When I started this build 9 years ago, with my usual hubris it never crossed my mind that I wouldn't finish the airplane in North Carolina and fly it to Colorado where it would be based for the duration. Years dragged by with progress which could sometimes be characterized as glacial, so I found myself retired (after teaching Mechanical Engineering at UNC Charlotte for 34 years) with the spousal unit accepting a faculty position in the Mechanical Engineering department at Colorado State University.
After much soul searching I decided to do what I recently swore I'd never do: move the project by truck across the country. Reading other peoples' blogs, it seemed that most people did it themselves. My best estimate on the cost of renting a 22-foot truck and paying for the Diesel fuel was $1600 (probably low). I discovered Stewart Transport, who specializes in moving light aircraft, and found their quote to be $2500. This $900 delta turned out to be some of the best money I've spent. Shelly and Mark showed up in the most impressive 18-wheeler I've ever seen, outfitted with a special crane for loading the fuselage, with the wings being strapped to the walls in padded slings. This was much better than I had envisioned doing it myself and it was definitely a good thing it was done so well: winds through Kansas and Colorado were consistently gusting to 40 mph (direct cross wind), forcing many 18-wheelers to park for a while. I don't want to even think about me in a lightly-loaded truck having to deal with that.
The Mothership recommended that I build a false spar made of 1-inch plywood with holes for the spar pins and holes for tie down purposes (these weren't used). The crane attached to this and the nose wheel strut. Worked perfectly.
After loading, my two dogs and I raced the truck to Colorado -- barely beating them -- where we unloaded
at my new hangar. Feels great to utter those words: my new hangar. I had been on a wait list for a hangar both in North Carolina and Colorado for many years, making no apparent progress toward a rental unit. After checking prices on purchasing a hangar I put that out of my mind. Then, out of the blue, I got a personal message on Vansairforce.com (thanks, Ken) about the availability of a T-hangar at KLMO (1.5 miles from my house) for $40k, almost too good to be true (it even has an electrically operated door!). Of course, that's part of the money I needed to buy the firewall-forward kit and the avionics kit, but that's another story. KLMO is a hotbed of experimental aircraft activity, with lots of RVs including two other RV-12s.
In a previous post I bragged that I'd built the fiberglass tailcone fairings without removing the stabilator. I went on to say that I'd fly the airplane having installed the stabilator (an odious task) only once. So much for that. It had to come off to fit in the truck. I constructed a stand just the proper height to support the stabilator while removing the two 1/4-inch bolts (kinda scary) which hold it on the airplane. The bolts can then be accessed with an 8-inch extension connected to the 7/16th socket with a universal joint, allowing for the required misalignment. A big contributor to making the process a PITA is the lead counterweight which sticks a couple of feet into the tailcone. The shaft holding it, the aft end of which is seen in the picture, must be unbolted and rotated 90 degrees to fit through the hole in the aft-most bulkhead in order to be withdrawn, an awkward process for one person. The most maddening thing, however, is having to remove the tension from the stabilator cables (see previous post) only to redo it upon arrival in Colorado. Here it is in its new home.
The sequence of events which lead to this massive relocation from my ancestral home in the South to my new home in Colorado almost seems preordained. Every piece of the puzzle fell into place without any effort. If I were religious or otherwise mystical I'd attribute it to some power beyond my understanding. Alas, I must attribute it to happenstance: the spousal unit (my beautiful and talented wife, Karen) became interested in triathlon, attended Dave Scott's triathlon camp in Boulder, spent the following summer training with him and completing the Boulder IronMan two summers in a row, by chance trained with the number one real estate guy in Boulder (thanks Sasha) who put us onto an amazing house in Longmont, was able to teach summers at CU Boulder, then got a faculty position at CSU. Every piece of the puzzle fell neatly into place. I'm still amazed by it all.
