Paint
Paint Ideas
Something that really makes the aeroplane look finished... The paint. We've been bashing around paint ideas ever since the whole project started (of course, we all fantasise about this stuff). Although the military thing is somewhat overdone in the RV community, I've never been able to get over the lure of it for some reason. The whole point in spending all that money on a black MT prop with yellow tips was to compliment the military style paint.
Of course, American schemes did come to mind, there are numerous renditions of US P-51's out there on RV's. But alas, we're Brits, so that rules out the Stars 'n' Bars eh? What is it to be then? First thought obviously turn to Spitfires of WW2, but we weren't really all that keen on the camo paint.
There were obvioulsy P-51's wearing RAF Roundels, such as 'Dooleybird', but none of those took our fancy either.
I do like the D-Day stripes. They make a plane look very cool indeed, so it would be nice to incorporate that into some scheme too.
Anyways, bring on the Royal Navy! Here's Argonaut, a Sea Fury. We like the colours this plane is wearing, and may go down this road. It's fairly simple in that it is just two basic colours, with some detailing. No D-Day stripes though.
Here's another Sea Fury with D-Day stripes. This looks pretty cool too, maybe a little too much 'Duck Egg Blue', but generally OK. I can see I might have to do some more research here!
If you have any pictures of Royal Navy aircraft that we could consider for painting our RV, please forward them!
8/8/2007 Update
After a scouting trip to Sun N Fun in Lakeland Florida (in the RV no less), I decided on a painter for the plane. We'll be sending it to Tony Dias at Advanced Aircraft Refinishers. Some of the work I've seen of theirs was very very good, and should meet my expectations for very high standard.
If you visited Sun N Fun, you may have seen the AOPA Cardinal. AAR painted that plane too. They're so booked up that the wait will be a few more months yet! I'm expecting it to be sometime in November, once Tony has worked me into the schedule.
The trip to the paint shop will entail a 4 week down time, possibly less, depending on how things go. I take a day to disassemble the plane there and then another day to re-assemble when it's finished. Tony prefers that the builder does this, and I can understand why.
We've pretty much decided on the Sea Fury paint scheme. Now it's just figuring out which ship and the exact colours. We're thinking of something from HMS Centaur right now, so I'm researching the Sea Furies that flew from her deck. The picture above is a Sea Fury in the colours from HMS Ocean. It's quite a lot of research, and I've bought a lot of old books to figure it all out properly. It doesn't have to be exactly right, but it would be nice to be close.
More to come....
This weekend I went own to Georgia to pick up the baby. Was I in for a surprise when I saw the plane. It was absolutely stunning. I'm so happy with it! The best thing I can do is jkust put the pics here and let them speak for themselves. I'll leave them on the large size so that you can see the plane better. It's gorgeous! Shame it was snowy and cold (7F)... There'll be plenty of pics to come as flying season comes around.
I'd like to thank Tony Dias and his crew at Advanced Aircraft Refinishers for doing such an outstanding job of interpreting my designs and executing them on our plane. What a fantastic job guys, thanks!
