Pima Air & Space Museum
More than 160,000 visitors per year file through the
gates at Pima Air & Space Museum, the largest
privately funded, nongovernmental aerospace museum in
the world. With nearly 300 aircraft on display across
its 80 acres in Tucson, Ariz., the facility sits in the
middle of an aircraft-lover’s paradise. Just across the
road, the ‘Boneyard,’ or 309th Aerospace Maintenance and
Regeneration Group at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base,
houses more than 4,400 surplus aircraft from all
branches of the U.S. military and the federal
government.
Pima has acquired most of its collection through loans
from the Boneyard or other federal sources, with
additional aircraft obtained through donation or
purchase. However they arrive, the F-15s, B-17s, B-52s,
737s, UH-1 helicopters – the list goes on and on – need
sprucing and periodic maintenance to keep them in
exhibition-quality shape. That task falls to Scott
Marchand, the museum’s director of collections and
aircraft restoration. One major aspect of maintenance
includes a painting regimen.
”We paint from 10 to 14 planes per year,” he says,
“depending on the sizes of the planes, their paint
scheme and weather conditions.”
UV Onslaught Demands Attention to Coating
The sunny Arizona weather makes ultraviolet light the
biggest challenge for plane coatings. Old-formula paints
from the 1960s and ‘70s had held up very well, Marchand
notes, but by the 1990s many of these paints had to be
re-formulated to comply with EPA requirements.
“These re-formulated paints failed horrendously,
extensively and dramatically,” he says, mincing no
words.
Then, in 2004, Marchand tried Prism® fleet refinishing
coatings from Martin Senour, distributed through NAPA,
and has used them ever since. Prism, a complete
acrylic-polyurethane system available in
basecoat/clearcoat or single-stage topcoat technology,
is offered in solid, metallic and pearl colors. Chosen
for simple application, excellent hiding properties,
quick dry times and superb gloss, Prism is available in
0.5, 2.8 and 3.5 VOC levels. The museum mainly uses the
Prism 3.5-VOC single-stage formulation.
Pima Air & Space Museum employs high-gloss Prism
coatings during the painting process, which, as compared
to flat and semi-gloss finishes, better locks in free
ions that otherwise would reflect off of the base metal
and slowly tear the coating apart, leading to oxidation
and a diminished finish.
“We have about 140 planes exhibited outside, and the
longer we can keep them looking good, the more time and
money resources that we can spend our on other tasks,”
reasons Marchand.
Facilities Enable Indoor and Outdoor Painting
A 30,000-square-foot main restoration facility with
35-foot-high doors serves as the center of painting
operations at Pima Air & Space Museum, complete with
a spray booth large enough to hold two cement trucks. If
aircraft can’t fit into the spray booth, it’s painted
outside, per an EPA exemption for periodic maintenance
of large-scale equipment, according to Marchand. To meet
EPA water-handling regulations, the museum recently
installed an isolated aircraft wash rack with a
water-treatment system.
The painting process at Pima Air & Space Museum
lasts six to eight weeks for an average-sized plane such
as an F-15 fighter jet, with actual painting comprising
one-third of that time. Preparation, where stripping
isn’t required, includes power washing and scuffing the
surfaces to be re-coated as well as performing any
needed repairs and covering areas to protect against
overspray. Painting includes a primer overspray and then
a topcoat. For the most part, crews will not disassemble
planes for painting, as that requires the use of special
jigs and rigging that the museum does not possess.
“We try to have two or three planes in different stages
of preparation at one time,” says Marchand. “That allows
us to take advantage of available staff and volunteers
as well as weather conditions. We want to make sure we
have something to serve to the painters when they are
done with the previous plane. The goal is to keep as
short of a gap as possible when we are on the paint
gun.”
Prism Custom-Tinted for Each Job
With varying color schemes for each plane, Pima Air
& Space Museum has its Martin Senour Prism paint
custom-tinted and delivered for each job, and only keeps
red, white and blue insignia colors – commonly used on
U.S. military and government planes – in stock. Of
course, plane size and paint scheme determines the
amount of paint used, but Marchand offered one of the
museum’s biggest jobs as an example.
“A few years ago we painted a B-36 Peacemaker,” he says,
referring to a strategic bomber in service from 1949 to
1959 that, at 230 feet, had the largest wingspan of any
combat aircraft ever built. “That took several months of
preparation, and the actual painting took eight weeks.
Due to the desert heat we only could paint for a couple
hours in the morning before the plane’s surface became
too hot. We used 25-30 gallons of primer to cover the
airplane, then 40-45 gallons of Prism metallic silver to
provide three topcoats, and then 5-10 gallons of red,
white and blue for the insignia and markings. Crews used
12-15 gallons of white to coat the plane’s underside.”
Since 2002, when Marchand moved from his native Canada
to take a position at Pima Air & Space Museum, he’s
overseen the meticulous care given the B-36 and other
aircraft in the museum’s collection, and the capability
of Martin Senour Prism coating systems in preserving and
protecting these precious artifacts. In this
aircraft-lover’s paradise, nothing else will do.