High-Flying

For 37 years, flight enthusiasts have gathered in Lakeland, FL, for the annual Sun ‘n Fun International Fly-In and Expo. According to Bill Eickhoff, Sun ‘n Fun’s chairman, the six-day event, which took place March 29 to April 3, attracted nearly 250,000 aviation enthusiasts. This year’s Fly-In highlights included a 10th-anniversary observance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a 20th-anniversary retrospective on Desert Storm, and a 100th-anniversary recognition of Naval aviation’s inception.

To add flair to the Sun ‘n Fun campus, which is open year-round and also houses the Florida Air Museum, the Central Florida Aerospace Academy (CFAA), which owns the property, hired Dixie Signs to build an iconic pole sign for the facility. The sign would not only brand the event and the campus’ onsite amenities, but also honor Naval aviation’s legacy in supersized fashion with a two-ton, 37 ft. 9 in. x 39-ft., retired Blue Angels Variant Lockheed T-33 plane affixed atop the pole. And, the project required meticulously engineered footings and hardware because it was installed in the middle of an existing retention pond.

Getting started
We’ve been in business since 1972 in Lakeland. L. J. Douglass first opened Dixie Signs in Plant City, FL in 1939, and we’ve developed a reputation throughout central Florida. This was our first project for the CFAA, which had been referred to us by the school’s architect, John Kirk of Swilley, Curtis, Hunnicutt and Mundy Assoc. Thomas D. Arnot of Beechwood Development LLC, served as the CFAA’s representative. Both firms conceived the idea of an iconic pole sign with a T-33 as a “crown”.

It would sit in the middle of the pond and feature a large replica of a Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star,
an aircraft designed as a training unit for Naval and Air Force jet pilots. (Although the T-33’s maiden flight was in 1948, the model remains in service today.)

Our first phase of onsite work involved the foundation’s construction. The general contractors at the job arranged for the road to be built for transporting components onto the site, and for the pond’s draining the day before we installed.

We hired Mammoth Constructors to help us build the foundation because our vertical drilling equipment wasn’t big enough, and we don’t generally drill shafts placed within bodies of water. Mammoth’s and our crews drilled and poured the foundation, which includes the 40-ft.-long, 30-in.-diameter section of structural steel that’s set to the bottom of the concrete caisson 15 ft. below the pond floor and 25 ft. below water level.

Advertisement

The central pole is set inside a 4-ft.-diameter, concrete column. A 38-in.-diameter, rebar section also supports the primary structural column, and a secondary support fixture measures 18 in. in diameter. We installed the support sections using a double-ring and collar-sleeve joint assembly.

Janet Elliott, our project designer, developed the concept using CorelDraw® 15 and, for the elements to be processed via CNC router, SA Intl.’s EnRoute® 4 3-D software. However, before we began construction, we had to receive approval from Lakeland officials. Initially, our four-ton, approximately 33-ft.-tall display – and, specifically, the three-ton plane – were far more complex than what their code addressed. After three months of reviewing plans and shop drawings, the city finally granted approval days before 2010 ended.

If you build it
Our fabrication manager, Brian Casey, was assigned a nearly Herculean task. Although our design team had developed a rough sketch of the T-33, he had no technical drawings to use as a frame of reference. After having searched online, he found few photos of planes mounted in mid-air. We developed a template after crawling inside the plane itself. Installing the supports so they conformed to the plane’s slant required exacting engineering and precise cutting and welding. Of course, a plane isn’t designed to be a center-mounted object.

To fit it to the support pole, we removed the landing gear and any other impeding parts. We attached a 6 x 6-in., steel tube to the landing-gear mounts, and secured a 4-in.-diameter, steel tube to the cockpit in the front and the engine mount in the rear.

We painted all necessary components with Matthews acrylic-polyurethane paint. The plane’s paint scheme derives from the original military specs from the mid-1950s. We designed, sized and cut the graphics with Oracal’s Oramask 810 material, and the Sun ‘n Fun staff and Foster’s Aircraft Refinishing assisted with the plane’s refinishing and painting.

Handsome faces
We fabricated the 0.125-in.-thick, aluminum faceplates with a Gerber Advantage 600 CNC router, which offers an ample, 6 ft. 8 in. x 10-ft. working area and processes materials up to 3.5 in. thick. We welded the aluminum components together with a Miller Regency 250-amp welder. The blue sail measures 17 ft. tall; the white arc measures 14 ft. 6 in. tall, and the red swoosh measures 13 ft. 6 in.

Advertisement

We formed the plastic-faced, self-contained channel letters using a Computerized Cutters Accu-Bend fabrication machine. We covered the letters with Altuglas Plexiglas® impact-modified acrylic and illuminated them with Voltarc 15mm, 6,500K, white neon powered by France electronic transformers. We installed the letters against fabricated-aluminum mesh, which was welded to 2-in.-sq. tube frames.

To fabricate the channel logos, which were attached to the white arrow, we decorated the white, acrylic surface with first-surface, vinyl graphics with 3M™ 3630 translucent translucent film (except for black, for which we used 3772 opaque media). The logos comprise a 1-in.-wide, black trimcap; 0.05-in.-thick, white, aluminum returns; and 6,500K, white neon. We installed the sails with 12 angle supports that were bolted to the surface.

The attitude for altitude
The sign components, which we situated with a Manitowoc 1770C boom truck from a 70-ft. radius, involved fairly standard installation. However, the plane was quite a bit more complicated. We hoisted the airplane into place with an 80-ton Grove hydraulic crane. To lift the 7,000-lb. plane 80 ft. into place, we used roughly five tons of counterweight to steady the crane.

We rigged the T-33 for lifting using two, 2-in.-wide lengths of double-ply, nylon straps and one, 4-in.-wide length that supports the tail. Using straps of differing lengths helped us create the plane’s required listing angle. Using a two-ton, Harrington chain hoist, we attached the airplane’s nose directly to the crane’s main lifting hook.

The day we “landed” the plane, hundreds of spectators, photographers and local dignitaries attended. It’s only natural to be a little nervous working in front of an audience. However, the Sun ‘n Fun sign received a true trial in stormy conditions. During the middle of the Fly-In, a severe tornado ripped through central Florida. Many small airplanes, roofs, trees and houses suffered moderate to heavy damage, but the sign and plane were unscathed.

We worked in a tight timeframe – we only had two months from when the city gave its final approval until the CFAA’s deadline to have the plane installed by the end of February. This project tested our skills, but we’re very proud of the end result.

Advertisement

Roger Snyder is co-owner of Dixie Signs (Lakeland, FL).

Equipment and Materials
Cranes: Grove 80-ton, hydraulic crane, from Manitowoc (Shady Grove, PA), (717) 597-8121 or www.nationalcrane.com; boom truck, from Manitowoc.
Fabrication: Advantage 600 CNC router, from Gerber Scientific Products (Tolland, CT), (800) 222-7446 or www.gspinc.com; Miller Regency Dialarc TIG welder, from Miller Electric Mfg. Co. (Appleton, WI), (920) 734-9821 or www.millerwelds.com; Spectrum® 1251 plasma cutter, from Miller Electric; Accu-Bend channel-letter fabrication equipment, from Computerized Cutters (Plano, TX), (800) 310-2887 or www.computerizedcutters.com
Lighting: White, 6,500K, 15mm neon tubing, from Voltarc (Orange, CT), (800) 826-9465 or www.light-sources.com; OE1G electronic transformers, from France (Fairview, TN), (800) 753-2753 or www.franceformer.com
Metal: Aluminum (0.125 in. thick), from building-supply and industrial-equipment shops
Paint: Acrylic-polyurethane paint, from Matthews Intl. (Delaware, OH), (800) 323-6593 or www.matthewspaint.com
Letters: Acrylite SG, from Evonik Industries (Parsippany, NJ), (800) 631-5384 or www.acrylite.com; Jewelite trimcap, from Wagner Zip-Change (Melrose Park, IL), (800) 323-0744 or www.wagnerzip.com
Software: CorelDraw 10, from Corel Corp. (Ottawa, ON, Canada), www.corel.com; EnRoute® 4 3-D software, from SA Intl. (Salt Lake City), (800) 229-9066
Vinyl: Translucent and opaque media, from 3M™ (St. Paul, MN), (800) 328-3908 or www.3mgraphics.com; Oramask 810 paint-mask stencil film, from Oracal (Black Creek, GA), (888) 672-2251 or www.oracal.com