I own an auto detail shop. Am VERY familiar with all the ceramic coatings. They are all extremely similar and the performance is more of a function of the paint prep that the actually coating itself. If you do the paint prep work, almost any highish end coating will work. They are all made by just a couple of chem manufacturers. We are going to have our own 'brand' of product soon - chemically it's darn near identical to everything else on the market and will likely not have any performance difference. When I asked the people formulating if the high end aviation stuff was different chemically, they laughed and said 'what do you think?'.

I have done my nose and wing tips. I am cheap and/or lazy and have not done the entire plane yet. Much of the cost in aircraft coatings is b/c it's a PITA to prep and polish an entire plane. You would need a lift to properly do a plane like a piaggio.

I like Adam's Polishes for the plane. The graphene infused stuff to have a slightly deeper gloss. It's a lot cheaper than any of the airplane specific products.

If you do it yourself, here is a data point - for me to do my nose and front wings, I did a 2 stage paint correction (think 2 stage polish) with a 2 inch orbital disk. Took me about a day to tape off and polish that area. Application of the coating took about 10 min.

You can hand polish an area like wingtips with a single stage abrasive then toss on a ceramic - the results are better than wax.

Interesting. One of my problems is the whole polishing thing is not something I feel is in my strong skill set. So a little worried that the prep-polish stage would go sideways.

I too own a hand car wash and detailing chain. I used to find it funny how the OCD car enthusiast crowds thought there was a difference with different ceramic coating manufacturers, but after buying my first plane in 2021 it is next level mind blowing how more insane the aviation crowd can be. Specifically with regards to the price aviation folks pay for the service and also swearing that it works and lasts a long time. I need to get my crew that cleans my plane some revenue jobs. Every Ferrari, Porsche etc I have seen get a ceramic coating, the owners swear up and down it is amazing. It is, initially, it I believe likely is gone and of no benefit after as little as 90 days, possibly 150.

Regarding concerns with skill level to DIY polish, get an orbital polisher, use tape for areas of caution and try it out. Your total out of pocket cost for some polish(menzerna super finish or meguiars 105/205), a nice set of pads(lake country) and a Porter Cable or Rupes orbital polisher will be $500. Its kind of hard to mess up especially if its your own plane. Autopia dot org is a good place to learn a lot along with YouTube. Autogeek dot net has the equipment and products plus great pricing(wait for a sale or give code at checkout "autopia" and some great DIY videos for polishing, and likely even ceramic coat application.

I'm sitting here reading this and smiling with myself thinking about how much effort required the certification of the nose radome in front of the weather radar.
The geometry itself is already challenging, but demonstration of all the required parameters (RF attenuation, beam deflection, RF reflectivity) also bring in the evaluation of the paint thickness and composition.

A whole EM model of the coupled Radar Antenna and Nose Radome. Anechoic chambers measurements. Flight tests, modification for reducing "cats eyes", evaluation of different suppliers, etc...

All good, until someone apply something on top, or even to replace the original paint with a different chemical base. Not taking into account composites behind (can be damaged by the chemical), the color (temperature increase from dark colours can damage the composites) or the RF compatibility (graphene?).

Some ask a NTO for everything, others never ask for anything.

I wonder if a good old "DO NOT PAINT" marking should be placed on the nose radome, as per other sensitive areas (like RVSM areas around the static ports).

Anthony, I'm not saying that your solution is bad or not working.
Just thinking of different approaches here and the good tradeoff...

I assume those of us with Garmin GWX radar already broke all those carefully designed RF interference plans

I can assure you that if the amount of graphene in the ceramic coatings caused problems, bugs would make the radar in-op

The Garmin Weather Radar works well because it is a great piece of electronics (20+ years younger than original one) AND thanks to the carefully designed radome.
The fact that it continues to work properly after messing with the surface paint is just by chance.
I thought it would be interesting for you to know what's behind a nice nose shape, but I was probably wrong...
Enjoy

Daniele,

You are not wrong. I always enjoy your posts and unique background info. I did not intend for it to be a negative post. Bad attempt at humor

I always surprised how much money and time goes into certification and the details are ignored once it's sold. It makes me wonder if the certification process is needless complex.

I think stories like the radome cert difficulty highlight just how much engineering goes into these amazing machines. It’s easy to take it for granted. I still believe the p180 is the most impressive GA engineering feat. 30 years later there is still nothing even close to what it can do.

I've spent the last four nights reading this entire thread, now I am absolutely getting this as my next plane! I'm still not caught up, however I am flying to Dallas tonight and spending Thursday there and Friday in Tyler TX, does anyone happen to have one in the Dallas area that I can come take a look at it in person briefly?

Stop at KTME in Houston and connect w Don Sims. He always has some in the hangar.

I'm in KGZS today and they just happened to have a citation sii for sale, which was second on my list. So happy to get to see it in person then hopefully I can compare directly to the p180 this week. Houston is a little out of the way, but maybe I can stop in Tulsa on the way home worst case, I'm sure ICJC have some there.

Matt, Anthony,

Thank you for your words, much appreciated.
It is always difficult to transfer feelings while writing.
I should have emphasized a bit more the humor behind my thinking about the different approaches.
Daniele

They do and they'll be happy to show you around. If you're coming to OKC let me know.

My plane is there now getting all Garmin.