During the first flight, there was very, very minimal damage: one small grass stain (star thistle stain, actually) on the CM, and one of the fins had a small separation just behind the leading edge. It was easy to fix the fin with a little 60 second epoxy. The launch was on a G80-4T (single-use, […]

Q-ball’s painted. I mixed some gray (primer, as it happened) and flat black, painted on with a brush. Doesn’t look great under the OptiVISOR #7 lens, but looks okay, and looks fine with the unaided eye. When I masked the fin fairings, I left a small crescent masked that should have been unmasked, and it […]

Those RCS nozzles are awfully small–but tiny paint flaws look awfully big under a #10 Optivisor lens! Though it feels good to be closing on completion, there’s still so much detail work left. Painting the nose cone atop the launch escape system is upcoming, with a bit of a challenge to mask it well. And […]