Polet Cargo Airlines H4 Hercules (DONE!)

[The Rat]

Hell, I bought this smartphone back in 2013 and even then it was about a year old or half a year old.

My main camera is a Fuji Finepix S1500, a 'bridge' camera. Look up 'bridge camera' in a dictionary and you see a picture of a large pile of manure. It's okay for some purposes, but for macro or video my Samsung Galaxy S4 takes better pictures.

[Old Wombat]

Nice scheme, Brad!


My "new" camera is a second-hand Canon EOS 1100D DSLR with a EF 75-300mm 1:4-5.6 zoom lens & a 0.25/0.8ft EFS 18-55mm macro lens.

Part of my Christmas haul.

[TheChronicOne]

Y'all just got me back on track on eBay. Here I was looking at airliner kits when I need to be looking for a camera. 


Glad you like the scheme, Womby.. I think the masking of the diagonal lines was a good decision. The monkey of "how to get these transfers to work and will the blue bleed through the white" is off my back now.

[ericr]

beautiful painting scheme !

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, bud!!! It gets better from here!! Time to mask up and pain the de-icers so the wings will look more awesome than ever then I'm going to put a little black patch up around the windscreen for anti-glare duty. The transfers will make the rest including cheat lines and mid-nacelle cheatlines on the engines.

[TheChronicOne]

After things were going so rapidly the other day, today has be a slow, trudging crawl. Stopped to do some research on wing de-icers that lead to learning some things and a couple minor changes in the paint work. No matter, it made things easier which is good!  Still, getting everything right and placed took way too long but they're on now, at least.

I've also managed to mask the anti-glare patch and it actually turned out decent.

Next up I'm going to mask and actually paint 4 areas where the black horizontal line that splits the fuselage goes. The line actually stops on either side of the diagonal lines so rather than fiddle with the transfers, I'm going to mask of about 6mm of all the "ends" and paint it black. This way I don't have to do a bunch of awkward measuring and cutting altering transfers. Much quicker and less to think about. Hell.. I had thoughts of just painting the whole line but then again that could be problematic, as well, when having perfectly straight and perfectly wide lines are available to me with no need to mask or cut! 

I wish I could say I'll be done with this soon, then clear coat it... but I need to do touch ups (not many, though, thank God) then probably go back and do a thin coat of white on the white surfaces to take care of blemishes. I've been religious about keeping my hands clean and it's paid off, but, there are still things here and there and under glaring light imperfections can be seen. I'd like to minimize that and give it a nice even finish before I seal it.

ANYWAY!! Pics this time!  empanage:



Nose section:


Still some stuff to be done here like touch up the white near the frame work and paint the nose.

After all this is of course the gloss coat.. then I'll start on the part that won't be very fun simply because of the tight spaces and how small the stuff is... which will be the black lines (same as fuselage) on the engine nacelles. I think I'll attack this in a manner sort of like the cheat line ends I was talking about for the fuselage. Rather than cutting the transfers to contour around the engines/wings I'll just put put in straight sections as long as I can then just paint the rest of it. It'll be a ton easier and will look a lot better in the long run.

[DogfighterZen]

Big bird's looking good.

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, dude!!  This stuff is really cool. I'm biased of course but I really dig the colors on this and civvie stuff is just neat to build in my opinion. Doing warmonger stuff all the time gets old. 

[TheChronicOne]

Calling it a day on this one. So much of it seems so simple... yet... takes planning and time. The closer to being finished, the longer it takes!        I just keep telling myself that I'm further along now than I was and that there is less work ahead of me. Eventually I'll "break through" and things will fall together and it will be done. For now.. I continue to try to get the livery right..   

I think it's going well, though!

Current iteration:

[DogfighterZen]

Looking very good!

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, you should see it now!!!! Glossy and all the touch up work is done. It looks glorious if I say so myself! This scheme works absolutely great for something sea-faring.



STOP!!!!!!










MARITIME:






UH OH, UH OH, UH OH, here come the transfers!

[TheChronicOne]

All 16 black stripes are on the nacelles. I cut them in as close as possible and in doing so it looks well enough that I won't have to put any black paint on. I had to on ONE of them that I mis-cut but the rest are so close that you can't really tell unless you cram your face in the thing.



This took about an hour (or less a bit). It was easier than I thought it would be so that's grand!! Sometimes holding something biggish and awkward whilst trying to cram things into little spaces can be taxing but it wasn't bad.   (KINKY!!)

Going to press on with the black striping for now and get it all out of the way. I want it nice and straight and all that so I figure I should do it first before fatigue sets in and do the other, easier ones last.

Probably will be done tonight but being dark out It will be difficult to get any pictures worth a damn. I'll try, though! It seems like the camera copes better with a lighter background in these lighting conditions so that's what I'll try instead of the dark stuff.

[TheChronicOne]

All done!!!!   


I took a picture or two of the underside before I put the tiny propellers on so I wouldn't break them but the rest are complete build pics.


















ROAST FLIGHT!       (I know it doesn't say that but at a glimpse it LOOKS like it so I've been calling this thing "Roast Flight " ever since.    )

[loupgarou]

You've done a beautiful job with all that painting, masking etc. 

[ericr]

VERY beautiful !