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

[TheChronicOne]

OK... my modelling activities for today are all done. I didn't do any building and instead set aside the day for sourcing materials and doing research and I've managed a fair amount of both. I snagged a sheet that should have all lettering and numbers I need. One other thing I was thinking of doing was snagging a line drawing and slapping some liveries on it to see how to approach things.

I'm thinking of a classic either 2 or 3 stripe cheatline hockey stick configuration. A lot of this depends on the windows transfers because I'll need to have a wider black line if a dark color is necessary underneath in which case I'll simply put a green line below it at some reduced width. Otherwise, I'll just run a black/white/green cheat line under the windows if I go that route. Also.... as a throw back to the British I want to put the lightning bolt zig zag up near the nose. I'll probably reduce to black only at that point to make things easier then have it blend into the anti glare paint work forward and adjacent the cockpit windows. Gloss black lower, glossy white upper, with the black and and green cheat lines and a simple logo and "CHRONIC AIRLINES" in black font. For the logo it'll just be a black "C" in a green square. Whichever sizes work best together. Nice and simple! They say business logos are like flags... they should be easily remembered and a small child should be able to duplicate it with relative ease. I do believe a square missing one side inside of another square is pretty damn simple so should make for a somewhat attractive logo, if not strictly utilitarian.

For now it's time to relax a bit and watch tele. 

[TheChronicOne]

Weather has gone South so I'll have a day full of modelling activities! I have to get on the phone at some point and do battle with my health insurance (these people are trying to rip me off all of a sudden... after 4 years of good service all of a sudden they act like they have no idea what I'm talking about when I mention the no-cost primary care visit I was supposed to get...) and I still need to do my taxes but I'm taking a breather from that for now. I'm trying to maintain a good mental state so once I make it through the work week maybe I'll try that again. BUT ANYWAY, Like I said, it's raining and quite nasty out so I'll be posted up watching TV and doing model stuff all day after work. 

I'm going to stop "playing" with my made-up airliner project and get back to work painting on the Raptor.  All I really was wanting to do at this point is put a line drawing into MS paint and whip up a profile of what I'm trying to achieve so it's not like it was anything major. I'd done my preliminary research and bought everything I need (went over my budget of $30 grand total for the project by $5 but oh well... I'm pretty enthused about this and it's going to be a pet project...if I have to spend a lil more, I will! ) so we're lookin' pretty good as far as Chronic Airlines is concerned. I was thinking of doing the MSpaint work this morning before work but I'd rather sit around and soak up coffee, thanks. Some mornings I'm more energized than others and this one is about middle of the road so I'm content to sit here and watch the news, do my internet surfing, and guzzle copious volumes of coffee.

[NARSES2]

Weather has gone South so I'll have a day full of modelling activities! I have to get on the phone at some point and do battle with my health insurance (these people are trying to rip me off all of a sudden... after 4 years of good service all of a sudden they act like they have no idea what I'm talking about when I mention the no-cost primary care visit I was supposed to get...)

Best of luck with that mate. I'm very grateful for our NHS, even though I may have the occasional moan

[TheChronicOne]

Preliminary run of green is on. Not quite where I want it yet, but looks good so far! After it dries awhile I'll go back through with the tan and the brown and touch up the hazy areas on the green blobs.







Did some more looking at my reference pictures and sure enough I'll at least be having to do some paint work in the exhaust area on the fin thingies themselves and also the stuff around it. I'll get to that once the camo is done. Also, in doing more research, I find that some of the transfers might not fit the panel lines in some instances so I'll have to be really precise in trimming those out. Hopefully I can get them to work but if not, I'll just mask what's left and paint it. Going to have to mask the exhaust nozzles anyway to do them correctly.

[TheChronicOne]

Main paint work is done! Now comes a ton of touch up work.







"Raptor, Eater of Tape"


I'm going to have to sand some things before I start touch up of the grey borders, but, that shouldn't be much of a problem. I'm just hoping I can touch up the areas without having to mask on the inside and having to re-paint it all. Those grey borders are just the primer left as is. I have a shade of grey in my acrylics that is almost dead on the same shade but if I'm not careful, the slight difference could be noticeable so we'll just see how it goes...

[TheChronicOne]

Moving along now! I've done all the touch up on the grey borders and have put a couple coats on the exhaust stuff and will proceed with those next. I'm having second thoughts on masking and trying to get the neat looking design stuff like on the actual planes. I'll re-visit that conundrum later. The color I have the nozzles right now is wrong anyway so I'll likely bite the bullet and just do it. Otherwise I'll want to paint them a bit of a lighter shade than what they are now.

Also, I deviated a bit from the profile and painted grey border on the elevators inside edges. Not really supposed to be there but who's to say the Somalis didn't go ahead and paint it on there anyway for artsy-fartsy reasons?

Next up I've started to look at all the little details and there are quite a few transfers for this!! I think all I'll need to do is the funny stuff on the nozzles and the nav lights? Something else might pop up but it's looking like I might be getting pretty close to first clear coat. In checking on this stuff I went ahead and cut out all the transfers I will need and have done away with the rest.


Neato!!!  All this junk will be the salt and pepper on this burger. 


Annnnd one more picture of the plane itself now that the grey stuff is getting fixed. See what I mean about the paint colors, though? My little thing of grey paint matches up really well. I've only done touch up here and there, no solid coats of it and you can't even tell where I applied it! That is very handy.

[TheChronicOne]

Doesn't look like much has changed but 95% or more of the touch up is done. There was a lot of it.     Next time I will remember to wrap the tape better over the wing edges and also try to mask any weapons bays before I start slathering paint around.

So, now, the bottom is pretty clean looking finally:



Mainly touch up work and also cutting-in around the exhaust and all the jive at the rear of the aircraft.


Did the same up top:






Same thing... just a lot of touch up and cutting in around the exhaust work and even went back in to all the other colors as well to do odds and ends to make this the "cleanest" iteration yet.

Seems like I keep posting the same pictures or whatever but oh well.. doing the best I can.   


So that's it for now. Done had the typical mood-destroying BS occur so work ground to a halt. At least I got this much done. 

[TheChronicOne]

A new day, a new set of motivation. I have a TON of work to do today, including running all kinds of errands to include grocery shopping then I really need to get on the phone to the insurance company. I decided against it the other day because it might have put me in a bad mood but now I'll be in a bad mood if I skip it again.   

BUT after all that, I'm going to get to work masking and doing the exhaust nozzles properly. I need to paint the nav lights, as well. That will take less than 60 seconds. Both project combined should be less than an hour, yeah? Then... I'll take one last trip through the paint work to make sure I didn't miss any touch-up and to check one last time for details then it's time to gloss it. After the gloss, I'm going to go ahead and put all the pylons and weapons into their bays then I'll start doing transfers. I'm going to start with all the little grey patches I have to see if they will even work to my satisfaction and if not I'll stop right then and there and paint all that stuff instead. I figure if I can get to this point by the end of the day I'll be in really good shape and well on my way to being done.

Other than this, I have a wee bit o' sanding to do on the Liberty then it gets primer coat #2. It just might be good for paint after! THAT would be awesome because I'm eager to see this one finished and also I'd like to get these "more involved" builds the hell off my bench so I can just do simpler stuff for the rest of the Spring and Summer. It won't be until near November again before I start another project that involves surgery or tons of parts and steps.

[TheChronicOne]

Scratch all that. Work went way long then somehow I wound up in the stupid grocery store nearly an hour waiting on fish to be made that was supposed to take 8-10 minutes. Not sure what the hell happened there but I kept checking and kept being put off and by then I was "invested" in walking around the store so I just kept waiting and waiting... Bullcrap. Also I had an extra surprise lawn hoisted on me but not like I was going to skip it. It's right next door to two others that are next door to each other so it would be dumb to leave the job just to come back a couple days from now. SO ANYWAY....I didn't even get home until 2PM and then had to make lunch and eat it.


SO... no plan for now. I'm tired and got too much sun. I'll figure out something to work on at some point I'm sure but right now trying to stick to my prior plan or come up with a new one just isn't happening.

(Didn't call the insurance people either)        Not going to. I've had enough infuriating things happen today already. 

[Rick Lowe]

Hey, Brad.

The Raptor is looking good, nice to see it coming together.

The 737 came out well, especially good the way the cockpit framing improved.

Good reorganizing job; it's a pain but worth the doing. And yeah, like so many other things, it gets longer and more difficult the more you procrastinate.
An easy way of quick shelving is putting planks on bricks, especially if said bricks are cheap or free. If they are the kind with lightening holes in them though, watch out for stowaways - the last thing you need is to bring problems indoors.

Insurance - yeah, I feel your pain... most don't cover dental or optical without paying extra, and even then they don't really cover the sort of amounts I have to pay... 

[zenrat]

Do you think the fish was always going to take an hour but they were scared to tell you in case you said "no, i'll go elsewhere"?
I hate that.  Be honest with me and i'll wait.  Lie to me and you'll never get my business ever again and i'll badmouth you round town.

So, while I have everyone's attention:  Jetstar airways - lying bunch of expletive deleteds.
Wasted hours of my time keeping me standing around in an airport when I could have been sitting by the pool drinking cocktails.
I'll never fly with them again and neither should you.

[Rick Lowe]

Do you think the fish was always going to take an hour but they were scared to tell you in case you said "no, i'll go elsewhere"?
I hate that.  Be honest with me and i'll wait.  Lie to me and you'll never get my business ever again and i'll badmouth you round town.

So, while I have everyone's attention:  Jetstar airways - lying bunch of expletive deleteds.
Wasted hours of my time keeping me standing around in an airport when I could have been sitting by the pool drinking cocktails.
I'll never fly with them again and neither should you.

Yeah, Jetstar are only ever in the news here when they do something wrong - to be fair, that's usually the case with other folk as well, but they in particular do seem to take up a lot of airtime... and the things that they get wrong seem to regularly fall into the 'spectacular fail' category.

I agree - people will usually cut you some slack if things aren't going smoothly, as everyone has 'off days' - and if they won't they probably wouldn't have been happy however things turned out, anyway.

[TheChronicOne]

Hey, Brad.

The Raptor is looking good, nice to see it coming together.

The 737 came out well, especially good the way the cockpit framing improved.

Good reorganizing job; it's a pain but worth the doing. And yeah, like so many other things, it gets longer and more difficult the more you procrastinate.
An easy way of quick shelving is putting planks on bricks, especially if said bricks are cheap or free. If they are the kind with lightening holes in them though, watch out for stowaways - the last thing you need is to bring problems indoors.

Insurance - yeah, I feel your pain... most don't cover dental or optical without paying extra, and even then they don't really cover the sort of amounts I have to pay... 

Thanks, bud!!!!   

Raptor paint is being finalized right as I type. I have two more nav lights to paint then it's ready for gloss. Glad you like it.

The 737....... is one of my favorite things rights now. It's sitting over there on the shelf and I keep looking at it... like... WOW.... it looks like a million dollars!! I love it!! Get within a foot and my sloppy paint work starts to show where I didn't quite fix things after taking the masking off but otherwise. .. . .     


I tried to capture the "essence" of it. Looking at it from here..... 



Doesn't quite do the trick, oh well. 


I know what you mean about them creepy crawlies in the bricks. Not only before I tote them inside but after as well... makes a nice home for the brown recluse which rots limbs away and kills people. I found a couple meandering about in my model kits last year in fact... one big motivator for the re-organize as we head into Spring and them things start moving around again.

What gets me are these people... "Oh don't hurt the lil spider!!! Pick it up and put it outside!!!!" Blah blah blah. Yeah whatever... I tell these buffoons to google "brown recluse bite" then explain to me again why I shouldn't kill them outright. Then there's the black widows but they never really come inside thank god..

[TheChronicOne]

Do you think the fish was always going to take an hour but they were scared to tell you in case you said "no, i'll go elsewhere"?
I hate that.  Be honest with me and i'll wait.  Lie to me and you'll never get my business ever again and i'll badmouth you round town.

So, while I have everyone's attention:  Jetstar airways - lying bunch of expletive deleteds.
Wasted hours of my time keeping me standing around in an airport when I could have been sitting by the pool drinking cocktails.
I'll never fly with them again and neither should you.

Nah, they had made multiple batches of it in the interim.. that's why I was somewhat confused. I knew other people were waiting for some, too, but I didn't think they would snap it all up because.... damn.....

OK, I walked in there just past 12:30... I asked the dude, "how long before you have more fish." He said it was cooking right at that moment. I'm slightly aggravated that I'm not getting a time frame but I'm in no mood to to cause a fuss because I'm already feeling like trash from being in the sun all day. At this point I'm so tired and sun-sick I can barely speak anyway so I just wander off to do some shopping. I would ever so often glance back over to see if the two ladies standing around waiting were still there because I figured they were the ones waiting on the fish.

Anyway.... like 10-15 minutes go by and they still there so I walk back up and......   turns out a big batch of fish was put out for sale and someone got it all or some poo-poo?!  One lady left and the other wanted two pieces so that left...... TWO pieces of fish LEFT. I want 8. So I ask the dude..... how long for fish?  "8-10 minutes."   OK... so I wander off again for 10-15 minutes because I don't like to rush people and estimates are generally bullshit anyway.

So I come back, AGAIN. This time there is a bigass glorious pile of fish sitting there! I think, "Thank you sweet baby Jesus."  So I ask dude again.... and he's like.... oh it's still cooking or whatever. So no I'm confused as hell. Again, I don't want to cause a fuss, more for my own mental being than anything so I wander off again, damnit, for another 10-15 minutes..... just to show back up and....... CRICKETS.

This time I'm like, "To hell with this bullshit, I'm going to camp in front of this place. "So I STOOD THERE.... for ANOTHER 10-15 minutes..................................   then I finally got my fish. All freshly made, mind you.... and delicious.. but uhhh.... I guess they didn't want to empty out the stuff they had already made??? The 12 or more pieces??? So they made me wait another 15 minutes for a fourth time??? I have no damn clue what in the hell was the motivation behind all this.. I know some if it my fault.. I should have just parked in front the ... thing or whatver.... but still....

Anyway, I walk out the damnd oor and get in my truck and look at the clock and it was past 1:30.         Bearing in mind I've been up since 4AM and just did 4 seperatae jobs including three large lawns without taking any breaks or eating anything so I'm more than 10 hours into my day and I BARELY make it home by 2 oclock then I still have to cook the hush puppies that I bought. Rock hard frozen solid hush puppies when I pulled them out the freezer at the store... they are now soggy bullshit because I wandered around the store so goddamn long they defrosted... but anyway... I still have to cook those for 15 minutes so It was about 2:30 before I finally ate my lunch.

Infuriating.... all the while in between was nonsense, too, like people cutting me off in traffic so that they just barely slide through the light but since I had to slow down and let them in, I have to SIT at the light.. etc etc etc... It was just one of them days.....




It's going better now, though. 

[TheChronicOne]

For now................. the paint work on the Raptor is done!!!! 

I got to fretting over masking the nozzles and it was wasting more time than just doing it so I decided to just try it free hand and it worked out well enough. I've gotten better over the last 2 years and it's starting to pay off by saving time being able to paint somewhat straight without masking tape.


Sloppy but oh well. I've looked at build pages and the like for other peoples' models and they don't even try to paint this stuff at all so maybe I'm one up on them. A whif with things more accurate on it than some folks' real-world builds! Imagine that!!! 

On to the Liberty. I have three little areas left still that need some PSR but it's 90% done.







Let's all try to remember just how disastrous and crappy the original fit and surrounding area around the cockpit were. That I have it all blended this well is frankly amazing considering my skill level.

Now... here's the problem..... some of the paint and body work is built up so thick that it's basically seamless into the masking tape on the clear parts. So......... ... .... when I go to take the tape off it could potentially take chunks of stuff with it. The tape doesn't come off until after the last coat of clear at the very end of the build, too, so if things go tits up at that late stage it's going to take quite a bit of fixing to correct. So.........  one of a few things could happen: I could do nothing and peel the tape away and it somehow works great. I could peel the tape off and am left with a ridge that needs sanding down...... I could peel the tape off and it takes chunks away............ or... I could GUESS at where I need to cut and use my hobby knife to help matter and it comes off just fine.. or.. do the same and it's still terrible. I have one more option: go ahead and peel the tape off NOW before I go further so that if I need to fix things, I can, before actual paint and gloss. Then, once things are correct, I can re-mask the winders and go ahead with the paint work.

I think that's what I want to do.. maybe a combo... run the knife through there so I don't peel stuff away I don't want to, then fix everything nice and pretty, then re-mask the clear stuff then get to the paint and gloss. This is the most labor intensive option, but, also the safest.


I think I have a handle on things now and have a pretty solid plan for both builds and I've definitely made some forward progress today so things are looking up!!! I can definitely see both of these being finished soon!!!