Static Display “do not touch” sign ideas

Howdy
As y’all know Airshow attendees just love to touch and get there sweaty prints all over polished aluminum airplanes…
Yesterday after a flyin event my freshly polished ‘Coupe was littered with fingerprints, one person even literally rested there whole body on the fuselage…

people just think that the static display aircraft are a petting zoo or something…
does anyone have any good ideas for signs to warn against touching the aircraft?comedic signs welcomed aswell

also how do y’all politely tell people to stop touching the airplane without coming off stingy or rude?
After 3 years of ownership I can agree with that, pretty much every event I get asked if it’s chromed as they are rubbing their hand on it…
Expecting people to stay back is like setting up a swimsuit edition magazine and expecting people not to look or buy it. You WANT people to look at your plane, so when they come, you can't act shocked that the lower-IQ half of them also touch it.
 
People don’t read signs, so unless you rope off the airplane, there’s not much you can do.

Exactly. Having put up with the general public for years putting on athletic events, I can say with certainty that people absolutely, positively, do not obey signs, or even read them. If there is an area you want to keep people out of, you have to put up a physical barrier. And I don't mean just rope it off and put up signs--you have to make it physically impossible for people to get in there. Even then, if the perceived payoff is high enough, some will try.

Tim
 
does anyone have any good ideas for signs to warn against touching the aircraft?
Having set up a number of static aircraft displays at the commercial level to include venues attended mostly by "aviation" people who should know better, the only 100% sure way to keep people away from your aircraft is to put a bright colored barrier and keep one or two people at the aircraft at all times. Short of that there is always that 10% who will cross the barrier because "they know what they're doing.":rolleyes:
 
Having set up a number of static aircraft displays at the commercial level to include venues attended mostly by "aviation" people who should know better, the only 100% sure way to keep people away from your aircraft is to put a bright colored barrier and keep one or two people at the aircraft at all times. Short of that there is always that 10% who will cross the barrier because "they know what they're doing.":rolleyes:
I've literally seen a kid try to "ride" on the tail of an L-4 - like a horse - at an airshow. And the parents were mad at me for yelling at him. :rolleyes: Sitting on elevators, too. There are much, much worse things than touching a polished plane, no matter the pain that that undoubtedly is.

A friend has this on her plane:

1967 Cessna O-2A Skymaster / Oscar Deuce 67-21383 - N1166B, "Steel Tiger" by Christopher Ebdon, on Flickr
 
The only thing that has worked for me.

My breaking point was when a guy walked under my ropes, grabbed the prop, and aggressively pulled it through like he was trying to start the plane...idiot.
Same here, guy starts turning the prop as I was sitting on the ground leaning against the wheel pant... I told the guy, "don't do that," explained how dangerous it was, and he started arguing with me, "oh, it won't start up!"
 
Strange. I don’t even touch the real cool show planes without permission, let alone someone’s personal plane that they flew to the show.
 
Same here, guy starts turning the prop as I was sitting on the ground leaning against the wheel pant... I told the guy, "don't do that," explained how dangerous it was, and he started arguing with me, "oh, it won't start up!"

Darwin award candidate
 
At a fly-in many years ago a friend came in his Quad City Challenger. His was set up with the folding tail design. On that design the locking hardware on the castle nuts for the elevator supports were the quick release type that looked like a large bobby pin instead of a standard cotter pin.

His prefight inspection before leaving the fly-in found that several of those "easy to remove" lock pins had been removed (stolen) leaving the possibility of losing a control surface on the way home.:mad:
 
Sadly, the best and safest thing to do it just keep your plane in the hangar and go play a round of golf instead.
 
Asking this question is like asking:

How do I hike through the northern woods in a meat suit and not get attacked by a bear?
 
Maybe several signs around the plane that says “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! DON’T TOUCH ME” and in small letters “That means you too uncle Chester.”
That’s too great!
Asking this question is like asking:

How do I hike through the northern woods in a meat suit and not get attacked by a bear?
haha true, thread kinda got off topic but I was mainly asking for sign ideas...
also I do stand guard or have my wingman guard the airplanes as people obviously cant be trusted and that way we can also talk to those interested in our birds.... but just to have a sign to reference whenever I tell someone to not touch would be nice.
 
Don’t put up a sign…post snipers. Only the first one will touch it.


I volunteer at a museum and the number of people who will just put their kids in your airplane and let them play with the controls is crazy. I have been at our air show and seen kids just yank on control surfaces while their parents watch and do nothing about it. Since I fly some of the planes I always do a super thorough preflight because you never know who has messed with what.
Same here, guy starts turning the prop as I was sitting on the ground leaning against the wheel pant... I told the guy, "don't do that," explained how dangerous it was, and he started arguing with me, "oh, it won't start up!"
Back when I was flying Stearmans for a living, a mother was taking a pic of her little boy under the nose of the airplane. She lowered the camera, walked up, grabbed the prop and pulled it down so her little boy could put his arm around it for the picture. You’ve never seen four guys in red suits run so fast.
 
Howdy
As y’all know Airshow attendees just love to touch and get there sweaty prints all over polished aluminum airplanes…
Yesterday after a flyin event my freshly polished ‘Coupe was littered with fingerprints, one person even literally rested there whole body on the fuselage…

people just think that the static display aircraft are a petting zoo or something…
does anyone have any good ideas for signs to warn against touching the aircraft?comedic signs welcomed aswell

also how do y’all politely tell people to stop touching the airplane without coming off stingy or rude?
A white glove dispenser? Have them polish it for you!
 
From my work, I'm certain of this - if you send out an email to a large number of people, specifically telling them NOT to do something, click on a link or whatever, a certain percentage will absolutely do it. If I ever wanted to have someone install malware on their PC, my first bet would be to name the file "do not open".
 
From my work, I'm certain of this - if you send out an email to a large number of people, specifically telling them NOT to do something, click on a link or whatever, a certain percentage will absolutely do it. If I ever wanted to have someone install malware on their PC, my first bet would be to name the file "do not open".
As opposed to IMPORTANT—PLEASE READ as a subject line?
 
Cattle prod.... Ok, I've seen too much Jackass today.
 
The only thing that ever helped was when I put a sign saying, "Fingerprints suck. "Please only touch here", with an arrow. That area was full of fingerprints and the rest of the plane was pretty much left alone!

That’s pure genius!
 
how about something like:

"Go ahead and touch it, it only took me 300hrs to get it ready for you".
 
People don’t read signs, so unless you rope off the airplane, there’s not much you can do.

This...one of my many hats was once being in charge of a Signs Committee for a major annual event and the joke was that we needed to make signs that said "Please Read The Sign" to put above the other signs.

People are oblivious...not outta spite, they are just generally clueless.
 
Do what they used to do around the operational NEACP... (young airmen armed with M-16 rifles just itching to put an intruder on the ground)
 
I've found this to be the best warning sign to stay back and not touch.
upload_2022-4-5_9-0-6.png
 
Same here, guy starts turning the prop as I was sitting on the ground leaning against the wheel pant... I told the guy, "don't do that," explained how dangerous it was, and he started arguing with me, "oh, it won't start up!"
I think it was the same guy, as the guy that did it to mine argued with me as well how it wouldn't start.
 
I had to intervene at an airshow once when a guy, with a small child perched on his shoulders, stood in the prop arc of a T6 pushing on the prop just to see it move.
 
can't fix stupid quickly enough...
 
I can sympathize with the OP, having staged a polished plane at various events. At the very first public event I learned the hard way about giving people access. If you let anyone sit in your plane a line will instantly form.
DSC_0125.JPG
Some youngsters are great and it's fun to share with them. Others are varmints who compulsively grab knobs and yank the stick. I pull those kids out immediately and hand them back to their parents.

Flash forward a few years I had the plane at a big event and allowed various adults to sit in it. Later I found canopy side glass sections unlatched (would have blown out in flight), master switch on, etc. You can't see it in the picture above but the front side of the prop was highly polished and impossible to touch without leaving prints. Even with the hang tag telling people in bold red letters not to touch the prop, I watched a guy reaching out to touch it and his 12 year old daughter yelling at him for doing so.

I still want people to be curious and get to see the plane up close but I'm a lot less friendly about it than I used to be.

Edit: I intended to share horror stories told by my uncle. People using the horizontal stabilizer as a baby changing table and a kid doing pull ups on the pitot tube are a good source of amusement.
 
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Better yet, fence charger!

I remember years ago (our son is now in his mid-40s and he was young when this happened. He came into my aunt's house with eyes as big as saucers. "The fence shook me!" Once we figured out what had happened he was treated to every adult in the room laughing. He had grabbed an electric fence between pulses and when the fencer pulsed, he got "shook". :)

:) Am I the only one that has an email rule that marks anything with that subject line as junk?

Great idea That subject line gets put in the trash without being read.
 
I remember years ago (our son is now in his mid-40s and he was young when this happened. He came into my aunt's house with eyes as big as saucers. "The fence shook me!" Once we figured out what had happened he was treated to every adult in the room laughing. He had grabbed an electric fence between pulses and when the fencer pulsed, he got "shook". :)



Great idea That subject line gets put in the trash without being read.

I touched one when I was a kid back in boy scouts. It had been raining all night so good conduction was assured. I woke up on my back with the rest of the troop standing over me. It was a good lesson learned.
 
I touched one when I was a kid back in boy scouts. It had been raining all night so good conduction was assured. I woke up on my back with the rest of the troop standing over me. It was a good lesson learned.
I think I did one better, trying to jump a fence I had not been warned had been newly electrified. It was set up for cattle, and a ball went over the fence at a church we regularly visited. I was eager to impress friends I didn't see often and grabbed the new wire with both hands... let's just say it was a lot less impressive and some good laughs were had at my expense.
 
I warned my very cocky next-door neighbor of our electric horse fence, and how I usually kept it off, but every now and then when either the weeds got tall or the horses got bold, I'd turn it on for a few days... but he responded with "That won't bother me, I've been shocked many times by those." What I didn't tell him was my fence run was right at 1 mile, so I had to choose between the "less than 1 mile charger" and the "1 - 5 mile charger", and I chose the latter. Every morning, I'd watch as the guy would walk over to our fence with his cup of coffee, lean on the wires, and scratch our horses noses. Then one day I turned the fence on...man I wish I'd had a video of him that day! It blistered him good! Coffee flew in the air, he hollered, and jumped up and down for 5 minutes straight.
 
So there I was...

Horse field behind the outbuilding we had that had my basketball hoop on it. Shed roof sloping back towards the field. Airball bought you a trip into the field to get the ball back. Electric fence, pretty easy to step through carefully. We learned to use a blade of tall grass to non painfully check if it was on.

Airball... run around the building, down the hill, check the fence, it’s off, go get ball...

pretty sure farmer John was watching because between the time I cleared the fence going in, and grabbing hold to go out, what, 20 seconds, well, it got turned on!

Really good two handed grasp on that puppy (I tossed the ball to my bud) and WOW!!

I hope he got a good chuckle out of that!! Hell, my buds did (who were too afraid to grab hold and help me out). Held on to that sucker for the full 8 second ride until my spazzing finally overcame my electrified muscle contracting squeeze on that wire. Seems like yesterday..
 
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