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

[TheChronicOne]

Per the "research" side of C.R.A.P. here's an interesting, brand new video of an exploration of a relatively intact BAC-111. These pictures are 10 and 13 years old and the area around the aircraft is rather grown up right now....       Where is this thing? Way down in Argentina nestled at the foot of the Andes. Registration appears that of one from the U.S. and I don't know who Rotec is. Some private firm or something...  the plane wasn't configured for passenger service.





The video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfO3QlHP76w&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR22SYQwtB5Aq8V7V0BLkJnjC4qbnHbeYgAzlS13fJTtcT_0NlCynvFU5Y4


In other news.... I've sanding a little bit after a putty job on the Phantom then I primed it. I'll start painting it pretty soon. Time to break out the brushes for more than just detail painting. Been a little while since I've done that. 

I've sanded on the Tristar. A couple places where crazing was a bit heavy left a couple craters so I've filled those in and will sand them down soon. I sanded away the trapped cobweb..........           it'll need one last wet sand with paper then it'll be ready for paint again. Won't be long!

[TheChronicOne]

Got a fair amount of stuff done today on a decent range of projects.

Phantom is primed:




I stop at this point because I forgot to put the canopy on. I'll have to get it masked then glued on and re-prime the area. Of course, this means I need to paint and finish the cockpit interior. No prob! Slight oversight, won't slow me down too much. I also ordered masks for the canopy. No raised detail on this vacform one so I'm going to play it safe.

Tristar stuff!! I allowed the putty to dry then wet sanded the whole thing with sand paper. I do believe she's ready for white paint again! Awesome. I could do that now but the wind is blowing like mad.

737 stuff!! I sanded more on the engines. The verdict is finally in; they'll work! The problem I could have had was to have a weird step or transition where I extended them but it all works out fine and contours correctly. I still need to refine it, but goal of being able to use the kit engines has been achieved. I never did locate AA replacements. The replacement decals will arrive any day now for this one as well.

The Pluto is just sitting around waiting for me to be motivated again. So much brain power and scratch building involved that I only want to work on it in ideal conditions. That said, when I left off I was cutting out the space for the nose gear well. My next thoughts are on how to make some sort of nacelles for the main gear... 

[TheChronicOne]

SO much interesting stuff going on lately. It's distracted me from modeling. First off... Lawton has done flipped its &$^#$%.  We have a population of about 115,000. Not a small place, but not a huge city, either, but this year, I swear, has been so violent!! The shootings and murders this year. But this weekend in particular... wow! 5 shooting deaths and I think there were a couple just a week ago! So many I'm losing track.... anyway, one of these was a whole family murder suicide about 3 miles away and turns out one person involved was someone I knew back in the day that live just a couple blocks away. Crazy! Then the other shooting a mile away at the club that had a shooting just a few months ago. There were MORE shootings over the weekend, as well, just no deaths with those. What the hell got into Lawton over the weekend? Things always ramp up after the first of the month and especially when it coincides with the weekend but this is a bit much for Lawton.

Next up... I WAS in the running to pick up a nice full service contract with Home Depot. I've been devoting a lot of brain power to this for a few days now but no longer because the contract went elsewhere. A Shame, that would likely haven been a year around ordeal and I could use it over the winter when my lawns go away.

So anyway, every time I turn around some new interesting stuff is happening. Most of it not very good, but it's hard not to get caught up in it! Now the distractions are starting to go away... it's Monday... back to business.

Still sort of windy but I think I'll paint the Tristar today! I'm having second thoughts on my cheatline procedure. I was going to go ahead and put them on the gloss over so I could use the cheatline itself as reference to mask to the lower portion. This should be safe to do...  once the decal is clear coated and sealed in I should be able to mask on top of it without ripping the decal back off when I remove the tape. This SHOULD work, right???  I'm having seconds thoughts about this and may resort to tracing the cheatlines onto paper then taping the paper onto the model instead and just using that as my guideline. 

[TheChronicOne]

Got the Tristar painted and it looks much better than the disaster that occured on the last attempt. I didn't take any picture of it but just picture patches of crazing here and there and a lot of orange peel.    Remember who's doing this, too...  this is me we're talking about....  I have more problems painting things, I swear.    THIS TIME the spider seems to have vacated the Tristar model so I didn't have a bunch of cobwebs all over the place.


Pretty smooth, yeah? Next up will be gloss in a couple days. This is matte white.. it's all I have right now.


Making more moves on the 737. Sanding the engines and now they look pretty good. The non-crisp detail of the original engines is still there and I'm not up to the task of making it crisper but I think this work out just fine.



Next up I masked the bottoms of the wings and and temp glued the wings on so I can put Miliput in there and get the correct shape where it glues on. Next I'll put a wee bit of masking on the nacelles to keep the putty off of places I don't want it then start building up the beefier Adv. pylons. It's good to be making progress on this one.

[TheChronicOne]

Stopping long enough to ruminate on ideas for creating an aircraft brought out of retirement and put back into service. The current fiasco with the 737 MAX offers ample fodder for this task so I'm entertaining thoughts of yet another airliner. BUT, I'd like to make something military.

There have been actual thoughts of making new A-7 Corsairs so that's an interesting option within the more plausible "side" but then again the whacky "side" wants me to make a modern B-17 with the grey paint and modern USAF markings. Or... something. 

[Rick Lowe]

There was talk a while ago about new-build Broncos... can't remember if it was here, or BtS.

Ground Attack, FAC, a new cargo fuselage as Maritime Patrol (I have a Bronco and a Hormone earmarked for that scenario...) or whatever.
New engines, new armament, avionics, etc.

Just a thought... 

[PR19_Kit]

There was talk a while ago about new-build Broncos... can't remember if it was here, or BtS.

It's been mentioned in various aviation mags too, and only recently.

[TheChronicOne]

I've heard of this too and out of many options it's one of the more plausible. Even if no US military entity ever bought any I think there's a healthy market for those types of aircraft so that's neat and it could be Panamanian or something. 

Elsewise, (did I just invent a new word?) my Eduard canopy masks arrived today. Boy am I glad because I'm losing steam on my other builds. The 737, well, it's just because I've never done half of the stuff I'm attempting so it slows me down. Same thing on the Pluto.     Tristar, sort of similar... I decided to figure out a better way to mask curved surfaces so I'm back to the drawing board as it were to figure out the best way of doing it. I'm getting a little burned out on the mind-wracking tedium.

So, the masks......I do wonder; they're for the Special Hobby FH-1 kit and my kit is the MPM but I figure they should be close enough to work just fine. This vac canopy has no raised detail, either, so I can fudge things a bit. There are frame lines, but I can go over them and then make things look right in paint. I just hope I'm not wrong! I guess we'll find out here pretty soon. 

[TheChronicOne]

Got the canopy masked and cut out. Indeed, I had to make adjustments here and there to get the masks to work but it all looks just fine I think.




I found myself motivated to work on the other builds at this point. Good deal... I decided to just jump on in and do what I can. So:



Trying the whole "plot the masking without the cheatlines" business with my traced and cut out paper mock ups. I'm not confident everything is straight... I may stop and put the windscreen decal on to help me line things up better but even then this seems less than precise. If I had the actual cheatline transfers down then the masking for the stuff below them is a no brainer but doing it this way, if the line is crooked later I would have to re-paint everything which would include masking over the decals ANYWAY at that point. I'm going to read up in some of my books and stuff about more on this. I'm all about hands on learning but sometimes the booklearnin' needs to go with it.


Last, I'm putting the miliput in and around the old 737 engine pylons. After it all dries I'lldo the best I can to get it shaped correctly. Not sure how this is going to go. I had to choose between this and sheet styrene. It's easier to contour the Miliput to fit the wings, so I went with that....   hopefully it works out in the end, if not, I'll chisel away most of the putty and try the sheet styrene I guess.



Not sure about a lot of this stuff but at least I'm doing SOMETHING so that's a win in my book.

[PR19_Kit]

I tend to put the windscreen decal on airliners first too. It's a lot easier to line up as it's smaller, and once it's there it's a good starting point for the cheat lines etc.

Did you try looking along the cheat line from the nose to line it up? That way you can see if it's parallel to the roof or the wing root a lot easier.

[TheChronicOne]

I did and it looks pretty good but this paper is difficult to get to sit flat and it doesn't contrast with the white paint so there's some doubt. I think I'll go ahead and get the windscreen on and re-evaluate. I will likely also re-do my templates in a darker color. I've avoided situations such as this with my prior efforts but this one has curvy stuff involved and patches of grey amongst the NMF I need to mask for and there's also a strip of white below the cheatlines I need to account for as well. This stuff all combined is really testing my abilities.

[Old Wombat]

Great opportunity to show yourself that you're actually better than you believe you are, Brad!

[Rick Lowe]

There was talk a while ago about new-build Broncos... can't remember if it was here, or BtS.

It's been mentioned in various aviation mags too, and only recently.

Veery Iiinteresting... maybe there's more than just wishful thinking to the rumour? 

[Rick Lowe]

Great opportunity to show yourself that you're actually better than you believe you are, Brad!

Agree 100%

Yoo caan doo eeet!!

And (voice of experience here) even if it's a fluke the first time, it makes you realize it's not that hard and banishes the bogeyman.

Go, Team Brad, Go!! 


Oh and re the Milliput, you do know you can shape it when it's new with a wet finger/tool, right? That way you don't have to carve off too much of the Hard As A Rock set stuff... ask me, etc.

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks y'all!!  Glad to have the support. Probably would have shelved some of this stuff temporarily if not for the help. 

I knew about the Miliput and water ...  a very handy feature and I use it. I ran into problems the first time I used because I tried to fill in an empty space and couldn't get it properly set in there without it moving around so I had to put extra. I learned my lesson there which is to fill in with plastic first to give the Miliput something to attach to and so that I don't have to use as much. In other words.... I tried to build a house without a foundation.

Of course, I'm not too upset by my error because I learned some good lessons and it lead to me having my neat new rotary tool.     Sometimes the best way to learn is to mess things up. 

Phantom. I need to paint the cockpit interior so I can glue on the canopy. After, things should start to progress rapidly. I've checked my reference material again and it seems there's not even little silver areas on wing edges or around the exhaust or anything.... the entire exterior with the exception of the wing walks is blue. How lazy! I love it. Here are the pics I'm using, check them out. Gear doors are especially neat.

https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/mcdonnell-fh-1-phantom-i

I see the radome appears to be a slightly different shade than the blue paint but in scale it might not be noticeable so I'm likely not to represent this. But I wonder is this aircraft correct, or was this an inaccurate resto job(even the wheel hub and gear struts are blue..... ) for the museum?  Maybe I should find some more reference pictures?     I need to find some more anyway to paint the cockpit..

Also going to do some reading. I have a couple very nice model books about airliners in specific so I'm curious to see what they say about the cheatlines and masking curvy stuff to see how close I am with my methodology and to of course pick up some knowledge. I bought the things, may as well use them!



Speaking of books, I picked up a few about a month ago I've been wanting to show everyone.



These things are... like... $3-5 all day long on eBay. Used books are such a great value.

Lastly....  I bought another circle cutter and it arrived less than 48 hours after I ordered. Nice! If I actually needed it right now, though, it wouldn't have arrived until November.