Brief Description: Masked off the fuselage to paint cockpit area.
On Friday I started masking the fuselage by myself in preparation for painting the cockpit. It had been quite a few years since I had painted a van (20 years) and I had forgotten what a pain it is to mask, especially by oneself. My lovely partner returned from the beauty salon just in time to help me with the right side of the fuselage, just before happy hour. We ate out for dinner!
Today we finished masking the inside as I tried to figure out what to and not to paint. I knew I did not want to paint the stainless steel firewall and that caused a lot of cutting and taping, but the baggage bulkhead frame, floor, and side panels will be painted. The seat pans and the removeable panels over the spar will be painted but not the alodined spar. The forward cabin floor will be painted even though Charlotte's plans are for carpet. More tedious cutting and taping! It took much more time to mask than I thought it would. The tailcone behind the baggage compartment is already primed but we will not paint it to keep down the weight. Now we just have to wait for the Jet Flex water based paint to come from Aero Performance who somehow forgot to ship the order last Monday. The weather is perfect for painting now, so I hope it holds until Monday and Tuesday of next week. We'll let a professional shop paint the outside after the fly off.
