Sling Pilots Forum

Hello All,

I was suggest that instead of painting the aircraft, I should look at vinyl wrap. Has anyone looked into this option for your build?

Thanks,

Andrew

I actually love the idea. You could theoretically skip filling all the rivets, and just wrap over the top of them. I asked the guys at TAF in Torrance about the idea, and they didn't seem too stoked. They said you would have to replace the wrap every year or two to keep it looking good. They recommended painting the base color on the plane and using vinyl for accents.

I still really like the idea, depending on cost. It's cleaner than trying to paint the plane (no fumes), so that's a plus. Assume you have to re-wrap the plane every other year (but maybe every year!). Say a paint job lasts 10-20 years. If you paint the plane yourself, it will cost only 2-3k. If you get it painted, it might be 10-15k depending on what you want done. From my limited research it looks like it would cost about 1-2k in material to wrap the plane yourself. Didn't look into having it done. So, there's so much room for error in the lack of accurate numbers, but its potentially a wash with the option to have a new scheme every few years, or you could end up paying double or triple over the estimated life of paint. It's completely not cost effective over painting the plane yourself! If I could be sure the wrap would last 3-5 years without the rivets starting to rip through the vinyl, I'd probably go that route even with the slight increase in cost.

All these numbers are such rough estimates though, saying 2 years per wrap, 20 years per paint job, and guessing at costs to wrap the plane. If someone knows wrapping costs a little better I'd love to hear from them!

Great response Evan. Maybe I would just paint the aircraft white and then use vinyl accents and tail number. I like the idea of changing the look every few years. It also gives any potential future buyer the option to do the same. Also, this could keep the paint costs down if I get a local auto body shop to do the base white coat.

I attended a good presentation given by the CEO of Schemedesigners about painting your experimental airplane.

He talked a lot about the pros and cons of the different methods and also a lot of details about actual design considerations.

As for Vinyl vs paint - if you want to do a very complex all up design, then you could do a whole airplane wrap, but it would likely be the same cost as painting the airplane, but allows for much more detail since it's printed.
If you have a simple design and want longevity, then full paint is probably the way to go.

The path in between is to paint the base (white or your preferred light color) and apply vinyl on top for the lines or registration number.

We actually did the last option on the Airplane in the Flying Club I'm part of with great success.

You do want to make sure the paint used is appropriate for airplanes to last longer.

Also word of caution about "changing looks every few years" - if you apply vinyl and keep it on for a while, the paint below will likely stay more protected than the uncovered paint, so you may when you remove it still see a resemblance of where the Vinyl was before if you change up designs.

Great point Phillip, thanks.