Warbird Information Exchange

Absolutely no offense to Ryan, but I'd much prefer to see $3/person donated directly to WIX than to get one plane repainted.

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Curator - EAA Aviation Museum, Oshkosh, WI
"Let No Story Go Untold!"
http://www.timelessvoices.org

$3 will get you some fishcod Zack!

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

Oh brother!!!!

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Curator - EAA Aviation Museum, Oshkosh, WI
"Let No Story Go Untold!"
http://www.timelessvoices.org

Found a photo that actually shows a B-25 in the process of being modified to the red border. So I understand now, exactly what you are talking about. Now.., I will be looking for it.., ALWAYS!! Thanks for making me a critic! LOL

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S.

For some reason I seem to remember that the Air Commandos did have a scheme that was OD all over and did not have the underside painted gray. Not sure if I am correct, just that I seem to remember that somewhere before.

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Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

See, now THAT kind of nose art is COOL because there is a story behind it. Makes it real.

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Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives, and I decline......

Ryan.......After my initial "shock" seeing the plane many years ago when cared and fed in a different location.... I decided I kinda liked Warbug's paint scheme....it was different and you could find it in a crowd

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Not that there is anything wrong with this...

I mean hey, she's cared for and flying! (and the stars and bars are right)


http://futurshox.net/aerothumbviewer.php?ireg=N45TX

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Zane Adams
There I was at 20,000 ft, upside down and out of ammunition.
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I've just seen in a magazine a recently restored F4U-1 (even fitted with a bomb rack), which has been painted in matte and accurate USN finish, a real beauty, just looking good and looking right (so much better than the über-chrommy Mustangs parked near it).

Very Interesting thread and I thought I would put in my two cents. I am neither a warbird owner nor a pilot, I just like airplanes. Over my 20 plus years in aviation I was just a ground pound or a tube slug as the pilots like to refer to us enlisted maintenance types. I have lived long enough to become an active member of a reunion group, NAS Atlanta Reunion Group, and so now I come to the subject at hand, Warbirds paint jobs.
As part of the reunion group I was contacted recently about a SNJ paint scheme. The owner was interested in painting his SNJ-5 in a NAS Atlanta paint scheme from WW2. Well, the group has over four hundred members and a large archive of source material on which to draw on to aid this man in his task. I searched the archives for photos and talked to three members from that period and supplied the information to said owner. Well, it was not quite what he wanted. First his SNJ had to be yellow not silver with green stripes. Well, I told him that during WW2 Atlanta was a navigation training base not a primary flight training base so the station had no Yellow SNJs during this period. Well, I was told that I was full of bs and he would paint his plane anyway he wanted.
After saying all this, it does not matter how the aircraft is painted to the owners. It is all about them, just like their egos, stock portfolios, trophy wives and favorite colors. If they care anything about history or the veterans that is only a secondary concern. Of course this is my opinion and does not apply to all warbirds and their owners.

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The Breaks of Naval Air-Skid Marks in the Sky

For instance, for the Stinson, this is what I found on Ebay for the past three weeks.



Frankly, why to try to invent fantasy markings, almost always looking wrong and fake, when there are for every WWII aircraft types hundreds if not thousands of cool, amazing, funny, sexy, impressive, beautiful AND REAL accurate markings ?

This is probably a good place to ask for this:

My local sign/decal shop does great work, I mean really great, and they are but a mile from my shop, but one thing they don't have in their database is the correct font for the US wartime aircraft stencils. Has anybody got a stencil alphabet and number set, either as a file or on paper that I could get a copy of? If I can get it to them then they can just make up the stencils for me right here.

Thanks in advance guys, and I'll throw my own two cents into this threads pot: the airplane we had painted last year and the airplane that I'm restoring right now are and are going to continue to be shiny. The finish is shiny, the zinc chromate colored interior paint is shiny, even the instrument panels aren't flat painted but rather done in a "satin" finish. This because the paint physically lasts longer and it makes maintenance alot easier. I know it's not right and it's not that I don't appreciate other points of view but that's why it's been done that way, and since I'm the guy that pays the bills I'm the guy that gets to decide. However I do have a pet peeve and here it is: restored airplanes where every single interior piece is not only painted the same color but is obviously painted from the same can. The airplane ends up looking like it's been dipped in paint. Though some individual assemblies are/were done this way, the whole airplane generally wasn't, and it just looks really, really weird.

P-40's in Chinese markings with shark's teeth are cool, and I love that Russian B-25. The CAF FM-2 is about as butt ugly as they come and the tramp stamp only makes it worse, but it can park in my hangar and leak oil all over the place anytime it wants to. We'd even give it a bath (which would be made much easier by all the shiny paint!)



Dan

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

Regarding shiny paint...I'll be the first to admit I know absolutely nothing about painting full-size aircraft, cars, etc., but being a small-scale plastic modeler, I've got to ask...is there any paint manufacturer that makes a dull coat for full-scale machinery? Something that could dull the shine, but leave a smooth, easy to clean finish?

Zack

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Curator - EAA Aviation Museum, Oshkosh, WI
"Let No Story Go Untold!"
http://www.timelessvoices.org

You can get clearcoats in basically any sheen you want, dead flat to high gloss, but they're finicky finishes. Any dull finish is rough (that's why it's dull in the first place) and the roughness is what makes it hold all the dirt and grime and be hard to clean.

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Defending Stearmans on WIX since Jeff started badmouthing them back in 2005.

2nd that

I'm sure that NMF plane is a beast to maintain and painted is so much easier but still.It just does not look right. And for those for authenticity...... guess what? It's OK for NMF to be shiny



$0.02

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Arguing with a pilot is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. After a while you begin to think the pig likes it.