Paint

I got the parts back from the painter. Very pretty. Metallic!...so sparkly! We hauled them back in a rented Penske truck to the hangar; another nerve racking drive.

Vertical Stabilizer and Rudder. The lines match up perfectly on the airplane.

One pretty wing!

I'm helping the painter as much as I can after work and on the weekends. We put up plastic around the shop and made it into a make-shift paint booth. Step one was high build primer, filling holes, more primer, more filling holes and a lot of sanding.

Then paint starts going on! It was really exciting seeing it painted.

We spent one VERY late evening taping off the plane. I owe a huge thanks to my buddy Kris for putting in some long hours on this effort. We pulled the white plane out into the yard and then, using the paint image Jess and I created, actually just projected it onto the airplane. Using a standard projector, at night of course, gave us really good guidance while taping it off. It was still A LOT of work to do this and very tedious. The tape goes on but the curve isn't perfect so you pull it off and try again....good, but at this point its not quite right so you pull it off and try again....not bad except right here.....ugh...try again.

Once we had the lines taped off  he sprayed the black.

Then the green and then the grey stripe. It was surreal having a finished plane sitting in my shop. It didn't look like some project anymore, but a real airplane.