Date:	3-30-2011
Number of Hours:	0.00
Brief Description:	Repainted invasion stripes
During the cold/lousy weather we’ve been having during February and March, I decided to take the wings off my Sonex and re-paint the invasion stripes and polish the wings. I also want to paint and apply non-slip coating to the area used to enter the cockpit. Lastly, I need in install the ‘stars and bars’ stickers to the wings. So I took the left wing off first and brought it home. I imagine the guys at the hanger think my Sonex looks pretty silly with only one wing. Re-painting the invasion stripes was not too much of a problem, although I’ll never be confused with a painter. All-in-all the stripes don’t look too bad. When I installed the ‘star and bars’ decal, I should have followed the instructions better than I did. The instructions say, in BOLD letters, THREE times, to apply a water/soap mix spray LIGHTLY. Apparently, I can’t read when words are BOLD, because I sprayed way too much water on. This excess water is now the cause of a few dozen bubbles under the decal! Fortunately, over the past few days I can tell the water is evaporating and maybe after a week or so all the bubbles will disappear. If that is the case the decal on the bottom of the left wing will be good. After I re-painted the stripes and applied the decal, I polished the top side of the wing again. One thing that happens when you polish, is the surface becomes really slippery. I re-learned this as I was flipping the wing over to polish the other side and it slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. It landed right on the leading edge at the far end of the wing and crushed the fiberglass wing tip. Crushed it enough that I have to now take the wing tip off and have it re-painted (after I fix it with fiberglass and bondo!). Needless to say, I was less than pleased by the whole experience. I’ll have to take the wing tip in and get it repainted after I fix it. The second wing wnet similar to the first, except the stars and bars decal looks better because I didn't use ANY water.