Painting the Cheetah ...

When we bought our Cheetah in June 1999, the good news cosmetically was its nice new red-and-tan Naugahyde interior.  The bad news was the exterior:  original factory paint, trimmed in the "Official Colors of the 1970's," avocado green and orange.

The old paint was still in mostly servicable condition, but the hideous clash between exterior and interior colors made a new paint job a priority.

Selecting a new paint scheme was an agonizing process.  To help us visualize some ideas, we needed a template on which to sketch and doodle.  The side-view drawing in the Grumman Pilots Operating Handbook (right) is not very accurate, so we made a side-view photograph of our airplane with a moderate telephoto lens to minimize distortion, then with the aid of a graphics software blanked out the paint (below).

We played with a number of possible schemes, some original and some based on factory schemes on Grummans and other types ...

Browsing through some old airplane brochures, we came upon photos of a 1983 Piper Turbo Arrow IV in a simple yet elegant scheme (right).  This scheme had the additional benefit that it consisted entirely of straight lines, instead of tricky curves and patterns that would be difficult for a paint shop to reproduce.  We also felt that the straight, horizontal lines would give an impression of greater length to the stubby Grumman fuselage.

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