How to paint your Drone?

Why not?  The UPair One is a plain white plastic beast.  It's a DJI Phantom clone and who would paint their Phantom?  I wouldn't.  You spend $1000+ on something you don't paint it on a whim with a can of spray paint.

But after you upgrade to a Phantom, what else are you going to do with your UpAir?  There is only one YouTube channel that I can find where someone has painted their UpAir One and that's Olaf at Drones4Life.  After you upgrade to a DJI phantom, and probably any other DJI product, your not going to have much affection for your first drone.  It's just a fact.

So why not have some fun with your first love?  Since I've removed my camera and gimbal from my UPair, it's rock solid!  I can fly it within line of sight and it will do whatever I ask of it.  I can ask it to do things that I would never feel comfortable doing with my $1000 Phantom.  

Yesterday, I decide to paint my UpAir.  I originally thought that candy apple red with flames would be great, but after getting to Home Depot and finding out that they didn't have candy apple red, I settled on metallic silver with florescent green and red stripes.  Ok, I decided on the the metallic silver with red stripe stickers from my Phantom.  It was easier than masking the 3 different colors, and as it turns out, it doesn't look bad.

So this is the paint that I settled on.  I've read that you shouldn't use metallic paint because of the attenuation to the GPS signal. (Olaf again @ Drones4life) but I'm a bit of a rebel and I need to check out the data myself.  As it turns out, the Rustoleum metallic paint that I used didn't have any noticeable effect on my GPS lock on my UPair.   I ended up putting 3 good coats on the GPS antenna on top too! 

Here's a link:
http://www.rustoleum.com/product-catalog/consumer-brands/specialty/metallic-spray/

If you are unsure about this, of course, don't do it.  I'm just reporting that I didn't have any issues.

Next, I also installed 4 new Racerstar 2212 980KV motors.   This is also something that Olaf had done.  I bought these motors last month and I thought that now would be a good time to replace my old motors.  The old motors are still good but the ole UPair really looks cool painted metallic silver with red motors and red Phantom Stripes on the front.

So here it is!  The (almost finished) metallic silver, 2212 red racerstar motors and the pilfered DJI Phantom 3 Standard decals on my naked UPair.  What do you think?  (I want to fill in the sweeping lines inset into the fuselage plastic with red paint and highlight the "UPair" logo as well.)