What’s the reason for the amusing (to us smutty English) name SHAG2000?
They use Airtime engineering for the taking apart / putting back together.
My landing gears have been taken apart, cleaned, greased and reassembled at annual.
They mask all the brake lines, grease nipples etc. Then most of the old paint is removed by hand prep. After that they apply a light coat of primer and two coats of paint, keeping paint thickness at a minimum. It looks like new. It’s the part of the aircraft I inspected most closely, and before I left with it they had the plane on jacks and tested retraction/extension.
I am amazed that there is a labour saving in that method, not least because obviously there is no access to surfaces which overlap in all landing gear extension states.
I would have used the opportunity to completely clean and and re-grease the landing gear. That job is worth twice the price, for the peace of mind.
It’s a bit like resprays done with the control surfaces attached. Socata used to do that partially: everything was primed separately (though they did put rivets in afterwards, which is ever so naughty because the paint comes off them a few years later) and the whole plane was sprayed after the airframe was assembled, but before the windows were fitted. I can see pure paint shops doing this because it sidesteps the authorisations / liability involved but Airtime clearly must have that capability in-house.
Monkey damage really gets on my nerves. I keep asking Oxford to control the problem….. :)
They mask all the brake lines, grease nipples etc. Then most of the old paint is removed by hand prep. After that they apply a light coat of primer and two coats of paint, keeping paint thickness at a minimum. It looks like new. It’s the part of the aircraft I inspected most closely, and before I left with it they had the plane on jacks and tested retraction/extension.
The gear wasn’t removed, but it was stripped and repainted.
I wonder how that was done…
The Jetprop they worked on with the boots was mine. Lol
I had an incident in Kathmandu, monkeys attacked the aircraft at the main airport and bit into the boots. Duck taped all the way to Bournemouth.
They did a good job installing my new boots, but left me to strip the old ones off, as none of the mechanics wanted to do it….
It was the tail and horizontal stabaliser.
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I don’t normally like wispy modern paint schemes, art deco is more often my style, but that looks great!
A friend once asked my why so many vehicles I owned were red or black. Since the friend was a woman, I asked her what colors she would wear if she wanted to distinguish herself. She agreed.
The gear wasn’t removed, but it was stripped and repainted.
It’s great to hear of Airtime Paint doing such good work. The main company itself went bust a while ago and the paint shop followed. The quality of the paint shop was always good however. The people there were always very nice. I used to go there to get my landing gear properly lubricated because my local firms refused to do it on the Annual. Unfortunately for me, the train transport between Bournemouth and Brighton is a big hassle.
Also good to hear the details were done correctly. Most resprays are not done like that.
On the landing gear, did they take it all apart, strip the paint, and re-paint it? That’s very expensive. I see it done all the time on King Airs where I am hangared, and I believe it is a mandatory periodic service on those (to NDT the gear).
