Depression after Washing

On Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:00:56 +0000 (UTC), Dylan Smith
wrote:

On 2008-06-30, John Smith wrote:
It really isn't as bad as you make it out to be.
You polish on rainy spring days, before the real flying season begins
and let it go the rest of the year. Maybe touch it up in August on days
when it is too hot to fly.

Coming in to this thread very late...

Actually, it is as bad as that unless you live in the desert. I owned a
polished plane (Cessna 140). It was only half polished, too - just the
lower half of the fuselage, the tailplane, and flaps. The rest was
painted.

To keep it looking nice required a whole day of polishing, a minimum
period of once every two months. By whole day I mean at least 12 hours.
(I rarely did it all in a day, usually I spent a weekend doing it so I
could do other stuff too). This was for an itty bitty plane and only
half polished with the more difficult to polish bits (things like upper
wing surfaces) painted. A completely polished Cherokee, for example,
would be at least three days work every two months to keep looking nice.
The plane absolutely must be hangared too. We also used Nuvite, the
final polish grade of that stuff also leaves a bit of a coating that
keeps it shiny for much longer.

The result with our C140 was of course stunning, especially when the
plane was parked on a rural turf airfield, with the polished underside
and tail reflecting the green grass, trees and blue sky. But it was a
BIG commitment to keep it that way. On the plus side you really get to
know the skin of the plane well and each session of polishing is a
rather thorough inspection.

I once had the care of a polished all aluminium cessna 150A.(lovely
thing)
polishing it took a weekend. what caused it to be painted eventually
was the realisation that the night time condensation appeared to
penetrate the wax polish. this continued the activity in surface
pitting that had developed all over the aircraft.
the eventual cure to the pitting was the wash and phosphoric acid prep
done prior to alodining the aircraft and painting it.

since painting, not a problem since.

in hindsight if I wanted an all aluminium finish aircraft I'd paint it
that colour.

Stealth pilot