I'm contemplating the covering that I'll use for my electrified Olympic II (99" span 10" chord) that I'm building. I've tried to find comments on the web and these forums on colors, seen a few good articles on the subject, yet it seems highly subjective.

What I'm after is anecdotes regarding experiences with clear covering on wings. I'd like to show off my handiwork (who wouldn't). I'd think that clear would be excellent at an angle, but probably not very visible direct overhead. I'd also think that the angle of the wings would show well (since the wing would become increasingly opaque as it becomes more parallel with the line of sight, increasingly transparent more perpendicular. My experience with darker transparent colors is that they are too dark for this effect to be noticed. The other choice I'm seriously considering is a combination of transparent orange and transparent yellow. The fuselage and vertical stab+rudder will be white; the horiz stab will probably be whatever color my wings are.

Stories? Opinions?

If you don't plan to climb to >500' or so, you'd be able to see it just fine. But a model this size wants to be up around 1000' or so for nice, long duration flights. Good luck seeing it!
Use a transaparent colored covering instead - light enough to see your work on the ground, but dark enough to be visible at altitude.
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Well, according to motocalc I'll hit 500 feet at a little over 20 seconds of motor run, so something that goes invisible over 500' doesn't exacly meet my needs. :-) Anyone else had any experiences? How about the transparent yellow/transparent orange option?

i built a 900 sagatta and what i did was used clear on the top and transparent red on the bottom,it looks great and has every thing i need,its still bright enough to see at height

its a poly wing ,so even when it is above you can still see the top of the poly tip while in a turn which really helps with coordination


im not a real wiz with a borrowed camera but i have some nice shots of it if you like but there to large to post pm me and i will send them to you ,,,vario

its very neat! the top [if veiwed from an angle] looks cream color as if there was no covering ,great contrast!

Whatever, you won't beat transparent Oracover or Profilm depending on what they call it in your neck of the woods.

To still show off the wood work and still be able to see your model you could cover the bottom with the color that will give the greatest visability and cover the top surface clear.
See the structure on the ground, see the plane in the thermal.
You can fly it more than once that way.

I like the suggestions of clear on top, color on the bottom. Vario sent me pics -- the clear on top/transparent red on the bottom looked great! I bet something similar will look good on my Oly II.

I've generally used transparent yellow on top and transparent dark red on the bottom - this seems to be a pretty good compromise aesthetically, and very visible.

BTW, some coverings add torsional strength to the structure (so I've read) and some don't - monokote is supposed to be good for strength, if this is an issue.