Vinyl or paint?

Hi.
I would like to paint my RV9A similar to the Van's demonstrator, with different colours: upper part blue, lower part white and a yellow S-shaped line.

I wrote to Van's and they told me the yellow line is vinil.

Since I would like to have the yellow line slightly separated from the blue (so, blue, narrow white, yellow line, white), I guess it will be difficult to design and apply an S-shaped vinil line which is equally distanced from the blue edge.

What would you do? Painting that yellow line or try with vinil? Any other advice?

Thanks.

I would go the paint route. But, the "vinil" could work easily. Place the yellow over the blue then apply narrow white stripes as the top layer.

ff

vinyl info

Yeah, love the way Van's did a simple 2 tone and made it look quite 'custom' with the swash/stripe. ( My guess, you save enough on multiple masking and labour to pay for the vinyl graphics.)

Note that if you are doing a yellow swash, which will run partly on the white, part on blue, that it is not totally opaque.
Most bright yellow vinyls have a grey pigmented adhesive which adds opacity, but not 100%, so you still see a colour shift where it runs from white to blue......
adding a white 'break' line where it goes over the blue will help visually, or you could layer yellow over a white background, but shrinkage and adhesion with layers can become a problem. If you are hangaring, not much of an issue.

as always, test, rinse, repeat.

Thank-you for your inputs.

Actually, the yellow stripe should go on the white half of the fuselage only. I will have the upper blue part slightly separated from the yellow part.

I wrote to AeroGraphics and had a positive answer on the possibility of having a yellow stripe custom made for me.

go and paint

Camillo, paint it !

Never worked with a long vinil ?

Ciao, Luca.
Yesterday, I changed my mind and designed on my wings the pattern.
I think I will also go with paint along the fuselage.
I hope the painter will know how to make curve lines...

To eliminate guess work ...

To eliminate guess work you can make your own full size template from paper and supply it to the painter as part of the contract requirements. I prefer straight lines but there are some curves in the design I came up with. I took the patterns for the major trim color to the hangar and taped them to the airplane to get the exact position/location dimensions and included them in the contract as well. In this step I found that the color scheme on the horizontal stabilizer and elevator did not look right in full size and I made modifications until I got it right while still in the hangar. I specified the uniform width of the second trim color which is a border separation of white around the major trim color (red) on the basic color (dark blue). I went through the Imron color chips and specified the exact color numbers to be used. There were no surprises and now after 5 years of flying since the paint was applied (I flew for a year without paint) I am still very happy with the paint job. This part of the airplane is worth an extreme level of work and detail.

Bob Axsom

Do Paint..

Paint looks much better than vinyl. I have done both, and the only advantage to using vinyl is making some curves or complicated shapes when you just dont have enough time to do it the right way.

Over time the vinyl will buckle, shrink, bubble, and ultimately start to look really bad.

ANY painter worth his salt can make curves with tape. The trick is making nice flowing curves and duplicating them on both sides of the aircraft.

Camillo, Id be happy to do a paint scheme rendering for you to help visualize your idea, and give your painter a nice clean guideline to go by. Just let me know
here is a sample:

Thanks for your inputs.
Yes, I will go with paint.
And John, your offer is really attractive!
I will contact you as soon as possible!

Thats great!! Just let me know..