AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2024 - 34

BRIEFING
SWEEPSTAKES /
Recreating a classic
Scheme Designers recreates the 1958 'AOPA Pilot' cover aircraft's livery
BY NIKI BRITTON
COMMITTING TO A new paint scheme for
your aircraft can come with a lot of nerves
and questions. Will this look as good on
my airplane as it does in my mind? Have
I picked the right colors? Thankfully,
choosing the new paint scheme for the
AOPA Sweepstakes Cessna 182 was made
easy as we chose to emulate the paint
scheme from the aircraft on the cover of
the very first AOPA Pilot magazine from
1958. Done! Easy! Let's make it happen! But
not so fast; choosing the livery is just the
first step before sending the aircraft off to
Gus Haussler at Master Aircraft Services
in Arizona.
What came next was the painstaking
recreation of the classic Cessna livery by
Craig Barnett of Scheme Designers in
Cresskill, New Jersey, who has helped
design all but three AOPA sweepstakes
aircraft schemes since 1999.
All Barnett had to go on was a photo
of the 1958 magazine cover, which he said
did not provide nearly enough detail.
" My research started out online looking
at photos of 1958 Cessna 182As to
see if I could find any in their original
scheme, " Barnett said. " I collected a range
of examples in what appeared to be original
schemes. However, it became apparent
that most were repainted aircraft and that
there were, as a result, many variations
from one example to another. "
34
AOPA PILOT / July 2024
Next, Barnett sought out examples of
the original brochure for the aircraft. This
turned up several photos of the brochure
online, which allowed him to glean more
detail regarding the actual original paint
scheme design. Unfortunately, these
images still did not provide enough detail to
recreate the scheme to the level of accuracy
Barnett was seeking.
" Working off small, pixilated photos
meant that a lot of the small details
and accurate stripe widths and spacing
would be a best guess, and I wanted to
avoid assumptions to the greatest extent
possible, " Barnett said.
Barnet reached out to Cessna's design
department to see if they had any information.
Unfortunately, most of the
historic paint scheme information has
been lost to time. It turns out there is no
central repository for information related
to Cessna paint schemes through the ages.
Luckily, Roger Keating at Cessna happened
to have a digital copy of the original
1958 Cessna 182A paint scheme design
drawing. This gave Barnett the last items
of detail needed to recreate the original
paint scheme design. What's more, the
original drawings provided additional
details that were not obvious in the photos
of the aircraft, such as small mylar
stripes on the inboard leading edges of
the wings, that would have been omitted
otherwise. With the scheme design
taken care of, Barnett now needed accurate
drawings of the aircraft.
" Without accurate drawings all the
data in the world will not yield an effective
design, " Barnett said.
Manufacturer drawings are typically
hand-drawn and preserved in lowresolution
electronic files. In this case,
these images did not provide enough
detail; these images could only be used as
a preliminary guide.
" Once the preliminary tracings were
created, " Barnett said, " many hours were
spent with photos of the actual aircraft,
as well as photos of Cessna 182As found
online, to fill in the missing details and to
significantly increase the accuracy of the
drawings.
AOPA Pilot Magazine - July 2024

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