Chronic's Research and Aeronautics Project (C.R.A.P.)

[TheChronicOne]

Pure luck had the stuff I was cutting up to fill in spaces net some partial US Postal service stuff  :



Those last two pieces of advertising malarkey bring those sections to the proper height to match up with the wings and fuselage.  I also put a couple pieces of sprue in the "holes."  I think I'll try to cut up some more sprue to put some styrene into the remaining empty spaces then I'll take my chances wit' the putty.

Friggin' unbelievable but that last upper layer of "malarkey" is dead level with the rest:



Not to say there isn't a ton of PSR on the way... 

[TheChronicOne]

Back to work!! Spent the day working outside and doing U.S. Thanksgiving.

Was so nice outside I couldn't just let it slip away. It was a shame nothing needed spraying because the wind was relatively calm for a change. We have about 10 days a year like this...   

Anyway... 'bout to roll one up, get something decent on the TV, and settle in to work on this Morningstar.

Not sure how much I'll get done because right now I'm going to try to do a tiny bit of sanding on the rear 3/4 of the wing roots as they are fine and dandy and will need no filler, but will be using putty on the forward parts and will need to let it dry. For that rear section I just need to feather the edges of the glue. While I'm doing this I want to "rough-up" the smooth glossy surfaces of my patch pieces so that the putty will have something to grab to. I hope these patches are amenable to sanding... I'm sure with the right amount of sheer force I can sand damn near anything but not knowing the exact composition of the material It may not respond all too well. We'll see...

After this is taken care of I retain the option to get back to work on the Mitsubishi. 

[DogfighterZen]

Nothing like a night chillin' out and modelling after a nice day out...

[TheChronicOne]

You said it, man. Been looking forward to this all day, really. I almost convinced myself to stop the "important" work outside about 2:30 to come inside and start on this stuff.     Made it another 3.5 hours though and I'm glad.  Heading into winter, but starting now preparing for Spring. . ..

Look at these totally accurate, in scale, and perfect dials and guages! 




Masked the area to prepare for cosmetic surgery:



First round of putty:



After this dried up a bit I cleaned off some of the excess before it hardened too much then I rand a bead of regular model glue all through and over it to help level things out. I need to leave it be for now so all that stuff can dry adequately.

So... I grabbed the Mitsubishi and here's the current state of that:



Aside from the "windows" which came out intentionally, the rest of it is stuff I stupidly glued in early in the build and broke off.... a bit o' gear and pretty much the entire interior of the cockpit  :



I'm going to re-paint the interior of the cockpit with my wasabi green acrylic then I'll glue the windows back in, the pilots and yokes, then that landing gear.

I painted the exteriors of the gear doors but it and all the rest of the stuff like antennas and pitot tubes or whatever will go on close to dead last.

I guess, if I'm feeling gutty at the end of painting and gluing all this stuff back on, I could try the transfers. One problem, though... the sheet doesn't look very good. The wax paper-ey type stuff that was on top stayed stuck to it and left "residue"on a bunch. It didn't stick to the actual transfers themselves but I don't think this bodes well. I have another kit just it that I could get them from and they look much better... but.... I kind of planned on using them to do the other paint scheme which would be the actual military "Nell."

SO.... if these transfers go tits up........... this just may very well transform from a real world build to a WHIF one.

The janky sheet:






This is tricky.. I still haven't went and got any cotton gloves so I'm trying my dead level best to only pick this thing up by the wing edges so as not to foul the paint finish..


EDIT: You know, I MIGHT have enough transfers between both sheets to make this work and still have plenty to do the military "Nell" version. I need to look into this. (note to self!)  Also, as a side note, I think all these rivets on here are too large but, by golly, I think they look really cool and I'm glad I didn't obliterate too many! Call me weird, but, whatever! 

[zenrat]

If you really desire to do an OOB version and dodgy decals is stopping you then you can have the sheet from my kit if you want.  I won't be using them.

Let me know.

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, Fred!! I'll keep that in mind. I'm hoping that between the two sheets in my posession I'll have enough. I don't see why not. The other sheet is.... subjectively nicer:



Lots of yellowing going on. It would be nice to know the difference in how these kits were stored over the last 50 years. It might give a clue to what causes the yellowing. Then again it might not! 

The yellowing could be fine on the green Nell but I'd rather not use those on NMF. The yellowing bits can be mostly trimmed away from the red striping so that won't matter but I'll try to keep the yellowing stuff for the green plane.

SANDING like mad on the Morningstar:


A good portion of it is in decent shape but I need to get it a little bit better so another layer of regular ol' glue for that then I'll sand it again. I may stop and slather some paint on there afterward to see what areas need more attention.

The Mitsubishi Nipples-GO! is on deck for more finalization. I spaced on the cotton gloves again so I took some micro fiber (or whatever) like ... glasses polishing thingies and wrapped them around the wings so I'll have something to latch my meathooks onto:



I need to put a little more green into the interior and get those windows glued in. I tried the other night but was having difficulties because of trying not to touch the finish.

There's not a whole lot left on this one.

[PR19_Kit]

Put the yellowed decal sheet inside a clear plastic bag and tape it, decal side out, to a south facing window. After a day or so in the sunlight you'll find that the yellow disappears, or is at least minimised.

To borrow a phrase from Fred Zenrat 'Ask me how I know this'. 

[TheChronicOne]

Oooh!  I'll do that. I'm in no big hurry so they can sit for a week for all I care.    I'll get that taken care of now.   

Speaking of being in no hurry.....  gluing these windows in is a bit of a pain!  I have to shove them in there with a stick then take another stick and put glue on the end of it to jam down the fuselage to apply the glue.  Then, to keep from disturbing it, I have to let it stand in the corner but since I didn't get much glue on in the first round (if I tried to put too much, the windows just stick to the... stick and come right back out  ) I'll have to put more. Between both windows this may take a while.

Also, the filler work is taking a while to dry on the Morningstar, so........    I find myself with nothing to work on which leads me back to trying to come up with a plan to make the ol' Spruce Goose Hercules for the Floatin' GB. Without cutting them out, however, I can't be too sure so I think what I'll do is get out some of my note paper and trace the pertinent ones, cut them out, and see if the fall right on the model. 

I have this 1/144 Ruslan, and I THINK I can make some of the transfers from it fit on here (1/200 H4) to make some sort of Aeroflot flying cargo boat.       This would be really cool because the actually building of the kit should go rapidly and should be easy. From the reviews I've read it goes together really well, too, so I think I can squeeze it in without throwing my "schedule" of builds out of whack too awfully bad. To that end, I think I've decided to cancel the F-14A real world build and do something else instead. I don't think I can get it done by Christmas day so I'll put it on the backburner for awhile and will build an Academy 1/480 C-5A Galaxy instead.

[TheChronicOne]

OK, second set of windows barely glued into the Mitsubishi... I'll let that dry up then I have to poke some more glue in there to fully secure them. Right now they are just "tacked" on long enough that they won't lift back out on the end of my pokin' stick. 

Other news:

Woops!! It was Polet, not Aerflot that has the livery I want:


Roast Flight indeed.....


Here's the gargantuan football field sized sheet of 24 billion transfers:



Good news is, they'll work!! Pin striping, stencils, logos, and things of that nature are what comprise this livery so I can easily fit it onto the Hercules kit without having to do crazy amounts of surgery and trimming as I would if I were to use the Volga-Dnepr ones for instance. Those will be used on the actual AN-124 (I will keep and use the BLACK 10 Russian Air Force ones, too!).

Seems like a simple enough build, yeah? Might be a fair bit of masking work for the paint job but that's no biggie, I don't suppose.  I think I'll go ahead and make this one official and make a thread for it in the Floatin' GB forum. 

[63cpe]

What A-5 model did you use for the fuselage of the morningstar?

Cheers,
David

[TheChronicOne]

I used the old Revell box scale 1/82 A-5A kit .





1/48 Skyray wings...  Transfers from a 1/72 TSR2 so in Scale-o-Rama terms it's now 1/72 all together here in Whif-World.

[63cpe]

Ahhhhhh, ok...thanks! Saw the lower back and wondered what it was...

Cheers,
David

[TheChronicOne]

You bet!  Happy to oblige.  You nailed it... good ol' Vigilante. 

I'm pretty much a "1/72 snob" and had plans of getting rid of the kit because it was box scale but it's such a neat kit....  glad I didn't.

[63cpe]

Know what you mean...I build 1/72 only ( the one and only true scale one says..) but got myself a 1/96 Revell Vulcan B1, the early 90-ies box. Very nce kit..
Just salvage and butchered an 1/96 (-ish) F-102.. also very nice kit..

[PR19_Kit]

AFAIK that 1/82 Vigi was the only decent 'low back' A-5A kitted.

A big pity as lovely though the RA-5C is, it's been kitted to death (I've got three different ones!)  and an A-5A in the scale would be great.