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

[DogfighterZen]

Very nice work on those decals, Brad! She's looking very good indeed!

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks!! This lil thing is neato.  I've slapped some more decals on it so I'm nearly done. I have some more to go on the under side and some that may or may not go on there (because reference photos don't have them).

Speaking of... I finally found MY airplane.... .      turns out the last two letters of the reg are reversed on the decal sheet!!!!!!




Know what that means, right?!!? This thing is now officially a very subtle whif!!!!! 


EDIT: I've found a few other mistakes on the decal sheet as well, but, I still love 'em. The stuff as a whole looks fabulous!

[PR19_Kit]

N4AE makes some sense as the AE fits with 'American Eagle', the sub-line that flew the ATRs.

I've seen similar screw ups on decals before, sometimes where the port lettering is different to the starboard and the decal maker has assumed it's the same.

[TheChronicOne]

Yeah, that makes all the sense. Figures! Next time I'll be sure to check up on this stuff BEFORE I put the transfers on. I could try to fix them but it would be very easy to mess up and I'm not really that bothered by it so I'm just going to keep chugging. 

[TheChronicOne]

Going to try to get some more decals on the ATR-72 and some more sanding on the F-52. Paint some on the glider. I think I need to do something to the nose gear on the ATR as well ... my reference photos show all 3 gear doors open when on the ground but the kit as the two side by sides closed for some reason... nothing else came closed. I assumed it was one of them type of set-ups where the doors only briefly open when the gear retract or drop. I'll have to look more into that. I still need to paint the props, too, but that's about it on this one. If I were to hunker down and get after it I could finish it off within a few hours. I'm not going to rush it, though, and I still need to do my clear test on the decals.

May happen later, however, as I've errands to do. Some of them I've been needing to do for a while. I still have one last lawn to mow but I've been waiting to get as close to Winter as possible. I have to go look at a small building someone wants tore down so I can put in a bid. Only reason I'm considering it is that my back has gotten a LOT better recently. There are days now that my sciatica pain goes all the way down to 2-3 on the paint scale and all the very weird nerve pain and weird feelings in my leg have gone away. So strange.. it would go from feeling like it was burning, to feeling like liquid was spilling down my leg. In fact, when it first start happening, I kept thinking my weedeat had sprung a leak and fuel was pouring on me and running down my leg. Nope!! Just mashed nerves...      But anyway!

Ciggies stuff is going well still. I've leveled off to about where I thought I would be at this time. My average has gone up from the 3 a day it was at for about a week and a half to about 4 or 5. I still manage long periods without smoking any at all and I've still not succumbed to having ciggies with my morning coffee. Here pretty soon after I get accustomed to this "level" I'll start the next phase. One of the nicest things so far about this is not having to make the 2-3 stops a week at the gas station. 

Will most likely be playing more Red Dead today. Starting to really get into it now! What fun!  But... still... I won't until I get some work done on me builds.     

Other stupid things to do today too if I can like go "do bloodwork" at the hospital but If I pull up in there and can't park within half a mile (meaning it's busy as hell) I might just leave.      They should just go on ahead and have that portion of the process operating 7 days a week. I mean... the wait is never really THAT bad but there's really no time, ever, that it's NOT busy. 

[TheChronicOne]

Well gall dang....        Basically nothing went the way I planned it. The tear-up bid thing was something I can't handle. Well, I can handle it, for the right price. I told him I could do it if he wants to pay my un-godly asking price but I said, "you probably wouldn't want to pay that!!"  The lawn I went to check on is borderline so I don't feel comfortable cutting it unless I ask permission first (working on that). Somehow, even though I mentioned wishing the place were open on weekends, I forgot that today is SUNDAY so I can't go do bloodwork. The realization struck when I was out picking up garbage.      Found a dollar bill on the ground, though. This year, I've found $35-40 in total. Nothing like last year when I found over $200 just laying around on the ground!

So, now I'm back home and I came up with some new chores for myself to do. I can't just NOT get any work done and start playing with plastic planes and video games. So... I'm going to clean out/up my work truck. The bed is a mess...   I try my best but not every piece of trash I pick up winds up in a bag and of course there are 2.3 billion cans in there so I'll take the cans and put 'em in my rainy day stash and get the rest of it thrown away and rake out the bed and make it nice. I'll clean out the inside, too, as it's getting sort of bad.

After that, I guess I can goof off. 

[TheChronicOne]

Lots of good stuff going on. Props are painted and cleared on the ATR-72. Found some gear doors I forgot about. Painted those, now I just need to clear them. Hey, I'll do that right now.......... *spray spray spray* .......        Sprayed the wing on my little test bed airplane too so I can put a chunk of Nazca decal on it and see how it reacts when I spray clear coat on it.

Messed up earlier and cut the gear doors in half on the 737 thinking they were spares. Turned out I got them mixed in with the wrong stuff. I'll have to glue those back together later if I don't find another spare set.    Also working again trying to fix the cockpit windscreen area. I messed it up something awful! It's better than it was for sure but I need to prime it again so I can see better. Since I'm doing that, I'm also sanding more on the fuselage so that it will be nice. I'll prime the whole thing and let it sit for awhile.

Been painting on the glider. Also masked some more stuff for stripes.



Next up, however, is a change in how I operate. It has become a huge pain to find things I've done on past builds because...... they're all in here in the midst of hundreds of pages of STUFF! So, I'm going to get with the program and do it how everyone else does. In other words, from now on, my builds will each have their own seperate thread. I keep wanting to go back and look at something I did in the past and it's just too damn hard to do that with so many pages of material to sift through.

I suppose I can keep my real world builds in here or something. This is going to take some getting used to but uhhhh... I gotta do SOMETHING because this problem will only get worse. 

[TheChronicOne]

Time for the final phase of work on the ATR-72!  I wasn't really being serious those months ago when I said I'd like to be done by my birthday which is today. However, with no planning at all on my part, it looks like I'm going to nail the deadline if nothing weird happens. I just have a few more transfers that I may or may not apply (a LOT of those on the sheet aren't visible on the American Eagle planes) then I clear it and glue on the fiddly bits.  I have a lot to do today as far as errands and work and stuff but I should still have a good chunk of time to work on this.

I'd also like to do a couple other things while I work on the ATR which is to put some more coats of primer on the 737 (with a little sanding here and there I suspect). I still need to look at the nose/windscreen area I've been trying to fix but I still would like to build up some coats of primer on the fuselage even if I have still have problems up front. The second is to continue painting my glider. I've finally settled on a way to fix the terrible canopy issue and have gone ahead with painting and to that end have the first coat of nautical blue on there. I've also had to do some rather tedious and definitely ridiculous fitment work on the horizontal stab. The joining pins were garbage and the fitment was garbage as well but I've corrected it all to the point where the glue and strene weld action should adequately fill the gap and everything should be fine. If not, I'll have to put a bit of putty up in there. I'll try to squeeze in some work on the F-52 if I can.

[NARSES2]

Happy Birthday mate 

[Rheged]

Happy Birthday, Brad!

[Old Wombat]

Happy Birthday, mate!

[TheChronicOne]

 


That's too corny!! 


Thanks y'all!!!!   Best news is I sucked it up and dragged my arse to the blood lab and my dr's appointment today and it was glorious.  I showed up at the outpatient center about 7:10 AM (but they open at 6!!!! ) and holy crap... I was in and out in less than 10 minutes. I've never been able to get this done in less than 45 minutes. Then...  it's only 7:30 so I drive around for a minute then park at my doctor's office and walk in at 8 when they open. My appointment isn't til 11 but I'm impatient and wanted to get it out the way. Lucky me! they had 8:15 free so I sit down and..... less than 3 minutes later they call me back!!!  Holy crap!! Now, instead of waiting 15-20 minutes for the Doctor to arrive.. he shows up in under 5 minutes HOLY ^#%*^*~?!     So everything is good. BP is slightly up but I ate like a slob yesterday (really salty stuff, sue me... )  but it's close enough to ideal that we don't need to alter my meds or anything. Whew!! I hate starting new medicine. So, I leave... whole doctor office visit was less than 15 minutes. You normally can't even walk in an find a damn seat that fast.  SO... next I drive home to start cleaning my truck and 10 minutes later the phone rings. It's my Doctor!! I'm like, "Uhoh."  But, turns out.....  the magic blood wizard has already done my blood work and it turns out everything is perfect aside from my potassium which is low thanks to my BP meds. So....  I'm now on a potassium supplement. But everything else is good, heart, lungs, kidneys, blood sugar and cholesterol, etc etc is all in great shape. This is the most amazing medical experience I've ever had. 

Cleaning the truck out took like 2.5 hours however.... but, man it was important to do. I'm "behind" now but whatever. I have job coming up tearing down a shed for a cool $250 so I wanted it ready to roll. 

BUT, now I get to "play" the rest of the day which is working on models until I get tired of that then maybe some video games and lots of beer. So, after lunch (which is glorious expensive crab cakes, salmon fillet and a filet of parmesan tilapia (yeah yeah, this is Oklahoma, it doesn't get much further from the coast than here so I'm stuck with this stuff) I'll start decalling the ATR-72 again and get it cleared so it can sit an hour or so then glue on the fiddly bits and it'll be done.


I'm kind of wondering if I should go by some lotto after the whole doctor/hospital experience.

[DogfighterZen]

Happy birthday, old geezer!! Sounds like a you're having a good one, now go buy that lotto ticket! 

[TheChronicOne]

Pass the geritol!!   Thanks!!


Woops, I done forgot. Work boots done hit the floor. I'll have to grab one the next time. 

My luck isn't holding anyway. I've done went and over sprayed my ATR like I do 50% of the time when I clear coat. I tried not to get carried away but it was sort of windy so I was close to the subject and bam!!!  So now I got to UV bleach the thing but the sun isn't out so she's on hold until it comes back around.  I had a run on it, too, but once it all dries up it may flatten out enough that it's not noticeable. I'll check it tomorrow and see, if not I may sand it down if it's too egregious. None of these problems are insurmountable but it does mean I won't be able to finish it off today.

That's fine because now I'm painting and working on other things and it's about time to swill some beer like a slob.    The glider is starting to come around and I've fixed the tail problem tiny bit of glue squeezed out but it's not noticeable unless you're really digging around for it so I'm going to just leave it because it doesn't bother me any.  Pictures later I hope but those will be in the thread for it.

[zenrat]

Hippy barfday Brad C.
May you have many more.