Different Views of the New Paint
These are the first few pictures of the fresh paint job. I'd like to thank Rick Hamilton for doing such a nice job of painting Blue and also for guiding my prep work. I was able to spend a lot of time making some small details just right. A paint shop might have taken a quicker method that may not have been as good in the long run. Click on a thumbnail image to enlarge them and read details. Click on an arrow to view more.
Blue's Left Side
Blue from the Top
Blue in Flight
Blue's Tail Detail
This picture is somewhat distorted because the wing tip is so close, but you can see how I used the scallops on the wing as well as on the tail pieces. I wanted the undersides to be mostly dark because we've found that dark airplanes are easily spotted against the sky or clouds. The mostly white topsides are easy spot if I'm flying below someone. Using a 14 foot long paper template I was careful to line up the top of each curve and the tip of each point in a slanting pattern. It took three tries with the large paper rolls, pencil, string, tape measure, and scissors to get a template where the curve, radius, and points of each scallop were the same and also correct for the wing length with curved tips. Then I got to do it all over again for the top of the wing because it's longer with the width of the fuselage.