Moments of Zen

[DogfighterZen]

A pearl beyond price, marry her quickly! 

Well, i admit the thought has crossed my mind, Kit...  

Are women allowed to attend model shows in Portugal then?  How cosmopolitan!

yes, women are allowed to attend and even participate in model shows in Portugal. I saw plenty of ladies of all ages at the Show i went to last December. And there have been more female modellers showing up in the Portuguese forum and facebook pages so i'd say that the ladies are starting to have an active role in the modelling scene all around. There's a lady in a What-if modellers page on facebook who's a very active member, presenting a new build almost every month.

I went to a local wargaming show the other week and the wives and girlfriends were manning the refreshments stand. Home baked cakes all for charity  The cakes were absolutely  I think their "stand" got more attention then anyone else's 

Can't blame the lads for giving the ladies the attention they deserve. And homebaked cakes are always a good way to get our attention...   

So, haven't done much the last couple of days cause i had the "meet her mom and dad" event and it was a family oriented weekend so, tonight i'll be doing some work on the Raptor.
I wanna try to get the nozzles finished before Wednesday cause me and Milady are going to Paris for a few days.
I will obviously be on the look out for model stores while i'm there but i have to take a look through the web to see if i can make the hunt easier. Couldn't go there without trying to bring back a bit plastic. 

[DogfighterZen]

So, i hadn't been out of Portugal for quite a few years now but last week, me and my girl flew out for a few days in Paris.
We stayed in a hotel just 15/20 minutes of city's center, nothing too fancy but in a very quiet and accessible area. First day was a birthday party of the friend that my girl wanted to go visit over there.
Second day was dedicated to visiting the D'Orsay museum... Quite a few models in show, one which really impressed me was the Opera building, that is a very complicated construction.
The third day was left for anything else we thought of visiting and after dropping a couple of friends off at the Eiffel tower(we had both been there before), we didn't know what to do because i hadn't though we'd have time to spare. A quick google search revealed that there was a permanent exhibit at the Le Bourget airport so, that where we went. Obviously, i was happy as brat when i started seeing fighter jets in google pics of the museum.
Getting there was a bit boring cause it was a 40 minute trip in a couple of different transports but we made it and i was smilling as soon as i saw the entrance to the Air and Space museum of Paris-Le Bourget.
One detail, as i wasn't expecting to go there when we left in the morning, i didn't take my digital camera with me, only my phone, which i hate for taking pictures, and the battery died half way through the visit. My girl also took pics with her camera and when i get them all sorted out i'll post a link to my Imgur album so i don't clough up this place with over 100 pics of real world planes.
As some of you may have seen on the stash thread, i bought a model at the gift shop on the entrance of the museum, and it had to be a french bird, the heller 1/72 Super Etendard.

On the modelling front, no real news since last update. Still trying to find time to finish masking the engine nozzle area on the Revell Raptor, which was better to do with the vertical fins left to glue after painting this.
Let's see if i can get anything done tonight.

[TheChronicOne]

Sounds good!!   You did what I would have; went to the airport. lol  The only way to roll.   

[DogfighterZen]

Sounds good!!   You did what I would have; went to the airport. lol  The only way to roll.   

I didn't forget you... 







And we flew to France and back in the Boeing 737-800



And here's one for Kit... 



I've got a few more of a few other airliners but i want to get the pics in my girl's camera sorted before i upload them on my Imgur account.

Only glued a few trips of masking tape last night but at least i've figured out how i'm going to paint this area. Has a few different colors and several masking steps to spray everything right.

[PR19_Kit]

And here's one for Kit... 

Yeah, magic, a Grasshopper. Thanks for posting that. 

I flew one for all of 15 seconds once, frightened me to death!

[TheChronicOne]

Yaaaay airliners!!!!!  My favorite stuff right now. lol   Awesome!! Look at that big A 380. So portly!  Imagine that thing wallowed out and rigged to drop conventional iron bombs. If weight weren't an issue I wonder how many, say Mk. 83s would fit...   

[DogfighterZen]

Well, i've got all the Paris-Le Bourget pics uploaded on to my Imgur account but i haven't cleaned up the album so there are a few pics of the same thing that have to be deleted.
In the modelling front, finally some news, the Raptor is almost finished. Finished the decals last night, now needs, maybe a panel line wash, a couple of varnish coats on and it's done...



Feels good to finally get something done and i'm satisfied with the outcome. Nothing fancy, not a try at making a plausible whif, just for the fun of it, how i'd like to see a Raptor in PoAF markings and a dark color.
I know a lot of people don't like this aircraft but i really like it's lines so i had to have this one "in-flight" so, it'll be stuck on a stand, which is also nothing fancy, just an old Airfix stand painted in gun metal gray.
There will not be a long backstory or dedicated thread for this one, i won't bother. I'll just get a few better pics of it when it's finished and move on. It would have to be a really good story to explain the Raptor in PoAF service...
One could say that after Trump decided to reopen the Raptor factory and Portugal became a rich country by finding oil under it's the south shores, a dozen Raptors were sold to the PoAF to patrol the country and international waters out of the Lajes Air Base in the Azores islands...

Next will be to finish the Hasegawa F-16E Agile Falcon... 

[NARSES2]

It does look very good in that scheme 

[TheChronicOne]

Love that color!!

[DogfighterZen]

Glad you like it, guys!
I like the look of the color mix, the metallic sheen comes through but not too much, and blue is my favorite color so, came out just how i wanted it.

Nothing done in the last couple of days but tonight is a night fot modelling so i'm thinking of starting out the session with a coat of X-22 on the F-22 to seal the transfers and then, put it aside to let it dry properly.
Picking up the F-16E and begin masking for the camo scheme is also on the list but first i want to decide what loadout it will carry so i can glue the respective pylons under the wings.

Also, the idea of building the Phantom right now is not motivating me very much, at least, not as much as building a revised version of the single seat F-16W or maybe even the original twin tailed desing of the Viper. Either one of those or a 1/48 Viper. 

[DogfighterZen]

So, i've been quiet but i've been working, the F-16E was waiting for my choice of markings and scheme so i used one of the options on Caracal's Next Generation Vipers sheet. It's the USAF option of one of the 179th FS' Vipers with the Have glass V paint scheme.
Pretty simple and dark, i think it looks so good, i had to have one in that scheme, even if it's a whiff.
The models has been painted, gloss coated, transfers were applied, gloss coated and the main gear and gear bay doors are on. I still have to decide if i'm going to use the chin targeting pod but the rest of the loadout has been selected and painted, almost ready to go on the pylons.
With all of this, i haven't done anything else on the Raptor, it's still waiting for a matte coat to finish it and put it up on it's stand.

With these two almost finished, i still haven't decided what i'll be doing after these are put on the display shelf...  last Thursday, i was going through my watch list on ebay and decided to buy a bottle of Microsol and a set of decals for what i had in mind for the Phantom. Some beautiful teeth coming my way...

[NARSES2]

Sounds interesting 

[TheChronicOne]

Yeah!! Toothy grins are nice!!! 


Man, I bought me some 'at Microset and Microsol. Brilliant!! I needed that stuff long ago. Good stuff. I used it the other day to get a long, straight transfer conform around a substantial knob sticking out the side of the model and it cinched it right up. 


EDIT: That said...... it had a bad reaction with my gloss glear?? The places where I put Microset turned YELLOW!     I'll have pictures of that later, of course. I'm not going to fix it, we'll just have yellow.. uhhh... "weathering" on it. Did I not let that stuff dry up long enough or what? It was definitely dry, but should I have waited a few days or something?

[DogfighterZen]

Yeah!! Toothy grins are nice!!! 


Man, I bought me some 'at Microset and Microsol. Brilliant!! I needed that stuff long ago. Good stuff. I used it the other day to get a long, straight transfer conform around a substantial knob sticking out the side of the model and it cinched it right up. 


EDIT: That said...... it had a bad reaction with my gloss glear?? The places where I put Microset turned YELLOW!     I'll have pictures of that later, of course. I'm not going to fix it, we'll just have yellow.. uhhh... "weathering" on it. Did I not let that stuff dry up long enough or what? It was definitely dry, but should I have waited a few days or something?

Ouch!! I've had problems of the sort when i was using floor varnish as gloss coat but that was only with the Vallejo medium decal solution, it softened the decals, varnish and paint! I've had a few issues with that so i bought Microset and never had problems with that one, although it is weaker than Vallejo's solution, which is why i bought the stronger Microsol.
I've also been using Tamiya's Mark Fit strong solution and i just love it. But i have to admit, i've started using X-22 for gloss coats and it's a great product. Just like the XF-86 Matte clear, the X-22 is very forgiving, levels out on itself pretty good but i know some will shout "Mr. leveling thinner to go with it". The X-22 is a great clear coat and as i'm using mostly Tamiya colors and thinner, no reason why it shouldn't work well.
These are all acrylics, which should work fine with the paints you're using but my advice would be:"Chuck that gloss clear out the window and get some X-22 or TS-13 gloss clear from Tamiya or some Alclad Aqua gloss or other gloss clear from a modelling company, it does make a difference... at least for me, it does... but i use an airbrush, don't know how that would work with spray cans. Get us a pic or two of the yellowed model.


Edit:
I was also reading your C.R.A.P. about the decal directly on white paint, and what i think is, if the paint's smooth enough, you won't need a gloss coat for the decals but remember that the gloss also protects the paint job, i had to gloss coat both the Raptor and the F-16E even before painting was all done cause the metallic mix was too easy to scratch and chip off so, a good coat of X-22 on it and it's ready for war!

[TheChronicOne]

Right on... that's what I had to do with my Yak. I wouldn't normally have glossed it at the point I did but I was getting tired of having to keep cleaning the white parts off. Even a light touch on the red then on the white would put an ever so slight red tint on it and of course dirt and other stuff.. I said, "to hell with it, I need to get this protected."   

I failed to mention earlier that I sprayed the clear way too heavy and that's probably the main problem. I have been fighting this for a long while now... I just need to get used to the idea that I need to mist coat sometimes. I sprayed it so heavy that it was running and I could shake the damn thing and drops would fly off.   



You can see where it ran down the slope toward the back of the wing and dragged out the Microsol. The gloss was puddled up on this wing big time and there's even a ridge of clear going across it. It's extremely thick because so am I.       I may have finally learned my lesson about drenching things in clear instead of layering it.. 



EDIT: Still, this looks pretty nice. None of this paint work problem(s) are apparent unless you actually have it arms length or less. It'll look just fine sitting on the shelf. I damn sure ain't re-doing anything, is my point.