Hello Everyone, & welcome back!

We've arrived back in Washington and are about to go back to work tomorrow.   In our absence, the Glasair team and the paint team (Aerocoating, here at Arlington Municipal) have done a huge amount of work getting the plane configured, painted, and ready for tomorrow.   Here's a summary of the work they've done:

After we left Arlington in August, the Glasair team set about disassembling the plane to send it to paint.  This is the last picture we got of the airplane before it left the Glasair hangar to get over to Aerocoating.  In addition to disassembling, they finished up a lot of the things we didn't have time to do while we were there.  First, they put the plane back to tailwheel configuration.  They also fit the cargo pod to the bottom, and installed the back seat.  In this photo you can see the back seat (it faces backward, so you're looking at the back of the bench). 

This is the rendering we gave Jeff at Aerocoating.  Jeff has been fantastic and worked with us every step of the way on paint--both color and scheme.

Here is the plane with primer on it, and the white coat done on the bottom.  The blue stripe is painter's tape--the beginning outline for the eventual black stripe between red and white.  To paint, Jeff and his team started with white, laid up the black, and then the red.

Here is the black coat with more detail laid out in the striping.

Jeff was great about the exact placing of the stripes and getting what we want out of the paint scheme.  For a 4-day stretch he texted us every night with updated photos.  Here are the outlines for the tail stripes, and...

...the draft of the stripe up by the nose.  Jeff sent us multiple ideas for stripe placement and width, until we got something all of us really liked.

Along the way, Jeff was sending us photos of all the parts we're soon to be putting back on.  Here is the right wing.

And here is the finished fuselage, on a rare sunny fall day in Arlington!

Here's what the color looks like in the shade.  We wanted something a little darker than pure red, but still shiny in the sun.  This clearcoat did the trick, and Jeff and his team did a fantastic job!

So here we go!  The next couple of days we will be putting everything back together and get everything ready to fly.  We don't know exactly how long that'll take, but we hope to be flying by mid-week.  We'll post pics of the process and be sure to blog 'em...thanks for checking in!