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LOHAN and the amazing technicolor spaceplane
Our Vulture 2 livery is wrapped, and it's les noix du mutt
LOHAN's out-of-this-world paint job: What happened next
One very long trip later, the spaceplane landed at a collection of brick buildings amid the rolling countryside outside Bidford-on-Avon, Warwickshire...
...where I was warmly welcomed by Chris Pyper...
...and vinyl wrap chap Pete Cox:
First on the wrap agenda was to print the design on a really, really big machine:
This has to be left overnight for solvents to evaporate, so it wasn't until the next morning that Pete laminated the wrap...
...and then cut the parts from the sheet. Note the two copies of each element, just in case the first application went titsup:
A rough fit of the wrap...
...followed by test with a scrap piece, to confirm proper adhesion...
...was the prelude to whipping out the heat gun and giving it some welly:
This was a particularly traumatic moment for me, seeing Pete turn up the heat on our magnificent aircraft, but it suffered no damage as the result of its ordeal.
Here are a few snaps of Pete working his magic with gun and fingers:
Pete skilfully trimmed the wrap as required...
...before turning his attention to the front fuselage upper section:
Finally, after several hours, the job was a good 'un:
So good, in fact, that we rushed mob-handed down the pub with the aircraft, took the photo at the top of this article, then proceeded directly to the bar for celebratory liquid nourishment.
I'd like to say thanks very much to SGS for their tremendous work and generous hospitality. My liver is still recovering from the effects of the latter, so I look forward to a return match at some stage, specifically with Chris and Dean.
In that spirit, we invite readers to raise a pint or two to SGS, and all those who contributed to the search for the perfect spaceplane livery, which we reckon is pretty well what we've got. Cheers. ®
More from the lovely LOHAN:
- You can find full LOHAN coverage right here.
- If you're new to LOHAN, seek out our mission summary for enlightenment.
- There are photos our our magnificent Vulture 2 spaceplane here, and detailed structural plans here.
- For your further viewing pleasure, we have all our photographic material stored on Flickr.
- Our LOHAN and Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) videos live on YouTube.
- We sometimes indulge in light consensual tweeting, as you can see here.