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Yet Another L-1011 TriStar G-BAAA "Halcyon Days"


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Graham love your intro story and watching carefully your build...didn't realise some one else made a Tristar other than Airfix and they are like rocking horse.....and expensive to boot.

Personally  I hate the bl@#dy aircraft but it does look good and I would like to build a crabfat one. ...My hate comes from being 'captive' on one or more than one occasion coming back from (never to) some location ...Bosnia ,Afghan etc.and they were forever breaking down ..normally the aircon and the good old VC 10 baled us out...it s was probably coz we were matlots...any excuse to wind up the senior service!:jump_fire:  

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Enjoying this.  I have a lot of love for the L-1011 given that I spent most of my youth flying TWA from Boston Logan to London Heathrow.

 

Love the build. 

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2 hours ago, junglierating said:

Graham love your intro story and watching carefully your build...didn't realise some one else made a Tristar other than Airfix and they are like rocking horse.....and expensive to boot.

Personally  I hate the bl@#dy aircraft but it does look good and I would like to build a crabfat one. ...My hate comes from being 'captive' on one or more than one occasion coming back from (never to) some location ...Bosnia ,Afghan etc.and they were forever breaking down ..normally the aircon and the good old VC 10 baled us out...it s was probably coz we were matlots...any excuse to wind up the senior service!:jump_fire:  

Hah, well I guess under the circumstances your feelings about the plane are understandable. Personally, I've never flown on one, though probably have been on nearly every other type since its time and some from before, like the DC-8, 1-11 and Trident. As a pimply schoolboy it was the fab colours that inspired me! Court went bust in '74 at much the same time as Nixon bit the dust - my memories of the two events are linked, along with the ominous 'News At Ten' signature tune and Gordon Honeycombe's grave tidings. Those colours graced the skies over Hertfordshire for a scant 18 months. The TriStar always looked 'right' though, in a way that the DC-10 just didn't, somehow. Apologies to DC-10 fans out there. Learning more about the aircraft as part of this build hasn't made me change my opinion on that score - it's a pity it wasn't the commercial success it deserved to be.

 

Eastern also do a TriStar 500 if you wanted to model the RAF version. While the engineering of the kits are a bit on the crude side, the overall moulding quality and detailing is pretty good. You can find them on eBay and they are much cheaper than an old stock Airfix version.

 

 

2 hours ago, Skodadriver said:

The 26 decals are definitely screen printed. I built Halcyon Breeze a while ago and had no issues with opacity although I did mask between the light pink and dark pink along the line of the bottom of the decal so I was applying the medium pink decals on a light pink background and not really using them to hide the colour demarcation.

 

One method you might consider is to photocopy the decals and use the copy to make an “underlay” from white decal sheet.

 

 

D'oh! Now you point it out, putting the demarcation right on the line makes total sense - why didn't I think of that? Now I'm at the mercy of the decal's opacity (unless I repaint, which I'm somewhat disinclined to do). I will also use the photocopy idea, it may turn out that the line isn't right at the nose end, where the decal tapers to a point (or should do - actually the 26 Decals sheet has a small error in this area and doesn't come to a point. Decided to live with that.) I've had to put the decal application on short hold however, because I was trying to get hold of some Future to apply a clear coat. My efforts in that area have failed (some friends were tasked to bring some back from the US but forgot), and Amazon Australia have it listed at $212 a bottle!!!!! What is it made from, gold leaf wrapped in rocking horse poo? So plan B is to use Humbrol gloss clear, but it'll take a week to come. So in the meantime it's back to the wings...

 

By the way, thanks everyone for all your kind comments and encouragement - it's nice to get off to such a welcome (re)start. As for next projects, I may do a few more 'Luton 73' era airliners - I have a Monarch Britannia and 720 waiting in the wings, but these will be OOB compared to this one.

Edited by Graham In Oz
Added Tristar 500 kit info
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2 hours ago, Skodadriver said:

The 26 decals are definitely screen printed. I built Halcyon Breeze a while ago and had no issues with opacity although I did mask between the light pink and dark pink along the line of the bottom of the decal so I was applying the medium pink decals on a light pink background and not really using them to hide the colour demarcation.

 

One method you might consider is to photocopy the decals and use the copy to make an “underlay” from white decal sheet.

 

 

i second that, no problems with the opacity of the decals. one thing worth mentioning graham - on my first attempt (when i actually used the decals before just painting the area instead) my decals 'overhung' parts of the tail, might be a good idea to also trace the decal and use a mask as a template to see how they fit, at least then you can trim down the actual decal to the size of the template once it fits perfectly. when i mentioned about these decals being a bit 'flaky' they will likely break off if they protrude the tail and take a lot of your decal with it. 

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Update: Wings and Engines.

 

While I'm waiting for gloss clearcoat to arrive, I've put together the engines and solved the issue of the leading edge slats. I kept the amount of modification to the kit wings down to a minimum and the results are not too bad, though not perfect. I think once fully assembled and painted they'll look pretty good though. I removed just enough material from the upper leading edge surface to suggest a recessed area without going right through the plastic. I then sawed a series of slots to take the vertical elements of the slats.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2069.jpg

 

It's hard to be sure if these are really in the right places - that's where the kit had scribed lines, but some reference images suggest there may be more. Still, that's what I went with. After that, I scratched up the slats themselves in the manner outlined in the earlier post using a piece of thin flat and a half-round strip. In the end I didn't need the EPO and the resulting recess formed a very natural place to attach them to the wings.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2070.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2071.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2066.jpg

 

With some crafty painting, these should look pretty realistic. The slat is a bit wide towards the wingtip, but by the time I realised this it was a bit too late to fix. I've made a start on the painting with priming and a bit of preshading, though I think to get the colour density sufficient, the preshading will end up disappearing - I should have gone with a white base coat instead of grey.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2073.jpg

 

So much for that. I also built up the engines. The only tricky aspect to these were the fact that the main fan is replaced by a PE part which was a bit fiddly, but not too bad. The spinner from the kit part is sawn off and attached to the PE to make the complete fan. The worst thing about it was that it was slightly too large a diameter, so the nacelle halves didn't want to close. I ended up scraping a recess around the inside edge of each half to take the fan, but the plastic being so thin I could only do it up to a point. Forcing the halves to close slightly concaved the fan, as well as forcing it to sit at a slightly unrealistic angle within the engine. Hopefully neither of these things will be noticeable, but it was a small point of irritation - why couldn't they have made the PE fan to actually fit?

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2072.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2068.jpg

 

Having got the nacelles to close, some EPO was needed to fix up a small dent in the front casing where the halves met (normal putty wouldn't stick in such a small area). After filing and sanding these back to shape, it was on to painting.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2067.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2074.jpg

 

Should have these finished tomorrow...

 

Thanks for looking!

 

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On 5/16/2018 at 12:25 AM, phil1 said:

I second that, no problems with the opacity of the decals. one thing worth mentioning graham - on my first attempt (when i actually used the decals before just painting the area instead) my decals 'overhung' parts of the tail, might be a good idea to also trace the decal and use a mask as a template to see how they fit, at least then you can trim down the actual decal to the size of the template once it fits perfectly. when i mentioned about these decals being a bit 'flaky' they will likely break off if they protrude the tail and take a lot of your decal with it. 

Hey Phil, don't forget to remind Graham to make sure he gets the logos the right way round!:rage::rofl2:

Cheers,

Ian

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Engines. Well, a frustrating day but came good in the end I think. I'm using AK Interactive's 'Xtreme Metal' paints for natural metal finishes. Everyone online praises these to the skies, noting in particular that masking tape can be applied over the finish and it won't pull it away. Well, that's not my experience. Not only does Tamiya tape (detacked on the back of my hand to reduce adhesion) pull the aluminium finish away, it reacts with it in a strange manner, causing the paint to appear to detach from the base coat. In fact the paint doesn't seem to want to properly adhere to the base coat, even though I'm using AK's own 'black base', supposedly intended for these finishes. I must be doing something wrong, but I don't know what. I left the base to dry for 24 hours and the aluminium to dry also for 24 hours, so they should be 100% dry. Maybe that's wrong, and it's better to overspray it when the base is only touch dry, so that there's more adhesion between layers. The other factor could be that where I'm spraying is quite cold - probably less than 15°C. Grasping at straws - I really don't know what's happening.

 

Anyway, after a few goes at it, removing the masking tape produced this sort of result, which I was unhappy with:

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2075.jpg

 

This shows the weird effect I'm getting. The front part of the cowl was perfectly smooth, but then masked to paint the middle part with a slightly different tone. After removing the tape, the front part ends up with this horrible finish that's sort of 'lumpy'. The middle part, being just sprayed, is perfect. But to respray the front and rear parts, the middle part has to be masked, so then the crappy finish ends up there. If anyone can put their finger on what the issue is here, I'd be grateful for your advice.

 

I did remask and respray the front and rear parts of the cowl, and sure enough the middle part ended up 'lumpy'. Not only that but the resprayed areas ended up all bloomed and not smooth and shiny at all, despite reprepping it by rubbing back to the base coat with 3000 grit.

 

This is when I was ready to scream, and in frustration, and figuring I had nothing to lose, I decided to attempt to polish the paint lightly using a cotton pad on my Dremel. To my surprise this converted the nasty paint job into a truly realistic looking natural metal finish, even though it was starting to allow the black base to just begin to show through. (The photos once again probably don't do the effect justice). I decided at that point to repeat the process on the other engine and call them done (other than the RR decals). The final result is, by a fluke, as good as I could have hoped.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2076.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2077.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2078.jpg

 

While I'm happy enough as it turns out, I would have preferred to have got there on purpose rather than by accident! So if anyone has any tips regarding painting metal finishes, I'm love to hear 'em.

 

Thanks for looking!

Edited by Graham In Oz
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Polishing seems to have done the trick! Looks good! :)

 

I've also had the same problems with AK's Extreme Metal, on my Bucc. It looked smashing right after I put it on, but then it seems you need to leave at that.

Just handling the part had it look like on your first pic. Letting it dry/set for at least 24h seems to help a bit. Not quite done testing those colors yet.

 

Håkan

 

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3 hours ago, Graham In Oz said:

. I left the base to dry for 24 hours and the aluminium to dry also for 24 hours, so they should be 100% dry.

Hmmmm, does that mean you left the masking tape on for 24hrs as well?

I have no expertise with this paint, but my instinct is to get the masking off at the soonest opportunity.

Was it gum residue you were polishing off? 

Anyway, you've done it, and the results are great.

Metallic lustre is a real challenge, and a bit of a mystery. One thing I tried is pencil lead graphite dust rubbed on with a finger. 

Like you I was at the point of desperation when I tried it, with nothing to loose!

 

Well, I'm glad you got it great result in the long run🌠

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2 hours ago, Azgaron said:

Polishing seems to have done the trick! Looks good! :)

 

I've also had the same problems with AK's Extreme Metal, on my Bucc. It looked smashing right after I put it on, but then it seems you need to leave at that.

Just handling the part had it look like on your first pic. Letting it dry/set for at least 24h seems to help a bit. Not quite done testing those colors yet.

 

Håkan

 

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one! With so much praise for these paints I was expecting them to be foolproof, but so far not the case (at least for this fool).

 

1 hour ago, rob Lyttle said:

Hmmmm, does that mean you left the masking tape on for 24hrs as well?

I have no expertise with this paint, but my instinct is to get the masking off at the soonest opportunity.

Was it gum residue you were polishing off? 

Anyway, you've done it, and the results are great.

Metallic lustre is a real challenge, and a bit of a mystery. One thing I tried is pencil lead graphite dust rubbed on with a finger. 

Like you I was at the point of desperation when I tried it, with nothing to loose!

 

Well, I'm glad you got it great result in the long run🌠

No, the tape was only on for a few minutes, over paint that had dried for 24 hours. Gum residue was present, but the effect on the paint was not just that, it seemed to cause it to 'bunch up' and become lumpy. It's hard to describe! Still, the polishing approach might be the way forward, when I come to paint those areas of the wings and tailplane that are natural polished aluminium. They should be easier since there's not the same necessity for masking.

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Wings: No real dramas here, just painting, masking, masking again and painting.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2079.jpg

 

The orange gloss ended up a bit orange-peeley but it rubbed back with no problems and I managed not to go all the way through to the underlying white layer (which I ended up spraying over the grey as it was too dark). Then it was time to finally assemble the flaps and build the secondary flaps. These proved to be quite tricky as I hadn't really thought about how I was going to fix them in until it was all assembled and painted. The final result looks good from the top but isn't quite true to life from below, since there's no opening where air flows around the secondary flap. In fact there's no real detail here and almost impossible to find reference images for it - almost all walkarounds of aircraft on the ground have the flaps fully raised. So there's scope for doing something in there but I'm not really sure what.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2083.jpg

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2084.jpg

 

For now that's the wings more or less finished other than a gloss coat, decals, and weathering. I haven't decided how far to go with weathering yet - these aircraft were brand new in Court service and the airline didn't last long enough to see them deteriorate much. Even the preshading might be a bit excessive. Next main job is decaling.

 

Thanks for looking!

 

 

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Those wings are a real treat, well done Graham!!

Lovely bit of upgrading.

I can see what you mean about the Court livery now.

 

Funny how reference pictures of something you really want are so hard to find.

The upside is, nobody else has the information either!

 

It all looks good to me, buddy👍

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Decaling - a total disaster. OK, I'm going to call it as I find it. I know 26 Decals have an excellent reputation, and I'm effectively a beginner, but despite taking every care that a person reasonably could, these decals are not fit for purpose. They are, of necessity, large. And they must conform to a whole heap of compound curves. But they are so incredibly brittle that the slightest need to conform breaks them up. Long cracks appear at even the gentlest touch. I'm using Microset and Microsol to help apply and conform the decals, but these are not helping. There is literally zero flexibility in the substrate of the decals - they have no chance to stretch by even the slightest amount to conform. It's not as if I'm forcing them - I was extremely patient and took my time, waiting for the softener to take effect, and applying the gentlest of pressure using a cotton bud and a soft paint brush. Nope, cracks all the way. The brittleness is unlikely to be an issue with small decals, but these large ones are unusable. It makes me wonder if 26 ever actually checked these on a built up kit to see how usable they were - I can't believe they'd be happy to sell a product this troublesome to a modeller.

 

The opacity is not sufficient to fully cover the paint line after all. That isn't a fault I'm laying at 26's door - I should have considered that. If this was the only issue, I could live with it. But they have other faults - the shape of the stripe at the nose end is wrong when compared to reference images, and the join between the tail decal and the rear fuselage decal has inconsistencies in the width of the white line either side of the colour, so they don't quite line up without a visible join. And the colour of the tail piece doesn't exactly match the fuselage pieces (they are printed on different sheets).

 

So I'm going to have to paint the full colour scheme after all. It's a shame, because it was the discovery of the existence of these decals that led me to build the thing in the first place. That's if I can remove them without damaging the paint.

 

Thoroughly demoralised at this point.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2085.jpg

Edited by Graham In Oz
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A pity with the decals! Always a bit risky with large chunks of decals.

Looking forward to see the finished paint job!

 

Håkan

 

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That's a shame.

Aren't transfer sheets a mystery, though? You can get an old yellowing sheet with a 40 year old kit and they work perfectly.

And then new technology from a specialist supplier falls apart before your eyes.

So frustrating!😠

 

They need to be told!

Give them some feedback, and see what they have to say.

Good luck with the rescue plan👍

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6 hours ago, Graham In Oz said:

Thoroughly demoralised at this point.

This is a real shame, I'ts coming on so well Llike you, I'm only recently back into modelling after a very very long break and I am dealing with setbacks largely due to encouragement on here from fellow BM's, so can we encourage you to press on?

 

Airbrushing the scheme will involve some delicate masking, but it will so be worth the end result. I've been really impressed with this so far.

 

I also agree with @rob Lyttle that you should give 26 some feedback.

 

Cheers

 

Terry

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24 minutes ago, Terry1954 said:

 

so can we encourage you to press on?

 

Terry

I've also been very impressed with the community spirit here, and I'll definitely press on. Thanks for all your support!

 

It may be a few days before I can face up to the reality of so many steps backward though. (And it's worse than it seems - after failing to remove the decals, I was forced to take the 3000 grit sponge to them which has removed large areas of the paint that was there. One thing I could not fault is the adhesion of the darn things! Effectively it means starting over with the fuselage painting.)

 

I've sent a polite note to Ray at 26 - not so much casting aspersions as trying to find if there's a better way to handle them they'd recommend. Since I want to do a few more models with 26 decals, I'm hoping the problem is confined to this one set and not endemic to the printing process or my own technique (or lack of).

 

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On 5/19/2018 at 2:14 PM, Turbofan said:

Hey Phil, don't forget to remind Graham to make sure he gets the logos the right way round!:rage::rofl2:

Cheers,

Ian

I still have nightmares about that ian! suppose I'm not the first and probably not be the last!

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16 hours ago, Graham In Oz said:

Decaling - a total disaster. OK, I'm going to call it as I find it. I know 26 Decals have an excellent reputation, and I'm effectively a beginner, but despite taking every care that a person reasonably could, these decals are not fit for purpose. They are, of necessity, large. And they must conform to a whole heap of compound curves. But they are so incredibly brittle that the slightest need to conform breaks them up. Long cracks appear at even the gentlest touch. I'm using Microset and Microsol to help apply and conform the decals, but these are not helping. There is literally zero flexibility in the substrate of the decals - they have no chance to stretch by even the slightest amount to conform. It's not as if I'm forcing them - I was extremely patient and took my time, waiting for the softener to take effect, and applying the gentlest of pressure using a cotton bud and a soft paint brush. Nope, cracks all the way. The brittleness is unlikely to be an issue with small decals, but these large ones are unusable. It makes me wonder if 26 ever actually checked these on a built up kit to see how usable they were - I can't believe they'd be happy to sell a product this troublesome to a modeller.

 

The opacity is not sufficient to fully cover the paint line after all. That isn't a fault I'm laying at 26's door - I should have considered that. If this was the only issue, I could live with it. But they have other faults - the shape of the stripe at the nose end is wrong when compared to reference images, and the join between the tail decal and the rear fuselage decal has inconsistencies in the width of the white line either side of the colour, so they don't quite line up without a visible join. And the colour of the tail piece doesn't exactly match the fuselage pieces (they are printed on different sheets).

 

So I'm going to have to paint the full colour scheme after all. It's a shame, because it was the discovery of the existence of these decals that led me to build the thing in the first place. That's if I can remove them without damaging the paint.

 

Thoroughly demoralised at this point.

 

L1011-Court-GBAAA-2017%20-%2085.jpg

i feel your pain graham, i was ready to bin mine after the disastrous results of the decal application.  painting the large orange section shouldn't be a problem, its the white lines that separate the fuselage colour sections that is the hard bit. i masked off everything but a 0.25cm gap and sprayed it white, it sounds painstaking but it worked.

 

with regard to the actual 'court line' decal - you might want to cut each letter out an apply them individually as that is another giant decal that could crumble

 

stunning work so far, cant wait to see the finished result. the wings look amazing with the flaps deployed

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I had a lovely reply from Ray at 26, offering a FOC replacement sheet. Turns out that it has been reprinted by a different manufacturer more recently, and the set I have is the older one. It could have sat around in a store for 10 years, which maybe why it's so brittle. I still may repaint the colours, but I'll await the updated sheet and see whether it's more forgiving first. Ray also said that the white background is overprinted twice on the newer sheet and is definitely opaque!

 

So things maybe don't look so bad - it's a new day :) Also, great customer service Ray!

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