No paint for Rivet Joint!
 

I read that in order to save £3 million, our "new" rivet joint (does any type have a more grating name?) are not going to be repainted and will remain in USAF colours (or should that be colors!)

While this will probably be seized on to prove we are off to hell in a handcart, may I just opine what a sensible decision. All involved must have better things to do than carry out the calibration programme a repaint would entail. It looks good too, shades of old transport command scheme.

One good reason is paint is very heavy! I was told of one helo programme where the trials aircraft was brought within weight limits by sending her to the paint shop to strip about 10 coats off her.

Probably a wise move.
If will keep both fleets (can three be a fleet) looking the same, which may be useful at times.
It will also save a lot of time stripping off one lot of paint only to then respray the airframes, which will also save all the re calibration.

Another bonus could be if the 'FORCE' was left on, and just 'ROYAL AIR' added in front as we could keep to the U.S. font and not our corporate one :)

Perhaps saving money on changing the drawing set as well...

Rivet Joint may not be a great name, but I'd rather it be known as that than as AirSeeker:yuk:.

isn't there an issue with painting the topside of the aircraft any colour other than white anyway because of the heat generated in the cabin?

in which case we're talking about different colour greys for the underside of three aircraft, which, lets face it, aren't likely to be on regular display at airshows - a mighty 'meh' is the reaction from this callsign..

£3million buys a lot of fuel for a reinforcement exercise down south, or an AAR kit for a C-130J (ok, it goes towards an AAR kit for a C-130J..) all of which contribute far more to Defence than buggering about with colour schemes.

Repainting the Sentry in Barley Grey caused a fair bit of extra expense to confirm that the aircraft mission system cooling systems could cope with the change of thermal profile caused by the new finish. (All to do with the reflectiblity of the surface - some finishes are designed to reflect radiation - others absorb it).

I saw this on another thread and wondered who is feeding this ***t to the Daily Mail.

I don't hold with the rationale given altogether but it was a safe decision to stay with the USAF standard scheme. Yes someone would have had to have drawings and sought approval to differ.

I think their was also a discussion over the font used for the letters on the side.

Who cares that much.

Two stories that spring to mind - the weight of the paint scheme on the Nimrod R was said to weigh 700 lbs. I cant recall if this was a single scheme as thre was a time when they were not always stripped back to bare metal during a major at NMSU.

in the early 90s when we fitted a new Dolly Parton antenna. Some measurements of the dialectric properties (transparency) of the "bomb doors" was taken. It was found that they had had several layers of paint as they had not been stripped since new. Great lengths were taken to determine how best to strip the paint. We used an old AEW Nimrod radome to experiment. In the end it was a traditional paint scrapper job. the flakes must have been 14 swg thick in places. One single layer was put back on and the performance improved significantly.

I can't recall if we had a spare set of doors but all three aircaft were soon recovered to that standard.

It will be - AirSeeker is the name of the programme rather than the name of the platform.

Given the age of the aeroplanes in question I would suggest they do make sure its only got one coat of paint, if not strip it down. Save weight and fuel.

Reminds me of the old Carvairs at Southend in the early 80's. They stripped down one to silver and result was a few kts increase in the cruise.

Strip the paint off Loose Rivet (will someone please rename the aircraft if only to stop me calling it this) and you'll be able to watch the airframe oxidise even faster than it has done so far.
There is of course some benefit in keeping the top white rather than some non-descript grey colour, this thing is full of rather warm electronics let alone the several kilowatts given off by the crew and without the white paint its likley to overheat in the sun of a Waddington winters day.

£3000000 is about half the cost of the current, last minute scrabble to convince someone to sign off a clearance for the RAF to fly the aircraft.

So, almost identical to Support / Transport Command colours.
Pity the blue stripe come lightning bolt won't be included.

I wonder if this about appearances or corporate image. Appearances can't really apply here, it's a really ugly aircraft and no combinations of monotone shades are going to help that. Corporate image in RAF terms involves so many different paint schemes that it's probably enough to paint a roundel or two, a tail flash and a serial number on it.

If it works as it is and to change it would cost millions (more) and might stop it working properly, let's just leave it alone. Sensible savings in my book. :ok:

How about a bit of PPRuNe Guerrilla Decorating :E

Now where did I put my lambswool roller and colour chart ...

Leopard print, Coff. That might help. Or reptile scales, a rainbow pattern or some kind of sponsorship scheme like "ASDA, Every Little Helps."

Perhaps the rainbow might cause a clash of interest between a happy organization and one between blue and yellow.

No point, there must be a few million lbs of fuel excess to the new budget now the ten has been retired.

Reckon the paint job is probably keeping the rivets IN!

It'll save Maintenance from using up all the Titebond gluing the screwheads back in . . .

When the FunBus was first painted in John Major Grey (plus pansy 'blue vein' cheat line :yuk:), 'the girls' decided that it needed a hot weather trial to assess the effect of the new paint.

Despite having been assured that there were plenty of hot, sandy places eminently suitable, 'the girls' and their boffins decided that Nevada was the only acceptable location, so off they buggered for a few weeks, with the aircraft full of extra boffin wiring.

Guess what - there was no problem. So back they (eventually) came and I went over to Boscombe with a crew to bring it back to Brize.

The engineers then discovered that the Boscombe boffins had left several miles of their wiring installed, but hadn't provided any weight and balance figures for it.... The usual handbag session between Brize and Boscombe then took place and, if I recall correctly, it didn't fly again until the Brize engineers had stripped out all the extra wiring Boscombe had left behind....:mad:

The 'blue vein' soon went, thankfully!

Funbus repaint
 

I was in MoD on one of the AT/AAR desks when the Funbus received its new paint job and BEagle is quite right, despite all Boscombe's calculations there was no problem found in Nevada. However, the story did not stop there. Having redone all their calculations several times over the Boscombe narks still could not understand the result and wanted another trial (to last several weeks) in somewhere else exotic and at our expense. If memory serves it was Snake who dissuaded them by the simple process of asking about sex and travel, closely followed by a NO as we had a much better use for the airframe on operational tasking.