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

[TheChronicOne]

NYUK NYUK NYUK NYUK!!!   

That's one project I don't think even a moderately or even highly skilled kitbasher could make look good.    Although.. I had, at one point, entertained the idea of a contra turbo prop F-16 but uhhhhhhhhh.... That idea lasted as long as a dropped ice cream cone on a summer side walk. For every decent idea that comes along a few absurd, impossible, ugly, or just stupid ideas do too. 

UHH Let's see here. I somehow amazingly didn't manage to pickle my organs last night cramming beers and the occasional Jack Daniels down my gullet so I don't have some type of wretched hang over.  That said, I wouldn't choose today to run any marathons or build a deck but I might find myself back getting these models worked on later.   

Tiny bits of painting to do on the Mustang... very tiny; parts of the canopy frame work. Normally would take less than 5 minutes to fix but I mixed up a custom shade of grey for this thing so I might have to paint, let dry, compare, then add more black and go back in again until I can get the new paint to match the old paint. Have to re-paint a patch of the cockpit interior as well then I can gloss the plane itself.

F-16 is ready for masking on the wings and fin and to get the yellow going. I imagine this will take awhile.  It took awhile to get the white painted on, too. Longer than I wanted. Sure wish I had a rattle can of it! Anyway.... seems like I'm playing with all of the most troublesome colors right now.... WHITE, YELLOW, and RED. I'll be glad when I get into painting the blue body!    That's the other thing I need to work on... getting the cockpit piece seams filled in.

[TheChronicOne]

UH OH!!   Something is flying overhead ready to whoop some azz!

[TheChronicOne]

Allllll donesie onesies!!!     

(I know, I know.. I almost want to slap my damn self for that one    )

Anyway... Mustang is off the factory floor!!


2018 and America has finally achieved world-wide air supuriority with the advent of the Mustang F-51M! 

[Rick Lowe]

Kewl!   

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks!  I'm diggin' it.  It kinda actually looks plausible!

I'm quite pleased with it for the amount of effort I put in. I wanted a minimalist, "modern" no frills Mustang and this is definitely it. I had to fight the urge to "spruce" it up with some other colors or perhaps more decalling but that would NOT be what I was going for. 

I can almost hear jet sounds coming from it....   

[zenrat]

I like this picture because it looks like it has a spatted undercarriage.

Good job Brad C.

[DogfighterZen]

Wow, that looks good... Simple but effective! 

[Old Wombat]

Where we might be if WW1 & WW2 hadn't happened.

[scooter]

Where we might be if WW1 & WW2 hadn't happened.

Then it should have the roundel, not the star and bar-

[TheChronicOne]

I like this picture because it looks like it has a spatted undercarriage.

Good job Brad C.

   It does!!  Wow.. that makes for some ideas there. That would have REALLY been confusing on this thing.....  Plane can be mid 40s vintage, paint job is 2010s vintage and fixed undercarriage with spad can be 1910s vintage and the plane spans a whole century. That's the type of stuff that's funny to make then just post around with no description and see what other stuff people come up with.

[TheChronicOne]

Where we might be if WW1 & WW2 hadn't happened.

I've thought a few times about an alternate timeline similar to that that would attempt to explain this type of thing.

At the end of WWII, and after dropping two atom bombs which then kicked off the cold war and arms races & space race and all that,.... that either the planet cumulatively banded together to say, "NO WAY, MAN!! THAT'S TOO BEACOUPE!! (about the bombs) Or perhaps.. "ALIENS!" Showed up and forced us to get along and instead of going "South" things actually go "North" and basically the entire planet agrees that for the common good all further advancement of tools of war would be capped right where they are. You can keep the stuff you have, make more, and make it more efficiently but no new development.

This would be fun because everything right up to 1945 counts but also at the same time no one says that these machines couldn't be perfected as they were by various means of manufacture, etc...  so.. you know.. while the still same "old" machines they can still be "better" and do more things. And how cool is the thought of a NEW Mustang rolling off the factory floor in 1991 sound.    Or... in 2018?  I get lazy and don't feel like writing up stories that's why no one's heard this yet but it has applied to 2-3 of my builds so far I do believe. At least two!      Some pretty decent BS if you ask me.   

[TheChronicOne]

I see I'm going to have to build another of these but take away the bubble cockpit bit, put on a little windscreen, add a second wing, put on fixed gear with spads, and use the glorious old-school roundels.

Still gets the modern paint job though. 


EDIT:  And a massive bang seat!!!    (ha! kidding.... )

[scooter]

Where we might be if WW1 & WW2 hadn't happened.

If you can find a copy of it, Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfus' The Two Georges postulates that because the American Revolution never happened, a whole lot of events predicated on our saying "Bugger off" to Mad King George never happened.

[NARSES2]

Where we might be if WW1 & WW2 hadn't happened.

If you can find a copy of it, Harry Turtledove and Richard Dreyfus' The Two Georges postulates that because the American Revolution never happened, a whole lot of events predicated on our saying "Bugger off" to Mad King George never happened.

Read that a fair time ago, quite a good book

[TheChronicOne]

4:30 AM and started working on models.    Just shy of 6 now, and getting some stuff done! I'll be "ahead" when I get back home later.

I have the elevators painted, and the other little fin things that go on the bottom are painted as well. Also working on PSR up toward the nose to get the roof-plate looking good and fix those two areas where the nose was busted off. 

Next, I've started measuring, doing math, and masking for the fin. I got to looking at these stripes and realizing there were 13 on each wing and on the fin. Well, I have 6 mm tape and 3 mm tape and then the measurements for the ailerons and rudder .... well, long story short, nothing matched up so I had to figure out a way to do it without having to trim up a bunch of tape. I finally settled on a pretty genius solution of.. "well, I can make 13 stripes, still, but there will be a TOTAL of thirteen instead of thirteen on each surface."  So that means 5 stripes on each aileron and 3 on the rudder. MUCH easier to measure out and space and this also allows me to have red stripes on the ends and everything stay symmetrical and balanced.

The red stripes on the main wings have already been painted but I think I need maybe 2... or 3 more coats to keep the white from shining through. I'll do that when I paint the stripes on the fin that I'm currently masking and at the end that should be all the red for this aside from a nav light or two which I'll do later.



So there're those..     Anyway.... I must be losing my mind because I'm thinking of masking this canopy. It's simple so should be doable even for me. I just wonder, though.. how people normally do stuff like this? Like.. on much more complicated ones, especially, do people just cover the entire thing in tape then cut out frame bits with a hobby knife or do folks cut pieces to fit?  The only one I've ever done, I just cut the pieces to fit. Not exactly sure how I did it, but it came out pretty easy. It helped that it was a vac canopy, though, and I had no "lines" to follow, rather, I just made my own.