First thing out of the gate this morning was to tape up (about a 45 min. task after cutting the tape and applying it) and paint the right vortilons with the last of their 3 colors: white.

With the final color shot on the right vortilons I then got to work on the left vortilons.  I’ll make a note here that my priority is everything on the right wing first as that is the one that is going to Phil’s shop first to get sanded and buffed out… near the end of this week.

I sanded the epoxy wiped left vortilons (pic 1) and prepped them for primer, which I shot 2 coats of next (pic 2).  I then set the left vortilons aside to cure for a good day or two.

One of my many blue paint touch up tasks at Phil’s shop pre-ceramic coating was to finish the triangular patch on the bottom of the nose, which besides being covered with epoxy, the blue was at least an inch shy of the nose tip heated pitot tube opening. As you can see, that task was completed (pic 1).

I left the green tape on side of the blue patch so that it couldn’t get ceramic coated since I needed to also re-paint the black border lines.  I taped up the right side of the blue and painted that border line tonight (pic 2).

The temp dropped off to fairly chilly as the night wore on, so I stopped any painting or composite work and knocked out a few minor mechanical tasks, the main one being my converting a rather large computer mouse pad to be used as a strake-protecting pad during refueling ops.

Here it is set in place.

I had measured the opening of the fuel cap probably a month ago, and confirmed it tonight to be 2.5″ in diameter.  To cut the hole cleanly I taped up 2 scrap pieces of wood and clamped them tightly on each side of the protective pad.  I then used my 2.5″ hole saw to make the cut.

There were a good amount of fibers on the edge to be sure, so I used a lighter to burn those away.

Here’s the result of my hole created in the strake protective refueling pad.  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

And this gives you the idea of exactly why I have this, since I’ve noted a lot of chips out of the paint just forward of the gas cap on a fair number of canard aircraft from the cap hitting the paint.  Not to mention if you clamp onto the securing cable/chain with the fuel ground clamp, which can definitely scratch/chip the paint as well.

After this arts and craft task, I called it a night.  I’ll continue my push to finish tomorrow!