When we designed the paint scheme, having seen other schemes with a “paint fade”, we decided it would look nice to have the white checks on the elevators and rudder to emerge from a red fade effect.

Obviously to achieve this is not without risk … a mistake would ruin many hours of painstaking, careful work.

But the paintshop team were confident …

… and here is Simon, one of the paintshop team, showing off his handiwork with a well deserved proud look on his face, for he’s done a superb job.

He used an airbrush to achieve the effect.

Here’s the left elevator, showing the sheen after the lacquer was applied.

Jumping ahead a bit, since I haven’t yet described attaching the tail feathers, but I couldn’t resist showing the full effect of the fade.

We are delighted with the superb results and the expertise of Shropshire Aircraft Painting.

The wings etc should be finished next week.