Someone gave me a very nice model of a Canadair Sabre in the Golden Hawks paint scheme. It is autographed by Fern Villeneuve, the first leader of the Hawks. Thank you very much! It is really quite striking, and makes me anxious to get the aircraft painted in that colour scheme. 2009 will be the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Golden Hawks, so I will probably plan to have the aircraft painted next winter.

My planned paint scheme doesn't leave enough room to put the registration markings in the normal size and place. In Canada, we need to either put 12" high marks on the rear fuselage, or 6" high marks on the vertical tail and 20" high marks on the bottom of the wing. I eventually called someone in the aircraft registration section of the Ontario region Transport Canada (TC) office to see if there were any other options. The guy I talked to was quite helpful, and he said that I could probably get approval for non-standard size and placement of my registration marks, as there was a regulation that allowed such flexibility for replica military aircraft (see CAR 222.05). I'm not building a replica military aircraft, but my paint scheme is a replica of a military one, and that seemed to be enough in his eyes.

I wrote up a request in August 2005, and sent it to the TC regional office. It was a long time making its way through the bureaucracy, but I eventually got a phone call from someone in TC headquarters here in Ottawa, saying that they had received the file from the regional office in Toronto, and they needed some more information. They wanted more details of my paint scheme, and a photo of the official data plate that will be attached to the aircraft. I don't understand exactly why the data plate photo was needed, but she was determined to get a picture of it before issuing the approval. I ordered a data plate, but the engraver screwed up the first one. I got a replacement data plate, then I was on the road for quite a bit. I finally got the data plate done, gave the photo to my friendly TC registration person here in Ottawa. Friday morning I received the official letter that authorizes me to have 3" high registration marks on the side of the fuselage beneath the horizontal stabilizer.

Peter James from Australia sent me a great idea that his son Martin came up with:

Meanwhile, Martin came up with a great method for applying the colour scheme to the fuselage. We simply loaded the colour scheme in to Photoshop on his Mac, connected a projector and projected it onto the fuse. Attached is a pic of the dummy run. Aircraft goes to the paint shop Monday.

This is a very, very neat idea. It could help save a lot of time when marking paint lines onto the aircraft.

I've spent a bit of time over the past week messing around trying to put the Golden Hawk colours on an RV-8 side view. I tried several different applications (GraphicConverter, Sodipodi and Inkscape), but eventually ended up using the Gimp. I've got no shortage of info to work with - a large collection of photos, a copy of the official RCAF paint scheme drawings for 1961, and an article from a plastic modelers magazine that shows how the Golden Hawks scheme evolved over the years. The hard part is jamming all that stuff into the computer and making it come out right. I'm certainly no artist.

The gold colour in this side-view is not perfect, but you get the idea. I don't yet have the right font for the "GOLDEN HAWKS" and "RCAF" above and below the hawk's head either. And I haven't put in the black anti-glare area ahead of the windscreen. I'm not sure I like that aspect of their paint scheme, so I may deviate from history a bit there.

Astute observers will note that there are no registration marks. That obviously won't fly, but I haven't yet sorted out what size marks I can get away with. If I had a few years legal training I might be able to decipher CAR Standard 222 - Aircraft Marking and Registration Standards. Everytime I read it I come up with another twist on the way the various parts of it interact. I want to try to talk to the person in charge of those regulations this week to get the sordid details. My fall back position is to put large marks under the wings, and small marks on the vertical tail.

Here are two shots I took of a Sabre in Golden Hawks colours at the Royal Canadian Air Force Memorial Museum in Trenton, ON a while back. The markings evolved a bit over the history of the team. In particular, the GH seen on the vertical tail was not present in the early years of the team - it apparently appeared in late 1962. I haven't decided yet whether I will use it or not.

I took the instrument panel to a local silk screening shop on Friday. They will give me a quote tomorrow, after they determine how much work they need to do to use the graphics files I gave them.

Saturday morning I drove to a local grass strip where a paint shop is being built. A friend recommended Bernie, the painter, so I wanted to see some of the aircraft he has done and talk to him. I saw two fabric covered aircraft he has painted, and an RV-9A. He obviously takes a lot of care when he paints, and he enjoys complex paint schemes. There was a bit of orange peel on the RV-9A, but you had to look pretty close to see it. The RV-9A was painted in a screened in area of a workshop, not a proper paint shop. I expect he can do a bit better job once he has a proper paint shop to work in. I need to take close looks at more aircraft to get a better idea of what a good paint job looks like.

I had thought I might just have the gold colour painted, then use vinyl for the rest of the Golden Hawks paint scheme. But Bernie scoffed at that idea - he says that vinyl often looks great when it is new, but it doesn't look so good after a few years. I showed him some Golden Hawks pictures, and he said it would be no problem to paint it all. He is trying to talk me into having the aircraft painted before first flight, as it is a lot easier for him to do a good job if the aircraft is not assembled, and it is a horrible job to disassemble it later. I've got to think about that one.

I've pretty much decided to paint the aircraft in the Golden Hawks scheme. The Golden Hawks were a Royal Canadian Air Force F-86 Sabre formation display team. Their paint scheme looked great on an F-86, and I'm pretty sure that it will look super on an RV-8.

Read on for more.