I’ve had several requests for details on the paint colours used on my Golden Hawk paint scheme.

The gold on the original Golden Hawks wasn’t paint - it was Sheffield Luxor Pale Gold powder from the Sheffield Bronze company mixed in clear lacquer - One pound three ounces of powder per Imperial Gallon of lacquer. The gold powder was dissolved in cellulose nitrate thinner before mixing with the lacquer. Three coats were used. The white on the original Golden Hawks was Dupont Dulux White - DU246-1497. The red was Dupont Dulux Red - DU93-2622R. The blue for some lettering was Dupont Dulux Blue - DU93-24160. All the original paint info is from RCAF drawing 5212 “AEROBATIC MARKING SABRE (F-86) ACFT” revision C6, dated March 1961.

All paints used on my aircraft are from the Dupont AF400 aviation Imron family. The gold is Antique Gold Metallic - P1165 - it was chosen after looking at dozens of colour pictures of the Golden Hawks. The apparent colour of the original aircraft varied quite a bit depending on the lighting, and perhaps on the accuracy of the colour reproduction. Antique Gold seemed to be the best overall match. The white is Matterhorn White - AF402. The red is Flag Red - P1202. The white and red were chosen because they were extremely close matches to the Dupont paint colours on the original RCAF paint scheme drawings.

I hope to have the aircraft on display at the Vintage Wings airshow on 4 July. The plan is that after their Golden Hawk Sabre finishes its flying display, they will park it next to my aircraft. It will be interesting to see how the colours compare when the two aircraft are side by side.

The reassembly phase took longer than I hoped, but I finally got all the bits back on this evening. Fred, an amateur photographer happened by as I was installing the wheel pants, and asked if he could take some pictures.

There are still a couple of final items to be added to the paint scheme. The missing blue “RCAF” and “Golden Hawks” text above and below the hawk’s head will be added next week, I hope.

It was way too windy for the first flight after paint on Wednesday - the wind was gusting to over 20 kt at 90 degrees to the runway. I’m sure I’ll eventually be flying in those conditions, but I’ve only worked up to about 15 kt of crosswind so far, and it has been over two months since I last flew the aircraft. My schedule is pretty packed today, but hopefully everything will come together to fly to fly on Friday.

Full size versions of these images are available at my image gallery.

I had a proficiency flight scheduled on a C182 this morning. For some crazy reason Transport Canada can no longer purchase AvGas on the south field at Ottawa, so you need to be careful to not bring the plane back too low on fuel. Smiths Falls has the cheapest AvGas in the area, so I stopped there near the end of my flight to gas up. I then pushed the plane to the side of the ramp, and walked over to the Kolorfast paint shop.

Korrey was anxious to show me the aircraft - he was very happy at how it had turned out, and he was proud to show me. I was blown away when I walked in the door - it looks gorgeous! The camera doesn’t really do it justice. I’m looking forward to seeing how it looks in the sun once it is reassembled, and the reaction it gets from other people.

It was sweltering in the paint shop, as the heat was cranked way up to help the paint cure. I’ll pick the plane up late tomorrow afternoon, and start reassembling it on Saturday.

I got a phone call from Korrey at Kolorfast a few minutes ago. He said the paint job was essentially finished. Woo Hoo!! Finally!! He wanted the plane to sit in the heated paint shop for two days to cure before I picked it up. And he wasn't happy with the body work on the back half of the wheel pants, so he redid it, and they are not painted yet. That isn't a problem, as I have several days of work to do before I would be ready to reweigh the aircraft.

I should pick the aircraft up late Friday afternoon. I'll spend a bunch of time at the hangar this weekend to rebalance the elevators, reinstall the canopy, all the control surfaces, access panels, intersection fairings, etc. I've also got some small mods to make to the engine cooling plenum cover. I'll ensure the fuel tank vent lines and the pitot and static lines are clear. I doubt I'll get all this work done on the weekend.

Sometime next week I'll drain the fuel tanks, install the wheel pants and weigh the aircraft. Then on some day with nice weather I'll take it flying again. I'll stick very close to the airfield for the first flight or two, just in case something is awry with all the work that has been done.

I was in Wichita for the week of 22 March, doing some Global Express avionics update flight testing. Last week was a busy week at work here in Ottawa, but I did get out to the paint shop first thing Tuesday morning to discuss a few details with Korrey. He had just started laying out the hawk graphic on the side of the fuselage. It is looking really good.

The green is a vinyl stencil. The shape compares quite nicely to the picture I took of the Golden Hawk Sabre at the National Air Force Museum of Canada at Trenton, ON.

The weather is absolutely fabulous this weekend, and it is killing me to not be flying the RV-8. I’ll be on the road again this week, and hopefully the aircraft will be ready to leave the paint shop when I get back home.

I took some comp time Friday afternoon, and dropped by the paint shop to see how things were going. The guys have spent quite a bit of time tidying up the fibreglas, and masking off the cockpit, engine, prop, etc. They hope to start spraying paint in a week or so.

I shipped the EIS 4000 back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, after carefully recording all the configuration settings, as I suspect those will be zeroed out.

The weather was pretty terrible most of all week, including the weekend, so I didn’t miss too much good flying weather.

The aircraft is at the paint shop - I delivered it Tuesday morning. It was very strange having a weekend and not planning to go flying. I thought of a few more little odds and ends I need to talk to Korrey about, so I’ll almost certainly head back out there sometime this week. Korrey’s guys will be working on the fibreglas, and he said that he hoped to start spraying paint around the 1st of March.

I pulled the EFIS and EIS 4000 out of the instrument panel before I pushed the aircraft down to the paint shop. I’m going to send the EIS back to Grand Rapids for a firmware update, and I will experiment with reading serial data from the EFIS with a Propeller microcontroller - the first step to a potential pitch axis autopilot I am pondering.

I spent all day at the hangar the last three days. Thursday and Friday were spent trimming the top edge of the lower cowling, so that there was enough clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. I then did a detailed inspection of the engine, put the cowlings back on, and did a short 20 minute flight late yesterday afternoon - just a few loops and rolls and three quick circuits. That is the last time the aircraft will fly until it comes out of the paint shop.

Today I removed all the control surfaces, fairings, access panels, spinner, etc. I also removed the UHMW tape that protected the leading edge of the flaps, and the temporary wing walk material on the wing roots. The aircraft is all ready to go into the paint shop - I'll push it down the taxiway to the Kolorfast hangar first thing Tuesday morning.

I spent most of the day at the hangar, working to open up the clearance between the upper and lower cowlings. Korrey, the painter, commented on the fact that the edges of the upper and lower cowlings touch all the way along the horizontal line where they meet. There needs to be a gap between them, or the paint will chip.

He said that he had faced this issue on some other aircraft, and had used a needle file to open up a gap with the cowling installed. I didn't want him to do that, as the hinge eyes could be scored, which could eventually lead to a fatigue failure.

I attacked the problem this morning - I decided that it would be best only remove material on the edge of the lower cowling, as that would also help solve a problem I had with the hinge eyes interfering with the edge of the lower cowling when installing it. I marked a line where I wanted the new edge to be, then removed the upper cowling. I used a thin feeler gauge to slip between the hinge eyes and the inside surface of the cowling to protect the eyes as I used a needle file to remove material. It worked, but it was very, very slow. It would take over a week to finish at the rate I was going. I eventually got brave and very carefully used a Dremel tool with a small cutoff wheel to remove most of the material, and only had to do a bit of cleanup with a needle file. I got the left side finished, then stopped for the day.

Originally, I had hoped to get a short aerobatic flight off this afternoon. I had flown on seven of the last nine days (six times for work, and once in the RV-8), and really wanted to go up again today. But I ran out of time. It has been many years since I flew that many times in a few days. Oh well - it was a good run while it lasted.

I got a surprise e-mail from Korrey, the owner of Kolorfast yesterday. He will be painting my RV-8. Originally, it was supposed to go in for paint sometime in February. Then he said that they were behind schedule, and they wouldn’t be ready for me until March. But yesterday, he said that they were ahead of schedule, and he wondered if I could bring it in ASAP. Someone else must have cancelled at the last minute.

The sooner it goes in, the sooner it comes out, and I’d rather have it down in the winter than in the summer, so I decided to go for it. I’m taking the next two days off to do a few odds and ends that I need to do before it goes in for paint. This weekend I’ll remove the control surfaces, fairings, etc, and Tuesday AM I’ll push it a few hangars down the taxiway to their paint shop. It should be out of service for six to eight weeks. I’ll miss flying it, but it will be nice to finally get the painting done. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it looks in the Golden Hawks paint scheme. I’m hoping it looks as good as Hawk One, which is the Vintage Wings restored Canadair Sabre (a Canadian built variant of the F-86 Sabre, with a higher thrust Avro Canada Orenda engine).