rob_van_riel wrote:Almost made it, but close enough; 22:30 instead of 21:47.
Looks like I was on time after all; forgot the UK is an hour behind, probably even two, as I doubt they had daylight saving time in '43.
Just some quick pictures taken in less than favourable conditions. I'll replace them with better shots once I get some sunlight to work with.
Sunlight? As if, in this weather. Still, somewhat less clutter in the background, and natural light.
Records of some final entertainments with this build to follow tomorrow, but right now, I'm knackered..
So, the final entertainments...
I found out that one of the windows on the top was painted over/deleted on these planes, so that carefully set aside transparency was now a problem. Fortunately, I've done spot repairs on airbrushed paint before, and now always spray a scrap of decal paper along with the main target. If the part had fit perfectly (which it doesn't, and sanding is out) I thing the repair would have been completely invisible. Now, it merely takes effort to find it
Next up was the protective varnish. I'd been dreading this part, as handbrushing it on shows (admittedly minor) brushstrokes, while airbrushing acrylics hasn't really been my thing so far; either I didn't thin it enough, and my airbrush clogged up, or I thinned it down with alcohol, and it still clogged the brush because it dries almost instantly, or I thinned it down with water, and got the surface tension so high I just got droplets on the kit. No good all around.
Then I remembered something about adding Windex. Windex doesn't exist here, but cleaning windows takes soap wherever you are, and soap lower surface tension. So I dumped in some drops of detergent and tested. To my very pleasant surprise, it worked. The mixture dumped on the kit consisted of about 50% Sylvacryl furniture varnish, 25% water, 25% alcohol, about 1ml of Talens acrylic retarder, and a few drops of detergent. Seems to have worked rather nicely.
That left fun with the glazing. The main canopy doesn't fit, you have to squeeze it down real hard to get it to go where it belongs. With the bulged sidepanels, it doesn't fit at all, and even squeezing won't help. Lots of fun getting painted transparencies to fit. Also, some bad language
After this, it could once again be squeezed into place. Thing is, Microscale Crystal Clear (PVA?) needs a long time to set. Suffice to say that my hands hurt from keeping the pressure up forty minutes later..
Final entertainment came from the wingtip lights. One behaved, but the other went
PING, straight into the jaws of the carpet monster. When questioned, the monster would only say "Burp!". I had to resort to improvisation. I superglued some fishing line accross the gap, creating a front rim. This gave me a frame, in which I could then drop some more PVA, as though making a "window". This works quite nicely, and might at some time be used instead of ill fitting lights by design rather than accident.
