Christmas update

It’s Sunday again, so time for an update.

Christmas is successfully over. Quieter this year, and certainly lower key. All the kids are doing remote learning so they are all home. No delayed flights or lost luggage worries this year, but lots of FaceTime calls to replace face-to-face visits.

Still waiting for the new A220 decals. Mail and parcels have been slow because of sheer volume, and we are still waiting for several Christmas presents to arrive. Not the end of the world but would be nice to get the A220 finished. That has meant that progress has been slow but steady on the Avenger and the 737.

Avenger

The Avenger was a Christmas/birthday present from Dave last year, and included an Eduard PE set and a Belcher Bits RCN conversion set. My experience with Eduard PE, especially the cockpit sets, is that they include too much detail. That means stuff that is so tiny it isn’t humanly possible to install, and this set was no different. A dry fit of the cockpit in the fuselage showed that little internal detail would be visible, even with the huge RCN greenhouse. The kit instrument panel was nicely detailed, but had no decals, so everything would need to be painted. I have not had much success painting panels, so the Eduard PE panel seemed like the right path.

Eduard also requires that many kit details are removed or scraped back to install their parts. The instrument panel needed to be sanded flat, as well as several bits on the kit side consoles. The Eduard panel is 4 parts in 3 layers, and then a dozen switches need to be added. I made an attempt to add some of the switches but after the first two disappeared into the unknown, I gave up. The details are simply too small, almost impossible to handle, and practically invisible once installed. With the instrument panel done, all the internal bits and pieces were sprayed interior green and assembly began.

The Belcher set doesn’t affect the front of the cockpit much, but requires major alterations to the rear. The most noticeable is the removal of the kit turret assembly, replaced with a new observers seat and radar operator’s console. The affected areas were carefully marked out and then the plastic was very carefully cut out with a razor saw.

Detail building, PE and painting could now progress in earnest. The Belcher parts were cleaned up, painted and installed. The Eduard set included a PE seat that was dutifully folded up. It didn’t look “beefy” enough when placed against the kit seat, and installing was going to be a pain, so the kit seat was painted and installed instead. I am sure I took a picture but it must have joined the two PE switches that disappeared. A black pinwash was applied to all the bits and pieces to pop the details.

Remember the comment from the last post about the quality of Accurate Miniature’s instructions? The kit is really nice, with good details and parts fit, but the instructions are terrible. The cockpit rests on the bomb bay roof, but I couldn’t figure out how. There was no definitive placement, and the floor could slide a couple inches back and forth on the bomb bay roof. The instructions just gave a vague suggestion as to placement. I thought I had it figured out, but a dry fit wasn’t successful, and the fuselage sides wouldn’t close up. Further fiddling discovered that the cockpit was too far back. Moving it forward a couple centimetres (yeah, I had it that wrong) and suddenly things worked. Well, almost worked. The bulkhead behind the pilot’s seat pinged off into the ether, apparently installed in the wrong spot. It was found after a complete clean up of the desk and then installed in the correct spot.

It was now time to install the Belcher radar station and observer‘s seat. The radar station fit well, but the observer’s seat was a different story. The instructions suggest you build a jig, 1/4” high, to support the frame. The seat sits on the desk, and then six supports are supposed to be glued between the seat and the frame. Yup, six. I decided to use brass wire, rather than stretched sprue, to make the seat supports. The seat and frame are resin, so I couldn’t use plastic cement with the stretched spruce. And then began a hour long adventure of trying to glue the six supports in place. I started out using thick CA, figuring the slower cure time would give me some time to place each support. That didn’t work, as the glue wasn’t viscous enough to hold the support, and I couldn’t hold the part steady enough, for long enough, to let it cure. After some choice words, I switched to normal CA. A spot of glue was added to the seat, then the support was held in one hand while an applicator with accelerator was held in the other hand. The support was put into place, and then the accelerator was applied immediately. The last picture in the set below shows the seat and frame painted and in place. In the same picture, the flare storage bulkhead is also shown in place. Belcher said the flare bulkhead went just behind a specific vertical frame. It fit well but covered a window. That didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t get the bulkhead to fit on the other side of the frame. So it was installed covering the window.

The last internal detail to install was the rear bulkhead and the rear wheel bay. The instructions weren’t specific (surprise!) as to where the two bulkheads went. Trial and error eventually worked out a place that seemed to work. The rear landing gear was supposed to be installed next, attached to the rear bulkhead. The gear was very long, and very slender, and stuck a long way out of the fuselage. That seemed like a guaranteed way to break it a half dozen times no matter how careful I was. Thankfully, a quick test fit showed that the gear could be added after the fuselage was joined.

Amazingly, with all the bits and pieces from the kit, Eduard and Belcher installed, the fuselage halves closed! It was very busy in there, with little empty space, so it was a pleasant surprise it all fit. Eduard is renowned for PE instrument panels that are too wide and impair closing up the fuselage. My initial effort seemed good, with no issues. Gently squeezing the halves fully closed resulted in a distinct ping and the instrument panel launched itself across the desk. I didn’t see where it went, but heard it land in the far corner. For the 2nd time in a week, I was cleaning the desk to find a part! An hour later, with the desk and the floor spotless, and I still hadn’t found the instrument panel. Looking in the fuselage opening, trying to figure out what to do, I realized that the panel was still in the fuselage, trapped under the pilot’s seat. Doh! No idea what I heard but huge (embarrassed) relief I had the panel. With the instrument panel carefully reattached, everything was ready to be closed up. A couple of pictures to prove what was inside as very little of it would be seen once the fuselage sides were joined.

737

The Airfix kit is pretty simple, and went together pretty quickly. Eight pennies were added to the nose for weight to keep it from being a tail sitter. Fuselage sears were generally okay, but the landing gear bay insert was a mess. The cabin doors were also a problem. The kit has separate doors for the passenger cabin and 2 more for the luggage areas. Not clear why, as there are no provisions to pose them open, and nothing inside to see. Even closed, all the doors stood grossly proud of the fuselage, and needed aggressive sanding and filling to get a decent fit. Several layers of filling and lots of sanding was needed before I had something worth trying some primer on.

I used Milliputt to close up the cabin windows. The putty was placed on the inside, then pushed thru the window openings until it squeezed thru. I let it sit for a few minutes before using a sharp blade to trim the putty flush to the fuselage outside. The putty was then left overnight to cure, then sanded smooth. This process worked really well, with only a little extra filler needed for a final result.

Remember the raised panel lines? They were gone - obliterated - by the sanding. I didn’t relish the idea of re-engraving them. After staring at lots of pictures, real and model, I decided that the panel lines weren’t visible and let them alone.

My Nazca decals included decals for the spoilers but not the flaps, so i filled the spoilers and sanded them smooth. Several sessions with filler were required to smooth the fuselage and wing seams. After wet sanding with increasingly finer grit sandpaper, I tried some primer. The primer helps point out were more effort is required, and it was quickly apparent that the seems needed more work.

The resin engines were cut from the pour blocks and tested. They fit fairly well, with relatively little fiddling needed. However, the resin had quite a rough texture, and needed a lot of sanding to get it smooth. PWA engines were natural metal, so effort now would pay off later.

With the 2nd round of filler sanded out, I tried another primer layer. Again, the primer showed more work was needed, and another round of filler and sanding ensued. The 3rd primer attempt looked good, and it was time for some paint.

That brought up the big challenge. PWA didn’t use a cheat line to separate the upper and lower colours, meaning it had to be right the first time. Eliminating the doors and filling in the windows eliminated all the reference points. The Fowler decals included the blue areas, while the Draw decals required the blue area to be painted. I wasn’t confident that the Fowler decals would fit, and I was worried about needing to mix a custom blue paint for touch ups. After some thought, I decided to scan the Fowler decals and see if I could create masks using my cutter. A half hour tracing the decal scan in the cutter software, and I had a mask for one side. It was quickly apparent the Fowler decals were only approximate to the Airfix kit, and didn’t fit well on the tail or rear fuselage area. But the mask concept worked well enough to prove that they could be used to establish the colour separations.

My planned path forward would now be:

1. paint the silver areas - the engines, the bottom of the fuselage, the leading edges of the wings and the horizontal stabilizers, and the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer.

2. paint the light grey areas. This included the wing to fuselage area, and all the moving parts on the wing trailing edges

3. paint the dark grey areas. This was the center section of the top and bottom surfaces of the wings and the horizontal stabilizers

4. paint the upper fuselage white

5. paint the blue tail and fuselage stripe.

It was about here that I realized that the Fowler and Draw decals were different. The most noticeable difference was the speedbird emblem on the tail. The Fowler decals had the emblem centred on the tail while the Draw decals drawings had the bottom of the emblem touching the trailing edge of the tail. The Fowler decals were for C-GPWW, and I had actually found several pictures of this plane online. The first picture showed the bottom of the emblem touching the trailing edge, like Draw showed. The 2nd picture had the emblem centred, like the Fowler drawings. So, somewhere along the line, the PWA scheme evolved. Minor detail for sure, but interesting to figure out. I altered my mask to match the Draw decal drawings.

With that sorted out, I sprayed the silver. What a disaster!. What looked okay under primer was awful under the silver. The fuselage seams were still visible, and the rough engine surface remained very apparent. Back to sanding and filling before getting a silver that looked good enough.

I have been using a specific picture as a reference. Google refuses to allow me to save it, but you can see it here. https://www.google.com/search?q=pacific+western+737&rlz=1C9BKJA_enCA826CA827&hl=en-US&tbm=isch&prmd=minv&sxsrf=ALeKk01X_aXQG7R6jTHdTmmV_fGZWHRAww:1607298651667&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjupLiJxrrtAhWyoFsKHSS-BCQQ_AUIFSgC&biw=1366&bih=909&dpr=2#imgrc=hMvAE_Lssi8FGM

One of the distinctive features is that the metallic finish on the engines isn’t uniform. It is a mix of shiny, dull, and darker areas that I decided to try and replicate. A half hour of masking and it was time to spray. Some in progress and end shots with the masking removed.

That’s were things are at. Another week of vacation so should be a good update next weekend.