Happy birthday Marie!

paddleriver

Jul 24, 20226 min read

Happy birthday to my beautiful wife! Her birthday was July 21. Lucky girl gets two celebrations! She was in Calgary on her actual birthday, and spent the day visiting her Mother. A trip to Heritage Park for lunch, and then dinner at Wellington's with her Mother and Daniel. Of course there will be another celebration when she gets home!

It seems to have been a relatively quiet couple of weeks since the last post. Nicholas and I met Daniel in Cold Lake for the airshow on July 16th. It's always great to see the Snowbirds and hear the jets tear around the sky. The weather was hot and sunny, with clear skies - perfect for an airshow.

Friday night I was out with some former work friends for a 6oth birthday party. It was a surprise party for my former boss's wife, down at the Thickwood Golf Course. The day had been rainy and cool, but the weather cleared up just in time to have dinner on the patio. After dinner, we retired to downstairs and sat around the fire pit for a couple hours. It was nice to see everyone again and I had a good time.

On Saturday, I realized that I had misplaced my house keys. After 2 hours looking everywhere in the house I hadn't found them. The only thing I could think of was that perhaps they had fallen out of my pocket while sitting around the golf course fire pit. They weren't in the golf course's lost and found, but I was told to check with the pro shop as things are sometimes turned in there. Thankfully, some one had found them and turned them in to the pro shop. A big sigh of relief.

Enterprise refit

Engine Nacelles

Masking the engine nacelles, to paint the black areas, took a painstaking 2 hours, and only 5 minutes to paint. It looked really good when the masking came off. Until I realized most of what was just painted isn't black. I had misread the paint guide. Other than the long, rectangular section down the centre of each nacelle, the rest is supposed to be duck egg blue. Doh! Fortunately it was painted with Tamiya black, which comes off easily with isopropyl alcohol. It's just time and I'm retired!

The correct colour is called out as duck egg blue, but once applied, it was so pale it appeared white. After masking everything again, I couldn't help but think that I wasn't going to spend another 2 hours on masking for nothing, so a little medium blue was quickly added to darken it up and make it more visible, as shown in photo 3.

Photo 1 - This is what 2 hours of masking looks like!

Photo 2 - Today's "doh!" moment. Only the black strip thru the middle is correct. Both ends are supposed to be duck egg blue.

Photo 3 - Another 2 hours masking, 2 minutes painting, a little pile of tape, and the correct colour is applied. Even darkened it hardly shows in the photo.

Primary hull saucer

The saucer decals are finally completed.. Pretty much the entire model is covered in decals. I learned very quickly this meant you add a few decals, let them dry, and then add a few more. Otherwise you will soon discover that you have inadvertently moved a previously applied decal and it can be a lot of work to fix.

Some minor paint touch ups are needed on the navigation array on the bottom side but otherwise done.

Photo 1 - Top side of saucer

Photo 2 - Bottom side of saurcer

Secondary hull

This area consists exclusively of applying flat decals on a curved shape. Of course that will work with no problems!

The plyon decals turned out to be slightly too large. After some experimenting, I decided to cut them along the green separation at the bottom on the pylon. This allowed a better fit at the bottom, and allowed better alignment of the vertical green stripe up the length of the pylon. Even so, the fit of the green triangle at the top rear was just okay at best.

Photo 1 - Decals applied to the bottom of the secondary hull.

Photo 2 - Decals applied to the top of the secondary hull

Photo 3 - Decals applied to the inside of the engine pylons

F-35

Fit is very good but I encountered small gaps along the front chines, immediately ahead of the intakes. Part of the problem was that the locator pins, between the top and bottom halves, didn't line up. Removing the pins helped but didn't eliminate the gap. The issue seemed to be the joint between the intake trunk and the fuselage halves. The intake trunk sat too high and too far forward, creating a lip. Sanding the trunk helped but filter was eventually needed.

Photo 1 - cockpit almost completion. Throttle, control stick and ejection draft left out to prevent damage.

Photo 2 - Some filler required along the front chine on both sides.

Photo 3 - Almost ready for primer

Photo 4 - Closed doors used to mask the nose gear and weapons bay.

Photo 5 - Cockpit completed and ready to close the canopy

Photo 6 - Another angle of the completed cockpit

Landing gear

The landing gear were test fit while waiting for the canopy to dry. The construction required a lot of strong language.

The main gear legs had four parts, consisting of the gear leg and three struts. One of the struts had positive location on the gear leg, while the other two had positive location in the gear bay. The gear leg was temporarily inserted int the gear bay slot, and attempts were made to add the struts. The process would have worked much better had the various pieces been glued to the landing gear bay as they were assembled. But I wanted to be able to remove the assembled gear to simply masking the gear bay. So I patiently, and then somewhat less patiently, tried to get the parts to stick together without falling out. Photo 1 shows it was possible but there most certainly were easier ways to do this

The nose gear leg also had four parts, consisting of the nose gear leg, the oleo scissors, a small cylinder, and a strut. The strut didn't have either positive locator on the gear leg, or a hole in the bay floor. So it was just glued together in what looked like the right position.

Ejection seat

I found a set of 3D printed decals for the ejection seat while browsing the Hannants website. At $5 I figured I would give them a try. The decals came without instructions or a placement diagram, and there seemed to be too many decals included for what was needed. Pictures from the internet were used to try and put something representative together.

Unfortunately, even though they are for this specific kit, they were all oversized. They were also slightly out of register. I had to cut the seat cushions to fit, which proved a real challenge. The belts also needed to be shortened. The end result looks okay, but I realized after looking at photo 3 that the white out of register stripe is on the left side of the headrest, but the right side of the seat straps. Oh well.

Photo 1 - F-35 seat picture from the Internet

Photo 2 - Back and headrest added

Photo 3 - Straps on and sealed with matt coat

Photo 4 - Seat mounted in the cockpit.

Canopy

The F-35 has a coloured canopy. Pictures show the color varies from a smoked tint to a gold metallic. Tamiya smoke and clear orange were sprayed on the inside of the canopy to try and replicate the effect.

It took two tries to get it right. The first attempt sprayed the clears on the inside of the canopy, and had several mistakes. There were three dust specs in the paint, but you really couldn't see them when the canopy was mounted, so I could have lived with that. A bigger issue was that the clear paint pulled away from the canopy bracing, which is actually on the canopy inside. This left a noticeable lighter "halo" area around the bracing. Again, I could have lived with that. The biggest problem was that the smoke colour was noticeably darker on one part of the canopy. It looked like it could have been a run, and was very noticeable from the side. I couldn't live with that, so I decided to strip the canopy and try again.

The second try I sprayed the canopy outside. I used Mr Thinner rapid thinner for the first time, and it really lives up to its name! Tamiya trends to dry fairly quickly but the rapid thinner made it dry in seconds. The second try worked much better but seems to have a pebble effect. I will apply a clear sealer to the outside to see if that levels the finish out. The internal brace was coloured black using a Sharpie marker, and was surprisingly noticeable after colouring.

Photo 1 - The desired effect on the real thing

Photo 2 - The clear canopy

Photo 3 - Sprayed with diluted Smoke,

Photo 4 - After a light coat of Clear Orange. Colour is good but there are some areas with a pebbled effect.