Yesterday, the weather was warm enough and winds
light enough to finish priming the unprimed parts from the last primer session
... plus the parts made within the last week or so. The temperatures were
at the low end of the Akzo recommended temperature range, so a light bulb was
placed at the bottom of a large tall cardboard box to make a warm place for the
wet parts to dry. Three rows of wire were strung from side to side to hang the
parts from …. this worked out quite well and got the temperature up to 78 degrees
inside the box.
A tall cardboard box with an incandescent bulb
at the bottom was used to make a warm paint drying box.
While attending AirVenture at Oshkosh two years ago, I spotted a company
that makes 2 1/4" instrument gauges for experimental aircraft ... UMA Instruments. I
spoke with Sharon Rathburn, a UMA sales and customer service representative, and
discovered one of the nice touches UMA is willing to provide a builder is marking
the airspeed indicator’s face with correctly colored speed tapes. UMA silk
screens the speed tapes onto the face of the instrument as opposed to using vinyl
sticky tape as some companies do ... which can lift and peal over the years.
This year while at AirVenture, I decided to look
for Sharon so backup steam gauges could be purchased for the DOG Aviation RV-12
… ultimately a 2 1/4" altimeter and airspeed indicator was ordered. A
page was copied from the RV-12 POH manual which showed the operating speeds and
Sharon wrote
down all the information so the correct speeds could be marked onto the
airspeed instrument's face. Some would say this is
total overkill for a small daytime VFR aircraft and to a certain degree, I would
tend to agree. However, having a background in electronics I know displays can
go lights out at any moment and typically when it the least convenient ... so the DOG Aviation RV-12 WILL have backup.
The UMD Instruments 2 1/4" altimeter and
airspeed indicator with custom silk screened speed tapes.
I’m very pleased at how nice the silk screening
looks on the airspeed indicator. Clicking on the above photo to enlarge it will
reveal the nice silk screen job on the face of the airspeed instrument. UMA did a nice job and the
customer service was great … thanks Sharon.