Desert Sailplane storage

Great discussion Bob....thanks! Any chance that your convention talk will
be published somewhere?

Casey Lenox
KC
Phoenix

Bob, Thanks for your detailed insights. What are your thoughts on the affects
of a fiberglass trailer painted with regular ol' paint instead of gel coat.
Does any UV make it through the trailer to affect the glider within? TIA.

Jim Vincent
N483SZ
illspam

Jim Vincent wrote:

Bob, Thanks for your detailed insights. What are your thoughts on the affects
of a fiberglass trailer painted with regular ol' paint instead of gel coat.
Does any UV make it through the trailer to affect the glider within? TIA.

I don't know whether the UV will make it into the trailer. However, I do
know that the UV will destroy the "regular old paint" rather quickly. In
another life, I owned a wooden boat which was on the water the whole
year without a cover. The UV literally burnt the whole paint away within
two years. And this wasn't "regular old paint", but specialized UV
resistant boat varnish.

Stefan

Great discussion Bob....thanks! Any chance that your convention talk will
be published somewhere?


The technical paper is scheduled to be published at an industry conference next
October. However, I'll be happy to make the SSA presentation available when
it's complete.

Bob

Great discussion Bob....thanks! Any chance that your convention talk will
be published somewhere?


Will be happy to share convention presentation when finished. The formal
technical paper will be presented at a technical conference on October.

Bob, Thanks for your detailed insights. What are your thoughts on the
affects of a fiberglass trailer painted with regular ol' paint instead of gel
coat.
Does any UV make it through the trailer to affect the glider within? TIA.

If the regular ol' paint happens to be urethane it is not much different from
gel coat - almost all white coatings use TiO2 pigment, so the inherent UV
penetration is not an issue. Of course there is a wide range of photo-aging
performance with various types of paints.

One difference between gel coat and paint is the thickness. Because a paint
film is typically thinner than gel coat it will allow more long-wave
penetration (not harmful to polymer surfaces), but may allow more solar heating
inside a trailer. I've never seen any actual data describing the difference, so
don't know how significant the delta might be.

Bob