So with Oshkosh, my wife’s family reunion in Panama City, FL and a diving trip to Cozumel, there hasn’t been much time for building. Besides, building in 90+ degrees is not fun.

I have a Nexus class in Columbus on the 19th, so the plan is to head down to Greenville on Wednesday and spend a couple days building before heading up to Columbus, OH.

On Tuesday, I made the 10 minute flight up to Burlington, WI to fill up with fuel. When I left the house for the drive to the airport, it was… smokey. At first, I thought someone was burning brush. But it was like this all the way to the airport. On the radio. they said it was from a brush fire in MINNESOTA?!?!

This is a picture from 1,500 feet above the ground.

After a quick flight down to SC on Wednesday I got started just after noon. Remember the post that said “No More Sanding”? Well, there’s done, there’s Done and then there’s DONE. At this point, I’m done. The outside of the plane isn’t completely finished. So I got started with the control surfaces (ailerons, rudders, elevators and various hatch covers.

Malcolm has a neat trick for painting horizontal control surfaces (ailerons and elevators). It’s important to keep the trailing edge as light as possible. Usually, when you hang these parts, the trailing edge is hanging lower than the leading edge. This means that as the wet paint moves (and wet paint does move), it ends up at the trailing edge making it heavier.

So this is the Hangar 18 painting rig.

Notice how the trailing edge is up? And that the parts are staggered so that you can access both sides? Like I said, pretty neat.

Here’s Malcolm shooting paint (actually, primer) again.

After this, the only parts left to paint are the engine cowlings. But that can’t be done until the engine is installed. I hope to start the engine installation in the next day or so.