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

[TheChronicOne]

I got one like that recently. The kit box was maybe 10mm wider than the box they stuffed it into so there was a wee bit of mashage on one end.

Monday I'll be in contact with 1001maquettes to see if they're willing to ship me a replacement set without me having to burn more money sending these folded ones back. I guess if I have to, though, I'll send them back and get my refund and go from there.

The other option is they simply tell me to keep the junk ones and give me a refund (or tell me to shove off with no refund) at which point I MIGHT be able to make these work after all. I'll need to measure the cheatlines. There is overlap and even this is mentioned in the instructions so I could squeek by with these. The next problem is the Arabic lettering of the airliner name which the crease is also through. I think the crease is going through an area that wouldn't be hard to duplicate with paint brush or sharpie or something. SOoooo.... these MIGHT work out after all.

Add to that, I still have at least SOME of the decals from the old sheet I tried first time. I think I might have thrown some of it out, though, but I hope not because I normally keep this stuff because I have my decal fix (amazing product!). NATURALLY, I found the ENGLISH airliner name but not the Arabic one. These are just what I found in the kit box with the model, though... I might have put the rest into my decals stash and I could get lucky and find those Arabic letterings. We'll see!!

[TheChronicOne]

Ahhh this is the life.  I painted and built the stairs. Next I have to let the enamel rails dry before I can use the stairs to figure out how long the supports and stuff will be. I'll use toothpick mock-ups. I can cut them down until they are the correct length then once I have that I'll make some sheet styrene angle iron and some sprue rod hydraulics.



Next I'm going to try to paint the windows on the tug.

[Rick Lowe]

 
Shows that just because something is in the background/support, there's still time and effort required.

[TheChronicOne]

I DO have a Saudia 737 sheet Brad, yes. 

It's not the same as yours, it's an ATP decal but it's the same scheme. The sheet has no windows though, just the cheatlines, titles, reggies, fin icon and the door outlines. I could probably rustle up some windows and a windshield too, I've ZILLIONS of those.

I can post them Monday probably if they'll do for you?

Cheers!!   Many thanks. We posted at about the same time earlier and I missed this. No worries on windows and stuff. Give me a chance to see what 1001 has to say and if they'll send me one or not then I'll get back with you.

Shows that just because something is in the background/support, there's still time and effort required.

Truth!! This isn't going as swiftly as I envisioned; has to be done right! 

Should be pretty neat. I'm going to try to frame up the stairs in a fashion that they can be removed from the truck. Gives me options for other stuff down the road.

[zenrat]

Sending transfers like that may not be deliberate.  Definitely incompetent though.

Have you tried sending them a picture and saying "oi, look what you did, how about a non folded set?"

Going to drop them a note Monday. Figured I'd wait for after the weekend and get back into "regular" business hours.  As a courtesy on my part.  It's weird, even though I'm the one getting screwed around I'm still concerned about not hassling others.   

I don't see how a human being can fold something in half and not mean to do it.... I guess if they were sleep walking while they did it that might be an excuse or something but whoever did it knew they did it... I don't see how on Earth they couldn't... Even if it's something silly like they are a blind person they should have had someone else do it.  Unless they have fancy machines these days that stuff envelopes?? 

Have you not spent time with a 14 year old recently?  They are more than capable of folding the transfers like that without realising that it would damage them.  If they were not interested in them then it just wouldn't occur to them they were causing damage.  When confronted they'd just shrug snd go "whaidunno" before looking back to their screen.
When I said deliberate I meant that someone did it out of spite.  It was prolly the 327th sheet they had stuffed in an envelope that day and they were thinking about girls (or boys, or video games, or their phone, or whatever).

[TheChronicOne]

Ohhh! I hadn't considered that; I never really thought it was because someone was trying to spite me, just that it wasn't an accident in general.  If these people are into the hiring of  untrained incompetent people, that too, is egregious. I'm familiar with young teens, but I don't employ them (or otherwise dull people); for the very reasons you mentioned.    They're so loose in the head!!!! Once they get past that nasty puberty mess, they can be some solid workers. I remember when I was 14.....  If me now had to put up with a 14 year old clone of me I'd choke the air out of myself. 

Not sure what is going on with build update....   I wasn't planning on working today but I would have felt guilty working on models or playing video games if I didn't so I went and mowed and picked up garbage. Glad I did, ol' boy have me an $80 tip and I am basically flat broke. My cash money, globally, is ~$15 (until now). We're talking all bank acounts, piggy banks, wallets, and rainy day stashes and vehicle ash trays. HOMIE is BROKE. So that $80 helped tremendously.    BUT as a result, it's now rather late in the day because I slept in.    I didn't leave the house until right at noon.     Nearly 4 now but I can get some work done before I play Mass Effect. 

The enamel is finally dry on the rails of my stairs. I guess now It's time to get my toothpicks chopped to the right length to mock up the supports then start measuring and cutting my styrene angle iron.   

[TheChronicOne]

Alright.. I started at the back to get a pivot point in order to situate the stairs at the right attitude. Did some fancy balancing after that to see what it looks like after adjusting the temp supports. When I make the final ones I'll cut them a tiny wee bit shorter but this works for now to get me going.



Now...  before I commit to doing a whole bunch of measuring, scoring, cutting, and gluing, I need to gather some opinions on whether or not I'm overburdening the VW with all this crap. I've seen pictures of light weight, small tired stair trucks but they don't typically have a set of stairs that look so bulky and heavy as these do.   

[Old Wombat]

Hi Brad.

I'm sorry to say that the stairs look over-scale, to me, & do seem to make the Combi appear to be considerably overloaded.

[TheChronicOne]

BOLLOX!     I think I agree. I can move the stairs at an angle that makes things look "better" but then the steps aren't horizontal and that's just window dressing so it's a no go. I'm not going to disrespect my VW like that.    I think I will turn it into a baggage hauler with two or three carts behind it in a train. THAT would be perfectly suited for this and then I can take these stairs and put them on a larger vehicle. 

[Old Wombat]

Or you could build a set of stairs using .5mm (.02") styrene & fine wire or brass rod for the hand-rails & supports.

[DogfighterZen]

Or you could build a set of stairs using .5mm (.02") styrene & fine wire or brass rod for the hand-rails & supports.

Why use brass rods? There are thin styrene rods from Evergreen and then there's the old bag or box of old empty sprues... 
Now, i'm saying this cause i always try to avoid mixing metal and plastic, i hate CA glue. You can't go wrong with styrene and TET. I know, PE and resin are all glued with CA and i have a few items of both materials but i'll only use it exclusively on those parts.

[zenrat]

Ohhh! I hadn't considered that; I never really thought it was because someone was trying to spite me, just that it wasn't an accident in general.  If these people are into the hiring of  untrained incompetent people, that too, is egregious. I'm familiar with young teens, but I don't employ them (or otherwise dull people); for the very reasons you mentioned.    They're so loose in the head!!!! Once they get past that nasty puberty mess, they can be some solid workers. I remember when I was 14.....  If me now had to put up with a 14 year old clone of me I'd choke the air out of myself...

I was a horrible child.  If I met myself now i'd hate myself.

However, you should see some of the badly packed items that come through our hands in the post Office.
Best (or worse if you like) that i've seen was a coke drinking glass that had just had brown paper wrapped round it.  Apart from anything else it was lucky no-one got badly cut.

[TheChronicOne]

I ain't going to scratch build anything other than supports and even that's pushing it. The objective is to relax a little bit and I don't need to be engineering things from the ground up.     I'm already going to have my hands full building the PE airstars for NorthWest Orient BDDBDBDBDBBDBDBD Cooper lighted in flight 727 project. 


On chat and email with 1001. I'll have a verdict pretty soon I guess. Not expecting much because of their infuriating return policy (that my stupid arse should have read ahead of time, but I wasn't expecting problems ordering such simple thing).  The proper course of action would be, "Wow, we're sorry, we apparently hired an ape to stuff envelopes, due to OUR error, we are sending you another copy of the decals for free, shipping paid by us."  This turns a 1 star review into a 4 star review out of 5 at least but customer service and personal responsibility are both dying breeds these days.

[TheChronicOne]

OK. The Customer service side of 1001 was good and they're shipping me a new set of decals so I can rest easy now. They didn't mention anything about sending the old ones back so this means I can start work on some of them from this folded sheet and wait for the cheatlines and airline name to arrive later. I still have a bit of work to do on the engines anyway. So, that's now THREE sheets of decals going toward this blasted thing. Hopefully I won't need a fourth, but if I do, Kit has my back. Let's see if we can get this one knocked out by Christmas.... 

Right now I'm painting the tug.

[TheChronicOne]

This has turned out to be some really fun stuff right here!!  It was weird getting started but there's a certain point when you have all your paints and supplies situated and you can switch between them quickly and when the details and stuff start to show up it's pretty neat. 

I decided to just hand paint this whole thing with brush and acrylics and dispense with things like rattle cans and masking tape. It's so tiny. On that note, I've had to use sharpened toothpick to paint quite a bit of it as even my smallest brush seems obese on this thing.





Still a fair amount of stuff yet needing actual painting then the touch-up phase. I may also try to find some sort of tiny decals to put on it somehow. I'd like to find some tiny stencils to use to represent "Schopf" and other words that should be on it.