Congratulations Christine! She has completed her thesis project, with a public presentation last Thursday, marking the end of her 4 year degree in Interior Design. We are so proud of you!
In the midst of finishing her thesis project and other assignments, a fan on her computer died. Christine was able to borrow a computer while waiting for hers to be repaired. Dell was able to get a tech over to replace the defective fan, and she was able to complete her final term thesis project on time. Her thesis is for an oncology center in Fort McMurray, build in a repurposed school adjacent to the existing hospital, and ran an impressive 158 pages long, containing 22 construction documents.
With school completed, next steps are to pack up her apartment and return to Fort McMurray. The chosen movers have been challenging, changing the contracted pick up dates three times. The first date simply wouldn't work, as they only gave her a few hours notice, and it was the same day she was doing her presentation. They called back the next morning to propose the coming Monday. This was acceptable, and would allow Christine to change her flights and come home almost a week earlier. With her flights rebooked, the movers called to request a new date, one that was after she was now supposed to leave. It was finally agreed that they would come Tuesday, after she has gone to the airport, so Christine has arranged for a friend to meet the movers and then turn in her apartment key.
Nicholas' pre employment testing challenges continued after his abortive attempt to get to Calgary for the previously scheduled test. He was rescheduled for testing in Calgary on May 1, the same day he was supposed to start work. Syncrude now only holds new hire orientation the first Monday of each month, which coincidentally was also May 1. If he missed orientation because of testing, the next opportunity for orientation was the beginning of June, meaning he would miss a month of work. He took the initiative and gave them dates his exam schedule could accommodate, and scheduled testing in Fort McMurray on April 19. Fortunately he had a 9 day break between finals so he was able to fit the testing in without impacting his studies. It was a whirlwind day and a half trip but it was nice to see him again.
Nicholas has now written 3 of 4 finals and felt good about them all. The last one is later this coming week, and then he comes home for the summer at the end of the month.
We had the pleasure of having Daniel home for a few days on the Easter weekend. He is now in the midst of his finals exams, having completed the first two. He thinks both went well.
The stomach problems I noted last blog have continued. I went to the walk in clinic on the Thursday before Easter, and received several prescriptions to manage nausea. They may have helped get me thru the Easter weekend but things took a turn for the worse come Easter Monday. By the Tuesday night I was so nauseous that Marie drove me to Emergency. We arrived about 10:30 pm to find it very full, Thankfully I was prioritized and into a exam area by midnight. I was pumped full of anti nausea and anti gas medicines, and they ran a battery of tests. The testing didn't show anything wrong, and by 3:30 AM I was feeling a little better, so they sent us home with more medicine. The ride back home badly upset my stomach and I hadn't been home 20 minutes before vomiting violently. The next few hours were a series of trips to the bathroom to manage vomiting and diarrhea. Past experience has learned it is important to stop eating, and give my stomach a chance to recover, so I stopped eating for the next three days. Feeling better, I began to introduce small amounts of bland food last Monday morning, and slowly began the effort to return to normal. Almost a week later, my appetite hasn't really returned, but I am feeling better. Fingers crossed this is now done for another year.
Unfortunately it wasn't to be. The above paragraph was written Thursday afternoon while I waited for Nicholas to complete his pre work testing. An hour after we got home and the familiar signs of stomach upset were coming back. Another round of vomiting commenced and it was early to bed. Friday was better and there were signs by Friday night and Saturday morning that this was finally running its course. It is now Sunday afternoon and things are holding. Fingers crossed I am finally done with this.
I had planned to go to Calgary April 14, to see the Supertrain show, and help Michelle with a doctor's appointment. I decided it best to cancel as I wasn't confident I was healthly enough. I have tentatively planned to try again around the beginning of May, with the Volvo booked for service on May 4.
Being that sick really kills motivation, and I haven't done much of anything. As I have started feeling better this week, I got the tires changed on the Volvo and my bike, started patching main floor walls in preparation for painting, and spent a little time at the workbench. With most of the snow gone from the back yard, I also spend an afternoon doing yard work.
As noted above, I had done some patching of the brown main floor walls. My intent was to simply touch up the patches using existing paint that matched the colour, but two things foiled my plan. The first was unexpected, and set me back a day. I had filled a large ding in the stairway wall, on the stair landing, and gave it a day to dry. Coming down the stairs the next day, I noticed the patch was gone! Looking around downstairs, I noticed several other patches were also gone. It was soon clear that at least one dog was licking the patching material out of the wall, and we later caught Luna in the act. Another round of patching and sanding ensued to restore the earlier efforts.
With the walls ready for touch up, I headed downstairs only to find my can of brown paint was dried up. The paint in the house is Colour Your World, now long gone, so new paint isn't available. I have had some luck getting paint color matched, and resorted to that path. Unfortunately, the new paint is just a shade lighter than the existing, meaning I will have to repaint most of the main floor brown walls. Some thought will be required for the front foyer, as I don't know how to paint the 20 ft high walls.
Ember continues to test our patience and skills. House training is going well, and her only risk of accidents is when she is too excited to remember to ask to go out. Her new habit is to jump up on people without warning, and I have spilled a couple cups of morning coffee when she has jumped into my lap as I was sitting down.
Anson
Not much progress on any models, but I got a little time at the bench as I started to feel better.
With markings complete and decals on, the model was sprayed with a gloss clear coat to prepare for weathering. Photos show these planes to have been used hard, but they were well maintained and kept clean, so weathering will be kept to a minimum. A home made medium gray acrylic wash was used to highlight details, add the appearance of wear in high use areas, and add a hint of grime.
Most restored Ansons are done in a high gloss yellow paint. Pictures suggest the actual planes, when in service, varied from matte to a light sheen finish. I decided on a light sheen, so started by spraying a 50/50 mix of Tamiya semi gloss and flat clear finishes. This dried too flat for my liking so I went to a 70/30 mix and got the slight shine appearance I wanted.
All that was left was to add the landing gear and install the final detail pieces. The landing gear looking simple but proved much more difficult than expected. Neither the main gear nor the rear bracing strut had positive location points, and it was difficult to get them to stay in place. The connection between the two pieces was even worse, with the rear brace simply resting on the bottom of the main gear leg. I was worried the small glue surfaces wouldn't be strong enough to support the model but it worked okay.
Next step will be to remove the canopy masking, add the props, some rigging for the horizontal stabilizers and radio antenna, and add a handful of detail pieces. The finish line is in sight!
Photo 1 - Decals and markings complete
Photo 2 - Landing gear installed
Photo 3 - Weathering added and light sheen applied
Photo 4 - Weathering added and light sheen applied.
MiG-21 Fishbed
I am enjoying this build immensely. The instructions are excellent, and the model looks fantastic as it goes together.
I had understood this to be the first of Eduard's "super kits," with exceptional detail and excellent fit. There is no question the kit incorporates exceptional detail, but the fit has only been good rather than excellent. It may be operator error but I have had to fiddle and adjust fit on most of the main assemblies. The worse was the upper wing to fuselage joints, where I could not avoid noticeable gaps. Perfect Plastic Putty was used to advantage to fill the gaps without loss of any of the fine surface detail.
As for detail, the kit includes multiple separate parts for vents, louvers and other "lumps" that other vendor's would typically mould into the fuselage. The detail parts are often very tiny, needing good tweezers and better magnification to install. The end result is impressive but it takes patience to get there. I have had to spend a fair bit of time on the floor, looking for tiny parts that escaped the tweezers. Photo 6 shows the oleo scissors on the main landing gear, consisting of two very small parts that need to be joined, and then attached to gear leg. One small intake vent was missing from the sprue when I went to cut it, and no amount of looking on the bench or the floor could find it. I gave up after an hour of cleaning and searching and called it a day. I came down later in the evening to grab something from the shop, looked down, and there was the part, lying on the floor. It is now safely installed!
All the major components are now in place. Next up will be the landing gear, weapons and pylons, and then to begin preparation for paint.
Photo 1 - Bottom seam needed some work
Photo 2 - Large gaps allow the top of the wings
Photo 3 - Gaps filled
Photos 4&5 - Beginning to look the part
Photo 6 - Needed fine tweezers to build the main great oleo scissors!
CF-5D Freedom Fighter
Canadian military procurement has never been a strong point. Outside of the world wars and the Cold War, the Canadian Forces have typically been neglected and forgotten. Equipment purchases have often been driven by political agenda rather than military need, and the CF-5 is another example.
Canada's NATO commitment from the 1960's thru the 1980's was for low level quick response nuclear attack, performed by the CF-104, and tactical air support of ground forces. No existing aircraft was able to meet the tactical support requirements so the military went looking for new planes. Ideally, the new plane would also be able to provide pilot transition training, filling the gap between initial pilot training on prop aircraft to service in fast jets. The potential list of candidates included a number of familiar 60's aircraft, with the military desiring the American F-4 Phantom. Government procurement dictated substantial Canadian content, preferably with construction in Canada. Few companies were willing to license out their designs, and the list of potential candidates shrunk rapidly. A license build version of the Northrop F-5 was eventually selected, with aircraft to be build by Canadair in Montreal. After much debate, a total of 240 aircraft were produced, consisting of 89 single seat A models, 49 dual seat D models for the RCAF, and 75 single seat and 30 dual seat aircraft for the Netherlands. It would be the last fighter jet assembled in Canada.
I have always admired the lines of the CF-5, and particularly the two seat D model. The extended length of the two seat cockpit adds grace and balance to the overal design. To me, the plane looks clean and graceful, with it's small size and light weight suggesting speed and high manueverability.
Lacking the mojo to work on one of the existing builds, I pulled out the CF-5 kit one afternoon and soon had the major parts trimmed from the sprues. A test fit confirmed fit would be as challenging as I remembered from my earlier build of a CF-5A. Kinetic chose a design that maximized parts use across both the single and dual seaters, with a two part year fuselage assembly that was common to both single and dual seat models. The two part front section included the nose, cockpit and intakes, with separate versions being moulded for the single seat and dual seat kits. Fit problems occur at the joint between the common rear fuselage and the separate two seat front section. Kinetic recommends assembling the rear fuselage separately from the front fuselage, and then mating the two sections together. Unfortunately this results in a very poor fit at the intakes, with a noticeable step at the intake to fuselage joint that is very difficult to remove. Instead, I chose to join the left and right front and rear fuselages sections together to form two complete fuselage halves. This forces the step away from the intakes and up to the top of the fuselage, where it is easier to work.
Photo 1 - Main components taped together. I love the look of this plane
Photo 2 - One of the major fit challenges is the wing to fuselage transition along the bottom of the fuselage.
Photo 3 - The joined front and back fuselage sections. The joint is visible as a white line to the left of the photo. Notice the resulting step along the top of the fuselage, where it is easier to work
Photo 4 - The underside of the rear fuselage fits well but lacks positive locating points. Care will be needed when applying glue to get a clean joint.
And that's it for another blog. Fingers crossed that my stomach issues are behind me. With the warmer weather finally having arrived, there is lots to do around the house. Take care and stay safe.
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