Hi All
Just recently I have been pushing myself to complete some real pigs.
Three (yes count em) THREE various Dragon Me262`s. One of these is a 262C conversion with scratch built rocket engine, one other is the Mistel which makes 4 aircraft, The Falcon kit of the 109G-12, and the Condor kit of the He178 all in 1:48 and all buggers in their individual ways so I thought enough is enough.
Lets do a simple slap together, I thought, with a closed canopy with minimal internal detail and concentrate on the paint job. I`ve always liked the 109G-10 in Croatian markings and after rummageing through my collection of loft insullation I found 3. The old Revell kit, a Hasegawa offering (nice) and a Hobbycraft kit which has the correct markings on the decal sheet thus my choice was made.
I looked through the internet and it seemed like a simple build with plenty of opportunitry for a weatherd paint job.
So box opened, battle commenced. The cockpit was fine with just minimal detail added, fuel line to starboard wall, seat belts added with fusewire buckles and Tamiya tape belts, wiring etc just painted on to show through the closed canopy. The radiator mesh under the nose looked basic so I simply added a spare from an old Eduard zoom set for the E. This fitted fine, fuselage halves joined and only a morning gone. But old habits die hard. Without really thinking Id cut the back of the oil cooler so as to add the small flap at the rear and without thinking much Id cut off both the radiator flaps and wing flaps so as to show them drooped. So much for a simple build but still not to much work. It was only after I had taken off one of the leading edge slats that I realised that this wing half was getting rather floppy and seemed to had lost any rigidity. Time to stop I thought so I joined the wings together only to find that the gaps for the flaps etc were much wider than they should be. End of day one.
Starting early I jigged the wings to the correct thickness scratched the inside as much as possible from the small slot on the outside and appllied some Milliput to hold them together and return some rigidty. Next start on the flaps. These were longer underneath than they were on the top. Recut, add filler, sand, check for fit, throw into bin and scratchbuild. Radiator flaps just about useable. Working quite late till the early hours the rest of the kit was assmbled ready for painting.
The next day was a Sunday, my son had borrowed the car taking my wife to a market and I settled down with the music on LOUD for some contented work. Now I use loads of different paints and had six different makes of light blue/ RLM 76. Four enamels had either gone hard or were going that way. Another was not enough to coat the whole aiframe which left a pot of acrylic. This had seperated and after shaking & stirring like crazy I thought I can use this. Ideally I really needed to use the manufacturers thinners just to get some life back into it before I thinned like usual with laquer thinner for spraying, but no luck no car no shops!. Still with true British resolve I carried on regardless. It went on ok, covered fine and dried like pebble dash. After spending another hour cleaning the gunk out of my airbrush (thats why I like laquer thinners, it breaks down anything so be careful if like me your airbrush has teflon o rings) Going back to the kit I was stumped. How do I clean this off. After a couple of hours rubbing the paintwork down with tooth powder a smooth finish was achieved. The underside was masked up ready for the top coat and then I thought paints! Luckily I found a reasonable match for RLM 82, you might of noticed that Im not a stickler for exact matches when doing a weatherd model as the real thing changes so much anyway, and filled the airbrush. So in my normal arrangement of airbrush in right hand and cigarette in left (its for balance-ok) I was ready to go. The airflow was rather high so I put the brush into its holder and reached down looking at the compressor to adjust the pressure. Turning back somthing wasnt right. I had managed to melt the starboard wing tip with my ciggy.
Well today has been spent correcting all of the above and suddenly the novelty has worn off.
