Hangar Queen

Creating one-of-a-kind flying works of art.

Jenna Quader
The New RC Soaring Digest
5 min readMay 26, 2022

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Hello, my name is Jenna Quader — AKA the Hangar Queen according to my dad. I am an artist who paints, draws and designs digital and photo manipulations into NFT’s online. For the past several years my father has been flying slope gliders.

Picture of me and my dad as a little girl. This is what started it all.

When I was a young child he built and constructed gliders back in the 1980’s. Just recently he came back to this hobby and asked me to help him make his planes into art pieces.

Me displaying my painted slope glider at the RC show in Orange County, California.

He was concerned that the weight of the acrylic paint I use to decorate his planes may effect the flying characteristics but we have not found any proof it limits their flight. At first we tried using permanent marker over the foam gliders but found it doesn’t last and it fades so I strictly use acrylic paint now.

To keep the plane light we don’t use a sealer to protect the paint so if it flies and crashes there is no guarantee the art won’t get damaged. The good news is when its flying in the air it looks amazing and you can barely tell the damage in the air. Sometimes it’s a decision weather to fly it or hang it on the wall as a masterpiece.

Here are some pictures of me working with permanent markers only. In this photo I am wearing gloves so the oils from my hands don’t effect the the use of marker ink.

Before I begin painting with acrylics we wipe the foam glider clean lightly with isopropyl alcohol to insure it is clean so the paint glides on smoothly. You can just use a paper towel to do this.

I use a very light grey acrylic paint and small brush to outline my design so if I make a mistake it is easy to wipe clean with a paper towel or brush. Here in this picture you can see how I outlined my design. I only use water to wipe away mistakes and don’t worry too much if the mistake is still visible because I can always paint over it later. I try not to use transparent acrylic colors as the colors are not as bold and don’t cover mistakes well. I don’t use any expensive acrylic paints either, just colors that cost about 99 cents at your local craft store.

Here is a picture of me painting in my design. As you can see I like to fully paint the whole wing. Sometimes I will paint both sides. Some projects can take about 24 hours or more to finish depending on the size of the glider.

When the glider is in the air it looks pretty rad! See the Resources section below for videos of my dad flying some of my art pieces.

So far I have only painted glider foam so I don’t know how acrylic would do on other surfaces. I’ve painted other peoples gliders other than my dad’s. If you are interested in a painted design you can message me on any of my social sites linked in the Resources section, below. I reside in Orange County, California and have only painted planes locally so far.

Here are a couple of my other designs. The tiger design at the right is featured in the SST Tiger video linked in the Resources section.

Thanks for reading and let me know if I can create a one-of-a-kind, flying work of art for you.

©2022 Jenna Quader

Resources

  • Jasmine Moon Designs — This is where you can get ahold of me. For a large painted plane I charge around $200 and for smaller designs $50. A fully painted glider top and bottom around $400. I like to give this range in pricing but that changes depending on the design, how large the glider is and how long it will take.
  • Alula Trek Maiden Day (YouTube) — My dad’s Alula Trek painted with with one of my designs. Don’t you love how it looks in the air?
  • SST Tiger (YouTube) — SST ‘heavy build’ emblazoned with the tiger design, flying at Caselman’s Hill near San Clemente, California.
  • NFT (Wikipedia) — “A non-fungible token (NFT) is a financial security consisting of digital data stored in a blockchain…[t]he ownership of an NFT is recorded in the blockchain, and can be transferred by the owner…NFTs typically contain references to digital files such as photos, videos, and audio.”

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