Today was the first day in a while that I had actual time to work on airplanes (!) I tried
@cyclone3350's formula for thinner and it works very well! I think the glycerin and larger needle is what makes it really work, as I added some glycerin to just washer fluid and it worked almost as well. The coats still come out very light and many are required but they're much less splattery and don't just run off like water. Unfortunately now that I have the gun set up to spray the paint nicely I found that the color matching was done rather poorly. It's not close enough that I'd be happy with it. Oh well, time to run back to the store and see if I can get something that fits a bit better. I think the fact that the scraps of covering I brought them were shiny might have messed with the machine so perhaps I'll go over them with fine sandpaper to dull them down.
However... just because I could I also covered a bit of scrap fiberglass with the Chinakote I used on the airframe just to see if it would be a viable alternative to paint. Usually film type materials don't work well on fiberglass because air bubbles pop up like nobody's business but somehow this material is immune to them, just like how I was able to iron the material onto itself to do the patterns on the fuse and wing. The adhesive also works incredibly well on it - it pretty much welds itself to the surface. It's more difficult to peel off fiberglass than wood!
Naturally that's the route I ended up deciding to take. Not only would the color be a guaranteed match but it would also match the shine perfectly too. If only I knew this route was right under my nose for months maybe I'd have this done a lot quicker...
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I wish I still had the Saito stickers that this engine came with. They'd look quite nice slapped onto the cowl.
Unfortunately the drawback of using a film covering on fiberglass is the seams are very difficult to hide away. I tried to put them more towards the bottom of the cowl, more shielded away from prying eyes. I actually did the entire base color on the cowl with two pieces. One which covers about 75% on the top and the other just on the bottom. The engine cutout helps immensely with this as you can cut the covering right there and shrink it up on the little bit at the front so it conforms nicely with minimal additional pulling or wrinkles. One day I'll figure out a way to do it with one piece...
Unfortunately I do not have enough yellow covering left to do the gear with and plus that has metal components anyway so it's better to just paint it instead. Same with the struts.
On another front I got all the CG fiddling out of the way today. It required 6 ounces of nose weight to balance, plus mounting the battery to the back of the firewall. I expected this airplane to need nose weight anyway as the engine is very lightweight for its displacement. Total weight I couldn't check because it was over the 8 pounds that my scale is capable of measuring.
Engine was also fired up today to check if the fuel system worked, which it does just fine. I thought maybe the relatively low position of the tank would cause issues but if anything it just prevents the engine from flooding out which is nice. I forgot how nicely this engine runs. It sounds like a sewing machine at idle, it's just so quiet. To get it started all you have to do is grab the spinner and flick it backwards to bounce it off compression and it fires up every time.
Initially however totally forgot to put a piece of fuel tube on the breather nipple which resulted in a nice river of oil on the bottom of the fuselage after a few minutes of running. I wonder if I put a seperate tank just for oil in the fuselage if I could reuse it?