Looking good Swanny. Can’t wait to see this one completed.
Made some real progress today. First is some additional flap detail, this is the part of the flap that drops. It is made from three pieces of Photo Etched material but even after having built one the second still took nearly an hour to put together with a X10 omni-visor. The first pic is of the main piece with the trailing edge folded over and the inner spars raised and the two cross members before installation. Next the spars and cross members are finally in place and third the leading edge has been wrapped around the spars. Forth, the lower hinge stubs are shaved off the old flaps and superglued onto the new flaps – there are five of these on each side.
After working the kinks out of my back from that little project I moved on to the cowling and the KMC cowl flaps. In the first pic we have the kit flaps cut from the cowling and a thin piece of Evergreen sheet is glued inside the cowl to give me a slight lip to fix the new flaps onto. The second pic gives a good view of the new lip. The third pic shows the new flaps in place but the hydraulic actuators are not in place yet.
When I test fit the cowling to the fuselage the effect is simply tremendous. It’s too bad KMC went out of business because this was an easy conversion and really makes a difference in how the Wildcat looks. Maybe some other aftermarket company will pick up this idea and put it back on the market.
It looks great Swanny. [tup][:-^] Yoy truly belong in the Master Modeller category. Cheers,
Eric
Agreed - those flaps look great, and there’s not a single kink in the straight lines. You must have the steadiest hands in history! Those cowl flaps are coming along nicely too - good idea with the styrene supports behind them. I’d probably have tried to balance them on the edge of the cut part, with little success!
The benefits of experience, eh? [;)]
Thanks Mike, all the kinks are in my back from being hunched over this flap for an hour.
Looking great Swanny. Not so mundane afterall [:)].
Regards, Rick
Monday the model was primed with Mr. Surfacer 1200 and some minor issues were fixed. Tuesday the model was preshaded with Cermacoat burnt sienna.
Wednesday I mixed my base colors and painted the belly of the beast.
Late Wednesday night I cut masks for the demarcation line and applied them, tonight some light Navy blue/gray goes on.
Hey Swanny! Ya know to put those light grainy pigments like white and grey on first-they don’t feather well (as you know-this was just a way to introduce the concept). Great job!
A true master!!!
[:D]
Lenny
Jeez, I’m thinking that by the time I reach 90, I’ll have skills half as good as yours. I’m gonna go cry now[BH][BH][BH]
And here is day five with the custom mixed blue/gray and sun fade done. I’m shifting over to the flaps now while this drys.
Great job, Swanny. My preshading never works cuz I overload the top coat! Thank God I only do 1/72 stuff-weathering is not much of an issue in that scale.