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I'm sure you've all seen the Sky TV vans on the road that are covered in leopard skin, or pictures of the Simpsons etc. The way they do that is to print the design onto sticky heat shrink vinyl and then wrap the whole van.
A friend of mine does this for a living, and he's just done a heli canopy for another club member. The result is quite outstanding. Due to the limitations of the materials, he's had to do it in two halves, so there's a little bit of an overlap and join straight down the centre-line of the canopy, but you've got to know it's there to notice it.
Because the whole process is done on a computer, you can have whatever you want on the design, including photos, artwork, text, logos etc, and in any colour. He simply prints it out on his machine at work, and then heat-wraps the vinyl onto the canopy.
The beauty of this technique is that it's quick and doesn't need lacquering to finish. He says that his first attempt (the one we saw today) took about 4 hours from start to finish to do, of which 3 hours was doing the design on the computer. It's certainly a lot quicker than spray painting, and you can use 'real' images like photos of your kids or whatever you want.
How much would people be prepared to pay to have their canopy done like this?
I'm not likely to see this heli now for a couple of weeks so I can't post a picture, but you'll have to take my word for it that it did look excellent, and included an extract from a photo on both sides.
It started as a bit of a joke at the field when the owner of the heli asked if it would be possible to put a naked woman on the canopy. Sure enough, it's been done!
A friend of mine does this for a living, and he's just done a heli canopy for another club member. The result is quite outstanding. Due to the limitations of the materials, he's had to do it in two halves, so there's a little bit of an overlap and join straight down the centre-line of the canopy, but you've got to know it's there to notice it.
Because the whole process is done on a computer, you can have whatever you want on the design, including photos, artwork, text, logos etc, and in any colour. He simply prints it out on his machine at work, and then heat-wraps the vinyl onto the canopy.
The beauty of this technique is that it's quick and doesn't need lacquering to finish. He says that his first attempt (the one we saw today) took about 4 hours from start to finish to do, of which 3 hours was doing the design on the computer. It's certainly a lot quicker than spray painting, and you can use 'real' images like photos of your kids or whatever you want.
How much would people be prepared to pay to have their canopy done like this?
I'm not likely to see this heli now for a couple of weeks so I can't post a picture, but you'll have to take my word for it that it did look excellent, and included an extract from a photo on both sides.
It started as a bit of a joke at the field when the owner of the heli asked if it would be possible to put a naked woman on the canopy. Sure enough, it's been done!
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