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

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks; life has a habit of getting in the way and suddenly it's weeks and months later...

nice to be back. 

I understand! I know you've been busy and have had to deal with a lot. Not sure if things could get any more complicated outside of aliens invading the planet or something!

[Rick Lowe]

Thanks; life has a habit of getting in the way and suddenly it's weeks and months later...

nice to be back. 

I understand! I know you've been busy and have had to deal with a lot. Not sure if things could get any more complicated outside of aliens invading the planet or something!

You mean they haven't and all this ... stuff... is just the result of Human action and interaction? 

Can't be, we need someone else to blame!

[TheChronicOne]

 



You know.... one of the dreams I have that recurs over the years is the alien invasion dream....


Anyway.....   uhhhhh......  I have nothing to report, really. I went and looked and saw that the next GB is Gunships....  I've already made my Gunship and I don't see how I could top it or properly enjoy making another lesser one. I have an idea but I just don't know....  might sit this one out. I don't want to let that stop me, however... I think I'll dig out that little Japanese plane and see if the Aloha decals will fit on it. 

[TheChronicOne]

I am almost ready to start my Aloha plane! I was wrong about the title, however. Turns out it will be the "Irving."  I have two of these little kits and I love them because they come with a free lil 1/144 scale cargo truck! 



Crazy thing is, when I got the kits, they came with a bundle of 1/72 stuff and I didn't really care about them at all - they were just extras in a scale I don't do military in. Since I started doing civvie 1/144 stuff though, including put airliner liveries on military planes, I gained a new appreciation so gave them a second look....

Anyway.... even for 1/144 they are small for trying to put airliner things on (which I plan to do) so it's a good thing that I have smaller scale 1/200 transfers for it. They are very old and these always like to fall apart but I will put decal film on them and try anyway.



I spent a good portion of today cleaning house and a large part of that was getting the remnants of the last project all squared away and the area all cleaned up and organized. I am now ready for this new project! As for the kit itself:




I hope it works..... before I get started I will make sure the transfers will actually fit. Even being smaller scale they still might not fit on the limited real estate the Irving provides. I have tricks up my sleeve, however....   it may not be possible to run the cheatline and the "Aloha" banner both on the fuselage but I might be able to split the cheatline with the "Aloha" in the middle or even do away with most of the cheatline. We'll see.

[NARSES2]

Intriguing, looking forward to what comes out of this  I've flown Aloha a few times, but never a Gekko 

[TheChronicOne]

Intriguing, looking forward to what comes out of this  I've flown Aloha a few times, but never a Gekko 

Thanks, Chris!  You showed up right on time, Brotha, because I just sat down to make it official.    I started on it in earnest so since it's actually going to happen I'm on my way to open a thread for it. So far I've had a lot of fun getting it started... it's a kit with flaws but something about working in this tiny scale is really appealing to me (perhaps because of the simplicity!). One thing of note both you and I are always interested in is the canopy framing/glazing. On this kit, the lines are well defined (probably overscale) and will make painting them with a tiny brush easier....  still.... the thing is soooooo tiny... whatever my finest, smallest paint brush is will be the one I use here..     I'm going to have some new pictures soon and will post them in the new thread.

[NARSES2]

I was a little surprised by the fact it was 1/144 to be honest. I've not seen many, if any, Hasegawa 1/44 kits this side of the pond. I suppose it could of been a re-boxed Otaki or similar ?

[TheChronicOne]

Could be,...... the moulds weren't exactly fresh (having plenty of flash) which could mean it wasn't an original Hase tool.    Let's go see what Scalemates says!          ....... 



........

Huh....  Says it's an "IMAI" kit, first made in 1973. 

[scooter]

Could be,...... the moulds weren't exactly fresh (having plenty of flash) which could mean it wasn't an original Hase tool.    Let's go see what Scalemates says!          ....... 



........

Huh....  Says it's an "IMAI" kit, first made in 1973. 

In a year and a half, it'll be eligible for full AARP membership

[TheChronicOne]

Oh no!! Next, it'll be cutting in line at the buffet! 

[NARSES2]

 

[TheChronicOne]

I'm currently watching a conversation on a model forum on Facebook. A feller put a clear coat on a project and had some crazing. It's pretty bad but not nearly covering the entire build and could easily be fixed by just sanding it smooth and re-applying paint in that area. I've done this myself a few times and never had an issue with it and was clearly a better option that stripping the entire thing and completely redoing the whole model. Is "stripping it and starting over" something builds sometimes do just for fun or something? I have trouble wrapping my mind around undertaking what could be a days or weeks long process to fix a problem that could be solved just as easily in an afternoon. Hell, I've had an entire fuselage craze like mad on me and I still didn't strip the entire thing... I just sanded it smooth and painted it again and it worked out great....     People keep saying, "You'll have to strip it and start over" and I just want to holler at them, "WHY?!" 

 

But anyway.....  I've been working on my Aloha airlines Irving and it's going quite well so I'm already starting to wonder about future projects. I have ideas and plans of course.... I need to finish my Tristar. I wanted to start a 727. I have one of a 3 vehicle set of 1/72 airport trucks I need to finish....  I have two or three repair jobs I need to do, including my melted Lysander. And... finally.... I might come up with something for the new GB but I'm not really enthusiastic about the subject matter to be honest. I already did my grand vision of a gunship with my Avalanche blasting plane so I'm not very motivated about it. However..... inspiration often strikes when you're not look for it so I'm hoping that happens. It did for the last one! I had pretty much given up on the recce thing then the inspiration for the Wraith hit and suddenly I was looking forward to joining in. We'll see! 

[Old Wombat]

Much of that attitude, to my mind, comes from the car modelling scene, where a perfect finish is the desired result for that "showroom shine".

It's just carried over into other areas of the hobby; sometimes rightfully, mostly not so much.

[TheChronicOne]

I can totally understand and "dig"(I like things to be perfect, too! )  the thought process behind it when warranted but so often I've seen people post up pictures of something where..... like....... 10% of a finish would be ruined and sometimes in areas that are separate from other areas and they elect to redo the whole thing or trash it. In an instance of it being a single engine or wing or something (poor examples probably but it gets my point across I hope).... or, say, just the bottom half of a saucer.....  in those cases, seeing as how the areas are isolated from the rest of the model, it would be "easy" to just redo that one area instead of the entire build. I would never presume to think that my method would be better for achieving the best end result but I swear I can get just as good or only marginally worse result with a quick "patch job" over stripping and redoing the entire thing. I just find it bizarre. This is in the same realm as "binning," which I've blabbed about in the past. Same type of thing... like... a little crack in the plastic forms or something... something that I could and have fixed before... and people just throw the entire thing away to start over or move on to a new project. I can get the mindset behind moving on to a new project as a reasoning but if you're going to just start the same exact project over again... I'd rather spend, as an example again, an afternoon repairing something than spending the next 3 weeks catching back up to where I would have been anyway! To each their own, however, and if everyone did things the same way I do, this would be one hell of a boring planet.

[kerick]

It wasn't Aloha Airlines but at one time there was a tourist airline taking people sightseeing in Beech 18s. Nice for an afternoon out to see the cliffs around Maui and Volcanoes on the Big Island. Kauai is beautiful too.
Looks like they don't do it anymore, almost all helicopters now. Bummer!