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.