It is a beautiful, warm, sunny Sunday afternoon. The kind of afternoon where you sit on the deck to write the blog.
I tweaked a nerve in my back late last week. Sure wish I knew what caused it so I can not do it again, as it causes considerable pain in my lower back and left leg. Not much to do but lie on the couch and wait for it to go away. Needless to say it was a quiet week.
Lots of news from the kids. Christine and Nicholas are back in class, while Daniel finished out the 2nd half of his eight month co-op term. In no particular order:
Christine completed her orientation week and passed her project/safety test. The safety test was a requirement to use the lab, and she was very nervous about it. Given the amount of lab work she has, lab access is pretty much a mandatory program requirement. The lab techs showed them how to use the equipment and then turned them loose. Her task was to create a topographic map using the CNC machines, and she passed with flying colours.
Nicholas has been leading a frosh team the past week thru Carleton's annual engineering frosh event. It is much more involved than anything I remember, with cross city scavenger hunts, whitewater rafting and cardboard boat races. At least twice this week the activities have continued late into the night. He tells us that he finally took a break from the scavenger hunt about 5:30 am to get a couple hours sleep before going to class. Last night, he slept in a tent in a parking garage, getting three hours sleep, before rejoining his team to finish building a cardboard boat, which the team raced today.
Daniel gave us a couple of big announcements this week. He has decided to take his master's degree, and is planning to start in winter 2025, immediately after completing an internship at Tesla. So the even bigger news was that he was successful in getting an eight month internship at Tesla in California, starting next May. It is a renarkable accomplish, and his dream come true, as Tesla picked 29 interview candidates out of 800 applications before finally picking Daniel.
Congratulations everyone! We are so proud of all of you!
Photo 1&2 - Christine's shop safety project
Photo 3 - Nicholas first day at school
Photo 4 - Christine first day at school
Marie and I will be in Calgary next weekend to move Christine and Marie's mom into their new apartments. Originally planned to move Christine on the 15th and Michelle on the 16th, until confusion with the mover's means were are moving both of them on the 16th. It's gonna be a busy day. Here's hoping the hotel has a hot tub.
House improvement activities this week focused on the garage. We had a roof leak last year, which manifested itself as water behind the north wall of the garage. I had taken the wall apart, after the roof was fixed, to let everything dry out. The wall was then put back together but I never got around to finishing the drywall joints and repainting. I wanted to get that done before the boat comes back into the garage for the winter, so have been focussing on finishing it up. The trim around the window was reinstalled today, and then I cleaned the garage up and swept the floor in preparation to move the boat in on Monday.
MiG-21 Fishbed
Finally got some pictures. I am very pleased with how this model turned out. Now I have to figure out where to put it!
CF-5D Freedom Fighter
And I got some pictures of the CF-5 too. Thankfully it isn't very big so it doesn't take up that much shelf space.
CF-104 Starfighter
I had some (self inflicted) issues with the metal paint. I wasn't happy with the areas immediately ahead of the intakes. Both sides showed slight scratches from incomplete sanding. Against common wisdom, I pulled out the ultra fine sanding pads and smoothed back the areas to eliminate the scratches. With the black primer polished back up, the metal finish was resprayed. On the whole, the repair worked pretty good. With the right light, the difference between the repaired and original areas is visible, but in most viewing conditions it looks fine. Both sides were then reglossed to protect the metal paint.
The black intake shock cones had suffered some silver overspray and needed to be repainted. The surrounding metal paint was gently masked and the black resprayed. The starboard side worked perfectly. The port side not so much. The gloss coat had not provided enough protection and removing the masking had damaged the metal paint.
The damaged area was gently polished back to primer and the metal finish resprayed. The repair was pretty good, but the new metal paint was slightly more reflective than the old paint, and really noticeable in the right light. A post-it note was used to gently mask the panel immediately ahead of the intake and duraluminum paint was sprayed. When the post-it was removed, a new paint demarcation was created that eliminated the difference in shine.
I decided to install the landing gear before decalling. The thought process was this would keep the fuselage off the bench during decal application, protecting the metal finish. I would normally leave the gear to the end of the build to avoid the increased risk of damaging the landing gear. We will see how this works.
Installing the gear was an effort in patience. The instructions build up the gear parts while attached to the gear bay. I wanted to build the parts up, remove them for painting, and then reinstall them. It was felt this would give a stronger result than painting each part first, then gluing the parts together. The starboard main gear leg went into place easily but the port side fought tenaciously. It finally clicked into place after about 15 attempts. The nose gear was even worse. It required 2 separate struts to be attached to the front of the gear leg, then anchored to the gear bay floor. The nose gear leg attachment proved slightly narrower than the gear bay, and kept falling into the bay whenever I tried to attach the struts. After many tries, the parts were finally in place. The end result is surprisingly strong. Fingers crossed I can finish decalling without damaging the installed gear.
Photo 1 - Finally up on its gear
Photo 2 - The gear from the underside. Very little of this will been seen once the gear doors are installed.
Photo 3 - Flight surfaces test fit
Photo 4 - Post-it tape used to mask the forgotten radar panel behind the cockpit
Photo 5 - Fuselage decals complete
Completion of the decals brings the model almost to completion. These planes were kept pretty clean, and must have been polished regularly based on pictures, so there won't be much weathering other than a dark panel line wash to pop out the panel details. Once that is done, the wings and tail can be attached, and then all the remaining details such as landing gear doors, pitot and antenna can be installed. I should be able to finish this off next week.
English Electric Lightning
Not a lot of progress this week. The fuselage filler has been sanded, and lost panel line details are now being restored. Not much worth taking a picture of.
That's if for this blog update. Take care everyone and stay safe.
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