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Navy-ation - Wasp The last post


perdu

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19 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

Well, its up to you but I won't be stopping until I am safely back on Planet Wibble.

 

Martian on the Loose

Planet Wibble is a very nice place. I spend a lot of my time there but only seem to meet Martian when we both visit Earth, well Telford anyway.

 

@perdu Keep going Chap, Stiff Upper Lip and all that, I'm fighting a Gannet at the moment and found watching Zulu last evening lifted my spirits somewhat. Nigel Green is superb if not 100% accurate.

 

Inspired by your work a visit to the stash to retrieve my Wasp is pencilled in.

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There's no duff performances in Zulu if I recall correctly, I love that movie

Hmm fighting a Gannet huh? I have that pleasure to come soon and two Frog Novo kits to wrassle with and lots of AM to try to get to grips with

 

 

Unfortunately Wopsie has brick walled me on the tailboom markings

 

I have 4", 6", 8", 12" and on up to 'really big' as Sir Lenny used to opine

 

But nowhere in my stash or under extensive hunting of the alleyways of the interweb can I find the necessary ten inchers

 

Any advice from you chaps and chapesses would be welcome

 

Til then Im fettling the littler bits, rotor blade supports and the like

 

Help  :badmood:

Edited by perdu
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I've been trying to use the RAF font I downloaded into Word to make the RN signs but it keeps reverting to Times Unwanted New Roman, it seems there's a world of interweb users out there having it happen to their versions too

 

But, and it's a big but, ;) I have discovered that the Trebuchet font prints out pretty well perfectly as the ROYAL NAVY I need

 

And I have a panel of RAFBG on a plain new file in p'shop that I can select white text to make up some 0.13888 high letters and print off the real things

 

Yeehaww!

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Oauntless was it? :)  Not to worry, my keyboard does that to me too, "really gets my wild up!"

 

Coming along a bit better tonight, I spent the afternoon playing with 'styles' in Word 2010 and managed to get the background to a headed style in a colour a reasonable facsimile thereof to RAFBG and played with the printer settings to get my new white decal sheet through the printer with letters on it

 

I used the 'style' so I didn't have to completely colour the sheet, just a strip 5/8" x 5" which saved paper for later

 

Hence this immensely magnified shot

 

P1120329.jpg

 

The decal sheet is brilliantly thin, I can see the backing film colour in this picture but I defy anyone to see it on the actual model

 

The colour isn't quite on hue but the printer refuses to get closer

 

I have a fine paint brush, an optivisor and a fresh tin of paint

 

For info Sovereign Hobbies paint colour is exactly the same as the paint in my tin of Compucolour2 from the eighties, bang on match and I love it

 

Also for info this decal paper has been supplied by Mr Decal Paper from an enquiry on A South American River sounding company

 

(enquiriesatcreativepaperco.com) and it is a remarkably thin carrier film, you may recall I used to work in the Transfer/Decal printing business when I were a lad, this stuff is better than the last three lots I have had elsewhere and I like it

 

We bandy about the names of people who displease us, grant me the privilege of praise where due too please

 

P1120331.jpg

 

This more realistically portrays what I see when looking at  it

 

P1120326.jpg

 

Even flooded with flash, not bad huh and no decal film silvering either

 

Behind the model are some of the print outs with which I refined the background colour

 

The font I used in Word, Trebuchet MS in 14 point measured exactly 0.1395" on the  decal paper, required dimension was 0.13888"

 

I figures that to be close enough, what do you think?

 

Less than a thou, is fine especially when the model is slightly off scale by a millitad

 

There is likely to be the odd touch in but not in any way a massive adjustment coming along

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2 hours ago, perdu said:

Also for info this decal paper has been supplied by Mr Decal Paper from an enquiry on A South American River sounding company

 

(enquiriesatcreativepaperco.com) and it is a remarkably thin carrier film,

 

Need to look into that.   I spent Sunday wrestling with Corel PSP which steadfastly refused to work on a file for the floor on the train.  When, after about 3 (literally !) hours I finally got the artwork completed, I printed, or tried to print it out on decal paper.   The decal paper I bought was supposedly the thinnest on the market - unfortunately, I bought it about 2 years ago and it must have "dried out" (?) as when it went through the printer, the decal film started shredding off the carrier paper and truly mucked my printer up.

I resorted to printing on photo paper, but I'm not sure I'm 100% happy with the result.

 

Anyways, regarding your latest exploits...

 

2 hours ago, perdu said:

 

 

P1120326.jpg

 

By the looks of that - YOU NAILED IT !

 

in case you were wondering - I had another week or two away on business. Back now but have got a lot of catching up to do before I can get to the mancave in a serious session

 

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One did wonder

 

One declined to mention it

 

One always believes "least said..."

 

 

;)

 

 

 

In other matters this decal paper has no identifying marks although some of the 'usual suspects' arrive on the doorstep bearing the same printed information on the obverse

 

It is certainly nice to use, this set of markings got four misted on coats of Tamiya Matt Varnish and that has allowed a really impressive application

 

.......Of course no more bets while the wheel is in spin, I'll post an update later if you like

 

Then I can tell you if there's been any shrinkage


I do love this modelling research

 

I managed to get a cheap version of PS4 many years ago which fulfils my main shopping needs and I still use PSP5 from an early age when it was a very user friendly give-away from a computer mag

 

GIMP or Inkscape might suit you too, Inkscape .091 has some incredible 'tools' for a free download ART facility, I believe Steve Fritag has it downloaded although in the Fritag drought these days I'm unsure whether he has gotten to grips with it

 

(Come on Steve its time we had more Hawkery mate)

 

Anyway thanks for hoping/thinking it's nailed

 

Serials next then codes, ship and rotor support frame

 

What does Crisp call them?

 

Forth Road Bridge, even if it looks far more like the Forth Rail Bridge

 

Nautical types huh, whaddatheylike

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I tried all those alternatives.  Really didn't like them, with Gimp being particularly frustrating.

 

I really loved PSP, especially version 9 but then Corel got a hold of it and thoroughly trashed a nice piece of software. I'm getting too old to learn new tricks. 

It was hard enough unlearning the metric system

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Great stuff Bill, those decals look just right - good job matey :) 

I wish I could find an easy pixel editor for the Mac... the Gimp version ('Seashore') stopped working when I upgraded to macOS (Sierra) but it was hard anyway. I miss PSP too!

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Ho ho

 

I have never unlearned the imperial system, learning metric in order to forget it?

 

Not a chance

 

I worked at a machine manufacturer who had to be using Metric

 

THEY ALL HATED IT

 

Because OLD like me

 

 But we got on with it

 

funny enough I never did get round to metricating my micrometers, but the machines still worked using tables to convert

 

he he

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Its odd but true Ced most of this was done simply using the abilities of the much maligned MS Word

 

Their templates

Their colour selection options

 

Beats me why they get so much stick from some peeps  :)

 

But to import wood grains I think H has to use one of those

 

:(

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Cheers chaps I am quite pleased about it, looks fairly nice in daylight too

 

Hendie, have you access to MS Paint? That does basic artwork quite well if not quite PSP values

 

Did you keep the old version of PSP?

 

Remove the new Corelised one and 'revert to better'

 

I may 'Sky type S' that Sea Fury today, its been hanging around for far too long and it's needed for my Naval air display

Edited by perdu
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Ta, minor problem (self imposed)

 

I'm redoing the tail legends, I have managed to get my RAF font refreshed in the font bank so I'm redoing them with I hope a slightly greener cast to the blue

 

As Crisp found there is a small green component in the colour mix which Ill be trying to get sorted, not easy with Word's colour handling

 

It is not designed to accurately print fine art colours after all

 

Maybe more later but I'm off out to the local to dine and mayhap imbibe a drop or three soonish

 

Fury had to defer to a trip au libraire, that later too, on the morrow perhaps

 

;)

 

Retirement is "magic our Maurice"

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Good luck with trying to attain the right colour. Also have a nice time out. Have, as my dad says, a sociable gallon on us and we will see what delights you come up with later on!

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I may not get the (full) gallon however I appreciate the wellwishing. Cheers!

 

Preliminary colour prints in so far are promising  Possibly best to leave the rest of the tests til the morrow though  ;)

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6 hours ago, perdu said:

Remove the new Corelised one and 'revert to better'

 

if only I could.  It got left back in the UK many years ago.  I'll just have to mumble and curse my way through Corels current abomination.

I'm with you on Word though, well in my case Open Office (cos I'm too tight to pay for MS Office). I did most of the artwork on the Dauphin with Open Office Writer.

 

Hopefully there will be an update on the train build soon.  I'm at that phase where I have to spend lots of time not building in order that I can continue building.  i.e. Lots of CAD work, Corel consternation, and of course, research, and trying to figure out the best way to construct the construction. It's proving to be a much larger undertaking than I had ever envisaged.

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Now that was weird

 

I took the ROYAL NAVY transfers off the tail cone after soaking them in Decalfix for a few minutes

 

It needed the scalpel to get into the edge of the film and lift it off the surface (there's probably a better way but its a first for me) as the film lifted it divided into two substrates or monostrates :( who knows and lifted and separated and it looked for all the world like a bluey film being held back by a gooey white chewing gum sticky layer

 

Weird

 

Some damage to the paint in places so I might touch in tomorrow but I'm happier about the prospects for the model now

 

Here is the denuded tail cone sitting over some of the print offs

 

The four at the back are colour set changes in the new RAF font and they are so much better in shape and area they will cover than the Trebuchet ones at the front

 

The originals had a too oval capital O which I was prepared to leave in place if I wasn't able to reload RAF 'the font' from the net, but I was so I did

You can see the tighter letter shape on the four top ones and the trend to green I managed to get off the printer at the end

 

One of the outer ones in this group is expected to get the gig tomorrow after they've had a varnish coat or three

 

P1120332.jpg

 

The green-ness shows up in a couple of them and when I compare with the paint on the model it is very close in hue

 

 

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