Over the past few months, I have endeavored to write these blogs as the month unfolds and the modeling progresses. It's simply easier to describe events while they're still fresh in your memory. However, this month's blog did not follow that pattern. I wrote most of this blog on November 21, lounging on the Viking river ship Embla, moored in the Austrian town of Krems. Today marks the seventh day of our European vacation and our second journey this month. Being twenty plus days into November, I'm finding it somewhat challenging to recall the month's happenings.
The month’s big family news was Daniel’s announcement of a full time job offer from Tesla. We went down to Austin, on Halloween day, to visit for the weekend. We had explicit instructions to dress nicely as he wanted to take us out to a nice dinner on our first night in town. He chose Eddie V’s, a high end steak and seafood restaurant right down town. Daniel had intended to wait until desert to surprise us with the big news, with a cake that had “guess who is the newest engineer at Tesla?” written on it. The waiter let the surprise out of the bag as we arrived at the table, asking who was celebrating the new job. It spoiled the surprise but it worked out well as we were then able to discuss it through dinner. We are so happy for him, and Daniel is over the moon with this new opportunity.
I was impressed with our visit to Austin. We packed a tremendous amount into 4 days, visiting a high end shopping district, the state capital building and grounds, the Bullock State Museum, a jazz club, and a winery out in Texas wine country. The city’s downtown is very vibrant, even late into the evening, with people everywhere and line ups to get into restaurants and clubs. On our final day, we got the family and friends tour of the Tesla facility. Everything is big in Texas, but the Tesla plant takes it to a whole new level. The plant is home to Cybertruck and Model Y assembly lines, and huge doesn't begin to do justice to the place. You can stand at the center of the building, look both ways down the center aisle, and not see the end in either direction. The facility is utterly spotless, and obviously efficient, as cars move along the line. A very impressive place.
Unfortunately, the trip home didn’t go as smoothly. We were scheduled to come home with a connection in Dallas, but heavy rain shut down the Dallas airport. We spent 6.5 hours total sitting on taxiways, waiting to get clearance to leave Austin. The first time we sat for 3 hours before they took us back to the terminal. An hour later, we got back on the plane, then waited another 3 hours before they decided to give up and cancel the flight. By now, it was 12:30 am, and the line to rebook flights stretched the entire length of the terminal. We gave up, found different flights through Denver on Expedia, and booked a hotel. Three hours sleep and we were back at the airport, finally headed home. The detour worked out well, and we met performers from the celtic band Cecilia while having dinner at the Denver airport. We ended up talking to them for 3 hours, even getting an impromptu concert from the accordion player.
The Europe trip was booked much earlier in the year. It was a 7 day river cruise on Viking, from Budapest to Pussau. We arrived in Budapest 2 days before the scheduled departure, after getting a great deal on business class upgrades with KLM. The extra time gave us a chance to catch up on sleep, and let us explore Budapest at a more relaxed pace. We spent time walking around the historic downtown, and visited several Christmas markets that opened the day we arrived.
River cruising is very different from ocean cruises. The river ships are much smaller, with only a few hundred guests versus the ocean ship's several thousand. A river ship has only one dining area, with one dinner sitting, where you sit at tables of 6, 8 or 10 people, It also has only one lounge area. Our ship had a large outdoor upper deck area, but it was cold and cloudy for most of our trip, with some showers, a little snow, and a lot of wind, and the upper deck didn’t see much use. It didn’t take long before you could recognize pretty much everyone on board and knew half the people by name. Daytime tours were also generally more relaxed, with an average of 10,000+ steps a day, as the ship spent more time in port than ocean cruise ships do. We still didn’t have anywhere near enough time to explore each stop, especially Vienna. Overall, it was a great trip and we are already planning to do another.
I am sure there are other things to mention but they elude me right now. Christine continues to do exceptionally well in her studies. Nicholas’ work at ARKK continues to challenge and excite him, and has even taken him back to Fort McMurray several times,
Tamiya Spitfire
The Spitfire received more attention this month, as I started to tire of the Fokker's constant filling and sanding. A couple days of concentrated work and the kit went from a lot of parts to an airplane, ready to paint. The kit is truly exceptional. It has a very high level of detail, incredible precision and everything simply fits together. The very limited amount of filler needed has been the result of mistakes on my part.
Photo 1 - Cockpit installed
Photo 2 - Everything coming together quickly
Photo 3 - And the underside
The kit decals can be used for the roundels and fin flashes, but the squadron codes and registration numbers will need to be painted. The kit decals were scanned and used to create masks for all the roundels, and set the scale and size for the codes and numbers. I have not had much success painting fuselage roundels, particularly the yellow outer rings, so decided to try a different approach this time. After priming, yellow paint was sprayed in the appropriate areas and the the full roundel mask applied. The rest of the roundel will then be finished after the camouflage colours have been sprayed.
Model Master enamels were used for the Sky Grey undersides, and for the Dark Earth and Dark Green upper areas. The grey areas were applied first, then masked off. The entire upper areas were then sprayed Dark Earth. Masks were cut by scanning and tracing the kit's colour painting guide. The translation from the 2D guide to 3D model wasn’t perfect, requiring some adjustment as the masks were applied. The Dark Green was then applied and the masks removed.
The Sky Grey and the Dark Earth were intentionally applied in a random mottle to represent worn paint. The Dark Green ended up too uniform after being applied over the Dark Earth, so it was lightened with yellow and a heavily thinned layer of the lightened green was randomly applied over the green areas. This helped create some colour modulation that is visible in the 5th picture below.
Photo 1 - Ready for primer
Photo 2 - Primed, yellow for roundel sprayed, and fuselage roundel masked
Photo 3 - Sky undersides painted and masked for topside colours
Photo 4 - Masked to spray the Dark Green
Photo 5 - Masks removed. Just a couple small touch ups needed.
I am still working out next steps. These planes were hand-me-downs when received by 403 Squadron, and had already seen a year of hard use. I have assumed that the previous squadron codes were overpainted rather than a full repaint of the entire plane. The plane’s paint, including all the markings except for the squadron codes, should therefore reflect many month’s of hard use. I think I will apply all the markings except the squadron codes, weather the plane, then apply fresh paint to represent painting out of the old squadron codes, and then mask and paint the new squadron codes.
Fokker Super Universal
The windshield was provided as a two part affair, with a separate top piece that had to be applied to the bottom window casting. Neither part fit well. The top piece only vaguely matched to bottom piece, and required a considerable amount of sanding to fit. The bottom piece then proved a poor fit to the fuselage, with large gaps along the sides. The bottom piece was adjusted by trial and error until a best fit to the fuselage was achieved - see photo 1 below. The top piece was then glued in place and the entire piece was aggressively sanded to get the two pieces to fit. After what felt like days of sanding and trial fits, it was ready to install.
With the windshield in place, attention turned to the large gaps between the wing, fuselage and windshield. Perfect plastic putty was used to fill the bigger gaps, as it can be shaped and worked with damp Q-Tips. With a decent base in place, Mr Dissolved Putty and Mr. Surfacer could be applied and sanded to final shape.
Despite being careful, the top windshield piece came loose twice. Each time required repairs to the windshield, and then the filler around the windshield. It was a painstaking process that seemed to last forever.
Photo 1 - Windshield finally fits
Photo 2 - Lots of CA and sanding needed to fit the top of the canopy.
Photo 3 - A big step forward. Wing and windscreen glued into place
With the windshield and wing in place, the other control surfaces could be added. The vertical stabilizer was pinned in 2 spots and glued to the fuselage. Mr. Surfaced was liberally applied to try and smooth out the gaps without damaging the stabilizer's cast rib detail. Pins were also placed vertically thru the horizontal stabilizer to hold it in place before a lot of filler was used to fill the huge gaps around the edges.
With all the major flying surfaces in place, the model was cleaned using alcohol and primed with Alclad grey primer. It was immediately apparent how much more work was still required to achieve a blemish free surface. The fuselage joints, as well as the wing to fuselage joints, clearly needed more work. Cracks, low spots and suspect sanding were visible in several spots. Worst of all, the scribed wing panel joints looked awful, with uneven line thickness and lots of stray lines. I'm now about half way through the needed corrections, with a couple hours still to go.
Photos 1&2 - Finally looking like an airplane
Photo 3 - Ready for primer
Photos 4 and 5 - So many repairs
I have been staring at the stash, wondering what to build next. With the Spitfire in the final stretches, I have actually starting base painting on a new kit. More about that next month.
Well, that's it for now. Hard to believe that Christmas is now less than a month away. It will be here before you know it, and we are looking forward to having all the kids are home for Christmas.
Until next time. Take care and stay safe.
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