Update on new paint job and leather seats

We flew our Cardinal from the AOGPaint in Mena, Arkansas back to New
York last weekend. Both the paint job and seat reupholstering work
were done on time, a month from delivery date.

We were quite pleased to see the paint scheme looked exactly like
the photoshopped image which we emailed to Linda. The airbrushed
Cardinal in fight on the tail section looked gorgeous. It was very
hard to imagine how the colors that we picked from the tiny patches in
the brochure would look on the plane. I was somewhat concerned that
the Navigator Tan might be a bit too gray and the Cabernet Red might be
a bit too dark. The real thing looked fabulous.

The new khaki leather seats also looked very nice. It's amazing how
a new coat of paint and new seat cover completely transformed the
plane. Now we can travel in style as my nephew said after seeing the
before and after images which we posted here

http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=...&x=0&y=-oqbro3

We lucked out and had great VFR weather flying back from Mena to New
York. We did not depart Mena until 11am after carefully inspected the
plane, preflighted, flew around the pattern, landed and inspected
again. Linda told us that a Bonanza owner just hopped in his newly
painted plane with his father and flew away. The next day, he emailed
and chewed them out for not removing a piece of tape from the static
port!

Rick immediately noticed that the aileron controls seemed much
tighter than before and were somewhat concerned. I told him that as I
recalled, all the planes that I had flown had tighter feel that our
plane so it was probably a good thing. We refueled at 2I0,
Madisonville Kentucky. The FBO manager happened to be at the
self-service pump. He gave compliments to the plane look. We told him
that it had just come out from the paint shop. The next stop for the
night was at Parkersburg, West Virginia. While waiting for the
shuttle bus from Comfort suites hotel, I chatted with the night shift
FBO guy. He zoomed his security camera to have a close look at our
pretty plane. He also told me the story of zooming in on a plane and
found a pair of legs and a stream of water. Then the pilot's wife
entered the FBO and was treated with an instant replay ;-)

The overnight stay at Comfort Suites (at $71 a night) was relaxing.
The wireless Internet connection worked instantly. We were very happy
to see that the huge high-pressure centers stayed over most of the
country for at least the next 36 hours. The next morning, we got up a
bit late and called the front desk to delay the shuttle bus for half an
hour. This gave us a chance to load up on the huge breakfast selection
with fresh fruits, yogurt, rolls, bagels, eggs, cereals, oatmeal etc.
for the trip home. With the wind from the Northwest at 45kts and us
going northeast, we had just a bit of a tailwind at 9000ft. In less
than 3 hrs, we were back to our own backyard.

With shorter days and change in daylight saving time, we did not
have a chance to fly our plane for a whole week. Yesterday, we had
planned to go to a fly-in to 'show off' our bird but I had some
last-minute emergency work and had to cancel the plane. We flew to
Columbia this morning to meet with some friends for lunch. The buffet
lunch at Meadowsgreen restaurant was as good as Steve had advertised.
After lunch, we flew to Wurstboro to visit our old training ground.
The moment we landed, some spectators standing near the fence started
snapping pictures of our bird. Of course, everyone wanted to see our
plane & all were amazed at the transformation.

White I was tying down the plane at KPOU, a group of people walked by
heading to the nearby restaurant. All heads were turned to look at
shiny bird. I wished there was a Cirrus nearby so that I could ask
them to vote on which plane was the better looking one. I'm certain
that I would get more than one vote ;-)

Hai Longworth
N30703

Longworth wrote:

White I was tying down the plane at KPOU, a group of people walked by
heading to the nearby restaurant. All heads were turned to look at
shiny bird. I wished there was a Cirrus nearby so that I could ask
them to vote on which plane was the better looking one. I'm certain
that I would get more than one vote ;-)

Hai, the new paint job looks alot better than the old one...

If you snap pictures of the seats, would like to see those too...

"Longworth" wrote in message
oups.com...
We flew our Cardinal from the AOGPaint in Mena, Arkansas back to New
York last weekend. Both the paint job and seat reupholstering work
were done on time, a month from delivery date.



The new paint looks great. AOG will be doing the paint on my plane if I ever
finish it. Luckily for me it's only about a 35 minute flight to Mena.
Unfortunately I'll have to fly off the 40 hours before I get it painted.

GigG
www.peoamerica.net/N601WR

We are pretty happy with the paint job. We inspected the plane quite
carefully and had not detected any bad paint areas. There was only a
minor omission problem with Linda forgot to put the Cessna logo in the
front of the plane. We had discussed about doing it with Linda taking
picture for the record. We did not notice that the logo was not
painted on until our arrival in NY. It was not a big deal but next time
we will make sure to have a checklist of all the detailed items. It's a
good thing that you live quite nearby. If you plan to do any interior
work, I also highly recommend Southern Pro Aviation. They only charged
half the price of Mena Interiors. The leather seats looked great and
smelled good too ;-)

Hai Longworth