Striping a polished RV

Hi all,
I am in the process of polishing my airplane, (along with a million other finishing jobs), and I have a question for the painting gurus out there.
How do you paint stripes on a polished airplane? Do you have to paint the stripes first then polish, or do you tape off the area you don't want to paint and scuff and prep the area you do?
I have been torn between using vinyl for the stripes, and painting them on, and not being a painter or even someone who likes messing with that stuff, I have come to the "place of all things RV".
Anyone?

Polish and Stripes

I just went through this. My RV was polished first and then I painted on invasion stripes. I also put on insignia but they were vinyl and went on easy.

I taped/masked everything except the area to be painted, scuffed it up with scotch-brite, primed it with acid self-etching primer, sprayed on the white, taped/masked, sprayed, on the black, removed some tape/mask, then sprayed on the clear.

The stripes were a lot of work (30+ manhours est) but they really make the plane. It would be much easier and take less time to use vinyl. There are pics on my webpage www.pilotbill.com

My painter said

to polish first. I ended up polishing the areas next to the spots to be painted before I sent it off to the paint shop. I didn't want to mess with using a compounding polisher with a rough grade polish next to my new paint. My invasion stripes were done with paint, but the stars and bars, N numbers, and black checkerboard on the rudder are all vinyl.

If you're only planning on simple stripes, I recommend using vinyl. Mine is polished, and has a triple stripe down each side, and wingtip stripes as well. You can see the design here:

http://picasaweb.google.com/rob.prior/20100305CFRBPAtCYXX#

The snowflake design on the tail is my own, and was drawn in Illustrator before converting to paths and exporting to a cutting path for the vinyl decal supplier. The stripes came on the plane when I bought it.