1. I checked out the latest paint progress. The red stars on the tail are done (minus pulling the masks off their outline edges, and the checkerboards are done (again, minus removing the masks).

2. My painter and I put the canopy on the airplane, after cutting away just enough of the masking plastic and tape to do it. We closed it but did not attach the canopy angle to lock it. This should be OK for what he wants to accomplish.

3. Next, we put the upper cowl on the airplane, so he can start on the nose numbers. This was a bit of a job, because we had to carefully cut away some of the masking tape and plastic, sand a bit of the primer from the Skybolt holes with a Dremel drum, and then get the already-tight cowl to fit. After some struggle, we decided I needed to cut away a fair amount of the forward side baffle material to get a good fit. After that, the cowl definitely fit a lot better. Photo 3 shows that some blood was shed in the effort today -- I bled all over my painter's nice lower cowl primer. Yeesh, no respect at all!