Another quiz

[cjsmith]

One thing you should have done but didn't

Stayed in France longer

One thing you shouldn't have done but did

Ignored the signals of a very dysfunctional relationship, and got involved anyway

One thing you're proud of doing

Getting a degree from MIT

One thing you won't do

Deliberately harm others for my own gain

One thing to have by you

jackiecat

One thing that makes you happy

Beautiful music

One thing that makes you sad

The distance people create between ourselves and other people

One thing you really want

A Pitts S-2C

One thing to be remembered by, or as

Compassionate

Comments

[gs.livejournal.com]

When you get your Pitts, what kind of paint job do you want for it? The red, white, and blue flames aren't bad, but I was wondering what yours will look like. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

That flame paint job is very labor intensive and is currently one of a kind. That's the plane they used for all the magazine reviews and suchlike. It's a lot smaller in person :-)

Here is a very standard Pitts paint scheme, if you ignore the sponsorship stuff on the side. Here is another fairly common scheme. Most purchasers of brand new S-2Cs will get a close variant of one of these with choice of colors, unless they want to do an expensive custom job.

I've thought a bit about what paint job I'd like, but haven't settled on a concrete mental picture. Aerobatic planes should have bold colors, for resale value and for any potential airshow work. For competition, they should have long lines painted from nose to tail, to make the linear parts of the maneuvers show up more visibly to the judges. My personal preference is not much light blue (looks like sky - a safety issue), not much white (looks like every other airplane out there), at least some green OR purple because I love those colors, not too dark overall because it turns into an EZ Bake Oven in the sun waiting my turn for takeoff.

When I was at the factory I saw a lovely darkdark forest green S-2C with yellow trim awaiting transportation to Alaska for sale. Despite how dark the paint scheme was overall, I was awfully tempted... (Shoulda bought it. It would have had better resale value right now than my stock does!)

How about this one? :-)

[gs.livejournal.com]

I like the red one (sans sponsorship stuff), but I like all the stars on the last one. Yellow and deep forest green would be great. Maybe yellow on top to avoid the EZ Bake Oven phenomenon. :-)

Aerobatic planes should have bold colors, for resale value and for any potential airshow work

...and also just for self-expression :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

..and also just for self-expression

I am trying to imagine some way to paint the top of an aircraft so that it looks like a giant yellow smileyface. (When the airplane is upside down, people on the ground could see it...

Ah yes! That's something I'd love to incorporate into the paint scheme: something upside down (perhaps text on the side of the plane?) that's obviously meant to be readable when the plane is flying inverted. A great reminder of what such a flying machine is FOR.