Aircraft Painting.

To obscure a large company logo, yellow paint was used and we arrived to find the aircraft as pictured on the left - it was clearly a disaster. The weather was so poor that no shooting was able to take place. The picture on the right - the same task, completed by a specialist painter. We were lucky, we got away with it.

Painting aircraft and helicopters is very complex.  It is best left to specialised aircraft painters who understand the effect of what they are doing. Even the weight of paint, (particularly on dynamic components) has a significant effect.

There has been some notable problems.  In one of the early Bond movies, a bright red North Sea helicopter was painted drab green to resemble a Soviet helicopter.  When the paint was removed, because the original paintwork on a hard working North Sea machine had various cracks and areas of mat surface, all of the cracks then contained green paint. The aircraft had to be completely stripped down and repainted at the Production's expense. In this situation insurance companies are in a pretty good position not to pay out, as it was ignorance rather than an accident.

Operationally remember to allow time to put the paint on and off including drying time in a suitable temperature. Therefore aircraft rental and hanger space must be allowed for, plus positioning.

Some Companies will claim that they have many times repainted their aircraft and are the best to do so again.  In our experience this is rarely the case as the example below shows.

Fablon can be used on metal aircraft providing it is of the low tack nature, but extreme care must be taken that it does not come off in flight.

The method used here is only for non flying work.The surface is first painted with a thin layer of liquid rubber and then painted with normal emulsion. The liquid rubber does not allow a great surface quality but is fine for military machines with drab or comoflage paint schemes To remove it you just peel it away.