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PIREP: Clear Wing Walk

H

humptybump

Well Known Member
Not all wing walk is black. As a matter of fact, I have now seen white and clear.

Clear Wing Walk is available from Aircraft Spruce. I chose the clear since my wing has is both silvervand black where the wing walk goes. I looked at what would happen if I used black and it really messed with the paint design.

The clear goes on just like the black but, unlike black, every single bubble will show. Since there are a lot of rivets in this area, they all creat a round pocket. If the paint is dark, they show just like air bubbles.

  • If you have a solid light color, the clear wing walk may work OK.
  • If you fill all the rivets and smooth out the area, clear wing walk should work better..
  • If you have dark color or high contrasts and can see your rivets, you should avoid clear wing walk.

FYI - If you have a light color and think white wing walk would look nice, find an ambulance maintenance supply shop or an emergency vehicle paint and repair shop. They can probably get some white wing walk. Alternately, call Aircraft Spruce apolish if they can special order it or if they would give the name of their supplier of the clear. The company that supplies the clear also sells the white but Aircraft Spruce does not stock it. I know, because they accidentally shipped me the white because their supplier accidentally filled a clear order with white.
 
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I too tried the clear wing walk, over an off-white pearl. I could not eliminate the bubbles, so I removed it and applied standard black.
 
Thanks Dan. I appreciate the confirmation of my experience.

It looks "OK" over my silver. I suspect I will get annoyed by the visible bubbles and will split my wing walk with "black over black" and "clear over silver".
 
UPDATE: in certain lights, the clear really shows bubbles, rivets, etc. I may follow Dan's lead and seek another path.
 
Good topic

My neighbor and I were talking about this this morning. I know you can get a multitude of colors at a skateboard shop. They've got it all.

What about a clear "paint on" wing walk? There's got to be something out there.

It definitely behooves to take the wing walk situation into consideration on the paint design.

Great topic. Hopefully more answers coming.
 
I used the "clear" wing walk on my yellow wings. When I applied it, I was disappointed at the bubbles I could not remove. BUT now 18months later, I don't notice the bubbles, but HATE the dirt and scuffs. The clear shows every smudge. :(
 
Can you just puncture the bubblies with needle and squeeze the air out? Those microscopic holes will close tight.
 
I put the clear on the 10 and before I even did the fairings, I hated it. The dirt is terrible, even dust. Tore it off 3 days ago and put Vans on. Much happier.
 
Wow

Another great discussion. I didn't think about the dirt aspect before I bought the white. It now goes to the bin of stuff to use whenever for whatever - just not the plane. Similarly, the skate shop idea is so obvious it's brilliant. Rick 90432
 
Very interesting, I planned going with the clear wing walk but when reading all the posts about it, I believe it is not the good solution.
I believe the skateboard tape is a good idea as Darwin mentioned, in two minutes I found one that will match my paint scheme for $7, what else?
 
I found a number of skateboard grip tape colors but did not find silver or light gray. What source did you find?
 
We have had good reports on our wing walk material. It is a marine grade, non-slip material that won't wear holes in your jeans when you're leaning deep into the cockpit to clean the floors or other activity. It's very easy to keep clean. It's also inexpensive. It's been on my Rocket for nearly 10 years and still looks like new.

Not perfect for everyone, but a very good overall product. The only knock I know of is that if you're a total clumsy klutz, you might want to stick to the Van's extra gritty, sandpapery stuff for 100% anti-slip effect.

http://www.flyboyaccessories.com/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=1
 
The paint shop that painted my airplane (Wipaire in St. Paul, MN) has some material they mixed into the white paint for the wing walk areas on my airplane. They then painted a border around it with one of the trim colors. It is some kind of grit and has worked extremely well, looks great, and is holding up perfectly after 3 1/2 years and 500+ hours. I would definitely do it this way again. Much nicer than stick on products. The only problem, as others have noted, is that I had them do it in white. Shows every speck of dirt from shoes and is a pain to clean. If I had done it in a dark color, it would have been really great. I don't know what the material they used is, but a call to Dave Utsch, at Wipaire, would probably answer that question. Dave can be reached at 651-209-7172.
 
When I worked for Dodgens aircraft Dan showed me how to do that. They started by mixing fine sand with paint in a big nozzle gun. Experimenting showed that it worked better to lay down a wet coat of straight paint and hand sprinkle the sand evenly, then more paint, more sand, more paint. Afterwards mask a border and shoot the whole thing again. It makes a really tough and pretty wingwalk. Only downside is you have to use a monster paint stripper to remove it.
 
I had already ordered the RV wing walk material in black before learning of the clear. Before I yank off the clear, I plan to take the black, mask it to match the wing, and try a light coat of silver to match the paint scheme of the wing. If the silver does not fill in the grit too much, then I install the black+silver walks and junk the clear.

BTW, the clean is less grippy than most of the black options. Grippy enough but definitely not the same.

If the silver paint is even close to the grippiness of the clear, it will be good enough since it is only a portion of width of my walks.
 
hydroguy2 said:
I used the "clear" wing walk on my yellow wings. When I applied it, I was disappointed at the bubbles I could not remove. BUT now 18months later, I don't notice the bubbles, but HATE the dirt and scuffs. The clear shows every smudge. :(
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I agree with this. We installed the clear wing walk on our white wing. We actually flew with it until Rain N Pain 2010 , ummm sorry, Sun N Fun 2010. After our repairs we went back to the black. I am much happier with the black. With the clear, we did not have an issue with bubbles but we could not keep it clean. It constantly had a muddy look to it no matter how often we cleaned it. It definitely looked very nice before anyone walked on it but once shoes made their way to the surface everything stayed dirty.
 
I pulled off the clear wing walk today and installed my black/silver ...

20120526-190353-575x426.jpg


First, I cut the black wing walk (from FlyBoys) to size. Then I matched the curve of the silver in the paint scheme and masked off the wing walk material. Took it to the paint shop and shot silver. After curing, I installed them. They look perfect. From 10' you might even miss them.

I expect the silver will scuff pretty easily. I can always touch up if/when needed.
 
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