Today is the beginning of a new life for Tweety Bird. She has been away from the home for 17 years with over 2900 hours of time together.

Tweety is moving back in with me for a few months for a major overhaul. When she returns to the hangar it will be like flying a new airplane since she will be radically changed and improved.

The goals of this project is to:

Rewire the plane with new radios and EFIS.
Install ADS-b
Install a WASS GPS system for coupled approaches.
Cut the existing pointy short nose off and add an extended rounded nose.
Repaint the interior.
Touch up various areas of paint the exterior.
Add additional panels and amenities to the interior.

The goal is to have the airplane up and flying for Sun-N-Fun in April which gives me about 4 months to get everything done…

This project is kind of sad and exciting at the same time. Sad, because I am taking a perfectly fine flying airplane with no problems and tearing it apart. I’ll be without a plane for the since I built her. Exciting because I’ll be making major changes and improvements that I have wanted to do for years.

Time to get started!

Gary and Robin stopped by to help me disassemble the plane and get her home.

The disassembly process took less than 2 hours.

I left the wings, canard, wheel pants at the airports as they are not needed during this phase.

Homeward bound.

Nicely settled into the shop.

We stopped by a seafood restaurant on the river after getting settled for the day. Gary is building a Cozy 3 and I am looking forward to following his progress on the bird. Thanks for your help!!