I mounted the N number and the stars and bars on the the left side of the tail today. I made some deviations from the way the graphics were printed. I moved the bars closer to the star because I preferred having a little wider stripe at the trailing edge of the rudder than what was laid out. That took quite a bit of ciphering to get it all to look right with the proper spacing etc.
Anyway, I started by cutting everything into individual pieces, the star and the stripes. I had to mount the N number first. The laser level really came in handy for all of this. I double checked I had the head rack of the plane zeroed out and then set the laser level where I wanted the bottom of the N number to be, cleaned the surface again, mounted it and admired my work. Actually, the next step was to take the laser level to the other side and repeat the process since it was already at the correct height. So, I mounted the right side N number,
I came back to the left side and mounted the star. This is when I began by repositioning the bottom stripe, closer to the star, since it is on level. Once I was happy with the position, I mounted it. The next stripe to mount was the most vertical one. I set the distance from the leading edge of the vertical stab and used a round object I found in the shop to set the radius around the star. This allowed me to set the point of the stripe to match the relative point of the first stripe. Once that stripe was mounted I just had to split the distance between the other two stripes. Again, I set the point relative to the other two and mounted the stripe.
