June 2019 – I am happily building along, and making great progress on the plane. My good friend, Ted, calls me and tells me he’s got a line on a Velocity and he’s ready to buy it. He just had to go out and look at it.
In order for Ted to get financed, he needs to sell the RV-7A, N662FF (#72102). This is the first plane I started and sold to him in 2010. He finished it up in 2013 and has been flying since. Ted was giving me first right of refusal on the plane.
I thought about it and mulled over the pros and cons and we negotiated a price. So on June 25, 2019, we wrapped up the transaction and I am now the official owner of my first plane…again.
I now have a lot of things to do on the plane. Don’t get me wrong on this next part, Ted is a very sound engineer and competent builder. He just never focused all that much on aesthetics. Enter Scott.
So this site will now become dedicated to my upgrades of #72012 and all that jazz. First things first, updating my tail number. I had N254AZ reserved when I made the decision to start building again.
The process is easy enough, take your reserved tail number (or pick one), fill out your paperwork, get the FAA to assign it, and take all that to your local FSDO to get a new airworthiness certificate issued. All in all, the process wasn’t too bad.
So here is what she looks like on the day I closed the loan.
So after I closed on the loan and everything was official, now is when I really had to figure out where to start on getting things rolling. Ted was like, “You should go fly and enjoy your plane for a while.” I wanted to tear into this massive project and get things to where I am happy with how things look and how they fly.
I had a pretty long list in mind and it looked something like this:
– Finish fiberglass ALL around. None of the fiberglass was done. This included some paint work.
– Install fairings and prime those.
– Fix the cowling. It honestly was looking pretty harsh.
– Gear legs. Re-install the stock gear legs.
– Replace the instrument panel.
– Remove custom fuel-injection system.
– Relocate the ELT.
– Install NAV/Strobe lighting.
– Fix ALL of the unfinished items, canopy, canopy transition, skirts, cowling, etc.
– Get this plane painted.
– Get an interior installed.
-Update fuel valve.
