During our scheduling process we knew the painting stage had to be completed as close to a continuous process as possible. We figured it would take two straight days of work and crew availability.

The day had come. Now we need good weather, a lot of coffee, pizza and a handful of luck to neutralize “Mr. Murphy”.

First the white paint. No taping needed. The coat of paint was feathered on the edges where it will meet the blue paint.

Jorge and Alexis painting tag team.

All done and looking good. Pizza time!!!

Now for the time consuming part. Straight lines and paper cover.

As you can see, in these pictures, we used a shipping container to give us some cover from the wind. We want to thank Peter Chatt, of CaribEx Worldwide, for allowing the use of his container.

While we wrapped the bird, for her “Dress Blues”, Agustin Martinez prepped the nose cone and Joe Miranda prepped the tail cone.

With the clock counting down we decided to paint the tail and start cleaning up before the end of the day. It is can get pretty dark petty soon after the sun goes down.

Another day another coffee. Alexis dry fitting the tail cone.

One light coat, one final coat. Now to the wings.

A little fine tuning and Jorge was done with the wings.

Time to see the results and it’s looking good, very good!!!.  That’s Jorge’s son, Igor, and Joe Miranda. Also there Agustin Martinez.

A little more work and its Pizza time with absolutely everything on it. A lot of soda pop with all the caffeine we can handle.

It’s not over yet folks!!!!!!

Now for the clearcoat to protect all the hard work from the sun and salt spray. Without it you can kiss the paint job sayonara.

The wind started to pick up pretty bad that afternoon. We were really happy we had that trailer to work as a windbreaker.

All of as sudden we felt some rain drops. Our hearts dropped as our blood pressure skyrocketed. Couldn’t happen at a worst time. Luckily the wind blew the danger away. Mr. Murphy didn’t stand a chance.

She’s all done and looking pretty. The sun came out again and properly dried out the clearcoat. All that’s left is a little fine tuning and she’ll be properly dressed. By the way her nose art will be , the one and only, “Mona“, fully dressed of course!!!