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

[Nick]

That brings up an interesting memory. I swear I read about one time where divers would dive flooded nuke silos seeing as how they could be, once flooded, hundreds of feet deep.

Not far off. There's a few silo dive sites across the States, like this one in Washington. Got $200? Jump right in!
http://www.underseaadventures.net/titan-i-missile-silo-silo-diving-dive-into-history.htm

There's a couple of restored museum silos too. One day I shall fly over and do a road trip to see them.

[TheChronicOne]

Not far off, I'd say I was dead-on accurate! Pretty interesting stuff. Hell, that's downright inexpensive even for "poor folk" like me!  Of course, SCUBA in and of itself carries a hefty price tag with all that's involved. I have a cousin that does the SCUBA and works in law enforcement. He's been on some pretty interesting stuff. Or should I say, IN some pretty interesting stuff. 


No productivity today. I planned to paint more on the BoP but I got stuck for FOUR HOURS just trying to invert the Y axis on a game controller. I wound up having to do all sorts of things starting when I was forced to download an "app" to force it to work because the game I was playing didn't support it without an excruciatingly tedious amount of work reconfiguring dozens and dozens of commands. Problem was that in order to simply use this stupid app, I had to sign in to a Microsoft account. NATURALLY.... when I did so, my account was locked for some inexplicable reason and thus set off a domino effect of bullcrap that kept going and going and going. So... by time I got it all worked out my hobby time was up in smoke.      Oh well.......  at least I figured it all out but now that's one less day I have to get the BoP finished. 

[TheChronicOne]

Quick update while I take a break from working on the Klingon ship. I'm painting the hell out of it and trying to get it wrapped up so I can assemble it and get on with clear and transfers but painting all this tiny detail is so time consuming and the bad thing is I'm not going to know what the total package will look like until I'm done. There's no guide for this type of thing... no reference... so I'm just doing "best guess" and hoping for the best. Another problem I'm definitely going to have is putting said transfers on! There's no real room for it and I probably should have waited on some of the painting until after I put some on but.... this is truly flying by the seat of my pants here.

[zenrat]

Wow!  I didn't realise how small this was.

[TheChronicOne]

Painstakingly small. I can hold the entire kit in my palm. Luckily the next one in the series, a Romulan D'Dederidex, is way bigger so I won't have to do this type of thing again for a good while. The Ferengi kit (all these came from the 3 piece "Adversary" set) was the same way as this BoP. Days and days of paint, 10 minutes or less of assembling. 

[Rick Lowe]

All coming along well there, Brad.
Yeah, the BoP is a cute li'l thing, emphasis on the "LI'L"...

The Cessna is a nice little kit, too. You wouldn't happen to consider the Vietnam-era Loach Minigun fit as an option?
(I've just finished reading Hugh Mills' book on his time with the 'Outcasts'...)

Family - nothing can be as comforting, yet can mess you up, in quite the same way... 
But yeah - what happens on the forum stays on the forum.
And I understand where you're coming from, being as I tick a lot of the Grumpy White Guy boxes.  (you darn kids - get off my lawn!)

Anyhoo, stay sane and know you can always vent here and we won't judge you. Much. Too Often.

[TheChronicOne]

Hell yeah, and thanks!  Li'l is dead-on. It's been rather enjoyable, though. Tedious and sometimes frustrating but when it goes well it's neat. I bought some fancy brushes a while back from overseas and OH MY GOD....  having actual quality brushes does make a hell of a difference. All the practice has helped but I can tell a marked difference between when I try something small with a cheap brush versus a good one.


Wasn't family this time,  just some meathead new property manager up the chain in my contracting affairs.    I was bitching at length like it was family problems, though.     Felt good, too.

I can't wait to build that Cessna. I love the little Arii kits. I have two of these and one or two of the float plane versions and one a piece of the rest of the set. I built the Bonanza back in the day, one of my first builds here in fact, and right after I started back up!    

Painting the BoP....  mostly done.. I have the engine exhaust to paint still but I'm undecided on how I want it. Everything else is done, however. Just need to glue it all together then get the transfers on. I've already glossed some of it (and also assembled some).

[NARSES2]

Wow!  I didn't realise how small this was.

Nor did I. I'd naively assumed it was twin engine'd bomber size, B-25/Wellington sort of thing. Makes me even more impressed 

[TheChronicOne]

A real test of patience. No way to mask any of this crap so it's all down to brush painting free-hand and hoping for the best. A fair amount of going back and patching up mistakes. Cheated and used some markers for the red and that helped. It also gave good variation to the colors which is on target for a Klingon ship and sci fi stuff in general...  I just hope that when I get it all together it doesn't look overdone and tacky.

Today is the last tiny bit of painting on the BoP then I clear the stuff and glue it together then it's time for transfers and pictures! I will easily have this done by evening. Knock on wood. 

[TheChronicOne]

Alright, finished the BoP just in the nick of time! Less that four hours to spare. I was pretty happy to have made the deadline.



Is it too much? I kind of think all the color everywhere kind of lends to the fighting nature of it.. war paint or something. Bold colors. I can also see how it could be considered overkill, though. I'm quite happy with it, myself. 

I'm eager to get started on the Cessna now.. but I need to go look to see when the GB for it starts.   

This leaves me with the Valon which will definitely be worked on tomorrow.  Then there are the two airliner builds, the PSA Tristar and the Saudia 737, that have been going on for years now & mentioned numerous times. I have managed bits and pieces of work on these over the time and especially recently so I never truly considered them stalled builds but they're pretty damn icy, that's for sure.    So... it would be nice to get a bit done on these, two, if I catch a break with the Valon.

[NARSES2]

That's nice 

I'm eager to get started on the Cessna now.. but I need to go look to see when the GB for it starts.   

1st March, two weeks today.

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks and thank! Two weeks....  that's not so bad. I might clip out the parts or might not but that gives me some time to try to get some work done on the those two airliners and naturally I will be finishing the Valon very soon as well. On that today, in fact. I need to find the letters to spell "NASA" but once that is achieved it's just a matter of slapping the decals on and clearing over them. I also have some touch up painting to do.... I need to paint the nav lights and arrestor hook and there are some edges needing cleaned up. I've still not made my mind up about the drop tanks. They sit unpainted but it would only be a matter of minutes to throw some paint on and get them cleared. I like drop tanks but I'm worried they might ruin the clean lines of the airplane.......      sometimes it's just nice to see a sleek, streamlined version of something that normally has all sorts of crap hanging off of it.

[Rick Lowe]

If it's a chase plane, they're going to be operating pretty close to the barn, and wouldn't need the tankage to cross continents...

'Sides, you could always say they're taking a short hop as a check or familiarization flight,

[TheChronicOne]

Sounds good to me! It does have the lil area rule tanks on the tips so that helps.    I'll play around with them a bit and do some mock-up pics and might even do a half and half when it's completed. In other words... why not do both?    Seems an interesting idea and good way to go about it. Whether or not I permanently attach them with glue can be left up to decide after.

[Rick Lowe]

We have a Plan!