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

[kerick]

I'm so sorry!

[zenrat]

This puts into perspective some crap going on at work and has made me realise it's irrelevant.

Who's to know if you conduct your own private burial and goodbye under cover of darkness?
When the council banned us from scattering the ashes of Mrs z's Aunties with her mum and dad we just went into the cemetery (conveniently at the end of the road) and did it late at night anyway.

[TheChronicOne]

The Dog! The only true and honest relationship we will experience!

It is so sad to lose such a faithful friend after so many years.
She was such a beautiful looking girl.
Lost my german shepherd girl this time last year, although much quicker.
She was 14, had slowed down, but still the boss of the house. She passed away in her sleep.
Still miss my Bonnie lass!
The year before, Finn, my 12 year old Dobbie/shepherd X, went of his food and water overnight. Rushed him to the vet first thing, turned out he was in the late stages of renal failure. No indication that anything was wrong before that, and I would get all my lot regularly checked out. Had to let him go. I think it is the last act of kindness you can do for a best friend!
(The reason why I have no money, and my vet has a nice house! We are a house of Four dogs, and nine cats! )

My condolences.

Thanks bud. 9 cats? hehehe.  Bet nary a mouse is around.. 


Renal failure.. I think that's what got Mimi. I didn't really think much of it at first. She's old as the hills so I just attributed to her being old but I looked it up and she had some of the symptoms of having kidney problems and all that. Drinking lots of water, can't hold her bladder real well and things of that nature.

Thanks again.. it's a lot rougher than I let on. This little girl got me through the violent loss of my only brother and she had a special place in my heart for that and of course she was my best friend and she's been with me for 16 years. I've had relationships with people shorter than that I there are some people I'm sure I knew, was sort of friends with, then parted ways with (like work acquaintences) people now that I can't even remember but Mimi goes all the way back to the early 2000's here... 

[TheChronicOne]

I'm so sorry!

Thanks, bud! She was my best friend. At least she's not suffering any more. She was in good spirits right up to the end but you could tell the last couple of days were rough. I'm glad it wasn't some prolonged ordeal, however.

[TheChronicOne]

This puts into perspective some crap going on at work and has made me realise it's irrelevant.

Who's to know if you conduct your own private burial and goodbye under cover of darkness?
When the council banned us from scattering the ashes of Mrs z's Aunties with her mum and dad we just went into the cemetery (conveniently at the end of the road) and did it late at night anyway.

I was contemplating just that but it had been raining some 14-16 hours. Even with my bad back I was going to consider it. I'm no stranger to digging holes professionally so I know how to do it, make it deep, and not just outright kill myself but in a yard with standing water and mudholes everywhere. Not going to happen. That was one reason why I was hoping she'd make it to today then take her to the vet. Rains gone now but it's too late to do anything. However, the silver lining is this: for $10 more than putting her to sleep would have cost I can have her cremated which is what I always planned to do anyway. So that's what I did. I'll go snag the ashes today. But.... the only other option, BY LAW, is that she goes to the dump with all the other animals put down that day and they uncerimoniously toss them out on the ground for all the heavy machinery to pile up and roll over.      Regardless of anything else I was determined to NOT have THAT happen.

[TheChronicOne]

Finally a day where I don't have to mow, and it's not raining. It's been months and months and months since I've had this happen. Every day I'm not out mowing it's because of some reason... something goes wrong or what have you. Rain... something breaks.... whatever. So now finally I'm having a day where nothing is broken and it's not raining. In fact, it'll be sunny and 75. Picture perfect day. This time, though, I have this black cloud following me around because of obvious reasons. But, the best thing is for me to get back into the swing of things and keep trucking. So...  I'd like to try to wrap some things up today:

Let's get this fire truck finished. I'm going to sand it down one more time and spray it one more time and whatever result I get, I'm rolling with it. I'm not exactly sure why the repeated sanding and painting isn't clearing up the finish but I guess not all mysteries are meant to be solved!

Time to get the landing gear done on the ATR-72. It'll suck big time if I get it all decalled and ready to roll and think I'm about to take pictures and show everyone my plane then be like, "OH, YEAH, I still have to finish these!!!"     So I'll spend and hour getting that crap together and primed then I'll paint them and set them aside.

737 time....  uhhhh....  I need to finish working on the nose/cockpit area then I'll prime it to see what is next. I can also prime the wings and start painting them I guess..  not sure how they're supposed to be painted with regards to wing spars/corogaurd or whatever the hell it is. Slats, de-icing... not even sure what all is on the leading edges on a 200 so I guess I'll be sitting down to do some research.

F-52 is very close to being closed up finally. I've painted most of the interior parts, I think. I just need to glue in the hud, mix up some two part epoxy and put weight into the nose cone, then glue on the canopy as well. I guess I'll do that first so it can gas out while the fuse halves are still apart. I can flip it upside down and what fumes there are can lift up and out of there away from the glass.

Pretty good agenda there! If anything else gets done, it'll be a bonus! 

I have ACTUAL work to do today, though. A new part to me trash contract has fallen into my lap and they want me to pull weeds in the flower beds. Normally I'd say NO WAY but there's really not that many so I'm happy to do it for them this one time. I can spend 2-3 hours and it'll be a good chunk of change for me.  Then there's errands. I tried to count up earlier and stopped at 4 but other than going to work I have to stop at stores, to get gas, to pick up Mimi's ashes and... like... go pick up prescriptions and stuff and might stop at the bank, etc. SHEESH!!!!!! I NEED A VACATION. 

TTL.

[TheChronicOne]

Back to work!! After lunch I was feeling lousy. Tired and not sleeping well on top of everything else so it took awhile to get going, but now that I am things are falling in line and I'm getting some stuff done. 

Check it: so now the instrument panel has been glued in, the HUD glued on (tiny %^^^*^*$^&*^  I dropped it once and amazingly I found it again...  tiny clear part smaller than a pin head on the floor!!!! ), cockpit detail painting is finished, canopy glued on (guess I'm commited to masking now for sure, no better way to make up one's mind than to be forced into having no other option  ). Did some dry fitting of the cockpit tub and the VTOL fans (I guess that's what that malarky is....   , I'll post pics of it later) and that stuff all fits in nice so after the glue on the canopy dries more I'll glue it in all the way. Also, I mixed up some epoxy and put some weight into the nose cone halves. I hope it's enough. I can't put any more in there without risking it not being able to close up. There is NO place, what so ever, to put any more into the front section of this thing. PERIOD. Might be able to put some under those fans if need be but they're getting close to the main gear so the effect will be less..


Completely arbitrary colors and stuff. This entire aircraft is fictional so I don't even see the point in adhering to what it is in Macross even..     ::SHRUG::


Two birds with one stone on the next picture.  Pic of a new kit in my stash but more over, the plane there... that little stubby thing is the fuselage half (upper). This thing is so weird to me...   It seems like the back half is missing but it's not, it's just made up of more parts and stuff. Weird plane, man. Confuses me, but, it's getting there!

[TheChronicOne]

Not moving real fast at all so all that junk I was talking about earlier is out the window. I've decided to spend all my time on the F-52.

It's been very therapeutic! It took a good long while to get started but once I was I found myself relaxing and finding a calmer state. Turns out, I was having fun once again, and making head way.

So, all the poo-poo stuff that goes in the inside is crammed in there and I put the fuselage havles together. Glued the nose halves together as well:


See the fan thing back there? VTOL! Pretty neat! the kit gives you the option to pose the door thing for it open. I don't want to do that, however, so have proceeded to cut the hinge thing off and started dry fitting it.



For a kit that has so far had excellent fitment, this piece is actually rather lousy. I spent a fair amount of time working on it. The fit of front is reall good, now, but the rear has gaps. All I can do is fill it in later.

Here's a close up of that area. Since it will be permanently sealed, I figure it's only right to at least take a picture of the stuff inside since they went to the trouble to make it and all...



I think I may have forgot to mention but I glued the nose on as well. So here we have what is going on now. That fan bay door isn't glued on yet (I'll do that when I'm a little more uhhh.."well rested"    ) but gives us an idea of what it will be next time I start on it. I've done some other small bits of work as well like painting the interior pieces in the intakes, the fan blades and glued those onto the intake piece they go with and a couple other little things.

But, check this out.. this is what it looks like right now:



Pretty cool, yeah? But I find myself on the ground: Squint at it and it looks like it could use three wheels, a fin, and a jet engine to become a dry lake bed land speed jet-car racer... . . . .    

[PR19_Kit]

It looks very much like Craig Breedlove's LSR car for sure, except that it's PINK. 

[NARSES2]

So does it come with figures of Lady Penelope and Parker ? 

[TheChronicOne]

I have/had one of these Hothweels cars and there's a resemblance:

So does it come with figures of Lady Penelope and Parker ?

Ha!!   Damn near! It comes with with a lady pilot figure, molded in the pinkle (pink and purple) color and she even has nice boobs and everything. Definitely can tell it's a lady pilot.     

[TheChronicOne]

3:30 AM!!! Working on model stuff!    I'm cleaning up and organizing my work space here and gathering up the boxes containing my current builds and getting them positioned. Not sure what I'm actually going to work on today, however. I have to go pull weeds again and the other day that stuff whooped my butt so I might be tired and achy later. 


Here's the deal, though... I sort of have a plan. Before I fell asleep last night (had a damn good rest, too, for the first time in about a week.     )  I figured I should jump in immediately and do the things I'm not really looking forward to:

      -Building the gear for the ATR-72
      -Masking the canopy of the F-52.

So, when I get home, I'll TRY to do these first thing if I'm still feeling motivated enough.


Meanwhile, I stumbled across a ton of lil emoji deals here!!!  Completely by accident.  All you gotta do is right click in a text field and an option box opens and the first one is "emoji" and it has tons of 'em!!!!  They work funny though, some of them don't seem to show up in preview mode.

😎✨🚁🛩✈🔥🏎😘😒👀🐱‍🚀🐱‍👓

[TheChronicOne]

Each time I do one of these (masking canopy), it gets easier, quicker, and better, but I'm still not entirely sure I like masking canopies. However, I do like it better than the alernative, however!! So long as it doesn't have a ton of lattice work canopy framing, it is the better option. Something like a B-29 nose though I'm still going to free hand. Painted tape strips is also nice as well and looked pretty damn good when I used that method on my Yak-53. BUT, I have problems holding and placing the tiny strips. The important thing is that I'm trying various methods. I'll NEVER improve I don't at least try new things. So anyhow... I'm liking masking more and more but but it's still not quite my favorite thing so I'll continue to use all three methods, considering what type of situation I'm in. Point being, though, is that I'm working on the F-52 canopy masking per my early morning agenda and I'm more than half way done, with the most complicated section already finished. 

Going to take a break from it for awhile though and take a look at these ATR-72 landing gear. I at least would like to get them started. I figure if I can at least get started on these two things then if I don't want to finish them right away, that's alright. I just need to do SOMETHING instead of keep putting it off.


Woops! I was going to take some pictures real quick but I left the thing in the truck. 

I also put some glazing putty stuff on the 737 and it'll be ready soon to be sanded again and sprayed with primer.


I'm not going to plan for much more right now. I might get back to it later this evening but after I mess with these landing gear for awhile and finish masking this canopy, I'm going to spend a wee bit of time brainstorming on this Racing group build jive and see if I can come up with a project to start. 🏎🏎🏁🏁

[TheChronicOne]

I am happy to report complete success in adhering to the plan of action for today. I've even managed to do more stuff than I planned so I am a little bit "ahead" now. So, I did indeed mask the canopy for the F-52. Lots of weird angles, curves, and tight spaces but since there was only one bit of frame that went across the glass, it was still relatively simple. It looks good!

Also, I figured out how to build the gear (there are NO instructions with this kit) for the ATR 72. first I had to clean them up because of a ton of flash, ejector pins, etc but I got it all done and now I have a set of main gear and the nose gear both ready for primer and paint. I also clipped out and cleaned up a couple of the gear doors and trimmed up the remaining sprue and pieces and it all now fits nicely into a measuring scoop. Good deal! Got done what I planned on and then some! 

Lastly, the rest of the "bonus" work: Some stuff on the 737. I put glazing putty on the areas where the windows used to be, some of where the seams used to be, and across the windscreen. I won't even mess with it now but when I pick it back up in a couple days it'll be ready for sanding then later that day, it will be primed. I'll prime the wings and stabs at the same time then I'll get to painting those right away. The fuselage may need more PSR however. We'll see.

[NARSES2]

I find the masking of canopies possibly the hardest part of the entire exercise. My eyesight (either prior to or since my "problem") doesn't help, but even when it was reasonable many years ago it was still a problem for me.

If Eduard don't do a masking set, or I'm impatient, I'll use painted tape strips. I bought a load of masking tape rolls at last years SMW which were 0.5, 0.75 and 1.00mm thickness and these are ideal.

Having said that I have masked my current Hs 132 in the traditional way, place tape and cut with new blade, but only because it has very limited and clear frames and because I thought being limited run the canopy would need fairing in. It didn't, fits like a hand made glove  The results of my masking will be clear, or otherwise, once she's finished.