mitchem

...probably because Trigonometry hadn't been invented yet ?.. Many thanks Flying Badger. I'd urge you dig it out and make a decision. Loads of colour schemes to choose from mike

Based on the photographic evidence, it doesn't look like much has been happening, but.... new decals were printed before applying them to the fuselage. All of the windows were remasked. Panel line wash was applied to the rudder hinge line (this appears to be quite prominent in online reference photos) Everything was sealed in with a coat of satin varnish Boeing grey was applied to the wings outboard of the engines (for some reason or other, the port wing proved to be a bit problematic) Panel line wash was applied to the horizontal surfaces that had been painted. I reckon that I should now be in a position to mask off the fuselage, before permanently attaching the wings....and filling the gaps. (The hole at the front of the starboard wing root should be interesting?) (The sister build taking place behind the scenes is proving to be a bit trickier than I had hoped for. (How many of us ever thought that we would use Trigonometry after we left school? )) Until next time. mike

Thanks Matt - good idea. I was considering low-tack masking paper, but that was before I discovered exactly how fragile my decals are!.... All of the markings in my previous post had to be removed after they came into contact with water. Occupational hazard of ink-jet decals when you don't seal them in correctly.

Classic scheme - Excellent stuff ! I remember passing through Lisbon once and seeing one of their 747s in the same scheme. Kind of blew my mind as to how striking the scheme was then. mike

Awesome build, and as for your collection..... mike

Thanks Keith. Loads of cunning plans ahead revolving around masking, spraying, masking, spraying, etc. I can see it in my head - it's just a case of making it happen in the correct sequence.

All winners IMHO ...and I'm going to have to vote for the A300 John. (Hope Dave has been ignoring the recent political circus, as he could very well end up building the Cessna ) mike

Been building models for more years than I care to remember, so why on earth did I decide to jump the gun and apply decals to the fuselage before joining the wings? I guess I needed the motivation It looks like "Great Zimbabwe" is coming to life mike

Thanks Keith. I think the bin would have been safe as the air was too blue to see it (ICM P-51D? Now searching for any scheme without stripes ! Thanks Moggy, More like blind obsession and pig-headedness Thanks Matt. You should see the other side

...so the 737 and I had a pretty serious falling out, inasmuch as the fuselage fell out of my hands and hit the floor. The tail snapped off (not where it was joined to the fuselage) and broke into four pieces; one of which is still missing. Cue blue mushroom cloud above my head Nearly three weeks later and I have managed to repair the damage. This involved making a new part from plastic card, gluing the fragments together, rescribing the panel lines, gluing the tail back on, blending it in, and then repainting the tail stripes from scratch. And when I mean "from scratch", I mean that I had to sand the paint back to plastic and start with a gloss white base. (Useless tip if you weren't already aware - self-levelling thinners is pretty good at blending colours togeether and spraying more and more paint on top doesn't help. I realised this when the yellow portion of the tail stripes looked more orange than yellow, while the red on the other side of the demarcation started looking more orange than red! ) Anyway, I got there in the end, and while all the repair work was going on, I managed to get the engines painted too. I also took the opportunity to tweak some of the paintwork, and this included reducing the diameter of the door port holes by gently sanding the silver surrounds off After temporarily attaching the horizontal tail surfaces, this is where we are now : ...and from a lower angle (The location of the Pratt and Whitney engine logos were masked on both sides of each engine, and while the registration decal has been applied to the back of the fuselage, it will be removed before being replaced with a thinner version as the varnish layer is a bit thick). Next step is to mask the fuselage up completely before joining the wings permanently. Thanks for looking mike

Impeccable finish there Dave Thanks for sharing. mike

...I may have to borrow one of your "things" Keith.... My KUTA build backfired big time, but on the plus side, I now have six things on the go for our next KUTA Competition! mike

Minor setback when I realised that I didn't have enough metallic paint for the engines, and what I did have, looked like it was well past its shelf-life ! Off to do some internet shopping and as I couldn't find a retailer that had all three of the colours that I wanted, I ended up buying some other stuff that I didn't really need. To top it all, the bottle of polished aluminium that I wanted to start with still hasn't arrived. Anyway - time to focus on the tailplanes. I had previously inserted some brass tubing through the rear fuselage, with the intention of using slightly narrower tubing to strengthen the join. It's going take some adjusting but it looks like it could work, as long as I don't over-complicate things: Messing about with more masks: The kit does provide etched handles for the passenger doors, but these won't be fitted until later on. In the meantime, the indentations in the doors need to be painted so I designed some masks for these. As I'm planning on painting the wing escape route, I designed masks for those too If you look close enough, you'll see the mask that I made for the narrow white strip that runs below the curved part of the cheatline. This narrow strip will run around the front of the fuselage but not down the length to the tail. After a splash of paint and the addition of some dark grey panel liner: (I'm pretty sure that the black escape arrows won't survive the process of attaching the wing to the fuselage! ) ...and just because I'm impatient, I needed to mock the thing up for motivational purposes (Don't panic - none of the horizontal bits have been glued to the fuselage) ...All I need now is for the polished aluminium to turn up.... mike

I'm afraid that progress on the 737 has slowed down after getting distracted with another build. (Stay tuned as I'm hoping to reveal both completed builds at the same time !) In the meantime, I have drilled out the door portholes and painted out the door surrounds The next step is to start painting the engines, and once they have been completed, it will be time to join the wings to the fuselage. Before that can happen, the cheatline and white components of the scheme are going to have to be buried under masking tape. It could be the last time you see these guys for some time I ended the day off by printing out four sets of decals to complete the markings. (My home-made decals are printed out using an inkjet printer, and based on past experiences, I know how fragile they can be - always good to have spares available ) Thanks for looking. mike

Well done for rescuing it and doing a great job in the process! Nothing wrong with wheels up. mike