Saturday - August 28, 2004

My name finally came up on the Maple Leaf Design ICON build list, the day before I left for Nats.  I wasn't able to contact Don Peters until I returned home, but I had some new ideas about how I wanted my next laid up and painted.

After a pleasant conversation with Don, I decided to have my next ICON laid up as a F3J TD wing, not the light wing.  I have two light layup wings at the moment, I wanted to have a TD wing in the quiver that was a bit stiffer.

I still wanted a model that was lime green over magenta, I can see that color very well, and I have lots of ICON parts that are those colors.  But I wanted to modify the paint job on the wing tip, I wanted something that would really jump out and catch the eye and be highly visible.  So I thought about the paint fades that Don had been doing for guys, fired up PhotoShop and started coloring a picture I had of a green wing tip.  I put a mask line in the design so I could a high contrast of colors, and used two separate fades.  The ends of the tips are faded orange to red, and at the mask line is the darker forest green faded into the lime green to the root of the tip, just to make that orange jump off the wing even better.

I sent Don this computer image of what I wanted, and he said he could do it.

Initial tip paint design done in PhotoShop

Well, last night Don sent me an email and said a big box was ready to ship to me, and attached a digital picture of my new wing tip.

The final design painted in the mold

The fades are a little more subtle than in my computer rendition, but I am still very pleased with the results.  (You can click on the image to enlarge it, the fades can be seen better that way).  I highly recommend working with Don Peters at Maple Leaf Designs.  I have bought a number of hand made sailplanes from his company, his products and customer support are the best in the industry.  

I can't wait to see it in person, with the entire model assembled.  And there is more to this story...  but that will be another blog entry in the future!