My First Design For The Precious Metal P-51 Paint Design Competition!
Monday, January 14, 2013 at 07:56AM 
Top view of my first concept for the Precious Metal paint design competition
I love Unlimited Reno air racers and I love awesome and effective graphic images, so having the opportunity to submit some ideas to the Precious Metal 'new paint scheme' design competition is pretty much a piece of aviation nirvana for me. I'm extremely pleased with how this first concept turned out, but it'll be interesting to see what everyone else thinks of it. I just submitted it to the Precious Metal Magazine facebook page where all the entries are posted, and I'm excited to see the responses I get. I wait, this is the internet right? Maybe I'm not so excited after all : /
My understanding is that the wings will be getting filled and profiled on Precious Metal, so there's a need to paint them going forward. The gold and silver on the wings in my first design is meant to be an impressive metallic paint (possibly with a mild chameleon effect in the sun) and the fuselage is still polished. The idea is to really pick up on as many 'precious metals' as possible.
Bottom view of my first concept for the Precious Metal paint design competition
I've been a believer for a long time in the idea that race aircraft at Reno need to have the best possible paint schemes to take the races up to their highest level. Paint (and vinyl) is such an easy way to create excitement, intrigue, and possibly most important, attention. In my opinion, this design I've come up with does all that... and I'll admit that I hope you agree.
I'm especially pleased with the asymmetrical paint on the bottom of the wings. Checkerboard on the entire bottom is still pretty cool, but it's also old-school cliche and it runs the risk of not really being noticed. But by having it on one wing only, it pretty much demands that you take notice and hopefully makes a much bolder statement that says this airplane is focused on that checkered flag! Seeing the airplane run the course from the pits or the stands with that checkerboard wing would be awesome! I also like that it gives the airplane a very different look on the ground depending which side you are on.
Side view of my first concept for the Precious Metal paint design competition
The side view is intentionally understated somewhat, but only in the drawing. The fuselage is still polished in my scheme (my graphic skills are pretty limited so it's kinda hard to tell) so all that awesome shiny polish would still make the view from the side amazing.
So what do you think? Is this a hot paint scheme for Precious Metal?
Reader Comments (2)
Nice Design! Allow me to make a comment. I think it would be better to switch the wing paint so as to take advantage of the checkerboard as the plane flies past the grandstand from left to right. I think it would be cool to use paint that gave off that shimmering effect ala Rare Bear.
Here's to Reno 2013!
TR
Terrence- as I mentioned in the text, the gold and silver paints are very metallic even to the point of having a bit of a chameleon effect... and the checkerboard is on the bottom of the left wing because the race number is supposed to be on the bottom of the right wing, that way the number doesn't get in the way of the checkerboard. I have that checker on the bottom specifically for the fans to enjoy : )