Area 88 1/144: The Upside Down Bomb (DC-10-30 + Kfir)

[strobez]

Ok... sorry to break up shipping and logistics discussion, but I'm workin' On a model here... and I've hit a snag.

In a nutshell, I'm not quite sure how to proceed with the engines. I'd been planning on tackling the engines separately after I got the fuselage sorted out, but I realized that this being a tri-jet... I need to get the tail engine finished before I can get the fuselage put together.

So here's my quandary. The fan for the tail engine sits waaay down the tube, nearly at the back.  According to Revell, bother the interior of the tube and the fan are "silver", but if I paint them before assembly, how will I get rid of the seam along the interior of the tube? Or...without completely ruining my paint job.

Should I just glue it together first, putty and sand with whichever finger fits, and then just spray down the tube and hope for the best?

While I'm at it... is "silver" the best option for paint? Any suggestions on what that translates to in Tamiya acrylics?

[PR19_Kit]

It's pretty difficult  to see down the intake of a DC10 in that scale Greg, and from memory I didn't bother to do any internal PSR in there when I built mine.

But PSRing it after it's assembled, and smoothing with your finger should work OK, assuming your fingers are small enough of course. And I'd actually brush paint the intake and the fan, that way you can make them different colours, intake duct first and then the fan with a greyer shade maybe?

[strobez]

Well I was surprised at how far down the tube the fan sits... it's in the last 1/4.  That means 3/4 of the tube will be visible and that seemed like a lot of seam.

Given my terrible track record with brush painting anything larger than a control stick, I think what I'm going try is to paint both the fan and the interior of the intake with the airbrush (in slightly different colours) and then assemble the interior with a round tape mask in place.  Then some careful PSR and another spray over the seam to blend it and then pull the tape cover off with tweezers in the final step.

If none of that works, I'll just shove the brush down the tube and swirl it around until everything is covered and call it a day. 

Anyway, I started on the interior by closing off the cockipit from the cabin to keep the light from shining down the tube.



Next, I painted everything black.  Since I'm planning for clear windows but no interior, I'm hoping this will give some depth, but still leave some light in the cabin.

[PR19_Kit]

Yes, most of that #2 engine cowling is actually intake duct, and it's the same with a Tri-Star too, except there the duct is bent into a big 'S' shape.

Painting the interior black is a new one on me, that's SEROIUS dedication! Are you putting lights inside it then?

[strobez]

Well, I'm mainly just flying blind here.  I read somewhere on the interweb that painting the interior black if you use clear windows instead of decals will reduce the "toy-like" quality of the model by adding more interior depth.  I probably wouldn't have done much more than that, but spraying the whole thing black wasn't much work, so it seemed worth the effort.

[PR19_Kit]

Ah right, as a died in the wool window decal user I've never done that, but I can see the logic of it.

[TheChronicOne]

Looking good!

[alfavega]

i remember this this scene from the OVA movie, although it was with a Yamato Airlines Boeing 747-100 
looking forward to see this one finished!

https://www.youtube.com/embed/5Z_BewoOw1w?start=4440

[strobez]

Yep.  That's the original Area 88 anime if anyone's interested.  They consolidate a lot of the stories from the manga.  So instead of the 3 main chapters to feature airliners, we have two.  They combined the "Saki pilots Yamato Airlines 747" and "bomb on the DC-10" into one, with the main elements of each.

The chapter where the MB-14 crashes due to negligent parts is also changed to feature a YAL 747, probably to save on the design costs.

I like the anime overalll, but it skips over (or leaves out) so much from the original story and uses rather generic and repetitive airplane colours that I prefer to base my build on the manga.

Speaking of the build...

Since the engines have necessitated a move up the priority list, I removed the fins (as per Kit's orders), trimmed the rear cowling (maybe a bit too much!) and hunted around for some cones.  The spares box yielded up a pair of bombs off a Yak-38, but they might be just a bit too big. I'm trying to strike a balance between small enough to be close to accurate and big enough for no peeking...

[PR19_Kit]

Looking very promising Greg. 

[strobez]

Looking very promising Greg. 

All my builds start out that way... and then I open the box.

Anyway, I sanded down all the offending cut marks, ejector pin marks, and thickness issues and got paint on the engine parts. For lack of much imagination (and limited by my stock of Tamiya acrylics) I painted the fans chrome, the engine interiors aluminum, the rear cowlings metallic grey and the cones dark iron.

I wanted to try for that shiny/oily/weathering effect on the engines that I've seen others do, but I haven't really got a clue how to achieve it.  I suspect I'd need fancier paints and more patience then I've got.

After the pain dries I'm going to give it a coat of Future to protect it from the general PSRing to come in the vicinity. No matter how careful I think I'm being, I always manage to scratch the finish.



I forgot to clear away the DC-3 engines before snapping the DC-10 pics.  Neat to see the general sizing up of from the DC-3 to the DC-10.

While waiting for the paint to dryi, I started glueing in the interior windows.  The ones that came with the box were very thick and a bit scratched from jostling for space in Kit's loft over the last 25 years. So instead I cut some thin clear strips from an iPad screen protector film and glued them into the slots. They're only half the solution.  I plan to fill the windows in from the other side with a clear glue I found off the shelf in a local stationary store.  The test run yielded the best results out of the 6 tests I ran (3 different glues with and without the backing film.  It worked under laboratory conditions, what could possibly go wrong? 

[strobez]

So, I made some good progress last night.

After putting down a coat of Future to protect the finish, I gave the fans a bit of a wash.  I didn't want to overdo it, but it might be hard to see down the end of the engine cowling, so I made it a bit heavier than I might otherwise have.  I think it made the fan blades pop, so that's what I was really after.



Next up was cutting some masking circles.  Usually easy in concept, but hard to implement over an uneven surface.  The fans were merciful and took the masks right away, so an easy job in both concept and operation for once. Yay!



Next I did some glueing to get the cones centered properly in the engine cowlings.  Took a bit of fiddling, but I was able to get them all more or less set up to have the same length sticking out the back end.  As I said, I wanted to make sure there was no peeking, so I took my time to get it just right.



With the engines done, I was able to button up the fuselage.  It's a big one, innit? I remembered some advice I got off a YouTube video about not trying to glue the whole thing at once and I was glad for it.  I took my time and held each section of the joint in the proper location until it was more or less set.  Getting the under carriage to sit properly was a bit of a chore.  It required some twisting and holding, but in the end I'm pretty pleased with the result.  Now on to the PSR phase!

[TheChronicOne]

Magnificent. 

[PR19_Kit]

Nice one Greg, you got those engines spot on for the later CF6s. 

[zenrat]

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I recognise that, it's the DC-10-Ekranoplan...