I’m all done. After completing the test program, and submitting a mountain of paperwork, VH-XVG has been issued with a “phase 2” Certificate of Airworthiness. I can now fly anywhere in Australia, carry passengers, day or night VFR, or IFR. Because I built the aircraft, I’m authorized to maintain it.
With special thanks to:
My wife Kerrie, who drove zillions of rivets and supported me all the way
Test pilot Kayle, a true professional in every sense of the word
Others too numerous to mention. You know who you are!
Like my all-slow build, phase 1 testing is also going slowly. A few squawks have required parts to be ordered from the USA to fix, that’s cost me weeks at a time. I’ve had to move Hangars, which was a big job and moving into the new Hangar is ongoing. Weather, Covid, other commitments all get in the way. I’m not on any deadline so I’m just letting flight test proceed at its own pace.
Having said that, I’m 15 hours into phase 1 flight test and the aircraft is simply awesome. Engine break-in went well, and for such a complex aircraft there have been very few problems. The redundant power system in particular has exceeded expectations.
Here’s XVG taking off from YCBG at 7am on Feb 25 2025 to test fly some instrument approaches under VFR. I’m particularly appreciative of test pilot Kayle for ongoing test flight assistance; Kayle at the controls for this flight.
March 28 update: Now 20 hours into phase 1. Here’s a video taken near the North Coast of Tasmania during a recent autopilot testing and fuel flow calibration flight. Cruising Lean-of-Peak, fuel flow is showing as ~44 litres per hour. After refilling tanks post flight, this turned out to actually be 41 litres per hour. Calibration factors in the EFIS displays were changed post-flight to correct this error.
April 2 update: Now 23+ hours into phase 1 testing, and almost done. At the same time we did full aft CG gross weight stability testing, we took the opportunity – while the back seat and baggage compartment were full of sand bags – to do some circuit tests as well. I hated piling so much weight in the back of the aircraft, but we have to test to the limits. As it turned out, the RV-10 took all this in its stride.
First video is the takeoff at gross weight, full aft CG.
Next is a flapless touch-n-go, at full aft CG and near gross weight (yes, it’s a bumpy runway):
Finally, a short field landing (without hard braking), full aft CG and near gross weight.
I’m inching closer to first flight. All the paperwork is prepared, Weight & Balance is done, and the formal control system checks have been carried out and signed off by myself and a second authorized person. An avionics LAME is booked for next Monday, Sep 30, to do the necessary pitot-static and transponder tests. In the meantime, today was the day for the first engine run with the cowls on, and taxi testing. After an initial engine run, we started up again and did some careful taxi tests on the apron outside the Hangar.
First taxi tests on the Apron
Once that all looked good, we got a clearance out to the runway at Hobart airport. It was a quiet time and the tower were happy to give us a clearance and get their first look at VH-XVG. Here are two videos, one on the way out to the runway, and then on runway 30 at YMHB, doing the beginning of a mini take-off roll followed by some S-turns.
On the way out to runway 30 YMHBFaking a takeoff roll and doing some S-turns on runway 30, YMHB
Inspections after returning to the Hangar revealed nothing untoward. I downloaded the EFIS logs and the maximum CHT reached during this test was a cool 312 degrees F. The underside of the cowl was at ambient temperature to touch, indicating that the Fiberfrax insulation on the inside of the bottom cowl was doing a great job.
It was a bit surreal to see XVG venture out into the world today after a 10 year all-slow-build RV-10 project. I stayed behind while test pilot Kayle did these runs, because I was getting over a cold and didn’t want to share it. But in a way, it was better because I got to carefully view it all from the outside while still keeping in touch with Kayle on the phone.
From a construction standpoint, XVG is flight ready. It’s ready to weigh (will happen this week), have the avionics tested, and have a 2nd control system inspection. I’ve got a mountain of paperwork to do for a C of A phase 1 application, but took an opportunity to roll it outside for a few photos. The only things missing in these photos are the rear leg fairings and wheel spats, which won’t be on for the first few flights.
After several months spent finishing the engine installation, on May 3, 2024 I finally attempted some engine ground runs.
In preparation for this, I tried to pre-oil the engine by removing plugs and cranking with the starter motor, as is commonly done. After four 15 second cranks, I still didn’t have any indication of oil pressure. I tested the sensor, EFIS display, and the oil sensor restrictor fitting on the engine, they were all OK. It may have come good with continued cranking, but I felt this was simply the oil pump being totally dry (=> unprimed) after years of storage – with air gaps between the teeth and pump walls instead of retained oil held in place by surface tension – so I decided to give it some help. Not having a pressure pre-oiler, I removed the oil filter (which is on a 90 degree B&C adapter), and with a cheap new oil can and extension tubing, squirted engine oil into the filter inlet gallery until it filled up. I then had a helper gently wind the prop backwards, one blade at a time, and kept refilling the space with oil. This sucked oil back into the oil pump, and coated all 360 degrees of the gears. With the oil filter re-installed, I then cranked the engine for 15 seconds, with still no indication of oil pressure. That’s not surprising, the sensor pickup is at the end of a chain which would include filling the oil filter and galleries after the oil filter outlet with oil. Sure enough, about 5 seconds into a second 15 second crank, the oil pressure came up and by the time I was done indicated in excess of 30 psi. After that I reinstalled the plugs and prepared the engine for first start.
To do these engine runs, I had heavy rubber chocks on the main wheels, and tied the tail down (with weights). And of course I had my feet on the brakes. I also had two helpers on the ground, with fire extinguishers handy. In the videos you’ll see me talking, apart from checklist items I had a phone link open to one of the ground helpers in case they told me to stop!
The first run was simply to confirm the engine goes, get oil pumped throughout the engine, and test each ignition system without going above 1200 rpm. It took a fair bit of cranking to get started – I think I did not have it sufficiently primed – and I was about to give the starter motor a rest when it fired. After this the run went fine, for a total of around 3 minutes and the CHT’s never got above 220F. There was a normal RPM drop when I disabled the left ignition system, and one backfire when I disabled the right ignition system, but then a normal RPM drop so something to look into there. Here’s a shortened video of the start and finish of this run:
After inspecting for leaks etc. and taking a break, we did a second engine run. This second run was to get the governor and propeller pitch control going. These won’t work until oil has been forced through the governor and into the propeller hub, and that takes more time and some sustained oil pressure at higher rpm. To do this, after a short warmup I took the engine up to around 1900 rpm, pulled the propeller pitch control back to a course setting, and waited. It took around 35 seconds for the propeller pitch to kick in, but I must admit I was expecting it to take longer and was slow pushing the pitch control forward again. As a result the transition to course pitch was a bit more severe than one would normally do for a ground test. I followed this with two more propeller pitch tests, again at 1900 rpm, before pulling the throttle back and ending the run.
A day later I downloaded the EFIS log data, and came up with the following plot for this run. It shows how I did the ramp up to ~1900 RPM cautiously in a few steps. The oil pressure drops before each propeller pitch event (as the governor becomes an oil sink), and along with the RPM drop there is an accompanying increase in manifold pressure. These changes are all as expected. Also on this plot are the primary and secondary alternator currents. The primary alternator current peaks at its rated 60 Amps not long after startup, but the battery was fully charged to begin with so the primary alternator only had to replace capacity lost due to cranking, which it was clearly able to mostly do across the short duration of this engine run. The secondary (vacuum pad) mounted alternator did some work as well, mostly at higher RPM’s, this type of alternator tends to have poor output at low engine RPM.
At the end of the test, fuel pressure drops to zero because I turned the (SDSEFI) fuel pump off. The engine RPM increased momentarily before stopping. This happens because as the fuel pressure drops, the engine sees a leaner mixture. Leaning from a rich mixture, the flame front propagation speeds up – i.e. the mixture burns faster, efficiency improves, and RPM momentarily increases. At some point we cross best stoichiometry (ideal mixture) after which the RPM will drop, the remaining residual fuel runs out and the engine stops.
Very happy to get these tests completed, and to have some good data confirming the test results. A special thanks to my neighbor Dickie and wife Kerrie, for ground assistance and camera work.
There are a few things to tidy up in the engine and cowl installation, then I need to install all the seat belts, a few inside panels, etc. before doing the weight and balance measurements, some more ground and then taxi tests, avionics certification and paperwork leading up to approval to commence phase 1 flight testing.
It took me the remainder of 2023 to recover from injuries and regain enough facility to complete the paint work. Painting an RV-10 is a very large job and I’ve given up any notion of keeping track of hours. I painted the fuselage and doors in late December, took a break for a few weeks and then completed the cowls, rudder and VS in late January. As large as my blow-up booth was, I couldn’t do it all at once, apart from which applying paint masks and taping up between layers is such a time consuming job it would be impossible to do it on my own inside of the time limit to apply all colors.
Overall I’m happy with the paint job, it’s not up to professional standards but pretty good for an amateur effort and my out-of-pockets costs all up, including paint, were a small fraction of the numbers I’ve seen being spent on paint jobs. Most of the cost was paint – I used PPG CA7700 primer and CA8800 polyurethane paint. I compromised in a few areas where the paint design was a bit too ambitious. For instance, I was going to include a black surround across the window/door pillars as is commonly done with RV-10’s, but that was just more time and risk so when the time came, I omitted that step.
Since completing the paint job, I’ve been re-assembling everything, it has seemed strange to be fitting parts together that will not be disassembled again.
Doors after painting the inside
Spraying final coat of fill primer, prior to sanding
Checking the final door gap
Taped up seams/holes ready for acid etch
Fuselage after acid etch, ready to prime
Fuselage after priming
Doors after priming
Fuselage after painting white
Doors after painting white
Paint mask ready to apply
Applying paint mask
Masking up ready for blue
Fuselage after shooting blue, taken through plastic window
My winter non-activity at the Hangar continued through July/August due to a bout of illness followed by ankle and knee fractures. As such I have had a lot of time on my hands where the only thing I could really do was sit around and type. I have a lot of material for the Aircraft Flight Manual (POH) and it’s time to start collating it into a coherent document. Of course, there are a lot of performance numbers that can only be filled in after phase 1 flight test, but there are other, descriptive chapters that can be completed at this time.
The small TFT display is unique to this aircraft, and I completed a chapter describing its operation. I’ve put a lot of thought into the redundant power system, and how the data it can gather gets presented to the pilot in a way that is useful and informative, but not distracting. Here’s a link to the draft text for that chapter (only):
It’s been a slow 5 months on the RV-10 front. Overseas and domestic trips and other commitments severely limited my time from March onwards, and by late April it became clear I could no longer paint in Tasmania’s cold conditions – since I don’t have a heated booth. I finished preparation of all remaining fiberglass components, painted the inside of the doors, and some other small pieces, but I simply couldn’t do any more primer/topcoat jobs because of my limited time and the cold weather. I resigned myself to this and won’t be able to resume painting until things warm up around here – October probably.
I have had some time across June and July to spend on other activities. I 3D printed a final model in cheap PLA for the inlet duct that wraps around the compressor, and it fits like a glove. I can now print a final version in a suitable material that can withstand temperatures inside the cowling.
EFI power board work
I released a version of the EFI redundant power PC board last November and had PC blanks fabricated. It included some design refinements and component changes brought about by some parts that were end-of-life’d by manufacturers during Covid. It is still the case that certain components are on very long lead times, but this situation should be resolved by early 2024, allowing me to get a small batch of boards assembled in a proper manufacturing facility. In the meantime, I have enough parts to hand build some more samples, so during the cold month of July I hand assembled two Rev 1.2 (Nov 2022) PC Blanks and tested them. There are 357 components per board, most of them the size of a flea, so doing two boards took me around 40 hours total under the microscope, spread across a week. The key to this kind of hand assembly is to never hurry, and stop when you start to tire. I was happy when both of the boards I assembled came up and checked out 100% functional. One of them will go into the aircraft, replacing the Rev 1.1 board currently in there, and one will stay on the bench for ongoing firmware/software development and test work. Here’s a photo of one of these new boards, sitting on the lab bench and connected up for test, wired to the engine emulator.
I’ve done away with the RS-232 DB9 connector, it’s too large and I use the USB-C interface which is much faster and needed for logging. I re-tested all normal operating modes, and fault modes across the two boards. In the process, I filled in a few pieces of firmware that I had left the last go-around, and addressed some other fault modes that I hadn’t previously dealt with.
When a fault is not a fault
A fault mode I hadn’t previously addressed is when there is a wiring or component problem that causes a resistive DC short to ground, resulting in a fixed current drain on a channel which should only ever pulse from a near zero-current state. In other words, the injectors and coilpacks. This type of fault could go un-noticed in a more typical installation, since it would not necessarily blow a fuse or circuit breaker, and the circuit in question might continue to operate – the injector could still open, and the coilpack could still fire, even in a degraded state. The engine operation might be a bit compromised, but the trouble would be hard to diagnose until it deteriorated into a hard failure. With the redundant power board, though, it is easy to sense these conditions, and I wanted to highlight them for the pilot.
I simulated this type of fault condition with the engine emulator and did the necessary firmware and software changes to capture the condition and highlight the fault. I settled on changing the normal display plot color from green to amber, and highlighting the fault information in the corresponding detailed display. Here’s an example of the displays for a coilpack that has a resistive fault to ground.
In this instance, the left coilpack has a resistive fault to ground. The right coilpack circuit is OK, and the normal pulse is shown with peak current (4.5 Amps), dwell time (3.5 msec) and implied engine RPM (500). However, for the left coilpack, there is a resistive fault to ground, and it’s not enough to trip the electronic circuit protection into fault mode. The display switches to Amber, and a sampled plot occurs along with an indication of average current. The pulse you can see is there because the coilpack is still there and operating. Since this occurs on top of a DC offset, the firmware doesn’t try to extract and analyse the pulse, so the pulse will move around on the display as updates occur. This is a simple resistive fault, but the steady DC baseline in this test could just as easily vary and it would appear on the sampled display as a noisy line instead of a purely horizontal one. Pressing the Coilpack-L channel will bring up the following detailed display:
In the detailed display, an indication of the DC offset problem appears in Red. There is no actionable item here, any wiring or coilpack problem will need to be diagnosed on the ground.
Fuel pump or fuel pressure regulator anomalies
There was a discussion on VAF a while ago about fuel filter contamination, and a suggestion that you could tell when fuel filter(s) needed cleaning by listening to the whine of the fuel pump(s). It struck me as odd that this is an acceptable diagnostic method in this day and age of engine monitors and sensors all over the place to monitor engine performance. So I did some more work on the firmware and software for the EFI redundant power board to monitor and log a bit more fuel pump data.
For the regular detailed fuel pump display, I derived and added a measurement of ripple current. This gives an objective, numeric indication of commutator action and noise, rather than the subjective indication I’ve had in the past.
Note the above display was using an air blower, not a regular fuel pump. Makes no difference for development work. Available in the new detailed display is a sampled plot of motor current showing commutator ripple, average current, start inrush current, ripple current, and fuel pump run time since the last start. In addition, a new button “Show start” has been added. The EFI redundant power firmware takes and stores a sample of the most recent start event for each fuel pump, and this can be displayed. The system captures 400 samples across the one second after a pump start is detected, and it is displayed as follows:
This display updates whenever a new start on the associated pump occurs, so if you didn’t like how a pump started, you could perform several pump restarts, and examine the start inrush characteristic for each event. The update occurs one second after the pump start begins, of course, since this is how long we collect data for. Any discontinuity in this plot could indicate a wiring error, or a developing fuelpump problem.
This sampling of fuelpump inrush current has also been added to the logging system. Every fuelpump start event is logged to flash memory, along with a timestamp as to when it happened. At the end of a flight, part of the log data processing consists of generating plots for each pump start event. The following is an example plot for a test run that involved seven pump starts. The inrush surge current follows a similar path for each separate start event. Any line that deviated from the “normal” characteristic would be cause for some further investigation.
This latest work closes out the EFI redundant power system design as far as I’m concerned. I’m happy with the features and stability, what remains at this point is to collate all of the operating information (some of which I’ve described in a few posts) into a chapter to be included in the POH.
I haven’t posted for a long time, but have been pushing along various jobs including the baffles, wing root covers, fuel system and painting various small parts such as the flaps, ailerons etc. While the wings were still pinned on to the fuselage, I did a complete fuel system and tank test, by filling the wings with fuel and running the fuel pumps each side through the entire distribution system, except for the final lines to the injectors. No leaks, good fuel pressure, no weeping rivets. After this, I took the wings off to paint. Since this was a major activity I’m posting some details here. If you’re not interested in the details, pictures are at the end of this post.
I thought about how to set the wings up for painting quite a bit, and finally decided to make a set of stands to hold the wing in place vertically, with the nose highest. I discounted more complex schemes such as rotisseries, RV-10 wings are quite large and a rotisserie would need to be quite robust. Apart from which, it is unnecessary. Painting the large wing surfaces vertically gives you the easiest access and optics to maintain a wet edge, and in an amateur setup without highly filtered air it exposes the minimum area for dust to “settle” while the paint is drying.
I was going to build a booth out of structural pine and plastic, but after pricing the required material I elected to save the hours and buy a cheap inflatable booth. It’s large – 10m x 5m – and the blower to keep it inflated is noisy, but it was easy to set up in the hangar and the filters were quite adequate.
I put a lot of thought into how the stand works, and then built it out of scrap material. There is a stand for the wing root (main spar), a stand for the outboard (light) end of the wing, and an intermediate piece of stand which allows me to support the wing after the white is painted, so the end stand can be temporarily removed and the wingtip fitted for taping. The two ends of the stand are tied together with a pair of 75x35mm pine pieces, 4 metres long, and the resulting “channel” can be lined with plastic to catch the water runoff from the acid etch and rinse operations. This was another reason for doing the wing vertically – I could do every operation from acid etch to final paint in the same stand, with no changes apart from the switch while the wingtip is temporarily put in place for taping.
I painted one wing at a time. Spraying takes next to no time at all, but taping off takes many hours and I didn’t want to have to do this for both wings at once. I did the left wing first, then after learning a few things did the right wing slightly differently. It took 3 (long) days to do the right wing, from start to finish, with four colours. Here’s the order of events:
I scuffed the top side of the wings while they were on the plane, and the bottom side of the wings on a pair of workbenches after they were removed. I de-greased both sides at this point, so that they were “substantially” clean before moving the wing into the booth. I also taped up both ends, all the inspection plate holes, fuel drains etc. at this stage.
Tape drop cloths to the floor of the booth. Tape builder’s plastic to the water channel, making sure it is pressed down inside the channel. Use minimum tape, because it has to be taken up again while the wing is in place.
Move in the wing stand and screw each end to the channel pieces.
Move in the wing. It’s a two man operation to lift the wing off a pair of workbenches and onto the stand. The poor guy holding the outboard end has to hold it while I secure the main spar. I inserted 3/8″ teflon tubing into the outermost 3/8″ holes on the spar connection, and used batton head screws with washers (and ample layers of masking tape) to secure the wing root in place. Then I move to the outboard end, hold the wing up, and the other guy can release the wing and insert the support for the far end of the wing, clamping it into the stand and screwing down a holding cap. The support piece has padded surfaces for the spar, two of them separated by about a 2 inch gap, for the outermost two bays of the wing. With this support in place, I can release the weight and the wing is fully supported, and moreover is fully exposed to be able to spray all surfaces.
Do any remaining tape up for paint. Fuel cap holes, and a few other bits ‘n pieces.
Fully degrease the wing. This is easy since it was mostly done before moving the wing into the booth. Don’t forget to pay special attention to the skin overlaps, where grease can stick to the edge.
Tape up the seams so the acid etch doesn’t penetrate into the wing interior (much). Tape over the fuel cap holes, and the the inspection cover holes etc.
Do the acid etch. I used cheap 2 litre and 5 litre garden sprayers, the type you pump up to spray. The 2 litre container was for Alumiprep 33 solution (about 50/50 with distilled water), and the 5 litre sprayer contained distilled water. Spray the acid at low pressure horizontally across the wing – it’ll all run downwards – and catch it with the 3 inch brush using horizontal strokes. Wear safety glasses. Work your way from the top to the bottom. I did half of the length of the wing at a time, front and back (spraying near the top oversprays to the other side), twice, allowing time for the acid to work, then rinsed it all off with the 5 litre sprayer, never allowing any of the surfaces to dry. The first acid you spray on will “break” and quickly run downwards in trickles, which is one reason you need to keep brushing horizontally to spread the acid around. Once it has had a chance to work, the water will not “break” much or at all. With one half of the wing done, front and back, I switched to the other half. I kept going back and spraying water over the first half, to keep it all wet (oxide won’t grow back under water). Once the wing was all done, the channel was full of acid + water runoff, the entire wing surface was wet, and there was also a bit of water lying around outside the channel (inevitable) but not much. In total I used about 1.5 litres of acid+water solution and 5-6 litres of rinse water (I had to refill the container once, a 10 litre sprayer would have been better). Now let it all dry.
After 5-10 minutes, I removed all the wet tape and rinsed around the exposed areas where a bit of acid had penetrated in and around the tape, using a bit more distilled water in a small squirt bottle.
Let the wing dry. I used some cleaning cloths to run along the bottom where the skins run behind the aft spar, since water tends to accumulate at this bottom (aft) edge and take a lot longer to dry. Heaters may be necessary if the weather is cold. Hot days are best, get the thing dry as quickly as possible because the oxide is growing back…
As soon as the wing is dry, spray EAP-9 (or your adhesion promoter product of choice). You only need a very fine mist of the EAP-9 product. Allow to dry.
Move in the wingtip. Spray the primer on both the wing and tip. I used PPG CA7700B primer, as part of the system I used. The primer only needs to be sprayed on as a very thin coat – almost translucent. Allow to dry.
Remove the water. You can “roll” the plastic from the outboard direction, then using a small cup and a bucket, get all the water (and primer overspray, and acid) out of there. I did this later for the left wing, but it’s best to get it all out of there asap because it’s a mess. Be careful not to splash any of this toxic mixture on the wing.
Wet down the floor (it contains a lot of primer overspray) and spray the main topcoat (in my case, white). I used PPG CA8800 paint. It’s expensive paint, but easy to use and will outlast me. I sprayed two coats using the CT2 thinner, 40 minutes apart. It took me 15 minutes to spray the entire wing and wingtip (I’m slow at this), so plenty of time between coats to clean the spray gun and mix up the next pot of paint (induction time is zero). The coats need to be thin, this isn’t a truck. Although it isn’t necessary to clean the entire gun between coats, I’ve always done so. Hint: After the first coat (only), as you finish cleaning each part with gun cleaner, rinse it in Acetone. This rinses off the gun cleaner, which can be a little slow to dry (in my case), and the Acetone will evaporate quickly. That way, when you reassemble the gun for the second coat about 20 minutes later, all the parts will be bone dry.
As soon as the white topcoat is “dry to tape”, or a bit more, re-configure the stand so the wingtip can be temporarily fitted. This step can be skipped depending on your paint scheme. In my case I had fairly acute sweeping angles of grey accent paint crossing the wing-wingtip boundary, and I wasn’t confident of getting these right without taping up the entire shapes with the wingtip in place. The mid stand piece I made was secured to the bottom channels, the outer most flap support, the wing tie-down hole, and the aft spar near the inboard aileron hinge bracket. I’ve included pictures showing how this was all done. I used a piece of 3/8″ fuel line inserted into the flap bracket hole to protect it from the screw, with plenty of soft (baffle material actually) padding and washers to spread the load, and of course masking tape.
Now is a good time to tape down some new drop cloths on top of the old ones, at least in the outboard half of the wing where you’ll be mostly working from now on. If you have a poor man’s spray booth like mine.
I made some patterns out of brown paper (and tracing paper) for where the various colours go. It’s a lot easier to do these with the wing on the plane, or the bench, and without the time pressure of spraying paint. Using the patterns, I taped off near the boundary of each colour. I use 3M 233+ (green) tape for anywhere that tapes on to freshly painted surfaces, and cheaper tape anywhere I’m taping down onto the top of the green tape, or other covering material. Once the basic shapes are outlined in tape, carefully slice the tape with a sharp knife on the wing/tip split line, and remove the wingtip. Re-configure the stand back the way it was (to make it easier to cover the rest of the wing up for protection from overspray.
Tape everything up. This is the part that I found takes a long time. Tape things up so you can easily remove tape covering successive colours, in the order you’ll spray them.
Tape up the edge(s) you’re doing, in my case the second colour to spray was blue. I use 3M 471 vinyl tape for the edge work. It’s best to avoid crossing rivets or seam boundaries, but in some cases this is inevitable.
Clean the exposed (white) surface with isopropyl alchohol. It’s best to avoid touching any surface at all, but I can’t manage the taping up wearing gloves so it’s inevitable to get a bit of a touch somewhere and this has to be cleaned up. Press all the blue edge tape in.
Go mix the paint pot. Spray the colour (again, in my case, two light coats 40 minutes apart). the very last thing I do before spraying the colour is to re-press all edge tapes, with a gloved finger. A final wipe with a tack cloth is also a good idea.
At the “correct” time, peel off the edge tape. It should be prepared so as to make it easy to peel off, and the direction should be correct (towards any point in the pattern). In my case I found 75 minutes after the second coat was about the right time, at 20-25 degrees ambient. Clean up any paint that (for example) ran around a rivet the edge crossed, using a Q-tip and thinners. It’s far better to deal with any artifact now with a Q tip than later with an air brush. In some cases the air brush will be inevitable.
If there are more colors, once the paint is dry-to-tape, rearrange the taping and repeat the above process for the remaining colours. I was able to spray two colours per day, white+blue on day 1 and dark+light grey on day 2.
It was quite an effort to do all this for two wings, but I’m happy with the results. It’s an amateur job of course, but close enough to what a pro would do at a much cheaper cost in labour. The paint I used is buffable, if I want to work on any areas later. There is a buffable clear coat available for this paint system, but I elected not to spray the clear, due to the extra expense, weight and the fact that I’ve never successfully sprayed clear coat before and didn’t want to add more work to the job.
I’m having a break from the project for a few weeks, before getting on with preparing and painting the fuselage.
