Painting Aircraft
 

Hi

I've just got a couple of questions about painting aircraft (or more specifically - gliders). I was not entirely sure which forum would be best to ask this on, but I decided the people who own their own aircraft would be the most clued up about it.

I'm part of a University Gliding Society and we are currently restoring a Ka 6 glider, which is an old glider of wood and fabric. We were considering re-painting it to make it look a little more interesting, but I can't find the regulations to comply with. Are there many restrictions to painting aircraft?

If anyone can give me any help or advice with this, it would be very much appreciated.

Regards
Tom

With fabric aircraft, you are more likely to run into technological restrictions than into regulatory ones, as the range of coatings is much narrower. If you are replacing cotton with ceconite, or if the glider is already ceconite-covered, see www.ceconite.com for an overview.

Thanks for the reply. I obviously underestimated the complexity of the process.

Does anyone know roughly how much it would cost to paint an aircraft?

Cheers

Overall weight is one concern. Control balance based on weight changes is another more important one.

Additionally, when you strip the old paint you need to exercise caution regarding what you use to strip the paint, damage to underlying surfaces, corrosion potential in faying surfaces, and ensuring a thorough inspection of the underlying structure is performed prior to recovering...which may include something much more thorough than a simple look-see.

I'd suggest searching out any Vintage Gliding Club members at your home club (Vintage Glider Club). The K-6 is still a pretty common type so there's probably plenty iof people who can offer advice. Depending upon which site you fly from you may even find that there's other K-6 owners nearby. Weight, paint type and colour are all considerations (black being good for conscipuity but bad for airframe life!). Don't know if the K-6 is annex 2 or not but that could also affect things too.

I was part of a team of high schoolers that redid a TG1A Cinema sailplane back in 1973. We used ceconite to replace the old fabric and painted the result using 2 part epoxy spray paint. The finish lasted a long time. The work was supervised by an A&P who approved the paint. Weight and balance was done after the paint job.

Good luck on your project. Ours was lots of fun.:ok:

Glider colour
 

Whatever recovering process you use, do please paint it a colour that we can see easily against the clouds.

Broomstick.

I spend a fair amount of my time painting (spraying) ceconite covered powered aircraft.

Drop me a PM with a contact number and I'll give you a call and discuss the two common processes that enables paint to stick to dacron/polyester.

I have plenty of work and am not touting for business, so you will get experienced knowledge at no cost!

Stik

Thanks for the advice everyone. I'll let you know if we can afford it! Thinking the money may be better saved towards an astir or something, as re-covering it sounds expensive.

Cheers though!
Tom

Same question, but for spam-can - any restrictions or can you just get on and start painting?

Cheers, Sam.

Hi Sam, for the spam can, if it's a Cessna the original paint was Acrylic Lacquer. This I believe is different to Gloss Paint and not so readily obtainable.

For the fabric Glider, one chap who was repairing his K8 said that the undercoat needed to be a Silver/Aluminium paint... quite why I don't know (maybe it's a radar reflectant.)

CAP 747 has the basic stuff for controlling painting.

This includes the necessity for enginering control - which never used to be necessary until people started to drag airframes to motor sprayers and get hings wrong....

Phiggs - the silver / aluminium coat is to stop ultraviolet deterioration of the fabric and a very necessary measure.

A couple of years ago, our local flying club decided to paint their C150 with help of the members. Started by stripping the old paint. One member brought his power-sander and started to sand away a lot of rivet heads. Lots of work to drill out the rivets and replace the heads. Expensive bill and the painting hadn't started yet.

This may sound obvious, but a key thing plenty of people forget is to follow CAP 523 (http://www.caa.co.uk/docs/33/CAP523.PDF) in tems of displaying the registration marks properly (i.e. of the correct size/height, against a contrasting background, etc).

The CAA do not actively look for people who are not following the guidelines, however if it is bought to their attention (i.e. a member of the public sends in a photo, or an inspector thinks something is blatantly not following the guidelines and decides to check it with the Aircraft Registration department) then they are legally obliged to follow it up and ask you to get them changed.

Hold on now guys, we're answering a question based on far too limited information.

Tom - When you say "restoring" a K6 it could mean anything from touching up a few paint blemishes to its needing a full refabric and refinishing. The latter would I'm sure be too much for a university gliding club to tackle - too much time, effort, cost and skills set.

Let's start from the end, not the beginning. The K6 unfortunately comes under EASA (European Mindless Bureaucracy) , it's not Annex II. You will therefore need an Airworthiness Review Certificate (ARC) issued by a BGA Chief Engineer before it can fly and the type of materials to be used are therefore more restricted than Annex II.


If the glider is, or has recently been airworthy then one of your host gliding club's Chief Engineers will have issued the last ARC. and he (or another glider inspector) will have done the annual physical inspection. Track those guys down and ask their opinion before doing anything. If the glider has been recently airworthy then they can tell you if new fabric is really needed (probably not). If the glider has not been recently (i.e. in the last couple of years) airworthy then forget the whole project right now.

Also the Chief Engineer will have an opinion on the paint to be used. Because if you paint first, and then ask him to sign off the glider, you might be told where put it!

The glider logbook ought to tell you what finish was last used and you would be well advised to stick to that type as a recoat. Otherwise there can be very nasty reactions between differing paint types. If you do start applying paint over an old finish, do some small inconspicuous test dabs to make sure there isn't a reaction. Not all glider owners pre-EASA were totally precise about recording repaints etc!

Incidentally one of the main problems with the K6 is cockpit size. Taller pilots (i.e. me) just don't fit. It can be a major problem for a club glider. Check whether your potential pilots can fit into it before doing too much work.

If out of interest you want to see how to refabric a glider Google the Ceconite Manual - it's very comprehensive.

P.M. me if you have more questions

cheers
Dave

astir 8 Did you notice the Glider question was 2008, and the thread was re-activated for aspam-can?

If its metal, give it to Mick Alan over at Turweston and it will look like this...
G-RVIZ in the air.. - a set on Flickr

Nope, can't say I did. Possibly easier to start a new thread?