The moment of truth has arrived – rotisserie is completely assembled on the Bocian ….. and after a few adjustments and setting the tail at the right height ….. it works!

It does take a bit of muscle to rotate the glider, but on the plus side, there’s zero chance of it getting away from us if not positively restrained. Having said that, we do of course positively restrain it with the hoop brake once we have it at the required angle.

Here Laurie is practicing for our entry into the next Red Bull glider aerobatics display. This particular manoeuvre calls for him to exit the glider when it’s in the 2 o’clock position of a hesitation roll, and then step into another glider (Blanik?) that’s flying just below our aircraft. How about a parachute Laurie, just in case…..

This shows our production line technique of paint stripping.

1. put down cloth

2. apply acetone

3. immediately cover with gladwrap to promote acetone chewing into paint rather than evaporating into the shed.

After some trials we learned a few lessons:

Ordinary cloth having a denser weave is better than Bunnings wipes.

Be quick to put the gladwrap down, especially once the day warms up – I think it got to about 27 degC today.

About 5 minutes dwell time is about right for good penetration of acetone into paint, it can then easily be scraped off with a credit card.

We managed an amazing amount of stripping in the one day, despite spending maybe 1 1/2 hours rigging the rotisserie.

This shows how the paint has shrivelled and Laurie is beginning to scrape it off the nose cone.

The same section a minute later, paint has been removed as large soft flakes.

The small black tape strip covers the static port.

We reckon we’ve stripped nearly half the fuselage in maybe 4 – 5 hours work.