Paint

[Captain Clanger]

I'm looking at buying a Sonex.

It's polished, and I would base it in Northern Europe - outside with cockpit covered, taken home (indoors) in the depths of winter.

Clearly it needs to be painted to live outdoors, but as summer is approaching in this part of the world, I'd like to fly it until autumn, then paint it.

Structure is internally corrosion proofed, I don't know for sure with what, but I'm told that "something" is 1000x better than not at all.

I'm after opinions on what (if any) consequences there would be in giving the aircraft the benefits of a northern european "summer" - in terms of detriment to the aircraft, and any impact (good or bad) in it's subsequent paint-ability.


Cheers

[Bryan Cotton]

Captain,
I see no issue with it being outside for a season and then going to paint. There are a lot of Cessna 140's that used to be polished and when that got too much to keep up, out comes the scotch brite, alodine and paint and then it looks like new. The 140 I rent lives in an open hangar and is bare but not polished. It looks like old lawn furniture. Harder to go back the other way, though it has been done. I suspect living outside will take its toll on the polished appearance but will take a long time to do anything to the structure. 6061 is pretty good with respect to corrosion properties.