We had a few days of nice weather at the start of the week, and then boom! Winter came back with a vengeance. We had 5cm of snow Friday, with strong winds to cause drifts. It’s -25C on Sunday, and 10cm of snow coming tonight. Perfect timing for some modelling.
A220
I have the finished the decals, and sprayed a gloss clear coat for protection. It is also now up on it‘s gear, though I still need to add the tires.
The small Air Canada symbols on the winglets proved to be a problem, and after several attempts, I am not totally happy with the final result The kit decals only gave two small maple leaf logos. The kit needed four - one one the inside of each winglet, and one beside the front passenger door. My first thought was to print small logos on clear decal paper. This worked but I didn’t like how it looked. I pulled the home printed decals off when the new Draw Decal sheet arrived, intending to use them. They came with the red leaf logo printed on a black background. I trimmed the over sized black background, and applied the decal. The decal really didn’t sit down properly, and still had bubbles after 2 applications of decal solvent. I cut the bubbles out, applied more solvent, and then carefully painted around the logo. Not perfect but it looks ok if you don’t look too close.
Pictures show the inside of the engines to be a bright, almost turquoise green. My first attempt to replicate looked pretty good, until a found a picture that showed there was a black strip between the silver cowl ring and the green. I pondered how to add the black, as it would be a difficult masking job. I decided to try some decal, painting a clear decal black, and then adding it in sections to the inside of the engine cowl. It turned out pretty good.
Into the home stretch now. The engines need to be mounted, the tires added, and various antenna added. I also noticed some bits of fuzz that will have to be carefully sanded out.
Avenger
The Avenger is also closing in on the finish. There were a number of small decals to add, mainly around the canopy. I clear coated the parts prior to adding a subtle wash. Brown on the light gray areas, and Dark Dirt to the darker gray areas. The wash was carefully removed, and the final clear coat was sprayed. The Avengers pictures I have found show them to be well maintained, and generally rather shiny. I settled on Light Sheen as my clear coat. Next step will be to join the major assemblies and then install the landing gear.
CRJ200
The CRJ200 is proving to be a nice kit, and has gone together quickly. The clear fuselage is hard to work with, making it difficult to tell if a joint is good. The wings and tail have been added, and the engines are together.
The wings have an usual separation. Rather than join together at the trailing edge, the joint is midway thru the lower flap. The lower wing edge was too thick, and needed a fair bit of sanding to avoid a step. I decided that the joint couldn’t represent a panel line - why would there be a joint in the bottom of the flap but not the top? Some putty was used to take care of the joint. The joint in the second pictures looks much worse than it actually is. I used a black Sharpie to outline the joint and confirm that it had been sanded smooth. This works well but colours the putty, making the joint look terrible.
The fit of the engines to the fuselage is very good, giving the opportunity to paint them separate. This should make it easier to paint the silver engine cowl ring.
CL44
With the A220 and the Avenger drying, it was time to bring out the next kit. As noted last week, I wanted to start my CL44 kit. The kit is made by F-RSIN, who aren’t known for their moulding quality. The kit has massive sprue joints, and is short shot in a number of spots. The plastic is also very rough, almost pebbly, and will have to be sanded smooth.
The kit geometry seems to match my reference pictures - it looks like a CL44. The panel lines are soft but generally pretty good compared to a line drawing I found online. Pretty good until I realized that they didn’t include either of the two large cargo doors on the port side. The beauty of using an iPad is that you can scale the screen to match the kit, making it easy to layout the door outlines. After an hour of sanding, the fuselage sides were smooth and the cargo doors had been scribed in.
I will test fit the wings before gluing the fuselage together. I want to get a sense of how strong the wing to fuselage joint will be, and whether I will need to reinforce the joint from the inside. I will finish scribing the fuselage panel lines after gluing the two halves together. This will ensure that the lines will match at the top and bottom.
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