Step 13.3, Painting the Fuselage

In early 2010, long before I even began the RV-7A project, I was planing to paint it.  The design of my paint booth depended on the size of my airplane's fuselage.  And the size of my shop depended in part on the size of the paint booth.  It is a really good feeling to finally be at this point now and I am pleasantly surprised to find that the fuselage which is the largest single piece that I will have to paint on this project, just fits.

There were minor dings that were hammered flat and some that needed filling and when that was complete the fuselage was rolled into the booth for primer.

After priming the fuselage was rolled back out for sanding and another round of minor body work.

And then the real fun begins.  Laying out the stripes.  

To lay out the stripes I wanted to first make a paper template so that I could be sure that the stripes would be identical of both sides of the aircraft.  To make the template, I taped some paper down along the length of the fuselage and then went to work adapting my paint scheme drawing to the full sized aircraft.  I went to a lot trouble calculating angles from my drawing, finding tangents at selected points along the curve and then transferring those points to the template in an effort to replicate the drawing exactly at full size.

The big problem with this approach is that it doesn't take into account that the transformation from drawing to fuselage is a transform from 2D to 3D.  Although when viewed exactly straight on from the side the resulting stripes did look like the drawing, there were certain angles that were aesthetically challenged.

In the end, I did a lot of adjustment by eye, as it were, to get the flowing shape I was initially going for.  Once the template was complete the fine-line tape is applied to the fuselage along the edge of the paper, recreating the shape of the stripe.  Flipping the paper over gets the same stripe on the other side of the plane.

Here a stick is employed to hold the rudder cables out away from the fuselage during the painting process.

The first stripe pained is the silver stripe.  The photo below is after the stripe has been painted and the re-taping process is underway.

The stripe is taped off and cover with masking allowing the blue stripe to be completed.  Once both stripes are done the white can be laid down.  Here Carol is preparing the masking for the blue stripe.

Finally, the white goes on and the fuselage is done:

Now, I start the whole process over on the vertical stabilizer and rudder:

There is still a lot of work to do on the paint; the cowling, the wheel pants, and the landing gear fairings, for example.  But the vast majority of the hard work on the painting is done.  The remaining pieces are manageable in size and should not be a major time sink like the fuselage and wings were.

Before I take the fuselage off of the rotisserie, I'll attach the four antennas that go beneath the plane (2 COMM, 1 Transponder, and 1 ADS-B IN).  That leaves 3 antennas to attach on the top side, but I'll save that for later.