BOOK A DETAIL AT PALO ALTO.
Tell us where your aircraft sits at KPAO and what condition the paint is in. We come to the airplane.
Peninsula / KPAO
Palo Alto is a tie-down heavy field on the edge of the Baylands salt marsh. Between the salt air and the bird activity, aircraft there take a harder beating than the flying hours alone would suggest.
Palo Alto Airport · about 45 minutes from our base at KLVK
Detailing at KPAO
KPAO sits at roughly 7 feet of elevation with the Baylands preserve on its doorstep. Two things follow from that. The first is salt: the same bay air that works on San Carlos aircraft works on Palo Alto aircraft. The second is birds. The marsh next door means droppings on wings, stabilizers and windscreens are a constant, and bird droppings are acidic enough to etch clear coat and paint if they bake on through a Peninsula summer weekend.
Most of the based fleet at Palo Alto lives outside. Runway 13/31 is about 2,443 by 70 feet, which keeps the field oriented toward piston singles, light twins and the flying clubs and schools that make KPAO one of the busier general aviation fields on the Peninsula.
Bird droppings and bug remains left on paint do not simply wash off after a few weeks. They etch. Once the etch is into the clear coat, washing will not fix it and it takes machine work to level the surface again. That is the single most common avoidable damage we see on tie-down aircraft, and the reason a regular wash interval on a KPAO aircraft is cheaper than the correction that replaces it. Our paint correction service handles the aircraft that are already there.
Palo Alto has an unusually high share of club and partnership aircraft, which creates a familiar problem: everyone flies it, nobody owns the cleaning. Putting the airplane on a recurring schedule removes that argument entirely and splits across the partners to very little per person per month. We also handle full interior detailing, which on a shared aircraft is usually further behind than the exterior.
We work at your tie-down or hangar. Our rinsless process means no water hookup, no runoff and no wash rack, which matters on a county field with tight environmental rules. Static ports, pitot tubes, vents and antennas are masked before any water reaches the airframe, and windscreens get an acrylic-safe cleaner, never anything ammonia based.
Peninsula aircraft often sell to buyers who fly in for a look. A pre-sale detail is the cheapest possible improvement to the first impression, and it makes the pre-buy inspection easier because a clean belly and clean gear wells let the inspector actually see the airframe.
Common Questions
Every four to six weeks is a reasonable baseline at KPAO, mostly because of bird activity and salt air rather than flying hours. Between visits, getting droppings off within a few days does more for the paint than anything else you can do.
Yes. We use acrylic-safe products only. Ammonia based glass cleaners craze acrylic windscreens, and that damage is permanent, so those products never come near an aircraft.
Yes, and it is common on shared aircraft. We quote the job and you can split it however you like. Recurring plans are usually easier to budget across a partnership than one large annual detail.
Yes. The rinsless process produces no runoff, so a wash rack is not required.
Other fields we cover: Livermore KLVK, Hayward KHWD, Concord KCCR, San Carlos KSQL, Palo Alto KPAO, San Jose KSJC, Oakland KOAK, Stockton KSCK. See the full service area.
Tell us where your aircraft sits at KPAO and what condition the paint is in. We come to the airplane.