Vinyl wrap on an aircraft?

StinkBug

StinkBug

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Wrapping cars is becoming incredibly common, go to any car show or trade event and you'll see all sorts of cars wrapped. What about planes though? Lets say you had a plane that was just plain white, or maybe that had some ugly color graphics on it, and you wanted to add some stripes or graphics without the expense of a full paint job, or say you were running a tour business and wanted to advertise on the plane. Is there anything in the FAR's preventing you from doing a vinyl wrap? Anyone seen it done before? Can anyone think of reasons it would be a bad idea?
 
Covered on dec 2 under title wrapping aircraft.
 
Bristell LSAs are brought into the country plain white and wrapped to customer specs once they are re-assembled here in the US.
 
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Sure can, and a great idea. All of the Redhawks are total vinyl wraps and just plain white. That way when they pull them out of service for the school, they pull the vinyl and sell it.

Now the vinyl is hardly durable, but easy to replace.
 
Trim colors in vinyl over a base paint color? Absolutely.

I would not wrap directly over aluminum. We've seen more than a few problems with corrosion on the kit parts in RV kits which are shipped with a layer of vinyl film to protect the parts. Presumably, a little moisture gets under the plastic and pretty soon you've got a corrosion problem.

Today's tribal knowledge suggests removing that direct contact plastic ASAP once you get the kit.

I assume directly wrapping an aluminum aircraft might create the same results.
 
Well reason I ask is that I'm in the process of buying an aircraft that has some seriously 70s colors going on. Primarily white, but with brown and gold stripes. I was thinking covering the stripes with different colored stripes in vinyl might be an economical way to make it not so ugly for a couple years while I save up for a full repaint.
 
There is a shop at Morey in Middleton Wisconsin (C29) that makes a living doing aircraft vinyl. At least as far as I know they are still there. I believe they did one of the AOPA sweepstakes airplanes a couple years back. Largely it is composites, but it works well as a stripe on aluminum.
 
StinkBug said:
Well reason I ask is that I'm in the process of buying an aircraft that has some seriously 70s colors going on. Primarily white, but with brown and gold stripes.
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... And the problem with that would be what??! :skeptical: :sosp:

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:D
 
if my brown and gold looked like yours I wouldn't have an issue. Mine looks more like baby poop on a good day and a bad day. What were people thinking in the 70s? Someone actually paid to have the plane stripped and painted these colors.
 

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kyleb said:
Trim colors in vinyl over a base paint color? Absolutely.

I would not wrap directly over aluminum. We've seen more than a few problems with corrosion on the kit parts in RV kits which are shipped with a layer of vinyl film to protect the parts. Presumably, a little moisture gets under the plastic and pretty soon you've got a corrosion problem.

Today's tribal knowledge suggests removing that direct contact plastic ASAP once you get the kit.

I assume directly wrapping an aluminum aircraft might create the same results.
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There are several RVs wrapped. A couple at Reno, several at OSH. Time will tell if corrosion is really an issue. I haven't seen any problems with kits wrapped in "blue death" in the 8 years I have been looking at 20+ year old kits in some cases. Might have to do with environmental conditions to some degree. :dunno:
 
StinkBug said:
Mine looks more like baby poop on a good day and a bad day. What were people thinking in the 70s?
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There's a '78 M20J in my hangar row with original factory paint that looks just like that. Its owner and I often compliment each other on taste in airplane colors. :yes:

I used to have a '78 Grumman Cheetah still in original paint: white with avocado green and orange trim. I couldn't wait to get it painted. :eek:
 
Dan Gryder as wrapped his DC-3 in vinyl a number of times.
 
Pilawt said:
I used to have a '78 Grumman Cheetah still in original paint: white with avocado green and orange trim. I couldn't wait to get it painted. :eek:
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Ohhhhh yeah avocado and orange would win this contest.....or would that be losing? FWIW I think yours is pretty nice looking.
 
StinkBug said:
if my brown and gold looked like yours I wouldn't have an issue. Mine looks more like baby poop on a good day and a bad day. What were people thinking in the 70s? Someone actually paid to have the plane stripped and painted these colors.
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That's not bad. I would be more turned off by some funky Brady bunch interior.
 
When my son ran the soap box derby in the "stock" division the first year, the rules say you could decorate the car with decals, stickers, and tape. I bought him a six pack of electrical tape in various colors figuring he'd come up with something. He came back an hour later and said he needed more tape. I came out to find that he had completely covered the back foot or so of the car in stripes of tape. I bought him more. He did the whole car that way.

He managed to get his picture in the Washington post as having one of the most distinctive looking cars. He came in 7th. The next year there was a rule change requiring the first 6" of the car to have nothing stuck to that. I figured it was the Ian rule (apparently the photocell finish line timer had an issue with certain finishes).
 
StinkBug said:
if my brown and gold looked like yours I wouldn't have an issue. Mine looks more like baby poop on a good day and a bad day. What were people thinking in the 70s? Someone actually paid to have the plane stripped and painted these colors.
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I think that's a good looking little Mooney. I wouldn't change it. There are much worse colors out there!
 
flyingron said:
When my son ran the soap box derby in the "stock" division the first year, the rules say you could decorate the car with decals, stickers, and tape. I bought him a six pack of electrical tape in various colors figuring he'd come up with something. He came back an hour later and said he needed more tape. I came out to find that he had completely covered the back foot or so of the car in stripes of tape. I bought him more. He did the whole car that way.

He managed to get his picture in the Washington post as having one of the most distinctive looking cars. He came in 7th. The next year there was a rule change requiring the first 6" of the car to have nothing stuck to that. I figured it was the Ian rule (apparently the photocell finish line timer had an issue with certain finishes).
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Cool story, and good for him! I bet more people remembered his funky car than who won the race.
 
I have vinyl stripes on the Freebird. A couple are now missing bits. Were they paint I could easily touch up. Viny, not so much. I wouldn't "wrap" one damn thing.
 
steingar said:
I have vinyl stripes on the Freebird. A couple are now missing bits. Were they paint I could easily touch up. Viny, not so much. I wouldn't "wrap" one damn thing.
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Take them off and redo the vinyl stripes. Touching up paint is never going to look good unless yoiu strip and repaint. Vinyl is much cheaper than even touching up paint. :dunno:
 
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My thoughts exactly. We wrap race cars because it's cheaper than paint, and when you mess it up (which we always do in offroad racing) you just peel and apply new. As a bonus you can print absolutely anything onto it without really upping the cost any.
 
mid 90's the numbers are vinyl pasties.
 

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I tried to use 3M aircraft graphic film on my certificated airplane to replace the stripes on the fuselage. The FAA shut me down and referred me to a memorandum from 2012 which prohibits field approval of “Vinyl Shrink Wrap”, and requires an STC.
 
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