It'll help a lot if you tell us what paint you're using.

If it's dope (and probably a lot of other things) the answer is to pick the bits off that'll come off, then feather the area out with a fairly fine grit wet paper (I'd use 320 or 400).  Once you have the bug removed, spray the affected area with the matching color (or brush, if that's what you're using), let dry, then color sand as necessary.

I might have removed the bugs with tweezers when everything was still wet -- but I may have found out in the process that it was the stupidest thing in the world to try.

Get a couple more bugs and mount them as Vortex Generators.

Once you remove them you will be one of those rare people that has all the bugs out of your plane.

Well two of them to be correct.

I was painting my Force yellow and two little wing critters flew right on the wing. One on the top and one on the bottom.

I just let them dry and did not try and get them off in fear of messing up the wet paint.

Now that things have dried for a few days what is the best way to get them off.

Thanks

The previous posts have pretty well covered the subject.  However, it brought to mind a similar situation I had a few years ago when I was applying the final polyurethane paint to the full-scale Steen Skybolt I was building for myself.  I had just applied the final coat of International Orange poly and it was looking really good - great gloss & flowout.  As I stood there with the spraygun in hand getting ready to go into the shop to clean the gun a Japanese beetle about an inch long landed on the very wet wingwalk right in the middle.  Boy, that was too much so I figured that since I was going to have to rework that area anyway I gave that beetle a heavy coat of red-orange polyurethane while he was crawling around on the wing leaving big tracks.  Then, to my amazement, the beetle took off and flew out of sight!  I don't know how long he survived but he sure was visible for quite a ways off.

The previous posts have pretty well covered the subject.  However, it brought to mind a similar situation I had a few years ago when I was applying the final polyurethane paint to the full-scale Steen Skybolt I was building for myself.  I had just applied the final coat of International Orange poly and it was looking really good - great gloss & flowout.  As I stood there with the spraygun in hand getting ready to go into the shop to clean the gun a Japanese beetle about an inch long landed on the very wet wingwalk right in the middle.  Boy, that was too much so I figured that since I was going to have to rework that area anyway I gave that beetle a heavy coat of red-orange polyurethane while he was crawling around on the wing leaving big tracks.  Then, to my amazement, the beetle took off and flew out of sight!  I don't know how long he survived but he sure was visible for quite a ways off.

     "I can paint any beetle for $29.95!!!"  Earl Schibe

    Dan McEntee