Painting an RV-7 Fuselage Part 1

Caution being the best way to approach a complex task, I began painting my RV-7 on all of the small pieces, such as the gear fairings, the access covers, and then moving up to the elevators and ailerons and flaps. I'm almost done with the wings, and then I'll move on to the fuselage.

The wing gets an initial coat of primer, and then a full coat of "Idaho Snow" base color. The picture at right is the base color.

After a day or so of drying, the wing gets taped off, and then the trim colors are sprayed. I'm using a maroon and "Dawn Grey" for my trim colors. Well, those are the trim colors for the wing anyways. It will be just the opposite on the fuselage, where the main color will be maroon, with trim colors of Dawn Grey and Idaho Snow.

This picture is kind of dark, but you can see the trim scheme. The part of the wing that is missing is the fuel tank. It gets painted at the same time as the wing so that the colors tints match and the trim lines actually line up!

With the majority of the "small stuff" painted, now it's time to move on to the fuselage. Today, I used an acid etch to clean the fuselage skin. The acid actually removes a layer of very pure aluminum from the skin of the airplane and creates microscopic pits in the underlying layer. Primer is then sprayed onto the skins, where it mechanically bonds to the pits. The color coats are finally sprayed and bond to the primer. When the aluminum skin is etched, the fuselage looks like crap! But the primer will go on tomorrow and then it will begin to look presentable again!