Interesting week for weather. Warmed up quickly coming out of last weekend, reaching 9C on Tuesday. Heavy rain a couple times thru the week meant that everything is now iced in. And then we got more snow last night. A lot more snow. I took this picture early this afternoon after clearInt the driveway. The entire driveway is covered in ice, smoother than a skating rink. The snow pile in the background is now over 4 ft high and extends almost all the way across the yard! And more snow in the forecast this week.
Watching the Olympics has been enjoyable. Wish the Canadians were doing better.
Fair bit of time this week at the workbench but not really much to actually show for it, making this a short post.
Beaufighter
The Beaufighter is physically complete, and has now been primed.
I have heard good things about the Aviaeology decals, so will use most of them versus trying to paint the markings. The version being modeled would be August 1944, requiring full invasion stripes on the fuselage, and top and bottom of the wings. Masking the white was a surprisingly difficult task, even after creating masks, and took almost 2 hours.
Photo 1 - The kit has the elevator actuators on the top instead of the bottom. Actuators on top was apparently a post war modification and therefore incorrect for this model. Very careful saw work removed the actuators and they were repositioned to be bottom of each elevator. Smoothing the top area damaged much of the mounded elevator rib detail. Thin pieces of tape were used to outline the damaged ribs, and then Mr. Surfacer was brushed onto the rib area to restore the raised features.
Photo 2 - The new ribs were a little too high and were lightly sanded to reduce the height round the edges. Hard to see in the pictures but it worked pretty good.
Photo 3 & 4 - Finished and ready for primer. The main canopy was challenging to mask and took over an hour to complete.
Photo 5 - White sprayed for the invasion stripes
Photo 6 - White stripes masked
Photo 7 - Black stripes sprayed.
Once the black stripes are masked, the undersides will be sprayed Sky.
Alpha Jet
Work on the Alpha Jet has focused on the cockpit.
The cockpit tub has been painted and a wash applied. Control panel switches have been painted grey. There are a couple that still need to be painted red and yellow. The instrument panels are painted and a wash applied to bring out the dial details. The kit doesn't include any decals for the dials. They look too blank right now, so dials will be cobbled together from decal spares. The ejections seats have been painted black and lightly dry brushed with grey. Seat cushions were painted green and the kit photoetch seat belts installed. Still need to paint some of the seat details and make some warning placards for the seat tops.
Photo 1 - Cockpit progress so far.
Photo 2 - Testing the limits of masking. The ejection handles were painted yellow, and then a very thin strip of tape wound around the ejection handle. Black was then sprayed once the tape was in place. Not perfect but better than I can do by hand!
That's it for this week. Take care and stay safe.
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