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.