Paint: Vinyl wrap experiment.

I had planned to get the plane painted this year, but recent global events have put those plans on hold, so I thought to experiment with possibly wrapping the aircraft in vinyl.  I decided to wrap my "spare rudder" as a learning experience.  I bought some pieces of "3M Wrap Film Series 1080" and gave things a whirl.

Draping one piece over the rudder shows that the vinyl needed to be trimmed (left).  So I setup to cut it in half (right).

The piece has been applied (left) and you can see the "knifeless tape" which is used to cleanly cut patterns out (or in?).  Following removal of the knifeless tape (if you do it wrong, the "knifeless" tape knifes in to your thumb!), the next chunk of rudder is ready for the next colored piece of vinyl.

Here is the final result.

Close-ups showing how well the vinyl can be made to conform to the surface profile around the rivets and seams (you can also see why I discarded this rudder by viewing its trailing edge).

Next I thought to place some test pieces on the plane itself to see how it would hold up.  Here I put a piece around the tank fill hole.

And some pieces on the wing, forward top skin and even the un-prepped (i.e., "pin-holed") cowl.

 

There was some learning going on.  For example, it's important to wrap around edges, non-flat surfaces are hard to wrap and pin holes in the cowl must be filled (on my first flight, the vinyl bubbled due to the heat pushing air through the pin holes as shown below).