Applying Vinyl Graphics to a Fabric-Covered SeaRey

“I want feathers.”

I stepped back from the workbench and smiled. “You want feathers, OspRey?”

“Yes. I am a bird. I want feathers.”

I looked around the hangar at the newly painted wings, covered up under some sheets in a corner of my hangar and smiled. Yes, I talk to my airplane, and I’ve learned to listen to her when she tells me to stop, go home because I’m tired and starting to make mistakes, or maybe I should do this instead of that. I was working on the engine today and had been musing about whether to leave the underside of the wings plain white or paint them when OspRey spoke up.

We talked about what kind of feathers she should have. The kit may be a Progressive Aerodyne SeaRey, but her name was OspRey, I had the appropriate N-number reserved, and I started thinking about what an appropriate scheme for the underside should be.

Living up in Puget Sound, a Native American-influenced design would be obvious, but I didn’t want to be accused of ripping off the culture. I spoke with some Tlingit friends and they hooked me up with a local artist, but things just didn’t feel right and we agreed that I (we) should find our own way. I thought about hiring an artist from the local area, but I didn’t really hit it off with any of the ones I met, and if something happened to the wing and I had to patch the fabric I’d end up with an ugly repair. It seemed OspRey was going to end up with plain white wings.

But about a year later I had an aha moment when I saw another SeaRey builder had done a large vinyl graphic on their wings, and a bit of research showed that, just like on buses, a vinyl graphic was possible. Who, how, and for how much, I left for another day, and I gave Scheme Designers a call.

I’m a decent sketcher, but people like Scheme Designers are in another world. For a flat rate, they give you unlimited consultations for as long as it takes to design a custom paint scheme for your airplane, and for more they will copyright the design so it cannot be duplicated without your permission. A few days after my call and we got the paperwork out of the way, Cristian Lacognata, an artist with the company, called to say hi. We talked in general terms about the airplane and art; he was familiar with the SeaRey and was intrigued by a Native American-influenced design. Cris asked who my favorite artists were (I love the impressionists and sensualists like Monet, appreciate the technical ability of Dalí but can’t stand his art, and don’t get me started on Jeff Koons), and with an idea of my style, he said he’d be in touch.

A few weeks later Cris emailed me a half dozen drafts. All looked great, and it was obvious Cris had let his imagination run. One was a stylized bird of prey that took the red/white/black from my old hang glider that I had duplicated on the top of the control surfaces that looked great, but wasn’t my kind of thing. Another appeared to be a photo of an Osprey’s bottom wing that had been gone over with a brush from Illustrator, giving the real feathers a softer, blurred palette à la a waterlilies painting that was intriguing. The others were an interesting exploration of Cris’s artistic vision. A couple I outright rejected, most went into the Hmmmm … stack, and a couple I printed out and took my own pencil to.

Scheme Designers was as good as their word; Cris and I bantered back and forth for several weeks tweaking and revising, sometimes reverting to an older version of the one we were looking at. We quickly narrowed the field down to a single design but got stuck; the tips of the wings just didn’t look right.

Unluckily, about that time a family matter came up and I had to put my build on hold. For stress relief I still looked at the design, sketched alternative ways, but was stymied. I was reassured by Scheme Designers that there was no hurry, and they’d be waiting for me, which took a lot of pressure off, and I tried not to abuse the unlimited revision guarantee.

Long ago I had learned how to repaint airplanes in Microsoft Flight Sim, and during the break I had scanned the design into Photoshop and put it onto a SeaRey in the program. The design looked excellent but confirmed my belief that while the design was 99% there, the last 1% on the wingtips was throwing it off. Reverting to good old pencil and paper, one day out of frustration I completely cut the tips off to start over from scratch, then stopped and looked at what I had done. Yes, it was no longer a true Osprey wing with long, fingertip primary feathers hanging off the tips, but it was more flowing. Importing it into Flight Sim, the truncated wing was too short to span the entire wing, but a quick tug on the move tool changed that, and suddenly, voilà!

When things were quiet once again on the home front I contacted Scheme Designers. Cris was no longer with the company and I filled in Noah Heckel, my new collaborator. He also liked the new version and made some suggestions of his own, some of which I took, some we worked together on, and some I gently turned down. The important thing was that we had a 99.99999999% design.

Just to be sure, I called up my old friend Greg at Poly-Fiber tech support. My reasoning was that since Poly-Fiber was basically a vinyl product, and we were going to do a vinyl appliqué, it shouldn’t be a problem, and I was happy to hear Greg say, “Sure, it’s done all the time. What questions do you have?”

The first question I had was who would do it? I called a few companies who were advertising vinyl wraps, and once they found out it was for an airplane they could not hang up fast enough. There were aircraft vinyl companies, but they were more specialized and just doing small things like N-numbers and small graphics like nose art, nothing like a 15×8-foot full-span graphic. One company was happy to give me an eye-watering bid that I understood when travel time and arrangements were included, but it firmly put it out of the budget.

I was working in the hangar one day when another homebuilder, Mike, stopped by. We started bantering and he saw the Scheme Designers graphic taped to OspRey’s wing and asked how it was coming. I told him about the brick wall I was running into finding someone to do it that wouldn’t cost more than the down payment on a house, and he gently smiled and said, “You know my company does vinyl graphics, why haven’t you asked us?”

I’ve always thought that the fastest way to ruin a friendship was to combine business with it, but we quickly worked things out. Mike approached his company; they were intrigued and agreed to do it as a one-off experiment. We laid down a few ground rules: I would not identify them to other builders, lest they be inundated with business they don’t want. I’d sign a stack of liability releases. And I’d stay out of the way (they know that I like to help). Agreed, signed, and a compromise where I’d only get in the way a little bit was agreed on.

First thing was, “What kind of vinyl to use?” I thought vinyl was vinyl, and stuff just stuck, y’know? Turns out there’s a complicated chemical reaction that occurs when vinyl is applied to something, and the vinyl used on signs, cars, buses, and airplanes is nothing like the vinyl used on bumper stickers or zaps. I listened and stayed out of the way as my friend talked with Greg, rattling off brands and different types of vinyl off the top of his head, debating which would be better to use in both a marine and airborne environment.

About a week or so later Mike called me up with a problem. The vinyl they wanted to use only came in 4-foot rolls, and at the root my design was 5 feet 6 inches high. In anything else they’d do it in two parts and there’d be an invisible seam, but Mike was both concerned about water intrusion into and under the seam, and trying to match the design from one sheet to another.

Meeting at my hangar, we took careful measurements of the wing, then used Photoshop to size the design to 4 feet high. The design was a couple feet short of the tip of the wing, but when I dragged the edge out, increasing the aspect ratio, the design actually started looking better; we had accidentally stumbled across an improvement. The next day I borrowed an image projector, turned the lights off in the hangar, and asked OspRey what she thought. We liked what we saw.

Of course it was February and freezing outside, but fortunately my hangar is insulated and heated, and I cranked up the gas for a few days to preheat my hangar and to get everything up to temperature. Mike told me anything in the 60s was fine, so it was 72° F when he came out. He had dropped off the vinyl several days before and I had laid it out to allow it to uncurl, and after laying it out and seeing the design full-sized I could not wait to see it applied.

Mike and his number one vinyl tech, Dan, came out a few days before to plan and prep, and we took the wings off their storage racks and laid everything on their sawhorses. I was pleased to see Dan was as excited as we were, and he examined every inch of the wings and stabilizers/elevators, looking for imperfections that he would have to work around. Yes, he found a couple. OK, more than a couple. OK, more than a few, and I had to tell him to quit being so persnickety and pointing out all the flaws in my covering and painting job. But I also appreciated his attention to detail.

A few days later Mike and Dan arrived bright and early on a freezing morning. We (they) wanted to start with the small pieces, and I had already temporarily hinged the elevators and stabilizers together so that was a good place to start. We set up a ladder to get an overall view of how it looked and align things, and all three of us smiled at each other once we got a preview of how it looked.

Mike and Dan got to work, and I got out of the way. A long time ago when I applied vinyl stickers on my radio-controlled (RC) airplanes I had used a little bit of Windex under them to make them slide. It was funny to see a similar process being used. Starting at the root, they rehearsed and talked over the process, then taped the entire graphic in place and started peeling the backing off, and I got to help by going down to the tip and putting tension on it. Working slowly, Dan judiciously used a heat gun and his fingers, moving slowly and carefully, sometimes peeling a section up and redoing it when they could see a wrinkle starting.

While we had to reduce the chord of the main wing graphic and abandon our plans for it to go on the flaps also, the stabilizer/elevator chord was almost exactly 4 feet, so we just fiddled with the aspect ratio and size until it looked right, and were able to cover both the stabilizer and elevator in one piece, trimming the vinyl down the middle of the hinge line. We (they) got it done; we went up the ladder, looked, and jumped right back in.

Two hours later the job was done. We got the wings back on their storage racks and put them up in planform. The results speak for themselves.

Vinyl showed its advantage again a couple months later when it came time to do the access covers. Mike just printed out a single strip for each section where the access holes were; I hung it from the leading edge until I found where the holes were underneath, and I cut them out. Mimicking Dan, I started in the center, worked my way outward, and used a brand-new #11 X-Acto blade to carefully puncture any bubble that kept air trapped inside. A light touch with a heat gun softened the vinyl and helped to smoosh around the rivets, and to bend around the edge of the cover. Being able to print a single panel also helps if I have to do a repair some day, since Mike can just print out what I need to hide the repair.

OspRey is still in progress, but her wings are on now, and we’re hoping to have her finished this winter and ready to fly in the spring. Only 89% to go now.