Nice not to be talking about snow for a change. It was generally a nice week, weather wise. There is some wet snow in the forecast later today, but nothing like the Edmonton area is getting.
I spent most of this week painting the rest of the kitchen and living room. Finishes late Friday afternoon, and then Saturday was spent putting things back. The change seemed very abrupt initially, but it looks good once the brain recalibrates.
Alpha Jet
Very little bench time this week, and what I got was a disaster. I was in the process of painting the fuselage area under the wings. I had just sprayed the weapons pylons and drop tanks, and was about to start the fuselage. I reached for the fuselage, caught it on the just painted parts, and dumped everything on the floor. Remarkably, the freshly painted pieces came out of it without incident. The fuselage wasn't so lucky, knocking one stabilizer loose and snapping the other at the attachment. The canopies popped off and the ejection seats went flying, while the nose cone cracked and split the underside fuselage seam back to the nose gear bay. Somehow the main gear legs weren't damaged. One step forward and two steps back.
Photo 1 - the damaged nose cone area
Photo 2 - shows how the various assemblies were laid out when I caught the fuselage on the parts rack.
Made a little time to work on repairs today, and actually managed to take a couple steps ahead. The paint is a three tone camouflage - white, gray and blue. The white primer works well as the white once polished to remove any minor roughness. Then comes the masking challenge to prepare for the gray and then the blue. The wings were temporarily attached to mark the wing to fuselage colour transitions. This allowed the masking to be done with a reasonable bet that the colors would match once properly joined. As I had expected, even without the wings in place, spraying the shoulder area under the wings attachment to the top of the intake trunks was difficult.
Photo 1 - Gray sprayed
Photo 2 - Blue sprayed. It is rather startling but should look okay once unmasked.
Next is to remove enough masking to allow the wings to be joined and fill any gaps along the top seam. Then resume masking to finish the rest of the painting.
Welsh Models CC-109 Cosmopolitan
Next kit on the bench will be a 1/144 Welsh Models Cosmo, a birthday present from Marie from way back in 2009.
It is quite a simple kit, consisting of two vac formed fuselage halves, cast resin wings with integral engines and stabilizers, and cast metal parts for the landing gear and props. The decals are printed on two sheets - one with clear film and one with white film. Unfortunately, the red lightning strips are printed on the clear film, so that the corresponding stripe printed on the white film has to be used to get the white stripe center. Those parts include a portion of the gray fuselage colour, and may be very difficult to colour match. My experience with the Argus is that you don’t want to try and trim the gray sections, as the decals break up along the cut edges if you get too close. I will have to experiment a little to see how best resolve it.
Until next time, stay safe.
Comments