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

[TheChronicOne]

Well well well!! I pulled up on the lawns I had scheduled and... uhhhh... well... they COULD be cut, but, I would feel like I was ripping people off because the grass has barely grown any since last time. I knocked on the door and no one was home so I made an executive decision to just leave.   

Came home and mowed the outside of my gigantic yard and decided to call it quits after my sciatica flared up. Man.. I can push a mower almost just fine but the whole "crouched over while twisting back and forth" action of weedeating is probably the worse thing I do, other than dead lifting the mower, for my back. It never fails... just 20 minutes into weedeating and BAM , there it goes. It's cool though because yesterday was the best it's felt in MONTHS and last night was the best night I've had in months and also felt good this morning... so... in the grand scheme, it would seem my situation is improving!       Not going to push my luck, though. Still a lot of work to be done on my yard but I'd rather delay it than risk injury.

With not doing those yards I've saved myself a smidgen of time to work on models... I need to do some laundry and vacuum the floors then I can shower up and get back to this KRAZY KUKULCAN and the trippy paint job. My drawing skills suck, for the most part, so I'm anxious to see how it goes... I need good guidelines to pull this off.

[TheChronicOne]

All done with work! Awesome!! I'd rather goof-off all day and now it's time. 

First order of business is to go ahead and paint the bottom side of this since the rest will be much darker. I'll have to thin this paint and luckily I found a suitably small vessel for this... an old prescription bottle! I can just dump the paint and water in there and shake the piss out of it and we're off to the races.

This painting plan should work out because about the time I should be done with this, it will be time for lunch, so it can dry while I eat these glorious enchiladas and afterward I can start trying to plot out this camo pattern.

[TheChronicOne]

NOTE TO SELF: Label the prescription bottles when you re-purpose them.

Lunch was going well until I decided that I better take my lunch time pain pill!  Open up the bottle and dumped a bunch of paint into my palm. 

Whatever. It was funny and luckily I didn't waste too much paint. 

ANYWAY...  this was bound to happen at some point...   me with never kitbashing before was cruising at light speed with the paint when I noticed that I forgot all about plugging the two holes on the fuselage where the original tail planes would have went. WOOPSIE! 

A little late in the game to re-enter PSR mode so uhh.... I'll just hit up the parts stash and see what kind of doo-dads I can find to glue on there. Being where they are I can call the doo-dads "secondary intakes" or "cooling ports" or some such.

[TheChronicOne]

Killed two birds with one stone! I'm going to take the rocket launchers, which are weapons out of time, and turn them into RATO rocket engines instead! They cover up the holes perfectly.

Can't leave 'em blue like this, though, so I'll paint them orange and call it good.

Also, just one more coat to go on the underside then on to plotting camo. 

[TheChronicOne]

Well.... here we go. The camo pattern has been drawn on with pencil. Looks pretty neat!!! What will it look like in paint though?

I've decided to try sticking with same colors, but different shades, rather than alternating colors.  Going to be mainly greens with some browns and black thrown in and some stuff in between but basically all kind of in the same range of colors, so to speak.

Cross your fingers.. I'm not so sure about this. 

[TheChronicOne]

WELL......  HMM....







At this stage I feel like I have no clue what I'm doing! At least the painting is well under way. I will need to put on multiple coats but I'm groing to just run through the series of colors I finally settled on with one coat first to see if I even like the end result! If it looks good, I'll go back in and do more coats, cut in, and do touch up.

Either way.. I've had enough of this fun for one day. MAD SKEPTICAL about this paint job but, as usual, I can't tell if I have me a sky-turd or something that will look killer.  Worse comes to worse and I'll revert to one of my old original plans of pretty much duplicating Australian army colors of tan, green, and black. For now, I'm going to finish work on the RATOs and stash all this stuff for the next session. 

[zenrat]

Keep going.  It'll look better when you've got the first coat of every colour on it.

If I really want to put my back out I have found that I can't go past repeatedly picking up heavy objects from the ground.  Pavers or bags of cement for example.

[NARSES2]

Lunch was going well until I decided that I better take my lunch time pain pill!  Open up the bottle and dumped a bunch of paint into my palm. 

Sorry, but that's hilarious  Glad you didn't waste to much paint 

[TheChronicOne]

You know what they say..." when your palms itch, you're going to come into some money." ...  I wonder what painted palms means. 

Maybe I'll find a cheap airbrush? 

[TheChronicOne]

Keep going.  It'll look better when you've got the first coat of every colour on it.

If I really want to put my back out I have found that I can't go past repeatedly picking up heavy objects from the ground.  Pavers or bags of cement for example.

Roger!  I'll press on and we'll see by tomorrow evening what it looks like. Should be done by then!

I know what you mean about them damn pavers, bruh. 

Concrete, too... here's the worst... when they sit outside for eons... long enough to soak up water and basically become parking blocks. 

Random though: East German Air Force captured Skyraider. Itching to put East German roundels on SOMETHING.               

[zenrat]

But they're not round?

Diamondals?

If the Soviets build the Skyraider they would have put a tail gunner in it.  Just a thought...

[TheChronicOne]

But they're not round?

Diamondals?

If the Soviets build the Skyraider they would have put a tail gunner in it.  Just a thought...

I callz 'em squarels, they're just tilted is all. 

I have a B-25 bubble turret that I could slap on there that IIRC would be the right size... not too wide or anything.....  That's actually a pretty cool idea. I think maybe I could manage to not butcher it... I could use a hole saw and drill out the hole and just glue the crap right on in there! Maybe make it a quad gun a-la Boultan Paul Defiant. 

[TheChronicOne]

I'm sure it will look good in paint, it definitely has a killer shape! Nice work. 

Has me thinking what other types of adversaries would look like mashed up...

Now there's a thought.. a whole series of craft made from doing just that. Zero and a Hellcat, Mustang and a 109, MiG-15 and a Sabre, etc. on down the line.

Thanks for the vote of confidence on the paint and the other! I like the shape, too. These pieces seem to work pretty well together. 

Anyway, once I settle on what to watch on Netflix (been checking out Longmire lately and it's not too bad! Not real big on "procedurals" but I'm enjoying it) in the background it's back to painting. Should have the first coat done within an hour or two then it's judgment time.

[TheChronicOne]

Color #3 of camo pattern is on and I'm feelin' pretty good about it!

The pattern isn't quite as I imagined but then again I don't have a lot of room to work with here... regardless, what is coming out of this looks pretty cool so I'm not at all disappointed. 

[TheChronicOne]

Now there's a thought.. a whole series of craft made from doing just that. Zero and a Hellcat...

Bring on the Zellcat.

Well it's either that or the Mitsumman Helro! 


As for an undate...  painting on the plane. This is taking a long time to do and a large part of it is flying by the seat of my pants. Right now it looks like my plane as Ebola or something but I think I'm heading on the right track. It will take refinement and multiple passes but I think this is going to work out. It looks better when you squint at it right now, though.    Loooong way to go.