Ready to Spray

Last night Rafael, Nick, and Leah were out to help as we got ready to spray primer.  First things first we needed to tape up the fuselage and wings to prevent primer from going places we dont want it. Also taped up the wing roots and wing fittings and a few other holes in various places.

I brought out the wing root fairings and the inspection covers as well and Nick worked on them for a while with some MEK.  Nasty stuff but it worked pretty well.  Eventually he had to leave though so Leah and I took over that job.  After a while they were done and then we moved onto the Horizontal Stabilizer which still had paint on it.  After a few hours of work it was looking pretty clean and we declared it good enough.  During the process though we had popped a bit of the top fiberglass skin free from the leading edge so I mixed up some West Epoxy that Neal had and borrowed some clothes pins and got it glued back in place.  Should be in good shape tonight.

So the plan tonight is to spray primer on everything. 2 cross coats is probably all I will do. After that it has to dry, you lightly sand and then clean the dust off, and then you spray 2 more cross coats.  I hope to do the second set of cross coats tomorrow night.  No work planned for Easter weekend as we'll have family visiting but on Monday the plan is to start the topcoat.  Very exciting!

Truck went to the shop today for a checkup before the trip to Marfa.  No unknown issues were found.  I dropped my parachute off with Steve today who will take it to the rigger so it will be repacked.  I've got a SPOT in the mail, sending the GPS off for calibration tonight.  N number stencils should be here soon, I hope.  So basically, I'm making decent progress on all fronts!