The 1/144 Braille Scale World of Sentinel Chicken

[Sentinel Chicken]

Latest progress:



Airbrushed the undersides and sides flat black. There were some gaps on the engine nacelle seams that were easily fixed with some thinned out Squadron White and a top coat of Tamiya Surface primer. I painted the interior wheel wells white but not evenly to give the impression of a grimy, dirty wheel well. There's a big donkey seam in there, too, but I can live with that one. Attached the wing pylons, I don't think they had much capacity on the real world Stoof, more like for single stores like the smaller pylons on the A-1 Skyraider. I'll have to think up a suitable set of stores for this build, I'm thinking maybe something simple like a flare launcher or even an ECM pod.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Latest progress:



I decided to brush paint the camo scheme and that will either be a total disaster or it could work out for me, we'll see. It's been a royal pain in the donkey to try and match the camo scheme I wanted to use for this build and what I have done so far may be a big clue for some of you. The difficult aspect was matching what on the real world is a grayish-tan color and I had tried several candidates which didn't work worth squat for me. Either to dark, too light, or too brown. The brownish-gray patches on the model are what I ended up with and to be honest, I'm sort of sick trying to get that one color matched. That was one reason I didn't want to airbrush this, I knew I was in for a round of trial and error.

The next hurdle will be the markings. I have some decal paper will give a shot for the first time at inkjet printing some custom markings.

[RussC]

One thing I found about camo patterns on 144 planes is that the size of the colored areas can easily become too large, its always best to go smaller and try to stay there. If its a set mirror wave pattern, then follow the textbook shapes but if its a whiffical scheme, go smaller.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Latest progress shots:





The camouflage scheme has been airbrushed on and added the prominent intakes on each upper side of the afterburner on the aft fuselage. The colors should be a a big clue what I have planned, I next plan to work on the cockpit to fix the broken ejection seat and then scratchbuild some pylons for the wings and a new set of missile rails for the sides of the forward fuselage. 

[Sentinel Chicken]

Latest progress shots:





First attempt in years of airbrushing a multi-toned camo scheme on a build this size, it was *okay* but I can live with it. Had the airbrush compressor set at a very low pressure but still got more overspray than I wanted. Next time I'll thin the paint out more. One of the main drawbacks of airbrushing, sometimes it's just too labor intensive to mess with. I may, motivation pending, go back and airbrush one of the shades of green again. I have more dark tan areas on the scheme than I need. We'll see. Got it up on wheels last night, it sits on its nose gear just right.

[Sentinel Chicken]

Working on one of the wing weapons bays:



Had I thought further ahead, it would have been easier to cut out the hole and build this weapons bay before I put the wing halves together, but oh well. I drilled out some pilot holes in the wing where I wanted the weapons bay to be located and then used a razor saw (with Dremel back up) to cut open a rectangular opening just a shade larger then I needed. I was going to do external rails and doors on the fuselage so that bombs and torpedoes could be rolled out under the wings just like the Short Sunderland, but had my fill of working on the ill-fitting fuselage and didn't want to hack more openings into than I already have. So for this what-if PBK-1 Tarpon, there are weapons bays under each inner wing and bombs, depth charges, and torpedoes are rolled into them from fuselage racks.

The weapons bay is just a simple styrene box. I like to use the tiled styrene sheet as it makes it easy to get the rectangular piece for what I'm trying to make- sort of prescored sheet, if you will. I have some other styrene rod and strip pieces for the interior (like the rails) and then I'll more details once I have the weapons bay fitted into the wing. I put in a piece of scrap sprue so the weapons bay has something to support it and it doesn't fall further into the wing.



Weapons bay now in place. I made it just a bit taller than needed so I can sand it down to match the profile of the wing undersurface. Squadron White will be putty-fooed into the gaps and sanded down. I've scratch built undercarriage bays this way, so I know it should work out just fine. On the opposite side I'll have some scratchbuilt doors in the closed position to indicated where that wing's bay is located.

[Old Wombat]

Coming along nicely!

[sequoiaranger]

Quite a project! I will enjoy seeing the outcome!

Might just be the camera angle, though I *THINK* I am right, but the inner (picture right) nacelle and the next one out do not seem to be parallel. Dunno which one is "out of line", but before you go too much further, you might re-align:



PS--several years ago I sold off a HUGE collection of unbuilt 1/144 and 1/150 scale aircraft models to Dean Sills in Michigan. The 1/150 aircraft were of an obscure Japanese firm that had ATROCIOUS box art (making one suspicious of the quality of the models--not warranted). If you want hard-to-get subjects (He-100 among them), maybe contact him. He may still have some of those!

deanshobbystop@comcast.net

[Sentinel Chicken]

The front of the nacelle is lined up parallel to the others, but the aft part toes in slightly more which gives the whole nacelle the appearance of being out of line. Good eye. Combined with the camera angle, it accentuates it. I had contemplated fixing it when I first started finishing up the wings and engines, but to be honest, was getting burned out of endless cycles of PSR- this is a much bigger build than what I've done before and underestimated the amount of PSR by a big margin!

From the top, it looks better since the front half of the nacelle is lined up correctly.

Still waffling on if I'll just live with it or take a crack at fixing the underside aft portion. Thanks for the tip on Dean's Hobby Stop. He has a website (located in Flushing, MI, right?), but his listing isn't comprehensive. I'll have to shoot him an email.

[sequoiaranger]

>Still waffling on if I'll just live with it or take a crack at fixing the underside aft portion.<

Being "underside aft" probably means no one will notice it when it sits upright.

re: Dean's--Dean was very interested in those 1/150 aircraft when we were making our arrangements--perhaps he also had an interest in the scale, or thought he could sell them at good profit to someone else. Of course there is no guarantee that they are still in his hands. I had accumulated an enormous 1/144 collection for use as "photo backgrounds", intended to be painted just like the main 1/72 subject (different plane #, of course) and put in the near background for "perspective". Too ambitious. But the collection included just about every WW II aircraft made in 1/144 scale. Good luck!

[Sentinel Chicken]

Latest progress shots:



The weapons bay is now fully integrated into the wing and several coats of Tamiya White Primer sprayed on between sandings helped smooth things out. And holy crap looks like I have a few minor "sins" to fix on the surfaces of the nacelles as well. Some of those I'll cover up Watergate-style with some greeblies like air scoops and the like. Added the final bit of detailing, the structural ribs on the side of the weapons bay. The original plan was to drill small holes in them to give the impression of a lightened structure. Maybe if I'd made this thing bigger and my eyeballs were ten years younger.



This view shows the other side of the weapons bay. There are two doors here that lead to the reloads/bomb/torpedo racks inside the fuselage, Sunderland style. One door would open if it's a 250 lb or 500 lb bomb being rolled out, maybe a string of depth charges. But for a torpedo, both doors would open and the longer stores would use both rails inside the weapons bay. Or if a long string of depth charges, bombs, or mines needed to be dropped, I suppose. The other side shows a closed weapons bay- just some simple styrene sheet there, nothin' fancy.

I plan to paint the inside of the weapons bay green zinc chromate, the standard interior metal protectant of the day.

[Sentinel Chicken]

>Still waffling on if I'll just live with it or take a crack at fixing the underside aft portion.<
Being "underside aft" probably means no one will notice it when it sits upright.

Some days the better part of whiffing is choosing the battles with styrene worth fighting, isn't it?

[PR19_Kit]

This is looking better and better. 

I like the use of the word 'integrated' here, it gives you a feeling that model isn't just thrown together. I may start to use that, if it's not patented of course..... 

[NARSES2]

Some fantastic work going on here 

[Gondor]

A suggestion for your lightening holes..... use black circles rather than make holes. Masking tape, decal film or whatever you fancy and what ever size you like, probably as fiddly as making the holes but at least you can add as many as you like without the structure falling to bits due to looking like Swiss cheese.

Gondor