Painting a propeller

[KRyan]

I got an e-mail from a customer who wants to paint the tips of his blades on the face side of the blade. It is a tractor aircraft, so the effect would be a large ring rotating in front of the pilot & visible to the pilot in flight.

At the very least, it seems that that would be distracting, and not serve any useful purpose. I also seem to recall there was some FAR that prohibited this, but I can't seem to locate it.

Any ideas?

 

[Tom-D]

I got an e-mail from a customer who wants to paint the tips of his blades on the face side of the blade. It is a tractor aircraft, so the effect would be a large ring rotating in front of the pilot & visible to the pilot in flight.

At the very least, it seems that that would be distracting, and not serve any useful purpose. I also seem to recall there was some FAR that prohibited this, but I can't seem to locate it.

Any ideas?

Just paint the front side, the back side should be flat black.

There is no FAR to prevent any one from doing this. try to keep the same amount of paint on each tip.

 

[Skylane81E]

I know of a IA/pilot/owner who likes to know where the edge of the prop is.

So he puts a small yellow bar on the tip of each blade. The effect is just a yellow circle in front of the plane.

 

[Geico266]

Story time.

I had my homebuilt painted and they painted the prop to match, but left the back side white. I thought I would try it and see if it made a difference. I could barely taxi the plane. it was like a white sheet being held it front of the plane with a strobe behind it. Very distracting.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Just checked the pictures - it turns out that my prop has white tips on the back- but I don't recall really noticing them (or perhaps, I'm just used to them).

 

[KRyan]

Geoff:

Do you fly at night? I'm concerned that the stripes would "strobe" in the position lights. This customer will be flying at night -a lot!

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Geoff:

Do you fly at night? I'm concerned that the stripes would "strobe" in the position lights. This customer will be flying at night -a lot!

As a light and sporty guy, no - I do not fly at night.

 

[KRyan]

Thanks for your help. I told him not to do it based on the night flying.

 

[jnmeade]

My friend had his Cherokee Six painted. The shop painted the prop a new color. The FAA was by, saw it, grounded it and insited it be repainted as original before flight. I don't know anything further.

 

[KRyan]

These guys don't have to worry about the FAA.

 

[N801BH]

My friend had his Cherokee Six painted. The shop painted the prop a new color. The FAA was by, saw it, grounded it and insited it be repainted as original before flight. I don't know anything further.

 

[Tom-D]

My friend had his Cherokee Six painted. The shop painted the prop a new color. The FAA was by, saw it, grounded it and insited it be repainted as original before flight. I don't know anything further.

Probably was rotor or the guy who hit on Bob Hover.

 

[Henning]

We had a great client with a 210, a business commuter type who would park in front of the hangar with a squawk list and standing orders to go over the plane and fix what we find. When I was done, I'd repaint his prop with a new stripe design (front side only touching up the black on the back) that would make whatever design I could imagine to work. He thought that was so cool.