June 2025

We get a surprising number of door to door sales people on our street, selling window washing and such. Marie negotiated a pretty decent price and so we had our windows washed. The dogs' reaction was priceless. Riley was a proper watch dog and didn’t like the people being around our house. He barked every time he heard or saw them. The other two not so much as they went and hid in the basement.

Unfortunately, the barking has gone from annoying to a problem. One of the neighbours, who claims to love dogs, complained about them barking. By text. It has hit us hard and caused us a lot of stress, scared every time one of them barks. We have engaged Ember's trainer to help and now have some things to help us. After a couple days, Ember and Luna are adapting but Riley doesn't understand and is having a hard time. After a week, Ember can go a half hour playing outside without barking. Riley gets 5 timeouts, back inside each time, in the same half hour. Three weeks later and Ember and Luna are more or less back to normal outside. Riley, not so much. He feels so guilty after barking that he goes and hides on the deck.

The plumber came back on May 26 to fix the previously repaired leaking ensuite shower. He showed me the inside of the valve, surprised at the amount of scale on the cartridge seats. In hindsight, I was too. The house has a soft water system. That should eliminate scale build up. He was also surprised that a new cartridge had been installed less than a week ago. He wasn’t impressed with it and decided to replace it. Things seem to be better now as the dripping has stopped. He also did some troubleshooting on the basement infloor heating and decided one of the pumps was kaput. It took two weeks to get a quote and set up an appointment but we now have a new pump and the infloor heat is working again.

Marie headed to Fort McMurray on the 9th for a retirement party and a quilting bee. She enjoyed it so much she stayed a couple of days longer than planned. That should have been a perfect time to get some modelling done but I never seemed to have time. The unexpected time suck was to try and repair a leaking hot tub drain hose. Several attempts were made, using products that were intended for wet use, but none of them worked. Regardless of what their instructions suggest, they they simply wouldn't stick when a leak of a couple drops a minute was flowing. The hot tub was drained to allow a repair to be made in the dry, and then a visit was made to the dealer. Turns out, this is a common problem, as the valve assembly is simply glued to the drain hose. With time, and twisting to open and close the valve, the glue fails and the connection starts to leak. They have developed an in-house solution using a small ball valve and a length of PVC hose. The existing drain valve was first removed - a disturbingly easy task that took next to no effort - then the ball valve is glued and clamped to the hose, and then the other end of the hose is glued and inserted into the drain hose. Finally, a clamp is applied on the drain hose to secure the PVC hose.

The weekend of June 20/21 brought heavy rain. Our rain gauge shows 85mm of rain in a little over 24 hours. Friday night, Marie asked if the sump pump was okay. In honesty, I had no clue. The pump is sealed into the well, bolted tight with a dozen bolts. It is pretty clear the well has never been opened since it was installed. Well, Saturday afternoon, we got an answer. Marie was in the garage and could hear a high pitch squeal. Some investigation found it coming from the sump, which had gone into alarm. So it was opened for the first time in 10(?) years. It was a very different installation from the old house in McMurray, with the pump hanging from the bottom of the lid. There was no visible float or means to trigger operation, and after 15 minutes I gave up trying to get it to run. Off I went to Home Depot to buy a more traditional pump, and the parts necessary to convert everything to the new pump. It took a couple hours but I now have confidence this pump will run.

Things just keep on breaking. The following Sunday morning, the central vac wand separated from the power head. Into a lot more pieces than it is supposed to. It didn't take long to realize that I wasn't going to get everything back into the tube. A search for replacement parts determined that there are no longer any registered dealers in western Canada. I assume there is a certain amount of commonality to these systems, so that they will have some level of interchangeability. I eventually found what looks like a clone on Amazon, and an order was made. We will know if a few days if my assumption is correct.

The kids are all doing well. Daniel went to Chine on business for two weeks, starting mid June. He then took a few days vacation and headed to Japan, where he did the power tourist thing as only he can. He heads back to Austin for three days, then flies to Calgary via Vancouver, with plans to work from our house and catch some Stampede. Christine finished her spring term on June 18th. By all accounts it went well and we were blown away the term project she shared with us. She will now spend 4 weeks touring Europe. The first 2 weeks will be with classmates, starting in Croatia, then heading west to Spain and Portugal. The final 2 weeks she will join an organized tour group and travel through Greece. Nicholas and Jill have signed a lease for an apartment in Cambridge. Its about a half hour commute for him, so a big improvement over the 60+ minutes drive each way he is doing now. They move in July 20. Nicholas is also heading to Calgary for a few days, arriving on the 29th and leaving July 2, to visit and pack up the last of his stuff to carry back as oversized luggage.

1/24th Airfix Spitfire

Not much work on the Spitfire this month. At least not much worth posting pictures of. Engine parts and engine bay components are in the process of being painted. Not the most exciting thing to show.

I was thinking last blog that I didn’t have as many pictures as I would have liked, and ended up having to try and describe some of the things I had done using words only. In truth, I figured no one would really want to see all the masking and painting steps. Nicholas called me on that, texting a bunch of questions about masking and painting So I will endeavour to explain better and try and avoid leaving so many steps out.

Speaking of steps left out. I was sure I had a picture of the Spitfire wrapped in camouflage putty but darned if I could find it. Of course, I found it after publishing the blog. So this week's only Spitfire picture shows the Ocean Grey applied and the camouflage putty in place, ready to spray the Dark Earth Green.

Magic factory A-4 Skyhawk

Almost all the modelling effort this month has been focused on the Skyhawk, with some good progress made.

The wing to fuselage joint was test fit multiple times before committing glue. It fit perfectly each time it was tested. Apply glue, and suddenly there were small gaps between the fuselage and the top of the wing. Out came the clamps to squeeze the joint tight. (Photo 1). Despite clamping, small gaps remained, which were easily filled with water based Vallejo Putty. This putty is a soft solid, about the consistency of ketchup, that can be squeezed into the joint. Being water based, any excess is then removed with a wet Q-Tip, before the putty dries, leaving a filled joint. Quick and easy, with no troublesome sanding.

Planes with tricycle landing gear, like the Skyhawk, are notorious tail sitters. The instructions make no mention to add weight but I didn’t take any chances. There looks to be virtually no space to add weight ahead of the cockpit, so space was found behind the cockpit. Not sure of how much weight might be needed, three 7 oz weights were crammed into the space between the rear of the cockpit and the front of the intakes. A test, balancing the plane on a knife handle, with wings and tail planes in place, showed it was now satisfactorily nose heavy.

Photo 1 - Clamps needed to join the wing to the fuselage

Photo 2 - Good wing to fuselage joint, with just the tiniest but if filler needed

Photo 3 - Balance check, resting on a knife handle. It's properly nose heavy

The kit has a working movable tail, the first I have ever encountered in a model. Most fast jets use moveable horizontal stabilizers, where the entire surface flat surface moves. This is in contrast to most propellor powered planes, where the front portion of the horizontal stabilizer is fixed, and only the rear elevator section moves. As planes approach the speed of sound, it was found that moving elevators alone weren’t enough to overcome compression forces that build up on the elevators as the air began to compress near the speed of sound. A number of early jets were mysteriously lost until engineers figured out that the larger surface of a fully moveable stabilizer was needed. It is really just a novelty on a kit, but it allows the horizontal stabilizers to be added after painting. That will be a big benefit given the complex paint scheme planned, and all the masking that will be required. And I promise to include pictures of the masking!

Starting to look the part

The cockpit includes a three piece heads up display. It sticks up above the rest of the cockpit so naturally it was knocked off several times. Trying to better protect it, I started preparing the windscreen for installation. While dipping the clear parts in Future, I became aware of something on the floor under my feet. I picked it up, a small indistinct piece of black plastic. Not immediately recognizing it, I set it aside. Test fitting the windscreen, I realized the heads up parts were missing, and the light bulb came on. Yup, the indistinct black piece of plastic was part of the HUD. A half hour later, after multiple floor sweepings, I had collected three pieces of the now broken HUD. Holding the centre piece worth tweezers, the two broken sides were reattached. Much fiddling of the parts and I was finally satisfied with the repair. Setting the piece down, it pinged out of the tweezers, bouncing off a lamp shade with a distinct "ting", and was gone. A quick scan of the desk found nothing. Another half hour sweeping also found nothing. Ten minutes cleaning my desk and I found part of the HUD. Another 10 minutes cleaning the desk and I found the rest. More fiddling and gluing and the party was once again repaired. It then safely put aside until the cockpit was ready to be closed up.

As noted above, I had looked through the instructions several times for any information regarding nose weight. I didn‘t find anything so decided to add weight in behind the cockpit. The kit is designed to display an open nose so their is no where up front to hide weight. Later, I was digging through the box for parts and came across a small bag of lead bb’s. That seemed to suggest the manufacturer expected weight to be added. It was only while I was reviewing the instructions for the nose construction that I realized that the manufacturer had designed the nose radar hardware as a hollow box intended to hold the bb’s. (See photos 1 and 2 below). An ingenious solution but I sure wish they had made it more obvious.

The kit allows the nose cone to be displayed in the open position, with all the hatches open and the cone raised up. It feels like default is to have everything open. Parts fit so far has been superb. But fit of the nose parts has been much more challenging. I wanted a closed up model to maintain the airplane's lines. So all the detail provided for the nose cone was dutifully built up and installed, only to be covered and never seen again. The nose itself took a lot of fiddling to join the pieces, and even more fiddling to get a decent joint with the fuselage. Despite best efforts it still needed filler in several places. I later discovered an online review where they also had similar problems fitting the nose, leading him to design a 3D printed replacement. It looks like a much slicker way to do it, and makes me wonder why Magic Factory didn't include a completely closed up plastic version for anyone who wanted a closed up nose.

The main canopy includes a two piece internal frame. It initially seemed like a good idea but quickly proved otherwise. The two pieces were extremely fragile, effectively impossible to remove from the sprue without damage, and then no way to hold it to clean up the parts. Many choice words were necessary while joining the two pieces. And then I discovered that the internal frame isn't required if the canopy is built closed!

Photo 1 - Ingenious but slow way to provide nose weight.

Photo 2 - Weight installed in the radar housing box, soon to be covered up by the closed nose

Photo 3 - The nose was probably the worst joint in the kit.

Pinto 4 - Until the next piece was added. Fit of the nose cone and various hatch covers was no where near as good as the rest of the kit.

Photo 5 - Getting close to painting.

Photo 6- Someone thought this 2 piece canopy frame was a good idea. They were wrong.

Masks were created to paint the three colour splinter camouflage. The kit's painting diagram was copied and resized to match the kit dimensions. This was then marked up with pencil, showing the colour separations as best as could be figured out from photographs. These were then traced and used to create masks. It works well on flat surfaces, like the wings, but is only a starting point for curved areas like the fuselage. The real place appears to be a mirror image along the centerline. Using masks, that can be copied and flipped over so both sides are identical, makes it a lot easier to maintain symmetry.

The entire plane received a couple light coats of white primer. The instructions paint guide, for a US Navy plane, suggest the underside is white. Photos of the real plane show the bottom is visibly darker than the white top areas, so a light grey was used to spray the bottom. This was masked off and white was sprayed on the appropriate top areas. This was followed by the blue, on the assumption that the grey would be able dark enough to cover the blue.

Photo 1 - Ready to mask

Photo 2 - White areas masked to paint blue. Lots of tape still needed.

Photo 3 - Blue painted

Photo 4 - Blue areas masked to paint grey, with yet more tape needed.

Photo 5 - Grey painted. Masked up to paint black with even more tape.

Photo 6 - Black painted

Here's the plane after all the masking was removed. Mostly good./

Masking removed. A mostly good result.

Removing the masking is always a bit of a nail bitter moment. You are never sure how well it worked. This time was mostly good. There are a few areas where paint bled under the masks. It's almost expected that there will be some paint bleed, and it's relatively easy to clean up. The bigger problems are an area of grey that lifted down to bare plastic, and several areas where thinner used to strip paint had bled under the masks and damaged the paint underneath. These will be harder to repair, requiring sanding to smooth and blend the damage, then remask and repaint.

Photo 1 - Damaged white paint, on top of the wing.

Photo 2 - Grey paint, in front of the intake, that lifted down to bare plastic

Photo 3 - An example of minor paint bleed, where a little grey paint had seeped into the white paint.

Next builds

Work is at that point where I am starting to think about the next kits to build. I have been wavering back and forth on a couple different themes. Then the kids made it really easy, when they gave me this for father's day. The box contains two kits, and I have already picked out paint schemes for both.

That's it for another month. Enjoy stampede, or Greece, as the case may be. Stay safe and back in a month or so.