Spads' other GB entry - Daco Skyline -300 with WP Colorado Spring decals - #FINISHED#

[Spad]

OK, so I have the clearance from the host to go with this one with it's assembled fuselage (but nothing else!)

This is the second of a pair of Daco -300 variants I shall be building, in Western Pacific scheme, this one in their "Colorado Springs" scheme.

This is one that I picked up around 4 years ago. I moved to East Dereham  and had heard there was a decent model shop in the town - so I went in search. What I found was utterly depressing, even heartbreaking tbh! It was the day before they finally closed the doors for good! Upside though was that everything was 1/2 marked price and this little beauty (with decal sheet!) was marked at £19.99! Irresistible to this Magpie!

Anyway, enough back story, here's the obligatory sprue shot!

 

 

Here goes!

ATB
Rick

[FortyEighter]

Nice choice of livery 😀

[pinky coffeeboat]

Watching this one, quite nice to have a colourful livery.

 

Jeff 

[Spad]

Thanks chaps!

So, wings assembled a a dry fit to the fuselage- horrors!

Tight fit underside

Dirty great gap on the topside!

And that's after some fettling of the lower side! Tending to use this one as a test-out for the Simpsons one I'm doing so hopefully I can get a better result with that one?

Bit more fettling I guess as don't really want to use much filler if I can help it.

 

Edited February 5, 2018 by Spad

[FortyEighter]

That wing root gap was the only issue I had with my Daco 300 (the rest is a really nice kit) - and the wings never would snap together as intended.  I don't think I got the alignment of upper / lower wings 100% correct, so will be looking to improve when my 400 is started.

[Skodadriver]

You won't get the wing root much better than that.  I've probably built the kit a dozen times and it's the one major weak point.  I expect the same when I get my HLX -400 to that stage.  If I were you I'd call it quits and get the Milliput out!

[Spad]

Hi all

a bit of progress made with the wing joint. With some judicious sanding of the lower joint it looks like I may have sussed the upper joint - this is it glued-up so what do you guys reckon?

What I learn here is to be incorporated into the build of the "Simpsons" version in the sister thread on here.

Rick

[Skodadriver]

That's looking really good.  Well done!

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Looks Ok Rick, tidy up with files and sanding and she'll be right.

[Spad]

Thanks guys

Still needs a bit of filler I reckon but nowhere near as much as before!

[FortyEighter]

Looking good!

[pinky coffeeboat]

Looking good indeed. 

[Viking]

Good progress, I love this livery and am looking forward to seeing it completed.

[Spad]

Looking around the STGb it looks like I am falling behind quite seriously so here's an update.

You will have noticed in the OP that I had already joined the fuselage - too many years building cars and WWII fighters got me out of the habit of thinking about nose weight. Hence my questions over on my Simpsons build. Conclusion, it's needed so I wrestled with tihs one for a while and finally came up with both an idea and also the 'nads to give it a go!

I decided to drill a smallish hole in the front of the nose bay and pour small quantities of cyano and Liquid Gravity in through the hole. This way I could make a mush of glue/weights and also keep the heat down while the cyano went off inside. 

 

Looks like Flickr have sorted themselves out now so here's a pic of the hole I made in the nose gear bay.

 

 

 Seemed to work ok, so fingers crossed!

Edited February 26, 2018 by Spad
Reason for no pic being posted at this time

[Spad]

I have started to work on the engines now with a view to trying to ease painting later

 

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No it's not a four engined 737! I'm doing a tandem build with the Simpsons version so I tried a production line approach and did them all at the same time!

I'm hoping to paint them up and attach the nacelles and do the finish painting before adding the intake ring - this way I hope to avoid difficult masking but still achieve a clean join and paint demarcation. We'll see how that goes!

 

 

[Spad]

While doing some cockpit interior for the Simpsons version I got all four engine nacelles together.

The engine faces are free to take up any number of positions in the intake so the idea was to leave them unglued so they could be aligned with the intake lip when that was fitted after painting. Just in case of wayward glue I tried to align them with the intake lips anyway.

Here they are with the others for the "Simpsons" version (metallic grey cones for this one, black for the "Simpsons" version.

Assembly was a cinch - once a little flash was cleaned off they all went together with very little need of filler.

 

The hot end of the engines were an experiment in Alclad with two being done in Duralumin with a light overspray of Burnt Iron, the others in Jet Exhaust with a light overspray of Burnt Iron. Frankly, I can't really tell much difference and certainly can't decide if one is better. Oh well, ho hum!

That's all for this instalment - more on the weekend!

ATB
Rick

[nimrod54]

Good job Spad and you are not too far behind bud, I have just completed the wing/fuse join on mine over the last couple of days. 

 

[Spad]

Thanks Nimrod54! 

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

These Daco kits look like they go together with little fuss. nice progress

[Spad]

OK, so i've been doing a bit of work getting the Simpsons version up to the same stage as this one and now it's getting close to the colouring-in stage. I don't have Boeing grey so does anybody have a likely looking match or alternative? I generally have a bunch of Humbrol or Xtracolor grey enamels so was wondering if USN Lt Gull Grey or ADC Grey would do it?

Any suggestions welcome!

[Skodadriver]

Received wisdom is that the best match for Boeing grey is Canadian Voodoo Gray FS 16515 which is available in the Xtracolor range. Alternatively a very close match is Halfords Racking Grey, in fact it's so close that I've used the Xtracolor paint for brush touch ups on the Halfords.  Light Gull Gray is FS 16440 and ADC Gray is FS 16473 so neither is a particularly close match to FS 16515.  That said, aircraft get weathered, bits get replaced, different paintshops use different paint mixes and at the end of the day it's your model to finish as you see fit.  If you don't want to buy paint specially for this model I suggest you go to airliners.net, find a few good pictures of the Simpsons aircraft and find the grey in your stash which best matches the colour of the wings in the photos.

[Spad]

Thanks Skodadriver - I'm after some Halfords grey now - is that racking or raciing grey?

Anyway, in the meantime I have pressed on with the fuselage white rather than wait until I can get to Halfords (in Norwich for me!). Thinks - it may have been better to do the wings first as I think it might just be easier to mask them rather than mask the fuselage - I'll find out shortly I guess!

Also got the white onto the engine nacelles.

 

 

 

Get the wings and tailplanes done and I can start getting those lovely decals onto it!! Really looking forward to that!

[Turbofan]

On 29/03/2018 at 12:47 AM, Spad said:

 is that racking or raciing grey?

Rick, I've just used some Halfords Racking Grey for the first time and I am completely converted! Straight out of the can and it goes on nicely and dries quickly to a lovely smooth finish, wow! Why have I had it sitting there on the bench for so long before I used it!?

Thanks for recommending it Dave!

The 737 is looking good Rick close to my favourite bit, the decalling, when all that hard work pays off!

Cheers,

Ian

Edited March 31, 2018 by Turbofan

[Skodadriver]

Rick, if you're looking for Racking Grey in Halfords you will find it shelved with what they call "Specialist and Decorative Paint" NOT the normal car paints.  You can do click and collect on the Halfords website so you don't waste a long journey just to find it's out of stock.

[Lex77]

A nice choice in colour scheme.

Looking forward to the decalling stage.