Citabria Made it back home safely from the factory...

b727plumber

b727plumber

1979 7GCBC, Frame-up restoration by ACA in 2022
Joined
Jun 24, 2020
Messages
92
Location
Centennial, Colorado
So happy to finally get our 1979 7GCBC home from a factory restoration! Two days of hard flying back to the Denver area but it is tucked safely away in the hangar now.

Thanks to Pat, Dale, Jerry and all the staff at ACA (& my good friend Ron on the right that works in the machine shop there)!

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Home in our hangar!

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Fantastic! Wow, those seats are spectacular. Leather?

I'm considering a factory restoration of my 78 Super Decathlon at some point. Would you mind giving a bit of detail on the process? What did you have done, and what did you decide not to do? How long was the queue to get in, and how long did it take once you dropped the aircraft off? Any surprises?
 
The seats are called "Ultra Fabric" from FlightLine Interiors (the factory interior company). They feel buttery smooth like leather but are a bit less expensive and lighter weight. They aren't really fabric at all, but it is the choice in between regular fabric and leather options.

https://www.americanchampionaircraft.com/interior-options
 
Big Ed said:
I'm considering a factory restoration of my 78 Super Decathlon at some point. Would you mind giving a bit of detail on the process? What did you have done, and what did you decide not to do? How long was the queue to get in, and how long did it take once you dropped the aircraft off? Any surprises?
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The plane was stripped of fabric on all surfaces, the frame was inspected and repaired in a couple of areas, baggage door welded in, aluminum belly tabs were welded, Hooker Harness mounts were welded in properly, battery moved to the firewall, extended baggage installed, installed carbon floor, upgraded electrical system, upgraded fuel gascolator & fuel shutoff, installed B&C oil filter adapter, vernier mixture control, cigar lighter for charging, eyeball air vent on panel, LH window hold up bracket, fuselage pre-fitted for future aluminum landing gear option, new tinted skylight, aileron spades, all new interior from Flightline, new headliner, new firewall insulation and bootcowl foam, new heat ducting & deflectors, new control sticks, grips and boots, new panel crossbar cover, all new plastics throughout the interior, new placards, new tailwheel spring and steering springs, all new hardware, control cables, pulleys, wood, etc., new wingtips, installed aluminum belly. Any hardware they touched, they replaced with new. Complied with all applicable SB's. Recovered entire plane and repainted.

Our engine has approx. 300 SMOH, so we didn't have them do anything to that. Same with the prop. Panel was pretty much left the same, but added a Garmin Aera 660, along with GMU-11 Magnatometer for magnetic heading on the G5, GAD-13 & GTP-59 for OAT, TAS & Density Alt on the G5, GDL-50R for ADSB-In to Aera 660 and my iPad. RH WAT LED strobe light (LH already had a uAvionix ADSB-Out & strobe)

It was shipped to them Sept 2020, but they were so backed up, they didn't start until Aug 2021 and finished it Jan 2022. A long process, but the final product came out great! (Covid supply chain issues and lack of personnel have screwed up everything!)

If I did it again, I would plan every detail out with Pat while it is waiting in the que. Once they started working on it, they move it pretty quickly through the factory, so if you haven't already mapped it out, it might not happen. Also, I would ask them about every possible upgrade/option for your year model. I missed a few small things that I didn't know about, hence I didn't ask them to do, and realized they would have been nice updates after it was too late (ie.- weld on the loops for the rear baggage net, etc.) I also might have gone the extra mile to have them powder coat the frame but that entails stripping out the entire electrical system and adds quite a bit to the bill.

If I think of anything else, I will post an update.
 
Big Ed said:
Great info, thanks! Wow, that is a long time to wait.
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Way too long in my specific situation, but I think everyone is having major issues these days. When they are ready for your airplane, a complete restoration should be a 6-8 month process.
 
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darrell whitley said:
Beautiful... Wait time would kill me though. Did you have another airplane to fly in the interim????
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Yes, I have a good friend that has a 7GCBC that I flew with him over the year & a half and I rented a Decathlon half a dozen times as well. When I was on Anchorage layovers during the warm weather, I got checked out to rent a 7ECA and flew it around the area. I also got my seaplane rating up at Moose Pass, AK during that time.

I found ways to stay in the air (outside of work flying) to keep my mind off of it!😂

None of that is like having your own plane at your fingertips though!!

I wanted to clarify some things on our wait time, so you can understand that the factory doesn’t normally take that long. They are good guys! The long time in the que was specific to my situation. In July 2020, the airplane had been pulled out of our hangar for some work to be done on the hangar ceiling. My airplane partner chocked it, stayed with it for several hours (no tie downs outside our hangar) and when the ceiling guys left for lunch, he also left for 30-40 mins. It was around 11:00am on a blue sky day in the Front Range in Colorado, with no visible wx in site. When he got back, the field had had a dry, high wind event (recorded at 50+kts) that picked the plane up enough to defeat both sets of chocks and it rolled backwards and the rudder, vert stab and the lh aileron were damaged by a fence. The tailwheel went down a slight incline enough for the fabric on the belly to just get scraped up, requiring replacement.

Another Citabria on the field (that was tied down!) was totaled because one of the wing tie downs broke or came undone and the airplane came up on that side and bent the wing on the secured side.

The reason I share the saga is that this created the situation where I called Pat at ACA and he told me that he might be able to start work Jan 2021, but that was not definitive. So, to get in line, we shipped it to ACA and began waiting. Covid was very disruptive but, also, customer upgrade/add-on scope creep with all of the airplanes in front of us caused additional delays. When they finally started on it in Aug 2021, they finally test flew it in Dec 2021, which is the time frame that they had told me to expect.

If you have a flyable airplane and can give ACA a deposit to hold your place in the queue, then I wouldn’t expect a total refurb to take longer than 6-8 months. Keep flying it until they say they can begin work on it on a specific day!
 
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So my question is - given that a year and a half is fairly significant in terms of adult life span, would it have been cost-effective to just buy a new one and trade in the old? Assuming the old is wood spar, you would save a grand a year just for the spar inspection.
It is beautiful. If my vinyl interior gives up, I want that stuff!
 
Yup, it would be nice to have friends with A/C you could rent/use... When I flew for a living the last thing I would want to do is go to an airport!! I found that when I retired that I really missed small airplane flying.. Hence, I bought one..
 
Bob Turner said:
So my question is - given that a year and a half is fairly significant in terms of adult life span, would it have been cost-effective to just buy a new one and trade in the old? Assuming the old is wood spar, you would save a grand a year just for the spar inspection.
It is beautiful. If my vinyl interior gives up, I want that stuff!
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Not sure if they would have taken a trade-in, but I didn't think to ask. Plus, it already had the new ACA aluminum wings from back in 2006. I don't have the financial ability to buy a brand new one and, from what I remember at the time, an order placed for a new one in Sep 2020 wouldn't have been delivered for probably at least a year anyway.

Regarding the decision to fix it, it became one of those creeping delay things, that once we transported it to them in Sep 2020, we thought that the work would begin sometime between January & March 2021 (which didn't seem to long to wait in line). We understood ACA didn't have a firm commitment to when they could start, based upon all the repairs in line ahead of ours, and many of those took much longer to complete than they thought it would. I don't have any issues with what happened. I think they are doing the best they can - It isn't a huge operation. And, I wanted their quality product for both my own satisfaction and future resale of a rebuild. (I don't expect to ever want to sell it but one never knows what the future holds...)

If you reach out to Flightline Interiors, I think you will find that their prices are pretty reasonable. If you can do the install yourself, that would be a great upgrade! Keep us posted if you move forward on that!
 
darrell whitley said:
Yup, it would be nice to have friends with A/C you could rent/use... When I flew for a living the last thing I would want to do is go to an airport!! I found that when I retired that I really missed small airplane flying.. Hence, I bought one..
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I was pretty lucky to be able to keep flying G/A outside of work flying. It was probably more expensive than flying my own plane but at least it kept me current and happy over that time. Anytime your airplane gets damaged and taken out of service, the wait to bring it back online can be long these days. I'm pretty happy that our damage was really minimal but because of the basic nature of fabric covered airplanes, the insurance covered over half of the costs of our total bill. We just put our own money in for the areas that were not affected.
 
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