1/144 NAMC YS-11 Olympic Airways

[Whirly]

This is my entry, one of the very few kit issued by Hasegawa in 1/144 scale together with a nice old Liveries Unlimited sheet for (I believe) the sole European civil operator of this japanese type.

I acquired the kit second-hand and the main parts were already assembled competently, I plan to go ahead after the summer holidays.

Cheers Fabio

[stringbag]

I'll bet this will be the only YS-11 entered in the group build Fabio.

So nice to see such an unusual subject in a nice scheme.

Thanks for posting this one.

Chris.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

I expect Chris is right with this entry. Nice you could join us Fabio. Looking forward to your progress when you start on it.

[Whirly]

Thank you both for the words of welcome: I have many Airbuses and Boeings in my 'reserve' but I just wanted to do something different and this seems to fill the bill very well.

Hope to do it justice once I come back from holidays.

Cheers

Fabio

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Great idea Fabio, I think I will drag something from the stash that is a little different for my next build.

[Whirly]

Ok, holidays are over and now it's time to work!

I checked the already assembled fuselage for any blemishes and it really is in good shape. I attached the transparent windscreen as I will use the decals, it fits well but came out slightly indented on one side. Some putty will take care of that...

I also filled with Mr Surfacer all the doors as they are slightly undersized compared to the decals.

On reading some reviews of the Hasegawa kit I noticed that the previous owner removed all details molded with the fuselage halves (aerials, beacons...) so will have to locate where to put scratchbuilt items.

The wings needed more care: I filled with Mr Surfacer a sink mark running along the thickness of the flaps (note that they are split on the underside and I got them already nicely filled and finished).

The engine nacelles are quite a problem since they have very good detail of the RR Darts many intakes but fit really terribly! I tried in many ways to adjust the fit but there's no escape to puttying the join lines and loosing some detail. Here Hasegawa could have done a much better job.

Pay attention also to the rear where the exhaust goes: it's better painting everything black BEFORE assembling the wings but in my case I got them already closed, will try to reach inside with the airbrush.

Will post more progress tomorrow, thank you for looking!

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Nice start.

When it comes to moulded on antennas I prefer to remove them as they interfere with correcting seams. I prefer the antenna to be separate so I can add them later. I did this with my B737 build.

[CliffB]

It's nice to see this one under way Fabio (and I hope that you had a good holiday ).

Cliff

[Whirly]

@TrojanThunder: perfectly agree with you, I simply forgot to say that having the original details is useful as patterns to make your own and to locate them correctly (after a check with available images of course!)

Thank you Cliff, I had a long holiday as you can see and it was blessed with excellent weather too, I only missed my modelling workbench

This morning I had more fights with the nacelles joints but I can win, I also glued on the wings, will see how they came out this evening after work.

Cheers

Fabio

[Whirly]

Wings and tailplanes glued on.

The wing junction was not trouble free, I had to use a lot of putty, hope it will come out cleaner after sanding.

[Whirly]

Ok, all the seams are cleaned up.I didn't expect so much filling on the belly, there are some strange sink marks.

A rough masking wth tape and paper and the white is on. I used Tamiya White Surface Primer and it came out perfect, I'm not a fan of japanese products but this is really magic!

More masking ahead, this time for the natural metal.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

I love the Tamiya white primer. it is my weapon of choice for airliners

[Skodadriver]

This is coming along nicely. Are you going to polish the white primer?

I just noticed that Nick Webb of Classic Airlines decals has a sheet for Mey-Air, an obscure Norwegian airline which seems to have operated a pair of YS-11s. This was news to me since like you I always thought Olympic was the only European user of the type.

[Whirly]

Nice find on the Norwegian carrier, it's also an interesting and classic '70s livery. If I happen to find another YS-11 at a good price...

I lightly polished the white primer with micro mesh because I had to do some touch-ups with decanted paint and the airbrush. This is the first time I tried the tecnique and I had some problems with the paint drying too fast: anyone tried adding some retarder to the mix?

[Whirly]

Did some more progress on the painting stage. First an undercoat of Humbrol semigloss black...

Then the natural metal:

My preferred paint for aluminium has been Humbrol Polished Aluminium for more yeras than I can remember. Now I had to open a new tin and unfortunately it seem to have changed, being less forgiving with surface imperfections and much more difficult to spray evenly with the airbrush. Am I the only one to suffer this problems or it's a common defect of the newer paint batches?

Anyway I tried to fix the unevenness with a mist of Alclad Aluminium, it's not the result I was aiming at but I really shuddered at the idea of stripping everything

Edited September 12, 2016 by Whirly

[Skodadriver]

Bad luck with the Humbrol. I've had so many bad experiences with natural metal over the years that I've developed the practice of only doing a section of the model at a time. On the Donaldson Britannia I've started with the tailplanes, then I'll do one wing (including the engines), then the other wing and so on. I know it's probably a bit odd and it does take a while but at least it means that if anything goes wrong it only affects a relatively small part of the model. Like you I used to use Humbrol Metalcote but I found it was easily damaged by handling. I could never get on with Alclad but I find AK Interactive Xtreme Metal easy to use and pretty robust once it's dry.

[Guilherme Kosciuv]

Looks great! I´m planning to build one in VASP colors.

[Whirly]

Bad luck with the Humbrol. I've had so many bad experiences with natural metal over the years that I've developed the practice of only doing a section of the model at a time. On the Donaldson Britannia I've started with the tailplanes, then I'll do one wing (including the engines), then the other wing and so on. I know it's probably a bit odd and it does take a while but at least it means that if anything goes wrong it only affects a relatively small part of the model. Like you I used to use Humbrol Metalcote but I found it was easily damaged by handling. I could never get on with Alclad but I find AK Interactive Xtreme Metal easy to use and pretty robust once it's dry.

Hi Skodadriver,

thank you for your hints. I'm really disappointed by this change in the Metalcote results: I used it for many years knowing its limits but worked on the whole very well for me and it was easy to apply. Now all this is gone, probably my tin was quite old and you faced much earlier the problems I had only now. I too dont'like Alclad that much and never got the shiny results promised despite following all the advices on the perfect undercoat (no, not in this case ). I'm going to test the new acrylic metals as you already did, some of my club members sponsored also the new Vallejo Metal Colors, did you try them?

[Whirly]

Looks great! I´m planning to build one in VASP colors.

Thank you Guilherme! It's a nice model but need some attention with the joints despite being Hasegawa, would look great in VASP colours too. Did you find a dedicated decal sheet?

[Whirly]

After the first problems with painting, more were around the corner with the decals.

I've always read wonders of the Liveries Unlimited sheets but I was not overly impressed with my experience...

 

Admittedly the sheet I am using is near to twenty years old, though I had big problems with the blue and white inks since the decals resisted even the strongest softening liquids. All the other parts of the sheet were in good shape, perhaps the transaparent film was a little bit too thin being very difficult to handle.

You can see all the problems with the big tail decal

After much swearing I managed to complete one side

The de-icer boots went on good instead

After a hard struggle all the main decals were on.

 

Edited September 20, 2016 by Whirly

[Whirly]

Another disappointment of these decals is the fit, you can see how there is a big gap on the fin leading edge despite all my attempts to get the best compromise all around.

The cockpit windows were also a bad fit worsened by the stiff white ink, finally I had to cut every window and adjust the correct sit.

Added the undercarriage,

the sit is good and it's quite like its bigger brother!

[Whirly]

While I was pondering over the individual aircraft to choose, I tried to apply the remaining decals and here I found how lacking are the instructions. You are supplied with two rows of gray things quite identifiable as vortex generators but you have to guess where they should go

After a lot of time wasted googling around I determined their position is under the tailplanes, see this still from a Youtube video

so they were applied accordingly

Now I have more items to identify...

Thank you for looking!

Edited September 20, 2016 by Whirly

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Decalling can be the most rewarding and the most difficult part with these builds, Especially when they do not want to co-operate. Sometimes I wonder if I should buy 2 of every sheet so I have a back up if things go pear shaped.

 

Looks like you have done well there @Whirly with the problems you have had.

[Whirly]

10 hours ago, TrojanThunder said:

Decalling can be the most rewarding and the most difficult part with these builds, Especially when they do not want to co-operate. Sometimes I wonder if I should buy 2 of every sheet so I have a back up if things go pear shaped.

 

Looks like you have done well there @Whirly with the problems you have had.

 

How you are right TrojanThunder! I enjoy immensely the decal phase but I always feel a shudder down my spine whenever I start applying the first one and see that I will have a bunch of problems...  This time seems I have survived  

[Whirly]

I haven't forgotten my model but life and work intruded in the plan as usual...

Now, after going much down the list of postings I found my thread and I'm resurrecting it!  

 

Last time I posted I was dealing with the unidentified detail decals in the Liveries Unlimited decal sheet...

The only ones I found an appliance for are a pair of louvres for the turbine engines which should appear as follows:

 

 

Problem is that when I turned to the model I found an air intake in the same position...

 

 

So, it seems that later aiframes and all the JASDF ones that probably Hasegawa choose to reproduce have this feature:

 

 

Conclusion is that the decals went in the spares box since I didn't want to make the repair after sanding away the unwanted intake!

Should I do another YS-11 I will check this detail in advance. Keep in mind that the louvres are not handed but appear on the starboard side for both engines (like the intakes).