It’s first week of April. March went out like a lamb and things are finally starting to melt. The week started out with temperatures just above zero, allowing what was probably the final winter bike ride on snow. It's on its way to +10 today, so the annual spring ritual of cleaning up dog poop is well under way.
There has been a geomagnetic storm for most of this week, and it has generated widespread, strong aurora. Naturally, we had cloudy skies and intermittent rain and snow for the first two days of the aurora display. Finally, after 2 straight days of solid cloud, the skies cleared Friday night and I got some pictures. The iPhone does remarkably well with night pictures.
Alpha Jet
Progress has been slow this week. I spent the first two days of the week filling and sanding on the Cosmo. Then other mundane things limited the time to work on it.
It took much longer than expected to get the wings and horizontal stabilizers on and cleaned up. I added an ACMI pod, a resin casting I got years ago at Uncle Bill’s, that took considerable effort to clean up and paint. Hornets and Hawks attach the pod to the wingtip sidewinder rails, but the Alpha Jet doesn’t have any. The pod was instead attached the the inner starboard pylon, but it wasn’t immediately clear how the pod was attached to the pylon. I finally found a clear picture that showed the pod attached to some sort of brace, similar to a sidewinder rail, that was then attached to the pylon. I fashioned a brace from a couple pieces of the leftover Cosmo backing sheet, glued together and then sanded into the appropriate shape.
I sat down on Saturday afternoon, determined to finish it - and didn’t. The kit includes a number of the antenna and protuberances of the real plane - some of which are actually real. It took some time to figure out what was right, rearrange some of the parts, and make some new ones, and Saturday eventually ran out. A couple hours on Sunday got everything attached, and the ejection seats back in place. The plane has become very difficult to handle, as there are bumps or antenna pretty much everywhere.
The plane is now essentially complete, with just a couple things left to do. There are two white decals to install on the inside of the canopies, to represent the detonation cord, before the canopies can be reinstalled. I will try and clean up all the little bits of sanding debris, tenaciously attached by static, before spraying a final semi-gloss coat to even out the sheen from all the “clean ups” on the wings and upper fuselage.
Photos 1 & 2 - Start of the day on Sunday.
Photos 3 thru 8 - the completed plane.
Cosmopolitan I had intended to work on the Alpha Jet at the start of the week, but the Cosmo fuselage halves were lying on the desk come Monday. I figured it could hurt to glue them together and just kept at it for the next two days. The two fuselage halves went together surprisingly well, but it became apparent that the fuselage was a little short on one side at the tail. I decided to fill the moulded-in cockpit windows, and the windows along the fuselage, and use decals instead. The kit also includes decals for the doors and cargo hatches, so these were also filled and sanded.
The really big effort became apparent when the wings were test fit. The fuselage opening was several millimeters longer than the wings, and was also several millimeters deeper than the wings were thick. Blue tack was used to bring the wings to the correct depth, and copious amounts of superglue was used to fill the front and back wing openings. Three rounds of filling, shaping and sanding ensued to get the underside of the wing to fuselage joint closed up and into shape. Perfect Plastic Putty, a clay based putty that can be shaped and ”sanded” with a wet Q-tip, was used to fill in the joint along the top of the wing. And with all that done, it was starting to look like a Cosmo.
Photo 1 - fuselage halves, with plastic strip added to brace the fuselage seam
Photo 2 - initial fill of the windows.
Photo 3 - initial fill along the fuselage underside
Photo 4&5 - three fill and sand cycles were needed to even out the windows
Photo 6 - moulded in misalignment of the horizontal stabilizers needs to be corrected
Photo 7 - the stabilizers were drilled and pinned to reinforce the joint, and to allow the stabilizers to be placed in the correction location. Now it is just a matter of filling and sanding.
Photo 8 - first prime of the fuselage to find gaps and mistakes.
Photo 9 - the wing to fuselage gap is large
Photo 10 - first layer of four needed to fill in the wing to fuselage gaps
Photo 11 - the gap along the top of the wing needed filling
Photo 12&13 - lots of sanding to smooth everything out.
Photo 14 - Getting close. Fourth, and hopefully the last, layer of filler applied to the rear of the wing to fuselage joint.
That’s it for this week. Back to working taxes come Monday. More warm weather expected so more dog poop cleaning will also be on the agenda. Stay safe.
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