Airplane colour (color) question

Hi

I was thinking of going for a white RV 7A, but seeing photo's of deep red RV's I might change my mind
Examples of red RV's
http://harmonia.meccahosting.com/~a00068a3/N87DX/Home.html
http://www.aerophile.org/pics/AirRacing/Practice/PRS01/DSC00061.jpg
http://www.idahobushco.com/images/pops_Rv4.jpg

Is red very heavy? One of the guys I know had to put on, I think, 7 coats of red at certain places on his airplane
Is it possible to get an undercoat/primer that is red and just paint a clearcoat over it or will that not look very good
How badly does a dark paint like red or black affect the petrol in the wings?
Does the dark paint affect the cockpit heat alot?

Red paint

The top of my 6a is true red. The top of our rv-10 is dark red. No known problems from it. However,if you select certain shades of red paint, it can be very expensive. Some custom reds can cost 600-800/ quart.

Red seems to be especially sensitive to the number of coats affecting the particular resulting hue/shade of red you end up with.

For instance I know an RV-6 builder who painted an extra coat on his wingtips to fix some minor imperfections after they were already painted to match the same number of coats of red on the wings, and the extra coat on the wingtips made them noticeably darker in comparison once they were re-installed on the wings.

White paint generally presents no such problems if you ever need to touch up a spot or make a small paint repair. It's much easier to color-match.

Red and white sure looks good together on an RV too

http://img545.imageshack.us/i/img4043.jpg/
http://img716.imageshack.us/i/img3325q.jpg/
http://img713.imageshack.us/i/img3340gf.jpg/

Red Fades

Red paint seems to be the color most prone to fading (I have a sports car that I call light red, others call it pink). Does anybody know if there are any studies that show which paint colors are the most/least resistant to fading?

Red and yellow are the most expensive pigments. Use a white primer to avoid mottling and coverage issues with your top coat. Use a top quality ($) paint and coverage will be fine. If you go cheap it will take a bunch of coats. I used two cross-coats of Sherwin-Williams Ultra 7000 base and had no issues (base-coat / clear-coat system). All the red on my plane was done with one ($$$) quart and I have extra.