ORIGINAL: outdoorhunting
Uh, a C-5A? I appreciate that fact, but what does that have to do with a 50'' wingspan RC Plane??? OK, so the paint has lead in it. How old is the paint you're using ?? Let's say, I completly paint a 50'' WSP plane with,let's say, 2 coats of primer, 3 coats of finish coat & a couple of coats of clear. Take into consideration, I'll be sanding part of it off. How much weight will that amount to?? One, maybe 2 oz.? I honestly don't see how it could amount to that much. OK. The plane will come in @4 to5 lbs., you add a couple of oz. to that for the paint. Big hairy deal. The same thing goes with glue, I always go over my kit builds & ARFs & give a ''little extra'' insurance to the more stressed areas. I've never had a problem that effects the plane's flying ability. I guess I'm saying we just ''worry'' about something that really don't matter that much. I just don't know of anyone that has a scale to weigh their plane that reads grams !!!!!!
I'm one of those builders that goes nuts when I see people posting about too much extra weight going from 4.8 to a 6v battery, a little extra weight is no problem at all, I prefer my planes a bit on the heavy side, up to a point.
Just for you I went out to do some of the thinking stuff. Last year I built a nice 60 Extra from a very old kit, glassed it and used Klass Kote paint on it.
1/2 pint of paint weighs in at 8oz, that mixed 50/50 with the part B so 16ozs, that was the orange and after thinning I used 3/4 of that total. Then I shot it with the second color of blue and used about the same ammount.
You can do the math yourself, it's a bit more then just a couple of ounces and I didn't even mention the hand painted pin stripes.
I built this plane as light as I could knowing I was going to go with glass and paint, the glass was very light but I have painted more then a couple of planes and know the weight can start adding up very fast depending on how much paint it will take to cover it.
When plastic covering first came out we thought it was over weight until someone used a scale on a before and after of two of the same planes to compare, it was an eye opener.
Paint can and will turn a plane into a lead sled if you don't think ahead.