Real World A-4k Skyhawk

[Gekko_1]

Hi guys,

I managed to get a little bit more done. I very carefully applied two hand painted coats of Future for a glossy base to do the panel lines on the upper surfaces. I waited a full 24 hours between coats and a further 24 before I began applying a very dark grey oil paint sludge into the panel lines.





I then carefully removed the oil paint with an old T-shirt paying particular attention to those damn slat rails! During this process my wife decided to pay me a visit in the model room. She was standing behind me and decided to give me a hug. Nothing wrong with that. Except when she moved here arms away she got the refuelling probe caught in her sleeve!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I watched terrified as the refuelling probe violently vibrated once it was released (all this took place in about 1 second) but luckily didn't go sailing over to the other side of the room!  

Hugs are now banned in the model room until further notice! B)









Thanks to Calums (over on ARC) heads-up regarding the lift spoilers!



Here you can see the relevant engraving done. Now that I'm aware of the problem I will make sure I engrave this area BEFORE gluing the wings on! :dum:

Next is a flat coat.

Richard.

[Damian2]

I'm second in line after Scooterman for Whiff A-4 lover!!! She's a beaut Richard!!

[nev]

Even an A-4 hater would have to admit that is a work of art    

[BlackOps]

Very nice!

[Gekko_1]

Thanks guys.

I had put on a coat of Testors Flat Clear last night, I was pretty happy with how it went on, so turned off the model room lights and went off to watch some television. This morning I inspected the model, it looked OK still, though maybe a little too matt. Anyway, then I noticed some gloved finger marks on the model caused by the powder coating on the gloves, I went to wipe it away with a little distilled water and it left a chalky residue, not to worry I thought, I'll wash it a little more and it'll go away...........WRONG!






I remained calm as I have heard about this sort of thing happening to other modellers, even very experienced ones. I figured it was the calk compound in the flat clear that was causing the problem, so I mixed-up a semi-flat coat consisting of 1 part Testors Flat Clear, 1 part Pledge One Go (Australian equivalent to Future) and 1 part distilled water. This was airbrushed at approximately 15 PSI.

The arrow in the above photo points to a spare canopy that I use to mask off the cockpit for airbrushing. If and when I need to use it I'll just get the paint off with paint and decal stripper which won't effect the clear canopy.

It fixed-up most of the problem, but still left a couple of white spots.




I'll leave it alone for today, to give the coat a good 24 hours to settle down and see if there is any change tomorrow. If any of you have experienced similar heart stopping events and have found a solution I'd love to hear about it, and no doubt so would a lot of other modellers!

Cheers

Richard.

[DropBear]

Great work    

[jester]

very nice.  

[devil505]

I'm looking forward to when you have this finished.
From what I have seen so far I would put this one in my top 10 Skyhawks.
 :salute:  

[Gekko_1]

Hi guys,

I've managed to fix it up a bit, still a little bit of 'fogging' on top of the starboard wing but I'm not going to worry about it.










Richard.

[Sisko]

Nice stuff Richard!

Always a pleasure to see your works in progress  

[ysi_maniac]

Absolutely outstanding work
             :salute:  

[NaOH]

Nice A-4 Richard.

Remember this one? I'm playing with my new Nikon D80 and thought I'd post it.

[Gekko_1]

Remember this one? I'm playing with my new Nikon D80 and thought I'd post it.

Yeah I remember that guy!    

[nev]

2 brilliantly done A-4s in the same thread.....  

     

[ysi_maniac]

Absolutely gorgeous Scooters