...Provided They're the Right Dark Colors

At the Oshkosh exhibit of Randolph Products, I had a brief, but important conversation with the company's President, John Randolph.

It turns out the venerable company is doing quite a bit of R&D for military applications; and a lot of it is filtering down to the civilian level. One of the recent developments in paint technology may be able to break the old ban about never painting a composite aircraft a dark color.

The problem with dark colors has always been that they absorb heat better -- a lot better -- than light colors. That extra heat, close to the skin, can cause major headaches, up to and including delamination, in the surface layer of the layup.

The old way of combatting this was to add layers, and weight. While that may be acceptable to a Corvette owner, whose car really doesn't have to fly, it's not a good solution for the aircraft owner, whose 'baby' does.

Necessity was the mother...

With developments in military infrared-detection equipment, a dark paint that did not absorb heat became important. After all, the military doesn't have the option of painting its equipment white; the camoflage patterns are preferred. The military doesn't care too much about the effects of heat near the surface of their composite materials -- it's concerned that absorbed heat during the day will make their equipment literally "glow in the dark" when the cooler night air makes the solar-heated equipment show up. A hot object against cool ground or foliage, transmits an IR signal that says, "shoot me here!" A different paint -- or something -- was clearly needed, to thward IR detection.

Out of this need, the solar heat-reflective paints were born. Randolph sells a lot of paint to the military, and these paints -- seen on everything from trash bins to F-15s -- help protect our deployed tax dollars from FLIR-induced extinction.

It stands to reason, John says, that this technology would work on 'glass ships. "We actually use some very bright colors" in the formulation, John said. Mr. Randolph noted, "Some very bright violets and chromes go into our darkest (military) greens."

We haven't talked with specialists at the 'glass plane manufacturers; but it's our guess that, given the data and the rationale, we might see them give the Randolph military "solar-heat-reflective" paint line the nod.

FMI: http://www.randolphproducts.com