Tim wrote: > I plan on using "Nevada silver" as a base and considering a checkerboard > pattern on the nose.
The thing about silver is that is entirely composed of metallic aluminum chips. You might argue that it's very thin, and you'd be right, be so is aluminum foil, the stuff that people use to make ground planes out of. I was thinking about painting my plane the same color as my car, which has a little metallic in it. An electrical engineer buddy whose specialty is antennas modeled my vertical stab and antenna in some software that analyzes antenna patterns at specific frequencies. While the signal improved slightly out front (for 123 kHz), it just about got killed completely from behind, thanks to the vertical stab and rudder behind it. That's bad enough, but then it dawned on me that the other half of antenna dipole is buried INSIDE the fuselage, and beneath the aft deck, so you might as well throw that leg away entirely! That's when I went to just plain red. Based on his analysis, and the experience of others, silver paint would seriously degrade antenna performance, which is why I'm probably going with a very light gray on top instead. My thinking is that white or light gray is easy to see from above, and a dark color such as red is easy to see from below. If neither of those arguments hold water, then it's just because I like red! > As A side note, do you see any problem using feather fill over smoothprime? I don't know about Feather Fill, but I sprayed an entire layer of urethane primer over Smooth Prime on my plane. Not that it proves anything, just that I don't think there'll be a problem with what I did. Can't say about Feather Fill, since it's polyester based. Wouldn't you want to follow Smooth Prime with the primer or sealer that's recommended for your top coat? For example, DuPont's Ultimate 2K urethane primer is OK for use directly under DuPont's urethane colors, and it has a great build and is easy to sand. It's working for me. Feather Fill might be just fine, but I don't know. I guess I should let somebody that knows what they're talking about answer that one... Mark Langford, Huntsville, AL N56ML "at" hiwaay.net see KR2S project at http://home.hiwaay.net/~langford
