanent clear marine silicone to try to prevent the cracking from getting worse. Hopefully if i clean the area well i will still be able to get paint to stick to it. The fabric on the airplane is Stits Polyfiber. I can watch a video and get help putting the fabric patches on the belly but how do i know what kind of paint to use and how do i blend it? I believe i remember rubbing MEK on it once and having some of the paint come off but im not 100% sure, i know brake-clean doesnt take it off unless you scrub it very hard (i assume they used the same paint for the aluminum surfaces). The pictures of the side of the fuselage/cracking are from two years ago when i bought the plane so they are obviously a lot worse now, I am too lazy to drive back there and get new pictures. The wings, empennage, vertical stabilizer ect look great, its just a few areas with minor cracking and bad cracking where the airplane gets kicked or touched a lot.
-Stephanie
As some of you may remember I had listed 777KB for sale for about 2 weeks and then pulled the plane from barnstormers as I am too attached to my airplane to sell, money isn't real anyways. Her second condition inspection was last month which went very well and I have been spending a lot of time with the airplane learning how to do minor corrections, fixes and preventative maintenance. Nothing needed to be replaced, we tied up and supported the oil lines better, minor things like that. The wheel pants are off as we still need to repack the wheel bearings and fix the brake line rubbing on the metal leg fairing but ive put a small cushion there until we get to that. The propeller was corroding to hell too, the shop that overhauled the prop in 2020 never put any primer on it.... wtf? Paint bubbling off all over with the leading edge looking like complete crap. One of the buds at the glider club helped me clean it off and rattle can it for now but the plan is to remove it and IRAN it next annual and get it repainted as the seals leak a bit too; but they've always done that (small grease streaks on back of prop). Random things breaking like the transponder squawking 0000, replaced the engine instrument so that the CHT reading works again, also discovered the main tank has a flop tube (but no inverted oil system).
Anyways, awhile ago something cut the bottom of the fuselage and tail in 6 inch sections; I have no idea when or how it happened. Pictured here is the rip in the fuselage but the one in the tail is similar on the horizontal stabilizer. I have it covered with some heavy duty speed tape I got from my old 145 repair station, I'm not sure what the exact PN is but its what they put on Boeing and Airbus parts. Needless to say I will have to add fabric repairs and painting to my list of skills, but Ken's documentation when building the airplane was poor and I have no idea what the paint color codes or type of paint used was. The paint appears to be rather flexible as it has not spiderwebbed in its 45 years attached to the fabric with minor cracking along parts that see a lot of movement like the side of the fuselage. From what i gather this might be an acrylic based paint like poly-tone? There are paint cracks i would like to repair and touch up to make look better, i covered the cracks on the side of the fuselage in a non-permanent clear marine silicone to try to prevent the cracking from getting worse. Hopefully if i clean the area well i will still be able to get paint to stick to it. The fabric on the airplane is Stits Polyfiber. I can watch a video and get help putting the fabric patches on the belly but how do i know what kind of paint to use and how do i blend it? I believe i remember rubbing MEK on it once and having some of the paint come off but im not 100% sure, i know brake-clean doesnt take it off unless you scrub it very hard (i assume they used the same paint for the aluminum surfaces). The pictures of the side of the fuselage/cracking are from two years ago when i bought the plane so they are obviously a lot worse now, I am too lazy to drive back there and get new pictures. The wings, empennage, vertical stabilizer ect look great, its just a few areas with minor cracking and bad cracking where the airplane gets kicked or touched a lot.
-Stephanie
