Happy Easter! I hope the easter bunny was good to you.
We had a very enjoyable easter weekend. Daniel came up from Calgary on Thursday night, and even though Christine is racing to finish her design projects heading into her last week of 3rd year, she was able to join us for a wonderful easter dinner Saturday night, and easter breakfast Sunday. We got to hear Daniel's pending coop presentation for work on Sunday morning, before he headed back to Calgary. Seeing him leave was sad, but it is wonderful to see his excitement as heads back to "his life". Nicholas is in the midst of exams, but will be home for the summer in a couple more weeks. We haven't seen him since early February and it will be great to have him back in the house.
For the first time in a while, it didn't snow on the weekend. The start of the week was miserable, with a big dump last weekend, then more snow Monday, and again on Tuesday evening. I got out my bike on Tuesday, along the Athabasca trail, and had a blast riding in the deep snow. I got out again on Thursday, and rode the trails around Thickwood, around Birchwood, behind Dickensfield and then around Burns Place. Almost 20km in total. The riding was easier as the trails had been groomed smooth. I think that will be the last snow rides this winter. There is snow in the forecast tonight but it looks like we are finally going to maintain some sustained warmer weather.
No news yet on Copper but he is doing better. The medication has helped but he needs to go outside regularly. Luna visited the Vet on Tuesday to be spayed. She was quiet when she got home, but was back to her sassy self by Wednesday night. Keeping her "calm" for 10 - 14 days hasn't been easy. They no longer use the dog cones but instead use tight fitting pyjamas. The cone used to help keep them calm as they would bang into everything. The pyjamas are much more practical but do nothing to slow her down.
Cosmopolitan
The Cosmo is close to finished. The decals were a struggle but were finally on and look okay. The decals come in two parts, with the first part printed on white decal paper while the second part is printed on clear decal paper. This means the RCAF lightening stripe consists of three parts. The first is the centre white portion of the lightening bolt, printed on white decal paper. The second part is the red stripe with the black outlines, printed on clear decal paper. The last piece is the fuselage windows, again printed on clear decal paper. This potentially unwieldy arrangement is needed because the decals are laser printed, which typically cannot print white ink. Application of the white lightening bolt, printed on the white decal paper, ensures that the grey/white separation is properly covered and that there will be a white background for the next decals, printed on clear paper. The initial challenge/disaster occurred when the white lightening bolt was laid in place. As shown in the 3rd photo, there is a grey portion printed on the bottom side of the decal. To my horror, this grey wasn't even close to the grey paint, and looked awful! In a panic, the decals were pulled off and, with a lot of effort, placed back on to the still wet decal paper. (Try sticking a piece of boiled spaghetti back into the package and you will get a sense of how difficult it was to get the wet decal back on to the paper. I knew the on/off cycle had stretched the decals but had no way of knowing how much. I sat there, pondering what to do with a stretched white decal stripe that had an unwanted bottom grey colour border.
Above and Below Graphics have decals for the Cosmo, so that became the back up plan. Using a sharp knife and straight edge, the grey border was carefully sliced off. The decals were then rewetted and reapplied. To my surprise/relief, they looked okay, and the decision was made to apply the red lightening bolt. The red decal was cut into three pieces to help deal with any impact from the stretched white lightening bolt. Cutting the red stripe decal made a huge difference, as it better allowed the window openings to be aligned, and any stretching could be accommodated by overlapping the red pieces. The result, as shown in the first two pictures, was good enough to start on the other side.
Photos 4 and 5 show the application of the red decals and the window decals. I was sure I had taken a picture of the white lightening decal in place but I can't find it.
The finished decals look okay, but something still isn't right. There are 11 window openings on the starboard side, but only 10 would fit. There is limited ability to slide them back and forth, as the lightening bolt zigzag needs to touch the rear of the cockpit windows, and the roundel needs to be ahead of the horizontal stabilizers. It was necessary to cut out a window and slide the rear most portion of the lightening bolt ahead to cover the gap. The port side had something similar, discovered when the door decals were applied. The front door is centered between the rear of the zigzag and the first window. But that puts it in line with the prop blades - an obvious safety issue when boarding - and there is no room to move it forward. The forward tip of the lightening bolt is also supposed to touch the black nose. The nose was painted per RCAF drawings so it is in the right place, yet the tip of the bolt comes up a little short. Oh well, it looks okay and no one would notice if I hadn't mentioned it.
Just the props and landing gear and gear doors is left. The partially painted props, with the red/white/red tips painted and masked, are shown in the sixth picture. The Cosmo has several attenna behind the cockpit, not included in the kit, including a horse shoe shaped antenna that I have no idea how to make.
CPA DC-6
This kit is huge! It will be a challenge to paint as it is larger than my spray booth.
The Vintage Flyer decals are for CF-CZE "Empress of Toronto". The instructions warn you to confirm window configuration before applying the decals. Still sensitive after the Cosmo decal challenges, I compared the kit window openings to the decals and realized they didn't match. The spacing and overall locations were okay but the kit had a number of extra windows. Looking at pictures didn't help at all, as it seemed that every CPA DC-6 had a different window configuration. A google search for CF-CZE hit pay dirt, finding two pictures that clearly showed both fuselage sides. The two links below connect to the pictures I found. The second link includes an interesting story of 1960's are travel if you have 20 minutes spare to read it. Most importantly, the newly discovered pictures confirmed the decal sheet's window configuration was correct, and the extra openings were blanked.
Flying the northern route in the DC-6B “Empress of Toronto”
Testing the wing to fuselage joint hinted at gaps on the upper wing to fuselage joints. The wing consists of five parts. A centre bottom section ensure correct dihedral and gives the wing strength. The two top wing sections are full length. The two bottom wing pieces are short stubs that join with the centre section to create a full span. The second photo shows the two pieces of sprue used to spread the wing opening in an effort to reduce the upper wing gaps. It also shows the plastic strips added to the rear of the fuselage to prevent the centre wing section from sitting too low. Filler was still needed to smooth out the joint, as shown in photo 3. Photo 5 shows the final joint, sanded smooth enough and ready for primer to test the joints.
As expected, I broke the nose gear. It lasted nearly three days of sanding before I caught it on my sleeve. Fortunately, it is thick enough that it holes can be drilled to allow a brass pin to be inserted to help strengthen the repair.
The cockpit windows fit reasonably well, but needed some filler to ensure a smooth joint.
Next week will see the wings completed and the stabilizers added. Painting is going to be a challenge due to the size of this thing.
That's it for this week. Stay safe everyone! Good luck on final exams, final assignments, and coop presentations! I know you will all do great!
Comments