Hello everyone and welcome to my newest small update and another exciting episode of "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back"! Yes, in trying to finish these two large aircraft I'm working on, I have encountered even more setbacks. It's as if these two refuse to be completed.
Let's start with the big B-377...
I had finished re-coating this and set it aside to dry and later picked it up to start removing the window masking. That's when I found this. It's hard to see in the pic, but it is a blemish on my perfect upper fuselage from running clearcoat:
So, after masking as seen in this previous pic; I sanded this smooth and re-shot it with the now-decanted Tamiya Gloss Aluminum. I think I got it close enough to how it was before:
Finally, I felt I could move along on this. I decided to remove all the window masking to prevent my breaking the landing gear and gear doors (among other things) later on. It seemed to go pretty well at the start:
Then I got to the other side. You can see how windows 1,2 and 4 fell inside the plane. Now I have a wonderful little high-pitched rattle inside this plane! Yippee!
Well, they weren't coming out so I did the only thing I could. Out came the window making fluid and now I have new windows:
My apologies for that poor pic, I was so frustrated with those three windows!
Moving on to Episode Two of "One Step Forward, Two Steps Back", we have my efforts to fix the aluminum coat on the C-118 which cracked. As you recall, I had shot the plane thusly:
Later I peeled off the Tamiya tape and lo and behold; it pulled a little of the white off with it, despite my clearcoating efforts! Okay, no problem; I was able to hide most of it under the 'cheat line'. Still some of it remained visible:
I primed it with a brush, masked it off again using the same technique with the B-377 and then decanted some white again. Here it is ready for me to spray:
Later on after spraying a couple coats of white and clearcoat; I pulled the Tamiya tape off and was gifted with a pain free and complete finish:
Finally! Now I can move forward on this.... again! Given the difficulty I've had in the past with this and with the B-377 decals, I pulled the decals for the C-118 and applied Liquid Decal Film to them. I just don't want to take any more chances!
Time to move on....
I added the remaining clear parts to the Hampden after dipping them in Future, along with the guns that are supposed to stick out from them:
Later on, I'll be masking them, dullcoating this plane and then painting the clear parts. Maybe then I can call this thing done.
After all those frustrating issues with all these previous models; I wanted to work on something more easy and fun. I pulled out the AH-1 Cobra and completed almost all the assembly on it. Now I'm ready to mask off the canopy and start painting this:
After this, I still wanted to work on something fast and easy. I then saw my Hasegawa 1/72 scale A-37A/B kit and decided to do that since I still have no Dragonfly in my collection. I started with the 'cockpit', such as it is. Since there wasn't much (not even control sticks!) I added the pilots to give this more eye candy:
After awhile, when they were dry I painted everything:
I had also built the wings while the cockpit glue was drying:
Since this little bird needs some weight in the nose; I added some cut up fishing weights to the inside of the nose:
Later on, when everything was dry, I closed up the painted cockpit inside the fuselage; added the wings and the tail, as well as some other detail bits and finally the canopy after I dipped it in Future:
Just need to mask those windows and then this will also be ready for paint.
That's all I got done for now. I hope you like it. Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.
