Matt's RV-8 Project



Matt Dralle's RV-8 Project
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Date:  6-18-2011
Number of Hours:  0.20
Manual Reference:  
Brief Description:  Trip Home From The Hangar - Part 01

It was a beautiful day today to bring 'ol Ruby Vixen home from the Hangar for some serious plastic surgery. Friday I called my favorite towing company and requested they meet me out at the hangar about 9:30am on Saturday morning. True to their word, they were there as expected. Luis, the tow truck dude and I didn't have any trouble getting her up on the truck and he did an excellent job of getting the landing gear well secured. The drive home was uneventful. The unload also went well. The funniest part of the ordeal was when I was standing across the street paying the tow truck guy and this man and woman on a bicycle-built-for-two goes riding by. The guy couldn't believe there was an airplane fuselage sitting in somebody's driveway and almost crashed rubbernecking to see what was going on. The lady - in the #2 position on the bike, of course - hollers out, "Watch where you're going, stupid" all in a panic! Got to love those bicycles-built-for-two... Pass. :-)

Getting the fuselage into the garage was a bit of a challenge. Since there is already a new fuselage in the shop, there isn't as much room to swing the tail in and around as there once was. This resulted in the left gear and part of the engine still "outside" when I got the tail and where I wanted it. There's no way to physically pick up the front of the airplane at 500+ lbs at the nose. So, I got the engine cherry picker and situated it such that I could just jack the nose and front landing gear off the ground using the engine hook at the top, and then just pushed the whole thing into the correct position in the garage! It wasn't quite that easy, but close!

Anyway, the old fuselage is finally tucked away "safe" in the shop now and I can truly get started on the process of reconstructing Ruby. What a lot of work this is going to be; especially if the luck I had to day continues much longer... ;-)
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Trip Home From The Hangar

Trip Home From The Hangar

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Trip Home From The Hangar

Trip Home From The Hangar

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Trip Home From The Hangar

Trip Home From The Hangar

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