Today I started off by prepping the nose gear strut fairing, the nose gear doors and the nose gear door hinges for white paint.

I then mixed up the white paint and applied it to these nose gear accessories.  I used a foam roller and was a little bit light on the paint, so I believe I induced some air bubbles into the paint surface.  Thus, I’ll wet sand and apply another coat after it cures.

I also painted the outer edges of the aileron pockets —which are already in white primer— since these areas are visible when the ailerons are deflected up and down.

Here’s the inboard side of the aileron pocket.

And the outboard side.  I did this on both wings.

I then spent well over an hour finalizing the sanding of the bottom cowling.  I cleaned up the edges and also redrilled the CAMLOC mounting holes.  I then remounted the bottom cowling onto the plane to double check its fit.

I also knocked out the final sanding in prep for primer on the top nose hatch door and belly video camera mount.

The epoxy wipes of course added just a hair bit of thickness on the front edge of the cowling, so I had to address this and sand down all the edges to ensure the cowling still fit well.

The cowling is a tight fit on the fuselage… nothing egregious or crazy, but I would guess it sits about 0.015″ aft of its original alignment.  It just makes the CAMLOCs fit a little tighter. I would also guess this may loosen up just a bit over time as well.

Here’s a shot of the left armpit air scoop, the gear fairing and the cowling intersection with strake and wing.  I’m happy with all these and so far, so good!

A shot of the the same on the right side.

Here we have a side shot of the re-installed bottom cowling.

After I took these pics, I did do some very minor West 410 refills in a few spots on the bottom cowling.

I also worked a bit more on the shop cleanup/organizing and some electrical work that I’ll report on in tomorrow’s blog post.