Your hi-vis paint scheme reminds me of something from one of my other
expensive hobbies. Back in the Middle Ages, knights' shields were
painted for IFF purposes. Since it cost money to get a limner to
accurately paint the design (called a 'device' - a 'coat of arms' was
more complicated), but monks transcribing plain text were cheaper, a
written language was developed to describe the images.

Modern Medieval recreationists (see rec.org.sca) use the same language
to describe their own personal devices. Perhaps the most famous is
this one, assigned to a fellow who goes by the moniker "Baldwin of
Erebor" (also known as Derek Foster):

"A dove displayed upon a billet chequey Or and Gules, between a pait
of cockatrices, clad in motley like a fool's. Their feathers are
dimidiated by a tree eradicated, limbed and fructed counter-company."

Links to prove I'm only half-crazy:

http://www.ravenboymusic.com/baldwin_of_erebor.htm (contains photos of
the fellow; don't know how old they are)

http://www.florilegium.org/files/PER...ongs2-msg.html
(ctrl-f to find the text "Copyright 1979 by Derek Foster"

http://atensubmissions.nexiliscom.co...%20of%20Erebor

http://www2.kumc.edu/itc/staff/rknight/baldwin1.gif (a picture of the
horrid thing, drawn by Jeanne-Marie Efferding)

Corrie


(Robert Bonomi) wrote in message ervers.com...

If I was designing a 'maximum visibility' paint scheme, *without*consideration*
of esthetic appeal, assuming that the plane spent most of it's time in
'conventional' attitude, and was _slow_enough_ for color to be meaningful
(e.g., no point in worrying about visibility for something with the flight
characteristics of the SR-71 grin) I'd do something like:

Underside of: wing, horiz. stab and elevators:
Black, with outer 40% being safety orange
Upper side of: wing, horiz stab and elevators:
White, with at least two wide, _diagonal_, stripes of safety orange
Vert. stab and rudder:
safety orange
Fuselage:
'Firewall forward' in safety orange
Behind that, black/white checkerboard, with edges of the 'squares'
down the middle of each side of the craft, and midline down the
top and bottom of the fuselage.

Might even consider doing 'reflective glitter' -- like the use for road signs
in the white squares on the fuselage, and the orange striping on the upper
side of the flight surfaces.

For 'esthetic' appeal, I might add relatively -thin- outlines of chess pieces
in the fuselage squares. Visible at relatively close range, on the ground,
but not enough to break up the 'solid' color block when viewed from a non-
trivial distance.

Again, though, this paint scheme *isn't* intended to 'look good', just be
*VISIBLE*.