Merry Christmas everyone.

I'm having my plane painted shortly. I've been working with scheme designers on a paint scheme. The scheme I like has black metal flake paint on most of the belly and I'm just wondering if anyone can tell me if I'll have a lot of issues with dirt / water stains showing on the black?

Thx.

Garth

Black shows everything! Looks great when clean and polished. That's a tough part of the plane to polish though....

MTV

Black is an excellent choice for the belly. I believe it hides the exhaust stains and the little bit of oil that seems to collect. I would avoid metal flake though, very hard to match if you need a paint repair sometime down the road.

Black belly is great for the U-2 or the B-2...... however not so good for visibility, if ever upside down.

Kenmore Air's fleet of floatplanes all have black with a bit of gold metal flake on the bellies. It's proven to be a good match for the operation, certainly hard to sea any oil, exhaust stains, or water spots from 10 or more feet away.

I painted mine with a black belly to hide future oil leaks, black leading edge and nose cowling to hide bugs. It does show a lot of dust, but it melts ice really fast.

Thx for the feedback guys. I'm going to look at an option of a grey color and then decide.

A medium/dark brown with lots of gold flake wood work good on the leading edges, nose bowl, lower cowl and belly. You could probably fly all season without washing it and nobody would know you have been playing in the mud puddles and also killed 40 million mosquitos.

Just make sure it's nice and smooth when you're done. My last airplane was painted with a base coat/clear coat system, and the painter (guy I bought it from) apparently decided nobody would be looking at the belly so didn't clear coat it. The resulting semi-gloss orange-peel finish made it a PITA to clean the belly, instead of just wiping it down it took two or three passes to get it clean. As a result I'd put off cleaning the belly, which just exaggerated the problem.