No, I didn't loose it. Just replaced the covering. Like so many other Nexstar owners who didn't seal the edges of the decals before the first flight, most of the decals on my Nexstar started coming off. It started to look pretty crappy, and I wanted to gain some experience covering planes, so I removed everything down to the wood. I found a few problems!
1. Where the landing gear enters the side of the plane was completely soaked with oil because it is not sealed. Oil just flows in around the slots and in the holes under the plane that are there for removeing the landing gear. When I re-covered the plane, I left the holes under the plane covered and sealed around the landing gear with silicone sealant. Hopes this works.
2. The tail area was soaked with oil. My plane was just not covered very well in the area around the tail. The oil also works it's way into the edges where the tail and rear wing are attached. Mostly on the exhaust side of course.
3. Where the elevator attached with the CA hinges on the exhaust/right side of the plane also had a little oil in the wood.
4. I removed all of the CA hinges so I could re-cover it. Most of the hinges that I removed were set into the wood with about 1/4 inch of CA material on one side or the other of the hinge. In other words, it was real easy to remove them with my exacto knife. I cut new slots and and installed longer CA hinges.

I removed all of the oil from the wood with the heat gun and paper towel method, followed up with K2R and Sig Stiks it for good measure.

My son flys it the most, so I let him pick out the color scheme. He is a little color blind, and also had trouble seeing the mostly white plane on cloudy days. So we watched a few other planes and got a good idea on what he could easily see. This was my first covering job. I think it came out pretty good. My only regret is that I read RCKen's LT 40 build and watched Minnflyer's covering video AFTER I covered my plane. I think it would have came out a little better if I would have done that in reverse order! LOL

Anyway, I just wanted to post this for the other Nexstar owners. Maybe just pay a little extra attention around the landing gear, the tail end, and the hinges.


Pete