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

[TheChronicOne]

 

I've been wondering myself and a thought occurred to me last night as I was drifting off to sleep.....   The reason why they are like that? So they can get in there to put on them fancy covers!     Honestly, though, that's all I could come up with... is that they open up like that so it's easier to "get in there" for maintenance and the like.

That's just a guess though, I don't know much about these things. 

[Old Wombat]

Could it be to dissipate the exhaust gasses so that they only blow trucks over at 50m, rather than at 500m, when they're on the ground?

[TheChronicOne]

Now that I have a good place for reference photos and all that, I'm getting on with the Boeing 737 build.  Nose repair continues...


Good stuff.

I like the glazing putty... it dries quickly and sands like a dream. I've used it a couple times prior, although I can't remember on what, and had good results. This is the "thickest" application yet so time will tell how it does w/ regard shrinkage.



I'm ready to prime the Raptor but it's too windy for that. I could probably force the issue by going to the side of the house opposite the wind but... I got that lazy bone. I don't even want to get up out my chair, bruh.    NOT that there isn't a billion other little things to work on like... painting the missiles and stuff so we'll what develops later but for now I've no plans to work on it.

The Liberty is getting a bit more of the sides and top re-inforced with a bit more glue then it gets to sit around for about a week or more to fully dry so that I can do the last bit of lining things up with the canopy.

The Fokker is getting seam work done. The wings are through (took more than normal!) and the top of the fuselage is done..... MOST of the bottom is done but I had to fill in where one half was much lower than the other half. I'm hoping the glue dries quickly so I can finish that and get the wings and tail planes glued on. That's always one of my favorite parts. 

That covers everything. And, while I have no lack of things needing to be worked on, I have this strange urge to start a 5th project. I'm going to fight that, though, because it's a slippery slope. 

[zenrat]

Used too thick that glazing putty will soften styrene.  Don't ask me how I know...

[TheChronicOne]

 

I noticed that myself on an earlier build! I still can't remember which.. it was a valuable lesson. I've since adopted a "layering" technique to avoid the strife. It dries swiftly but doing the layering adds time... still.. it dries fast enough that it makes it a swift process. I love this stuff. 

To that end.... my final update of the night is to proclaim the nose repair as being done. It turned out great! It started out looking akin a crushed beer can.. 



I also worked on the belly seam around the gear and the piece that had to be glued in. It's pretty close but will need more sanding at least and might need more filler, as well.

That's it, though. I'm putting this mess back on the shelf and will eat supper whilst watching "Cheers."   

[TheChronicOne]

Not sure what's going on today! I've yet to make any type of battle plan.

I do know this: next to no work will be done on the Liberty. I might start masking the canopy....  that's about all I can do as everything else is done.

Airliner...  this here will probably be the focus of the day. I'm waiting on nothing to dry so I can just get in there and finish up the sanding on the bottom then probably time to glue in the clear piece. I think I will wind up biting the bullet and masking the cockpit glass because I didn't find a transfer for the windows... so... filling them in isn't an option. Other than that, I have some pretty hefty filling and sand work to be done in part of the stuff that attached to the engines so I'll focus on that. Can probably glue on the tail planes at some point, too. All the fiddly bits are primed so I can start painting them.

Raptor is ready for primer. Like... all of it I think. The plane itself and all the other fiddly pieces still on the sprue. Going to be a marathon of painting all that mess pretty soon I guess.......

Fokker. I have no idea what I'm doing next on that. I need to finish getting the belly nice and smooth then I guess it's time to glue on the wings 'n stuff. 

Still trying not to get carried away and start a 5th project!! I told myself I need to finish two before I start one....

[TheChronicOne]

I'm going to attempt poor-mans Maskol on this 1/144 737 cockpit glass. Going to use just regular ol' PVA and get it in the windows nice and good. This sounds like a good idea, yeah? There's no way in hell I'm going to do a ton of tedious measuring, plotting, and cutting and the I'm not relishing the idea of covering it all and cutting it out with a blade either so I figure this is as good a time as any to try my hand at liquid mask and see if I can jive with it or not.

For now.... FISH AND CHIPS... well, not chips, but rather hush puppies. It's nearly 1PM and I'm only just barely sitting down to rest a bit after working and errands all morning... a good 6-7 hours worth. But "up and at it" since 3AM, though. Sheesh. Necessary evils but sometimes I really despise "being out" and doing all the shopping. I wish I could online order literally EVERYTHING and have it delivered. It's possible with enough money but certain things just can't be delivered unless you want to seriously pay up for it. Anyway, point is, I need to eat before anything else before I "crash" and run out of energy. I'm already there, I think! 

Anyway, that male bovine excrement ain't got much to do with model stuff so....   be back later to try this masking technique out!

[TheChronicOne]

Well, the PVA stuff just wasn't working (wouldn't stay in the very small lines and the windows themselves aren't recessed to help give the stuff a place to sit) so I stopped and pondered on the situation for awhile and decided that if I want these windows and don't want to fill them in then I HAVE to figure out something.

There is no "glue this on almost last" on this one because the cockpit glass is all part of the front roof section of the fuselage itself meaning it needs to be glued on BEFORE any filler and PSR. There's just no way around it!! Once again, this thing didn't come with a transfer for those windows so.........   I decided to just try the "mask it all then cut it out with a knife" routine and I like it! My knife is dull but it worked well enough and it wasn't that bad, to be honest. Gave me a decent result. I'll go back in for another round of fine cutting to get it better but this is "passable" as is in my book.



I made a couple boo-boos on the other side as that was the side I did first (quickly learned how to do it better by time I did the starboard side!) but I belive I can fix it.. and if not, I'll slap another piece of tape on there and do it again.

Once this is done I'm going to set it aside and leave it off until absolutely necessary to keep from knocking these tiny pieces of tape loose. Then, on to fixing those wing/engine pieces that need filling:

[TheChronicOne]

I had to do some crazy amount of filing on the Fokker D.21:

At first I just cleaned up the edges of the wings and wing roots and dry fitted the wings to the fuselage. What I saw after was a mighty clean fit but with a pretty substantial dihedral.  It was approaching F4-U type of angle let me tell you .....   

I had to bring out the big wood file and file the piss out of the sides of the fuselage wing roots. They were canted at damn near a 10 degree angle.... what the hell? The wings on the D.21 are as close to flat as I've ever seen. Maybe 2,3,4 degrees of dihedral, so this had to go.

At this point I finally broke down and went to the net to see what others have faced when building this kit. Turns out mine wasn't some wild fluke and this is one of the "problems" with the kit. OK, good enough. Now that I know I'm not losing my mind I closed the review and went back to work.

It took over an hour. One side was nearly perfect but the other side would not cooperate and I had to settle for "close enough." This means I'll have to use some filler and do some good ol' sanding but at least it will be correct.

It is now resting peacefully in my "helping hands" contraption 



It's in there amongst my blood pressure medicine and all the rest of the krimskrams and malarkey on the top of my desk.



I also glued the tailplanes onto the 737 fuselage. The wings themselves are getting filler in those gaps. Won't be long before I can do some paint work I hope!

F-22 is just sitting around somewhere. 

Liberty is still having the cockpit work solidify. 

[NARSES2]

Gave me a decent result. I'll go back in for another round of fine cutting to get it better but this is "passable" as is in my book.

Looks more than passable to me 

[DogfighterZen]

Gave me a decent result. I'll go back in for another round of fine cutting to get it better but this is "passable" as is in my book.

Looks more than passable to me 

Same here, i think those windows will come out good. It's not that hard, is it? Can be a bit boring but it pays off in the end.

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, fellers.

It wasn't bad at all!!  It didn't even take long....    I'll be doing more and more in the future and I can't wait to go buy some new blades.  I'm pretty stoked about having another method at my disposal that will help produce better end results. One of the things I've lamented over the months is that sometimes the canopy to fuselage joins would be less than stellar because I could never really get in there and PSR any of it. This will help eliminate things sitting proud or shallow and the occasional daylight shining clear through the gaps!!!! 

With all this in mind, I'll think I'll be priming the Raptor today... canopy and all.     

[NARSES2]

It's not that hard, is it? Can be a bit boring but it pays off in the end.

It's actually part of the process that I have always really struggled with for some reason  And yes I do use a new blade to cut the tape.

[TheChronicOne]

Speaking only for myself, I think some of the years of using blades doing floor covering has helped and transferred over to this hobby. Can't be cutting astray on some $800 piece of carpet or vinyl in someone's half a million dollar house; baseboards can't hide ALL the sins!      Hell, sometimes there ARE no baseboards so have to REALLY be "on target" and straight.

Sometimes I miss doing the floor covering but I'm glad some of the knowledge has been useful down the road. I had to give up the trade because my bosses would keep dragging me to houses where people owned cats. I'm highly allergic! 


With that said, I'm about to get the next few days' meals prepared (I not only buy in bulk, but cook in bulk as well!!  ) then I have all live long day to work on these builds! 

[TheChronicOne]

I don't have the Midas touch, I have the detritus touch!

Just about everything I worked on today did not progress, rather, regressed.

I was at the point where I was ready to glue the wings on the 737. I glued one while I worked on a last bit of sanding on the other...   Big mistake! The damned instructions fail to mention it, but you have to "do the wings" at the same time to get them to clip together. I didn't know this...  I had to pry the one back off and try to get the other in, all with semi-fresh half set-up glue...  It was a nightmare. I eventually had to just smother things up with glue and bear hug the thing to keep the wings nestled against the fuselage.  I'd like to blame myself for this screw up but I can't... not with instructions that fail to mention an integral part of the build.

Oh well, never mind... I'll have to sand the wing roots a bunch but it will turn out alright in the end. It's just a couple hours of work that could have been avoided with a mere couple sentences in the instructions. 

Now, for the funny stuff....  I put the F-22 on my hook apparatus that I use to spray things and started bouncing it around to make sure the hook would hold....  it did.. it was a good "hook" but I got carried away and was really shaking the hell out of it like an idiot so it flew off and bounced off the floor.    This made the whole front end split apart along the seam. Apparently it wasn't glued too well; there was so much linear real-estate gluing the two fuselage halves together that by time I got back around to where I started I guess the glue was already setting up (I could see it laying flat).  Oh well.. I re-glued it all..  I'll have to sand that down again then I can prime it without the whole Shaken Raptor Syndrome bit.

The Fokker also had some work done on it. Trying to get the bottom smooth and the wing roots fixed. I got most of it but I didn't let the glue dry well enough. The wings are still a bit flexible and the tacky glue made sanding a pain. The humidity here is causing all this stuff to dry much more slowly than has been the case in recent months. I managed to fix most of this, though. The bottom still isn't quite right but might be closer than I think. It's ready for the next parts to be glued on. 



On the whole, I'm moving these forward but the stupid mistakes and misdirections are slowing me down.