Before I flip this bird back upright I need to make a lightweight faceplate to attach to the front of the taxi light to cover the gap between it and its pocket in the nose.  Besides the aesthetics of how the taxi light sits in this nose pocket, I’m also concerned about air leaking around it and both causing the fuselage to be drafty, and causing drag.

Here’s a side view of the current taxi light front face.

I taped up the current taxi light face separately than the surrounding nose, since I wanted to capture the current gap with the 2-ply BID layup.

Which I did here.  I then peel plied the layup.

Another shot of the soon-to-be new taxi light front face 2-ply BID layup.

I then marked the outline with a Sharpie of the current taxi light opening in the nose.

A bit later, after I had identified and taped a few more spots requiring blue touch up paint, I sanded and prepped the taxi light opening for paint.

And then painted it, along with extending bits of blue on each side of the nose gear strut well towards the very top of where the nose gear fairing rests in the closed position … since there were still scant traces of white showing on the edges when it was closed.

I also touched up the inside edges of the laser altimeter openings in the hell hole with blue paint, as well as sanded and touched up the perimeter edges of the nose gear strut fairing.

I then swapped out the wing bolts for longer ones to allow me to attach the half-moon assemblies to flip the bird upright.

If all goes well, including weather, I plan on flipping the fuselage back upright tomorrow.