I'll go floyd one step further, lets get into the new millenium. Back when monokote was introduced it was a hit and miss product. Some times it sagged sometimes it did not. It had other quirks as well. Over the years it has improved. Plus now it comes in a wide array of colors not previously available.
Opaque monokote weighs in as .6 - .7 ounces per square yard. Now that is lightweight when you consider that to finish the medium sized plane you use no more than 2 square yards of material. If you spend some time and prepare the wood surface well you get an instant high gloss finish. Some will say "Yeah but you get all those seams" Well you do get some seams but that is where planning and experince using the material comes in. If you pre plan and perhaps use some paper to maked patterns of the panels you need to cover the airplane you can reduce the number of seams necessary and psoition them so the fall in areas where they are most unnoticable.
If you cover the airplane starting from the bact to the front and bottom to top you will never have a seam lift up at the edges and look nasty. But the newer stuff holds down a lot better than the older stuff did. Others will say you are going to get wrinkles in tight corners or around curves. Well you will if you do not know how to work the material in the problem areas.
Also with modern paints now available there is no reason that you can not get exactly the look you want with monokote. Adding some plastizer to automotive finish and you can make any design, gradient, lettering, effect you can using dope and silkspan, and save 80% of the work because monokote is alredy a ultra smooth surface which to paint. And as it already has the base color you save the weight of the primer and the base color as well. But that is if you feel you can not get the look you want by using monokote alone. You can iron monokote over monokote and avoid the bubble that form underneath you just ahve to pre plan your cuts and minimize the amount of surface area where the material overlaps, the rest is handled by using proper application techniques.
One thing though even with all of the advantages that monokote offers, it had one bigh disadvantage over painted finishes. Monokote is far less forgiving. Most times if you make a mistake you have to trash the entire panel and start from scratch. There is no fixing mistakes. With paint you just sand the surface and re paint the area. With monokote you have to peels the entire panel off and redo say the entire upper part of the wing.
The only thing that makes this tolerable is that you can preposition pieces as much as you want and fit and trim until you get what you want. Monokote is not permenent until you stick it down with an iron. With paint you are committed the second you it the trigger on the paint sprayer.
Also repairs to monokote is far easier than silspan and dope. Trash and have to redo an entire wing panel on a front row airplane and to match the color and appearence of the rest of the airplane can become a nightmare, also blending the new area into the old becomes a chore. Especially if the finish being repaired is a couple years old. The origional finish may have faded a hair or lightened or darkened. With Monokote your repaired panel will look exactly like the existing finish on the airplane. PLus it would take far less time to effect.
Finally some would say that there is no skill required in using and finishing with monokote. To those I say, If you think that then you have not tried to get a smooth wrinkle free seamless finish with monokote. To get prime results it takes no less skill than dope and silkspan, it only takes less time from start to finished product.
Monokote is however expensive. $11.00 for the standard colors and up to $14.00 for the metallics and pearl finishes. You can easily spend $80 or more for a plane that uses more than on or two colors for the entire look you are trying to get. My brodak vector has 6 different colors of monokote on it and to finish the airplane I had to spend over $80 on monokote alone. But what is my time worth, I had the plane covered and finished in a weeks worth of evenings as opposed to a month or more applying primer, paint and clear with the associated drying time and wet sanding and rubbing etc.
Paint has the one advantage that it can produce a seamless finish, (As long as it is done carefully and coreectly) but in the end no matter which you use the results can be excellent. But as others mentioned, crashing as airplane that required a lot of effort in finishing is certainly no fun so avoid the fancy finish, be it monokote or paint until you have passed your crashing phase as a colorful pile of balsa scrap looks pretty much like a colorful pile of balsa scrap that too great pains to achieve.
