Fuselage back from the painter

Our neighbours, Kerry and Des, rang us this morning to tell us that the fuselage of the plane Des is building was just arriving back from being painted. We grabbed our cameras and rushed out to meet Kerry at the fence. The fuselage was sent off 24 weeks ago but the wait was worth it. It is looking terrific.

Des is a recently retired Qantas international pilot and has been working on this two seater for five or six years. It has over 16,000 rivets in it. Des had to insert them all manually. He then had to fill the little hole at the top of each rivet with filler and sand it off gently. His patience leaves me speechless.

The next step is to send the wings off to be painted. While that is being done Des is going to install all of the instrumentation and the seats etc. When it is finally finished it will be housed in a hangar at the local  airstrip about 10kms away. Des is keen to take us up in it but we have assured him that he has his and Buckley's chance. We will, however, look forward to seeing him fly over our house.