Going to be a short update today.
It's hard to believe that it is the end of March already. There had been some hints of spring this week, with several days well above zero. I now know the sump pump is working properly.
The trails are in rough shape after a couple of warm days to begin the week. The snow become soft and people walking or quading left ruts and depressions in the soft snow, which froze into a very rough surface once it turned colder. Managed to get one bike ride in along the river trail, but it was very slow going to stay out of the ruts. I think I will stick to the paved trails for the next week or so. The studded tires make a lot of noise on the bare pavement but sure are nice on the icy sections.
Not much model progress this week as I have been doing taxes. Six of 7 returns are done so off to a good start. As tradition, I will let them "soak" for a week before going back and checking my calculations. I have found this helps clear my thinking after pounding away on them for several days. I don't know how accountants are able to bang away on taxes day after day.
Alpha Jet The Alpha Jet has progressed thru painting and decals. It has taken a lot more masking than I had expected. The kit's painting diagrams don't match the actual plane very well. I have relied on my pictures and the internet to help but the markings may be considered and interpretation rather than strictly accurate.
The actual planes have a soft separation between colours, so they are likely sprayed freehand. The separation is quite tight, and my pictures show you have to be quite close to the real plane to see the soft edge. I feel better about using hard edge masks as the soft separation wouldn't be visible at normal model viewing distances. An interesting aside. I found a picture of about a dozen of the Top Aces jets lined up in a row. Half were blue/grey and half were black/green. They were all identical. Freehand painted or not, it was clear that someone was closely following the painting diagrams.
Painting the wings and stabilizers separately has proved to be a good idea. The masking and painting along the top of the intake areas has been challenging enough without the wings on. I created a mask for the intakes themselves to protect the white when the dark grey was sprayed. This worked extremely well and was worth the extra time.
The initial blue colour, even though apparently true to the kit's painting instructions, was too blue, almost purple. After leaving it overnight, I decided to mix a custom colour and retry. Though more turquoise than blue, it matches pictures well.
Photo 1 - the original blue. Just too "blue".
Photo 2 - resprayed with a custom mix. Much closer to my pictures from Cold Lake.
Photos 3&4 - the complex camouflage scheme meant a lot of remasking and touch ups. Pretty much an entire afternoon was spent cleaning up overspray, making corrections, and adjusting the paint lines.
Photos 5&6 - unmasked (mostly) for the first time.
Photos 7, 8&9 - test fitting the wings and stabilizers.
Decals complete. Not many decals on this scheme, and all on the fuselage.
Not much left to do. Clear coat the decals, some light weathering given these planes are kept in very clean condition, add the drop tanks and all the little bits. Should be able to get it finished in the coming week.
Cosmopolitan Not much done on the Cosmo this week. The fuselage halves were cut out and sanded. It initially appeared that the one fuselage half was longer than the other but some judicious sanding was able to true things up.
The Cosmo has a taller vertical stabilizer compared to the Convair 440 it is based on, and the kit provides a taller resin rudder and stabilizer extension.
The instructions indicate weight is needed to avoid a tail sitter, but doesn't indicate how much. A quick tape up determined that a medium fish sinker would be needed. The tape up also found that the wings to fuselage joint is going to be problematic. The opening in the fuselage is much deeper than the resin wing root depth, so a lot of filler is going to be needed to bring everything into line.
Photo 1 - fuselage halves removed from the backing sheet
Photo 2 - test fit and taped together to determine how much weight is needed in the nose.
I will need to add some alignment tabs to the inside of the fuselage. This will help keep the two halves aligned when gluing, and will help provide greater surface areas for a stronger joint. The kit doesn't include any internal bulkheads but I may add a couple to help strengthen the fuselage, and help prevent the seams from splitting during handling.
That's if for this week. Stay safe!
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