It is a cool and very wet Sunday, with a heavy rainfall warning in effect. We have had about 30mm of rain since Saturday evening, and could get 5 - 10 mm more before it ends mid day Monday.
That kind of summarizes our weather this spring. It has been hot and sunny, with virtually no rain, until mid June. Then we get two days of heavy rain, dropping almost 75mm of rain, another week of hot sunny weather, and another heavy rain of 50mm. This was then followed by hot and dry weather for another three weeks. So we really need the rain once it finally comes.
It has been over a month since the last blog. Certainly not intentional. More that things have been busy and there hasn't been much modelling to report on.
Daniel headed back to Michigan the second week of June. Unfortunately, the team wasn't able to finish their electrical car in time to enter it in competition. Instead, the team went for the opportunity to talk to other teams and to network. Like the last trip, they drove non-stop for two days to get there, and then the same thing on the way back. Other than the excessive driving, it appears to have been a great experience. Here are some pictures of the car, posed in Edmonton, and the team in Michigan.
The hot and dry weather has meant a very high forest fire risk. There have been several fires around us, with the Fort Chipewyan fire being the largest. It has meant a great deal of air traffic at the airport, both fire fighting planes and the planes used to evacuate and then return the Fort Chip population. Early in June, there were 2 Sikorsky Skycranes here, something I had not seen before. They are very large helicopters, with a very distinct sound when flying. There were also several of the new Dash 8-400 Air Tankers stationed here, replacing the old DC-6 tankers.
Daniel came home for the weekend of June 9-12. It was the first time he had been home since Easter, and the first time all three kids had been home since Christmas. It proved too windy to go boating but we played a round of golf, took in a movie, walked the dogs, and enjoyed a long family dinner on the deck.
Nicholas and I made a very quick trip to Calgary June 17-19. We headed down on the Friday, visited with the Grandmas on the Saturday, and back home on the Sunday.
That was the first of three back to back weekend trips south that Nicholas made. Nicholas and a friend headed south June 25 to meet up with Daniel, then head to Mount Assiniboine to hike and camp. They had made the same trip last year, discovering the hike in was a brutal 8 hour uphill climb to get to their camp site. This time they booked a helicopter to take them to their camp, replacing the 8 hour hike with a 10 minute flight. The extra time was spent hiking, including stumbling across a grizzly bear eating berries near the trail. Some pictures from their trip are included below.
This weekend, Nicholas and Daniel headed to Lake O'Hara to camp and hike. It was a coordinated exercise in family computer logistics to book the camp site back in April when the online bookings opened, and we were lucky enough to get a site. Hopefully the weather is good and they are having a great time. They head back home on Monday so there should be plenty of pictures and stories.
While the boys were in Mount Assiniboine, I headed down to Edmonton for the Alberta Open Modelling Competition. This is the first large model show I have been to since before the pandemic, and it was a lot of fun. There were a large number of vendors and a very large selection of models to look at. One thing that I noticed was that most of the displayed model airpcraft were "clean", with flat or satin finishes. Modelling magazines seem to lean towards showing "dirty" aircraft - heavily weathered that show extreme wear and tear. I really liked the clean appearance of the models on display, and most particularly, the use of flat finishes. I will look to adjust my finishes accordingly. Some pictures from the show are below.
Painting baseboards has resumed. Current focus is to repaint the sunroom. This is a challenging experience, with a small room containing a lot of stuff. The strategy is to move everything away from a wall, paint the wall and baseboards/window trim, put everything back, and then move to the next wall. After 4 days I have finished 2 1/2 walls. I finally ran out of the original light brown wall paint, and had to purchase some new paint. The original paint came from Colour Your World, now long gone. The replacement paint is colour matched and is ever so slightly lighter in colour. After some experimenting I have figured out how to blend the new colour in. That's great news as it means I don't have to repaint full walls.
MiG-21
Even though I had a replacement resin seat, I assembled the kit seat. It was remarkably complex, with 17 plastic parts and 10 photo etched pieces.
I have been adding any leftover kit parts to my spares part box. It is a large box but is now overflowing with bits and pieces. To reduce space, I have started assembling things verses just adding sprues. This kit contains an amazing assortment of weaponry, - much more than required for the specific plane being modelled. I assembled about half of the kit suppled ordnance, even though only 4 missiles and 1 drop tank were to be used. The kit parts are very nice but it took over 2 hours to assemble 10 missiles and 2 drop tanks. I had had enough by that point and wasn't prepared to assemble the remaining half dozen missiles or the dozen or so bombs.
The kit decals consisted of two full size sheets. One sheet provided the main markings for six different planes, while the other contained stencils and other small markings. It took a bit to understand that the stencils were duplicate printed in both black and blue. The blue was supposed to be used on a camouflaged aircraft, but when applied, blended into the blue underside so completely they effectively disappeared. I instead decided to use the black markings on the underside and the blue on the upper surfaces.
I am always on the look out for more effective, and less expensive, clear coats. I recently came across some new clears from AK Interactive. They came in large 200ml bottles, making them about half the price of the Tamiya clears I have been using. I took the opportunity to try the gloss out before applying decals. It thinned well, and went on smoothly. My initial happiness turned to disappointment when I discovered that the gloss essentially peeled off when blemishes and dust nibs were sanded out. I thought the poor adhesion might have been caused by applying the gloss over the oil paint weathering before the oil paint had dried sufficiently.
With a gloss coat on it was time for the decals. The main decals were remarkably simple, consisting of 6 red stars, the yellow 127 aircraft number on the nose, and the shark teeth and eyes. The stencils were a different story, and were done over about 12 hours in 6 sessions. The stencils went on without any problem but seemed to resist any decal solvent I tried.
Photo 1 - Kit seat assembled. 17 pieces!
Photo 2 - Two hours work
Photo 3 - Panel liner complete
Photo 4 - 2 sheets of decals. That's a lot of stencils!
Photo 5&6 - 12 hours later and the decals are done!
Photo 7 - Upper wing stencils
Photo 8 - Lower wing stencils
Photo 9 - Lost fuselage and wing stencils
A layer of AK gloss was sprayed to seal in the decals and prepare for light weathering. I wanted to create some colour fading and decided to use oil paint "dot filters". This consisted of applying small dots of oil paint, in this case a buff colour for the green areas, then scrubbing and blending the oil point into the surface. I quickly discovered my initial oil paint dots were way too large, taking way too much effort to blend them in. Smaller dots were more effective, and were easier to blend in. The process was partly successful . I was able to get some fading effects but really wasn't able to get any variation in colour density.
I could not find any photos of either the plane being modelled, or any other plane in that squadron. After a lot of google searches, I was able to find a few very fuzzy pictures of a similarly marked jet. This was obviously back in the days of Communist Russian, and good pictures were few and far between. There are better pictures of MiG-21s, especially from the former Eastern Bloc, where the type is still in service. These were used as reference to weather the underside. On the whole, the planes seemed relatively clean, but had noticeable staining behind the main gear wheel wells and behind the air brake assembly. Darker oil paint dots were used, and these gave a good representation of "dirt" when blended in.
Photo 1 - The before picture
Photo 2 - The originally used "large" oil dots that proved harder to blend in
Photo 3 - Oil dots blended in.
Photo 4 - Dark colour oil dots used to weather the fuselage
I left the plane for a full week, to give the oil paint time to dry, before using AK Interactive Matte. The matte wasn't completely flat - more a satin appearance. It wasn't quite as flat as I had expected but finally decided to leave it. Later, after the matte had been given several days to dry, I accidentally peeled off a dime sized patch when using a finger nail to scratch at a small dust nib. I was not impressed. I am not sure I will use the AK clears again.
Somewhere in all the handling the ejection seat came loose. I had attached the canopy using canopy glue, a clear PVA like glue that forms a secure but not strong bond. But try as I might, the canopy wasn't going to "pop" off and I was reluctant to use a knife blade to force it. So the seat will remain loose.
Assembly is now on the home stretch. Canopy masking has been removed, and the landing gear and gear doors installed. The selected missiles were mounted on their launch rails and carefully attached to their respective pylons. The kit includes two very delicate pitots, that took considerable care to separate from the sprue and then clean up the attachment points. These were painted off the model, and are the last pieces that need to be attached. Pictures of the finished model to be included in the next blog
Kharmann Ghia
I am about 10 - 12 hours in on painting the black. First was two coats of the gloss black, applied directly from the spray can. Then 4000/6000/8000 grit sanding pads were used to level the paint and remove dust nibs and blemishes. Finally Tamiya polishing compound was used, applied thru coarse, fine and finishing, to get a mirror finish. Despite being extra careful, the polishing process burned thru the paint in several places, requiring touch ups to the black. A third black coat was applied to be rear, over the engine grating, to restore the paint. The centreline hood crease, vertically up the hood, was carefully repainted by brush. The black touch ups were then resanded and repolished to restore the shine. The hood crease proved problematic, and had to be repainted three times, twice by brush and then carefully masked and airbrushed, to get a decent coat.
The box lid, confirmed by online searches, shows that the window outlines are chrome. I debated apply chrome using Bare Metal Foil - something I haven't tried before - before deciding I would mask and spray the chrome areas. I was nervous that masking would mar the polished paint so decided to first apply a protective gloss coat. After my challenges with the AK clears, I went back to Aqua Gloss as the protective. gloss coat.
Photo 1 - Hood masked to touch up the black paint
Photo 2 - Black paint sanded and polished to a mirror shine
CF-5D
Applying stencils and polishing paint are not the most exciting things to do, and at times I found my enthusiasm waning. I decided to break out the CF-5D kit as a way to rebuild enthusiasm.
The kit cockpit is nicely detailed but does not include any decals or markings for the instrument panels. The cockpit was primed in black, then sprayed in light gull grey as a base coat. The instrument areas were carefully brushed using black, then the raised dial faces were dry brushed with the gull grey. Using pictures and online references, specific dials were picked out in appropriate colours. Random decal gauges were then applied to the larger instrument dials and sealed with gloss to represent glass.
The kit seats were pretty basic, but then so were the real seats. Photo etched belts were scavenged from the spares box, modified to match the CF-5D belts, and them painted a light buff. Once done, everything was glued into the cockpit tub and sprayed with a matt clear to dull the shine. I am rather pleased with how the cockpit has turned out.
Photo 1 - Rear cockpit
Photo 2 - Front cockpit
Photos 3&4 - Cockpit from above
Next up will be to install the cockpit into the fuselage and join the fuselage halves together. There has been considerable dry fitting to confirm that everything fits so fingers crossed, it goes well when glued is applied.
That's if for this blog update. Hopefully it won't be 5 weeks until the next one. Stay safe everyone.
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