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

[Rick Lowe]

You never stop learning mate.

Absolutely, and you should never, ever be frightened to ask questions no matter how silly  they may seem to you 

Yup, cos some of the rest of us may be thinking of asking the same 'silly' questions... 

[PR19_Kit]

You never stop learning mate.

Absolutely, and you should never, ever be frightened to ask questions no matter how silly  they may seem to you 

Yup, cos some of the rest of us may be thinking of asking the same 'silly' questions... 

And with a bit of luck one of us may know the answers too. 

[TheChronicOne]

You never stop learning mate.

I would have left the tails with dihedral.  Accuracy is over-rated.   

There for awhile I was wishing I had! 

Can't wait to get back to whif-only for awhile. I like doing accurate stuff, too, but some of my personality traits have be driving myself nutty over certain detail aspects. It's odd, because I'll  pass over others but once I make up my mind to do something a certain way, that's it, no turning back! 


Thanks everybody....  

I'll be back to work on kits todays...  going for the final push on this one. I have to paint some red on the underneath (sort of like the black anti slip strips, but connected with the rest of the red... just a couple of sections that "stick out" down on the belly)and less than 60 seconds of paint touch up in the cockpit then I can, I THINK, try to to the transfers again. 

Also back to work on the Bull bomber that has been whipping my butt. 

[TheChronicOne]

SO HELP ME, GOD.


All I was lacking was to throw on a couple strips of tape on the belly of this Tucano so I can paint some red on the underside per the the little "jut out" or whatever of the red from the fuselage onto the wings. 

NATURALLY, I didn't even put any pressure on it, merely grazed it, and one of the tail planes fell off.  WELL, hells bells, man, I have so much CA built up on it now that if I go back AGAIN that the the tail planes will be "floating" about a foot off the fuselage... So.. I just went on ahead and snapped the other one off again, too, and I'm going to file away all this slag and the stuff on the fuselage, AGAIN, and try, AGAIN to glue these things on.


Look at that mess.


GRRRRRRRRRR..

Im going to affix a wire wheel to my DeWalt drill to get all the built up glue off of the fuselage.. (it's that bad.. ). Tired of fussing with this particular pain my donkey. I'm never going to be done with this thing. I've glued and re glued the damn tail planes about 8 times now. Sometimes things just WON'T... GO... 


Time for the heavy artillery.

If this stupid thing keeps on like this I'm going to glue them on backwards and upside down just for the hell of it. 

[TheChronicOne]

Nice.  Screwed up my pretty red down there (other side is better at least! )  and gouged the piss out of the plastic but at least I won't be sanding CA for half an hour.



Now, I'll run through with some sand paper to smooth out all the gouges and repaint everything and try again. The delicate, careful approach isn't working so it's time to force this thing into submission.

Adding a couple more days to this as the exhaust pipe broke off again and I'm at the point now where I need to also file and sand all that down and repaint. And, now, I have so many "patches" that I'll need to re gloss coat the whole thing. 

I will NOT let this little feller get the best of me.......   

[TheChronicOne]

OK, last update for now...  currently repainting things. I sanded down the area where the xhaust pipe goes and put on some red.. also putting white back on the fin area.. it will take a number of coats with sanding with fine sand paper in between but I'm feeling pretty good about this. It's extra work.. it's frustrating.. but it will be a better end result, I just know it!  Sometimes you just have to take it back to bare metal (bare plastic in this case) and start from the base up!

[kerick]

I sympathise with you!
Just don´t let the frustration get the better of you!

[TheChronicOne]

I sympathise with you!
Just don´t let the frustration get the better of you!

Thank you, brotha...   

I'm trying, but I think it's pretty apparent that I'm upset.

I got a few coats of paint on the repairs, at least, and I'm now going to let it set. (Hell, *I* need to set more than the plane does.    )  But anyway, I needed that bit of "progress" at the end so that I didn't put it down feeling utterly defeated........ so, I have that, and feel better about the whole situation. 

One problem I'm having is that too many outside influences are affecting my mood so I'm already behind the game coming into this. If I could just clear up some of the stuff going on outside of modeling I'd be better off. 

And... here's the thing.....  98% of everything going wrong here is my own fault!     Sooo...... the good thing is that I can just keep learning and gathering experience. But, it's easy to tell myself that once I leave it alone yet in the middle of having the tailplane fall off for the 6th time all I can do is see red.   

Thanks again, and kudos to you and all the other great folks here that have been helping me and keeping me sane lately. 



 

[Rick Lowe]

All the best & keep smiling... you've come too far to let it get the better of you now. 

[NARSES2]

I find that once you break/knock a part off once it will continue to break. Especially true where you've used superglue 

[TheChronicOne]

All the best & keep smiling... you've come too far to let it get the better of you now. 

Thanks, Rick! Back at it this morning. I've cleared my schedule the entire day. It has rained outside and cold front moved through, etc...   so... I'm just going to watch movies and work on this model kit stuff today. I've already woken up and started painting.   I feel pretty good about getting this done today!

I find that once you break/knock a part off once it will continue to break. Especially true where you've used superglue 

So true. What it is about that?! Has to be a Murphy's law.  I'm hoping by going all the way back down to the plastic this time around that I'll be back in business.


I'm going to make a bold statement and say here that I will be done with this, completely, by the close of the day.   (what am I getting myself into..   lol  )   

[TheChronicOne]

No pictures for now but I'm proceeding on ahead and so far so good with the repair work! I did manage to screw up the placement of the tape when I put it down to protect some of the finish when I went nuclear on the fin area with the wire wheel.  The awesome news here is that the finish is coming along and will look good... should be nice and smooth. Not perfect, but certainly not bad.

Now, I need to get in there and clean up where I had the tape..  the paint build up at the edge and there's a raised line of paint there so I'm going to open up and use my sanding sticks that I bought like 4 months ago.  Damn things are expensive.. but I got them at 40% off so weren't bad about about $14.. but anyway..... there are 5 sticks (or 4...) with 10 extra belts for each so it's great having these and I'll need them to sand down these lines without butchering the rest of the finish.

I have to glue on the tail planes again, of course, but I'm thinking that should go much better and more swiftly this time since I'm working with nice clean, smooth surfaces again.

I plan on 2 hours tops fixing this paint up then it's in for a gloss coat. I can let that sit for an hour then start in decaling the plane. Not sure if you're supposed to put them on so soon after but I did it before and it seems to have not hurt anything so....  boy am I glad my gloss coat dries to touch quickly!  After just an hour I can pick it up and handle it with no worries. 

Around 5 or so I'll crack open a beer and start transfers then by 7 I should have started on gluing all the last little widgets and stuff on.

At least, this is the plan!   

[TheChronicOne]

Nailed a deadline!  Sure enough, I'm done with all painting and glued on the last tail plane right at 1:59.    So... I'm right on schedule! 5 minutes from now I'll hang this up and apply the gloss coat then let it sit for about 2 hours while I work on the Bull Bomber.

All the repairs went exceedingly well..  Current state:

[TheChronicOne]

In typical fashion for how this has been going lately, I get to decalling this bird only to have shattering transfers.


Go figure...

At this 11th hour I'm not trying to dig out all the stuff in my spares and try to find replacement. I'd only be able to find the roundels anyway and the fin flash andstencils(with the exception of maybe the yellow "rescue" arrows) would not be available. So. I'm just going to have to rebuild a jigsaw puzzle with each of these as I go. The tri-colored stuff with white is printed in layers so I'm hoping that only the roundels and fin flash will be like this and that the rest of the stuff printed just by itself will go on better. I imagine those roundels and fin flash, being printed how they are, are ever so slightly thicker and thus more brittle from sitting around in less than ideal atmosphere for decades. We'll see!

I said I was going to wrap this up today but this is slowing me down...  I'm going to keep chugging though.   

EDIT:  Seems like this is going the other way... the "thinner" transfers with less printing are even worse...   


Calling it quits now until I can come up with a solution for this. The rest of the transfers are all so small... I'm thinking of spraying gloss on them all but I've already cut them down into pairs so I'd have to attach weight to them all to keep them from flying off when I spray. That, and I'd have to trim them down really tight, right?  Not looking forward to that... I can trim them easily but then having such small pieces to try to handle...  it's not going to be easy. 

This said, I have half a mind to try another transfer. The ones I just now tried that shattered into dozens of pieces are the simple black letters and numbers of the aircraft identifier. Perhaps the colored stencils will work?  I doubt it.... I want to try one but if it destroys itself I can't replace it..

[DogfighterZen]

That sucks, specially when it's the only set that you have of what you need... Hope you get around it, that little bird is looking great!