I will start by wishing happy birthday to the boys. Unbelieveabely, they turned 22 on January 23. Marie was able to celebrate with Daniel a few days early, while Nicholas celebrated with Christine and his girlfriend, Jill. I am so proud of these fine young men.
Staying with the boys. Both are heavy into job interviews for co-op and summer positions. Daniel got his dream interview with Tesla last week, and thought he did well. He also had interviews with Atco, CNRL and Suncor. Atco and CNRL have both made offers, starting the clock. The UofA requires that Co-op students take one of the first two offers, so he is hoping that something comes thru from Tesla before he is forced to accept one of the other two. I think he is leaning towards Atco, which would be a project management job based out of Edmonton.
Nicholas has had two separate interviews with Suncor for two different Environmental jobs. He just finished a call back for one of the positions, so fingers crossed that he is successful.
Christine has submitted an application to take a Masters in Architecture at the UofC. She had to chase four of her profs down for promised references, with three coming the day they were due! But they are all in now and her application is official. She will learn if she is accepted later this spring.
Marie is teaching her first quilting class to the local quilt guild today. She has been prepping for a couple weeks, but is very nervous. Several people have told her how much they are looking forward to the class, and there has even been three new members signed up just to take her course. I am certain it will be a huge success.
The big event in town the coming week is the start of the Artic Winter Games. The Greenland team flew in on Friday, in an Air Greenland A330. This is the largest plane to ever land in Fort McMurray, so I naturally had to go out to watch. It wasn't great weather to take pictures. The wind howling down the length of the runway made it -30 with the wind chill and it felt every bit of it. Standing there, freezing my fingers as I took multiple pictures, I wondered why the camera was making an unusual triple shutter sound. The plane was just heading past when I realized the sound meant there was no memory card in the camera! Fingers nearly frozen, I pulled my phone out and grabbed a couple of hasty pictures. What a rookie mistake.
The Games will close my favorite bike trail. Biathlon and snowshoe biathlon will be held at the Fort McMurray golf course, and the trail is apparently in the firing range overshoot area.
Its a good thing Ember is cute, because she is a pee machine, and last Saturday was her worst day yet. Over the course of 2 sets of commercials, during a hockey game, she had 8 pees inside and 4 outside. Two pees were immediately in front of me as I was trying to clean up a previous pee! It worked out to a pee every 3 minutes! Marie googled how long it should take to house train a puppy, and learned most are housebroken in 4 - 6 months, but some could take as long as 12 months. Ember is coming up on 4 months so she is hitting the "target" range. After noticing that she tended to sneak out to the dining room to pee, we blogged off the exit from the kitchen, and the exit to the front hall. The other three dogs have honored the barrier but Ember is prone to jumping it. The last few days have been better, and we have noticed that she is more consistently whining at the back door to go out. So here's hoping we are making headway.
Ember loves playing outside with the other dogs, and absolutely loves going on walks. Yesterday's arrival of cold weather has put a temporary end to her outside adventures, and has considerably speeded up her bathroom trips. She also loves to play indoors with Luna and Riley, who are generally willing to play with her. It is fun to watch the three of them running around the coffee table, chasing each other. Ember went to the Vet last week for her last set of puppy shots, and is now officially 6 lbs.
My father isn't doing very well so I will be making a quick trip to Calgary, while Marie stays home to puppy sit. I am waiting to see if the roads south of Red Deer improve enough to head south on Sunday.
Lancaster
The upper camouflage colours are finished, the plane has been masked for the underside, and the black sprayed. A gloss clear coat was then applied to protect the paint.
It wasn't my intention to spray the markings but I wanted to try something I learned regarding mask positioning. I also bought an upgrade to the cutter software and wanted to try out some of the new features. The new upgrade greatly helped simplify creating masks and certainly justified the cost.
There is debate if Lady Orchid carried any markings on the starboard nose. One reference suggested that duplicate bomb mission markings were painted on the starboard side for the return to Canada. The CanMilAir decals note this option but indicate there is no photographic proof to back it up. A more believable reference, from a crew member, suggests that the crew painted "Jenkins' Express"' on the starboard nose. The Hanger Museum took this route and painted this on the Calgary Lancaster. I decided to take a shot at duplicating the Jenkins' Express words.
A good picture of the Calgary Lancaster's starboard nose was found using google. Photoshop was used to straighten it out and remove distortion. The cleaned up picture was then imported into the cutter software and traced to create a mask. Some thumb suck level scaling from the photo suggested the wording would be about 16mm long, with each letter less than 2mm height, so the scale was adjusted and a mask cut. Trying to weed the cut letters out quickly showed that some adjustment was needed to get a clean cut. Three attempts to clean up the letters and create a mask finally resulted in something that could be transferred to the model. A very careful layer of white was sprayed and the mask very gently removed to discover a mostly successful effort. The letters "R" and "E" in Express were placed over a panel line and didn't seal well, allowing some white overspray. A careful touch up with my finest brush got the letters cleaned up. This seems to be about the limit of how small a masked letter can be made.
Photo 1 - Masked to paint black undersides
Photo 2 - First coat of black revealed a bad seam at the tail. Repair in progress
Photo 3 - "Jenkins' Express" sprayed on the starboard nose
Anson
The model had a very prominent gun blister on the port side of the nose that wasn't present on the modelled aircraft. A couple of applications of filler were applied to fill the hole and allow the gun port to be sanded off. Rivet detail needed to be restored/created in a couple of places to match the starboard side. A quick shot of black paint proved the repairs were good.
A test fit of the internals was made between the two fuselage halves. It is complicated but the pieces fit perfectly. The fuselage will be closed up once a pair of rear bulkheads and the rear turrent framing are added.
Photo 1 - Gun blister removed and opening filled
Photo 2 - Gun blister repair tested with a bit of black
Photo 3&4 - Test fit of cockpit into the fuselage.
That' it for this week. Stay warm and safe!
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