Did a Flying Semaritans trip down to Baja with the mother lode chapter and brought my older boy along. We took a dentist and a volunteer interpreter and had a great time. It's always a little nerve wracking going into Mexico because of all the paper work involved, but it mostly went smoothly. At some point I'll do a detailed write up on all the steps involved if only for myself as I always seem to forget.
One reason I bought the TwinBo was to have enough room for everything when doing family trips. We go down to San Diego once or twice a year and with the four of us, a small suitcase each, a boogie board and a surf board, some bags of groceries, drinks and snacks even the big beast ends up pretty full. The concern is often how we're going to fit it into the rental car at the other end. We had some weird weather on the way down but very pretty. It ended up being an IFR approach and then we woke up to rain. That's pretty unusual for California in September!
This year I made my 3rd pilgrimage to Oshkosh. Last time was in my Baron and a Meridian geared it up in front of me, so they shut the airport and after circling for 45 mins I ended up landing at Fond Du Lac so missed out on actually landing at OSH. This year I went with the Tbone crew and camped so I got to do the Warbird arrival with 4 other planes in a 5 ship arrival and then setup a deluxe camp for the full experience. I went with my buddy Joe and we met up with friend and fellow Tbone owner Martin who flew his own Tbone. We had a blast. It was a lot of flying but well worth it. Logged 21 hrs of flying in 4 days without a squawk! Not bad for a 60 year old machine.
Decided to bling up the wing a bit and chrome the landing light lens frames. Gregg Cadieux had some spare frames so rather than wait to have mine done he did his for me and sent them over to exchange with mine. They look great. I was a bit concerned the different frames mightn't line up with the screw holes perfectly but they did. Amazing the precision the Beechcraft craftsman achieved 60 years ago.
Here's what the painted frame looks like
It was a pain in the butt to get that anchor screw out but once I did the wheel came right off and I replaced the old wheel with the bling version.
When I did my interior I decided to punt on redoing the seats. They were in good condition and comfy, so it seemed like a waste of money to recover them considering how expensive that is these days. So when I got the interior walls done I tried to pick a color that would fit with my existing seat color which is light beige color.
When I did the interior I went with a light brown which I thought would be a good neutral compliment to the seats.
But the contrast of this brown vs the beige seats just isn't working for me. The carpet is dark gray and I feel like the plane should go from dark dark carpet, to lighter seats, to lighter sidewalls, to lighter headliner. The beige against the brown sidewalls just isn't quite right.
Needs to be a dark brown or chocolate color to contrast properly with those sidewalls. Rather than recover the seats I decided to try to recolor them, so I bought a leather recolor kit from https://www.furnitureclinic.com
It's turned into a bigger project than I expected but it's entirely manageable. I'm able to get a professional looking output with a lot of tedious work and a little elbow grease..
Basically the process involves scrubbing the old leather with a cloth soaked in leather prep chemical which removes the leather protectant and penetrates into the old dye until it starts to come up. Then you wipe the down with alcohol cleaner and get all the old chemicals removed and expose the raw leather to soak up the new dye. Then you wipe with leather dye color of your choice and the seat soaks it up.
It takes numerous coats with time in between each coat to let it dry, and a lot of time to find all the little nooks and cranny's that you miss, but eventually you end up with a seat that is recolored and looks new. Then you spray a protectant sealer on it and you're good to go, and it's on to the next one. It's not difficult, but exceedingly tedious. I've got 2 out of 6 done so far but I think the darker chocolate brown will look much better and vibes with my vintage theme. At least that's what I'm hoping for...
