IdolM@ster Rafale M "lori Minase"

[georgeusa]

18 hours ago, Pete in Lincs said:

Nice one, George.

Keep them coming.

Glad to have you aboard Pete!

[Bigdave22014]

Without trying to gender stereotype, but keeping in the theme of the subject, surely any pilot in a suitably pink and sparkly flight suit will suffice?

[georgeusa]

Until I can figure out what to do with the photobucket fiasco, no updates. Plus, was have some personal matters that must be attended to that take priority. 

[infofrog]

https://postimages.org/ free and simple to use 

Check this site out 

Rick

[georgeusa]

12 hours ago, infofrog said:

https://postimages.org/ free and simple to use 

Check this site out 

Rick

Thanks Rick, I will check it out. 

[georgeusa]

It’s about time for an update.  Life has taken some interesting turns since my last update.  A little over two months ago, at midnight, on a Saturday, I was trying to make it back home in time to meet my “favorite”, my sweet Mattie, who was coming home from a date.  About 2 miles from the house, I came across an overturned pickup truck that had just rolled across the highway.  When I got next to the truck and saw the front, black brush bumper, my stomach sickened as I knew it was Mattie’s truck.  As I approached the truck, I was trying to think of how to tell her mother her little girl had died in a traffic accident as the cab was partially crushed, the front windshield was gone, one of the wheels had broken off and the frame was twisted.  To my great delight and joy, I saw Mattie’s face looking up at me, panic stricken of course as she was going into shock, complaining about her leg hurting.  She was alive coherent and had feeling in her legs; all positive signs.  I knew her mental facilities were okay as the first words out of her mouth is it wasn’t her fault!  She was twisted in her seat belt and her left leg was obviously broken.  A county sheriff appeared on the scene and called in an ambulance and firetruck as she needed to be cut out of the cab.  People make fun of me because all my vehicles are quite large; the smallest being a Ford F150 pickup truck.  Mattie was in a F250 diesel truck and because of its size and the fact it was old, I feel that is the only thing that saved her from being crushed and killed.  She had a compound fracture in her lower leg as both bones were through the skin, a complete break in her upper thigh region and another complete break in her arm.  Three operations later, she faces a long recovery period, but she should be back to her old self with maybe a limp and a lot of metal fittings inside of her.    I have modeled some as when I came home from the hospital I could not sleep; just couldn’t take the time to post, nor did I feel like doing so.  That, plus my pictures were stored on Photobucket and we all know how that turned into a total debacle!  I am in the process of restoring all of my posts’ missing pictures.  That is a nightmare and very time consuming.

 

On to the update.  I did a miniscule amount on the Avenger and just a tad to the 109.  The IdolM@ster offered mindless work with painting and decals so it got the brunt of the building.

 

Prior to painting, the canopy had to be masked, always one of the chores I hate the most.  Luckily, this is a simple canopy to mask and it was relatively painless.  (Still, it took me a good hour and a half to mask two pieces.  I am dreadfully slow at this part of the building game.)  In addition to the masking, there are some pieces that need to be attached to the inside of the canopy prior to its attachment to the fuselage.  So those pieces were painted and weathered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The canopy fit fairly well with just a bit of sanding and cutting to get it in place.  After the canopy glue dried, the plane was painted in its bright pink base.

 

 

 

The exhaust cans were painted and weathered.

 

 

 

And the finished exhausts were attached to the fuselage.

The kit has a great deal of white background; i.e., the nose and all edges of the airframe.  Decals are provided to most of the white areas, but the nose needs to be painted.  The nose is masked up with enough tape I hope to prevent any overspray.  The first layer of paint is applied and an “Oh No!” occurs.

 

 

I really don’t think I can get away with calling that very deep and large crease a panel line.  So, more putty is applied, sanded, and another couple of coats of white is applied.  (Pink is not a great background to cover with paint.)

 

 

 

Now comes the only reason to build these kits, the decal schemes.  Since this kit was designed for the Japanese home market, all the instructions are in Japanese and there are a few concerning how the decals should be placed.  Since I have done a few of these kits, I know there are base layers of white and some sort of large swoops.  On top of this goes an underlying theme layer, then the main theme of the particular kit, generally a large picture of the pilot character, followed by the last layer of stencils and details.  Anyway, the first layer consists of large pink swoops that run almost the length of the fuselage and tail.  The port swoop goes on first.

 

 

Not a good sign that I break the first decal.  I piece it back together and then get it into place.  This is then followed by copious amounts of Micro Sol to force the decal to conform to the kit details.  Generelly the decal must go over compound curves and sink into panel detail.  I don’t know who makes these decals, but they are generally designed quite well and react nicely to the Micro Sol/Set decal solutions.  For a 1/48 kit, I use about ½ to ¾ of a bottle of Micro Sol.

As the first layer of Micro Sol is working on the port swoop, I lay down the starboard swoop.

 

 

I am beginning to see a pattern here.  Two decals, two breaks.  Either my lack of sense of touch is causing me to be too rough with these decals, or they are more fragile than past IdolM@ster decals I’ve used.    After a bunch of applications of Micro Sol, both swoops are in place and are nestling very nicely to the kit detail.  Next up, the white borders are installed. 

 

 

After the base decals are beaten into submission, to hug the kit surface detail, the large signature decals are applied to the upper fuselage surface. These too, must conform to multiple compound angles even though they do not want to

 

 

The upper fuselage surface is then besieged by a warren of bunnies!!

 

 

Finally, a plethora of upper surface detail decals are put on and slathered with washes of Micro Sol.

 

 

 

 

 

Almost every decal that was bigger than ½ inch broke when I was applying.  Again, I don’t know if it is these particular decals, or my heavy-handed application.  In the last picture, the bunnies on the canards have a decal placed on their ear closed to the fuselage with an X on it.  At first, I thought this had some significance, but apparently now, as these same decals are on the starboard wing without bunnies.  If someone knows the significance of these X ears, let me know.  Anyway, here is the completed top fuselage decal scheme including the X ears (sans bunnies) on the lower port wing. 

 

 

 

 

Working around the plane, the decaling process proceeds to the port side of the plane.  The white border on the tail must be put on as the first layer.  Which is what I attempt to do.

 

 

As I stated earlier, I have done numerous IdolM@ster kits and they all have had white borders done with decals.  I have never had a problem getting the white decals to conform to the kit surfaces.  Because of the design of the Rafale tail, trying to put a white border on with decals involves a skill level I do not possess.  No matter how I tried to get the decals to conform with Micro Sol, it just did not look pretty.  That left the option of painting on the border; which entails masking over existing decals, including the very large decal of the pilot character on the port wing.  But, what other choice do I have?  I mask the area to be painted. 

 

 

 

Paint is then applied and the waiting game begins.  The tape is carefully removed and the damage done to the decals is negligible.

 

 

 

The worst damage was done to one of the white decals and shouldn’t be too hard to touch up.

 

 

The only other damage was one of the bunnies on the port tail lost an ear and a tiny portion of the main character decal needs some touch up.  Otherwise, seems like a successful solution to a potential kit killer situation.  I also discovered I missed one section to be painted, but that also can be touched up later.

The decals to the port side are applied.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have an issue with one of the port decals; why is the inner paint of the oval tail decal next to the girl’s head tan rather than white?  A similar one on the nose is white.  Doesn’t make sense why the inner colors are different.  I then went to the starboard side and made a significant dent on the starboard tail decals.

 

 

On this side, I cut the decal for the girl’s hair bow as the decal hits the part of the Rafale tail that sticks out.  There is no way to get the decal to conform to this extreme surface detail.  I didn’t do this with the port decal and now I regret it.  And this is where the fun stops and life begins again, with all of its chores and obligations.  As always, all comments are welcome.  

[Max Headroom]

Wow, that's a lot to digest in one go.

 

First off and most important I hope Your Favorite has a full and speedy recovery. The circumstances sound horrific but thank goodness the truck was able to protect her.

 

Photobucket *sigh*, many of us have been there.

 

The Rafale. Wow that's a lot of.......pink. Not terribly stealthy is it?! Those bunnies? They are NATO standard 'No Step' bunnies. 

 

Trevor

[Hunter Rose]

You sir have the patience of a saint! Some great work with such large awkward decals

[S5 modeller]

Brilliant decal work there sir. 

Shocked to hear of the accident, but it very fortuitous that you happened along. Glad to hear a full recovery is on the cards, it could have turned bad in so many ways. 

 

Matt