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

[zenrat]

Personally, I think you worry too much.
I know you want it to be accurate but why not use what you've got and blame the colour balance of your monitor?

That's what I do.


Did you ever think of painting this blue with yellow wings?

[TheChronicOne]

Personally, I think you worry too much.
I know you want it to be accurate but why not use what you've got and blame the colour balance of your monitor?

That's what I do.


Did you ever think of painting this blue with yellow wings?

Amazingly, no. And... yes, I worry over things. This is why I prefer whif builds. If there is a "spectrum" for people with OC tendencies, I imagine I'm on it. It's not like I have to do the hokey pokey and tap the faucet handle 50 trillion times before I wash my hands 20 trillion times but sometimes I get tunnel vision and get a little obsessed over certain things.  It drives me nuts sometimes!

It's all academic at this point because I bought a slew of paint at the sto' because it was all on sale for 50 cents a bottle.    I needed a Navy Blue color for my jetliner anyway. Snagged a couple 1/144 YF-23 because they were $5, as well. I think I'll smash one together with a box scale F-101B and cram a 1/72 cockpit in there (this could be a terrible idea)   I also bought more clear and primer at the Wally World. 

No clue what I'm working on today, though!! I need to put in some time on the 737 cockpit area because it's not looking very good. I had to go ahead and prime the nose of the plane so I could SEE it better and that helped a bunch. Going to have to use sanding sticks and the like so I don't knock my windows masks loose.    I'll snag a picture of that before I get started. Otherwise, I still need to make a tailpipe for the Fokker then I can resume painting. F-22 gets more paint in the bays then I can start painting the ordnance. Liberty needs the glass glued on finally, I think.

For now, I have to wash the dog, get lunch going, and pay tribute to the carpet monster (vacume the floors) then maybe I can finally get some plastic atrocity going. 

[zenrat]

I think OCD is like Autism.  Everyone has some aspects of it, just the amount varies.
My father has to have everything on his desk lined up straight and perpendicular with even spacing.  As kids we'd sneak in and move stuff just to mess with his head.
I can't sit in a room with a crooked picture on the wall without straightening it.

What doesn't help is when you get hold of what is supposed to be the correct shade of paint only to find that it is very different to the pictures you are working to (Vallejo are you listening?).

[TheChronicOne]

Agreed on all counts, brotha.  I can dig your pops' methodology. When I clean up my desk here, I do it like that. It sort of reminds me of a surgeon's tray..... everything is layed out nice and neat, perfectly spaced, all at right angles, etc. I'll have to snap a picture of it one day. Of course, I don't fuss when it gets out of order again but I pretty much have to have it that way before I start working on me builds for the day. 

On the paint.. I JUST got done experimenting with the stuff I have. I've had to come to terms with all the things on Wings Pallete NOT looking like the pictures of the actual plane that sits in the museum. Similar to what you're talking about, I guess at some point I have to just take a leap of faith and trust that the paint is the right color even if it doesn't match one or more of the damned pictures. At least I have the benefit of it matching one.  Problem is, how accurate is the D.21 sitting in the museum?! I've heard stories before of museum pieces being painted wrong colors so... is all the crap on wings pallete wrong or is the plane sitting in the museum wrong? OR, is it all down to my monitor?!     Bloody hell.

ANYWAY...   as far as that is concerned:



This stuff matches closest to the actual pictures of the actual plane that is in that museum... the same ones I've posted the last page or two here. Tried them on the test bed plane... I won't bother pointing out the 10-12 different colors on here now, but perhaps you can spot the three that work best. .. . . 


Hint, the green color I settled on is the one still drying and is actually called "Ocean Blue."  Matches well to the pics, but not too well to all the stuff on wings pallete...   SHRUG...   

I'm through with all that for today, for sure, though. I wan't to clear my head and in a couple days I'll recheck all this stuff and see if these colors still look right to my eye. I can say, though, that I now have TWO out of three colors locked in, so that's progress! I only had one this morning so I'll take all the steps forward I can get! 


A lil bit of work has been done to the Raptor. I finished the pale grey paint work in the bays.




Sloppy but it doesn't matter... I'll give it a light sanding before I paint the blue color on the bottom. I also figured out the ordnance and stuff that I wan't. I went with the most varied loadout....  a couple of AMRAAMS and fuel tanks for the big bays and AIM-9X for the smaller side bays. This is sweet because it's less work and I get to throw the other 4 AMRAAMs and the two AIM-9s into the parts stash.


737 has had some good work done, as well. The engines are all sanded up and ready for primer:




More importantly, the work on getting the nose/cockpit area nice and pretty has been getting done and is going well. Before and after:




I primed the entire thing, as well:


Boeing 737 AWACS if I glue a dish on top?

Next will be the second phase of sanding and filling anything that needs it. When I hold it in the right light, I can still seam the seam on the roof so I might need to skim coat that or..... maybe it will go away with the next coat of primer?     I might or might not mess with it is what I'm getting at.....   otherwise the engine pylons need more attention, for sure.

No work done on the Liberty today.

Did some moving and shaking on eBay today, though. I'm "back in business" and am scheduling lawn service for customers so I allowed myself to spend a chunk on hobby stuff (some of which was today at the LHS). BUT... I finally have my 1/144 Galaxy!!!  No box and no instructions but all the plastic is there. It only cost me $60 and another $10 in shipping. I also picked up a lot yesterday.... I picked 'em out and did the combined shipping thing.. got some RAF flying boat thing and an F-102, a Cutlass, and some other neat things that they had under priced. I'll get into all more in detail in the stash thread.

All for now!! If I don't call and end to it, I'll babble on all night...    

[zenrat]

"Lawn Service"
Oil change, filters, plugs and a tune up?

The Boing looks good.

As far as the paint goes the golden rule applies.  If it looks right, it is right.  Trust your gut and use the ones that you think you should.  If they are not an exact match? 
Meh.

[PR19_Kit]

That 737's looking really smooooooth now. 

[NARSES2]

As far as the paint goes the golden rule applies.  If it looks right, it is right.  Trust your gut and use the ones that you think you should.  If they are not an exact match? 

Absolutely  I'm convinced we all see it slightly differently anyway, whence the greenish blue/blue with a hint of green argument 

[TheChronicOne]

"Lawn Service"
Oil change, filters, plugs and a tune up?

The Boing looks good.

As far as the paint goes the golden rule applies.  If it looks right, it is right.  Trust your gut and use the ones that you think you should.  If they are not an exact match? 
Meh.

Thanks!!!  Yeah I think I agree, for now, anyway. ( ) 

These colors still look pretty good to me this morning after sleeping on the conundrum but I'll know more when they are on the plane. I tell you, though, if they look good on there I'm just going to leave them even if they are a tiny bit off. You're right, it doesn't matter in the grand scheme. All that counts is when I do my D.23 to match that I use the same colors THEN.       To that end, I think I'll tear off some masking tape and put it on the bottles with notation "DUTCH COLORS FOR D.21/23" or something so I can find them easily later.

Lawn Enforcement, sure enough, I did all my equipment run-through and fire up about 2-3 weeks ago. Everything is running tip-top and I even washed and cleaned everything. Only thing I'm not sure about is sharpening blades on my push mowers. One is good, the other I can't remember if I did last fall or not...   But, yup, everything is tuned up and ready to roll! I have tons of 2 stroke oil, weedeater string, and a healthy fuel budget for the month and even a bit of a rainy day fund if anything breaks. 

That 737's looking really smooooooth now. 

Aye, thanks! I've been butchering this thing pretty bad with my stupid, thoughtless mistakes but, you know what "they" say, it's how you recover from something like that that counts and I think I've managed to rehab it all pretty nicely. I honestly thought it would be much worse at this point but the second phase of post-primer sanding will be minimal and boy am I glad! 

Heck, it won't be long before I can start painting on this thing. That's a whole other ballgame... I think I might have to mask stuff on the wings to get the differing colors of panels or whatever.... outer edges and control surfaces different color than the interior parts or whatever..... the stuff never seems to be a solid shade. 

[TheChronicOne]

As far as the paint goes the golden rule applies.  If it looks right, it is right.  Trust your gut and use the ones that you think you should.  If they are not an exact match? 

Absolutely  I'm convinced we all see it slightly differently anyway, whence the greenish blue/blue with a hint of green argument 

Thats a good point and ... the blue and green... ugh, man..... I was trapped off in that yesterday. Trying to fight with my brain and convince myself that, "It's OK to use this "blue" paint where the green camo goes, the name doesn't matter, the shade and color does."          What was it??? OCEAN BLUE or something?? Seems like that would be mighty blue but it's the closest "green" I have to the "green" I need.         

[TheChronicOne]

Wind has wrecked my ability to prime or sand anything so I'm coming up with things to do and I've found one... I can go ahead and start masking the Raptor to put on the funky Vaclav PantherG paint job.



No, I take that back.... I was initially going to just tape over the primer and have it be the grey borders on the edges of the plane but the finish is spotty in a few places and will need a good, solid coat. So, I guess I'll instead start painting the actual camo work on top! This should be pretty fun. I'm not totally sure how to do the green dots business but I have a pretty good idea. I'm going to just go through with one round of painting the general shape and where they are more solid toward the center then I'll come back later with a stiffer brush and dry brush the speckled type borders. DAB DAB DAB.    Should work fine.

It's a good thing I bought some tan paint yesterday. It looks like I'll need it! I don't actually have any... that first shade I tried on the D.21 is actually an off white...  pretty light, so not exactly what I call tan but for some reason I didn't have a single bit of "tan" colored paint! I also found all the other colors and am ready to roll. PantherG kindly gives us FS numbers but I'm just going to eyeball it. Should have something worth looking at after a couple of hours! 


EDIT:  Is it going to be one of them days?    Wishy-washy, I swear!  Anyway...  I changed my mind again. It'll be a lot easier to mask outer edges than to mask the interior of the aircraft. Not only that, I can simply spray another coat if primer on so I'll have an even finish then can use that shortcut so....    logic won out this time. I'm eager to see this camo paint job but I need to be patient and not rush things so....    I guess it'll be a few days.    Oh well!

Now what?!       Oh I know!! I'll make that exhaust pipe for the D.21. 

[TheChronicOne]

Built the exhaust. I need to glue the little round tube thing that protrudes from the front on, after I "make" it. I already did, but, naturally, broke it off while painting and I have no clue where it went. I don't know why I didn't follow my normal procedure of saving things like that for the very end.   

Oh well!! It's an easy fix and at least I DO have the exhaust now:



I made it out of some surplus "chrome" plated sprue.

After that, I got back to painting and this is where it is now. I still have a lot of refinement to do but this is the general idea.



Thoughts on the colors? 


That's all for awhile. Time for video games. 

[strobez]

Oh... I like those colours.  I think the green really makes the rest of it pop.

[zenrat]

Based on the photo of the restored example, looks good to me.

[TheChronicOne]

It was good until sunlight hit it. It brought the BLUE out in it so I just got one more thing of paint that was nearly the same but with a greener hue. It's all done now, though! I still need to paint the yellow ring on the cowling and paint the faux window on the spine but that and painting the exhaust pipe are all that's left of painting on the plane body. Right now I'm painting the canopy. After that, all the remains are the 5-6 little needle like pokey things that go on the wings and the gun sight tube thingy, tailplane supports, and the aerial mast or whatever they're called. I'll likely glue them on then paint them in situation and that'll be a wrap! After that, I need to scratch up a post to glue on to the rudder so I can attach tiny wire from cockpit to tail.




I think it looks neat!!!    I'll probably wind up building my D.23 sooner rather than later so I can line them up together. I wonder if the Dutch AF had any other planes from that area that wore this these three colors as camouflage?  I'll have to spend some time surfing the net here in a bit and see what other things I could make to create my own Dutch WWII era air force.

Moving into the fictional realm, I've gotten some important building work done on the Liberty!!! I masked the windscreen and canopy then glued them on. I also glued on the two scratch made bomb pylongs onto the wings and lastly glued the tailplanes on the rear in the cruciform configuration. Still a long way to go before primer, though...   I still need to scratch build a housing for the tailhook I made and I'll also need to do PSR around the canopy now that it's finally on so I can get all that blended in.  Still... I made some good headway today and managed not to mess anything up even after I dropped it on the floor!   


Turned the flash off and held it up to the window to get the silhouette effect.

And here it is just sitting there:


Looking less like an F-5 now! 

Another coat of primer went on the Raptor so that I can start masking it.

Been doing PSR stuff (not much, though) on the 737. Nothing interesting to show on those, though.

TTYL

[PR19_Kit]

Looking less like an F-5 now! 

Less? 

It doesn't look ANYthing like an F-5 really, until you notice the shape of the centre fuselage. You've changed the rest of it radically, so much so that I was thinking 'What the devil is it?'