But plastic model airplanes are an old man’s hobby and thousands of historical images remained unused in a closet. My wife discovered another market for all of these profiles and Wall Pilot was born… on Facebook. We marketed the images on an FB page as a trial effort and were overwhelmed with requests!
Our business plan takes the digital profile artwork and creates vinyl airplane graphics aviation nuts can personalize. Anyone can have a custom graphic of their favorite airplanes and paint schemes, but most importantly their name and personal tail number on the aircraft. Wall Pilot can even customize the weapons loads.
Personalization produced a bigger challenge. Ten years ago when we started down this path programmers told us a website costs over $100,000! There are literally thousands of aircraft configurations, tail numbers, and paint schemes. Automated websites were financially impractical. We found a way to do this after talking with a nationally known printer.
New computer customization makes possible four, six and eight-foot ready-to-print airplane graphic costing under $160. Customized four, six and eight footers range form $300 to $500 as they take a lot longer to research and draw. We are capable of doing bigger profiles, as one custom asked for a 30 foot long airliner for his hanger!
The next dilemma was which aircraft to start with? A number of friends said to begin with the really famous planes: the P-51 Mustang, F-4 Phantom II, F-15 Eagle, F-16 Falcon, F-18 Hornet and of course my KC-135 were first off the printer. Now we have literally hundreds to choose from. Wall Pilot’s artists can create just about anything!