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

[Graham In Oz]

9 hours ago, Challenger350Pilot said:

You are truly an inspiration, Graham. I mean really. This is a fantastic chronicle of a very nice build. I want to say "comeback," but it appears your just an old hat very good with your skills. This is a difficult build, in every aspect. From the quality of the EE kit, to the addition of PE parts, decisions regarding flaps and slats (which are brilliantly done, by the way), averting disaster with paint and decals, to the final display. Very very nice job. I admire your patience and honesty, too. I have learned so much from reading and observing your process. In particular, the work with metal finishes. I am not familiar with the natural metal finish you chose...I prefer the Alclad products, and have had some success with them, though care must be taken when masking. I was about to suggest polishing the surface lightly, when I read further and discovered that you had indeed polished and achieved the result you were looking for. The engines look great! I have found that most L-1011 model kits don't really have the engine intakes quite right...they are a bit thick...and I have trimmed fans so that they would fit inside the nacelle...worked pretty well. Thank you for sharing this journey. You have enhanced the community's knowledge by your experience. I am inspired to build an EE L-1011; and the MD-11 too! Congratulations. And Thank you!

Aww, you'll have me blushing! Thanks for the kind remarks. I guess one thing I'm not short of is perseverance - a legacy of many years of software development  For a supposedly 'simple' build it threw up some surprises. Oh well, all part of the relearning.

 

I've never used Alclad myself, though many people swear by them. The AK metals are supposed to give almost identical results, but are a lot more user-friendly - at least that's what the various YouTube videos I watched on the topic claim. I think my problems with them were probably down to overthinking it, and applying too many layers. I tried a quick spray on a half-built Harrier to try out different paints before committing to the TriStar, and those came out really perfectly - but I didn't endlessly fiddle with it. Lesson there I think. On the other hand, I'm quite pleased with the engines in the end - of all the natural metal on the model, they look the most realistic. The intake lips are a bit thick, but thinning them down and shaping them was difficult due to the internals of the engine being in place. If there was a way to fit the core and fan of the engine after closing the nacelle halves, It would have been much easier to have at it with a file, etc. If I were the kit manufacturer, I'd have gone for a moulding where the intake ring was a single piece that fitted to the rest of the engine.

 

Overall I think the Eastern kit isn't bad, if you can manage the lack of locating pins and so forth. Detailing is very good overall, though perhaps the panel lines could be subtler. I'm not quite at the level for filling the lot and redoing them from scratch. The front undercarriage leg is rather chunky and not very true to the real thing, and the main wheel bogies are also on the crude side - but there was enough material to rework them somewhat to suggest brakes and other details, plus the PE hydraulic lines and compression linkage add a lot of realism. To be honest at this scale it's a moot point - you need a magnifying glass to see anything.

 

I think I'll do the Britannia next. Strictly OOB this time. It may have to wait for warmer weather though. In the meantime, I'm going to be working on the wife to buy a display case for the loungeroom, otherwise I literally have nowhere to put any of the finished models anyway! The other thing about this build was that it has greatly expanded my toolkit and materials - I should be set up to build anything a lot more quickly next time.

 

Thanks to everyone for your very kind feedback and encouragement, it has really helped me push on when things looked like they were not worth the trouble.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Graham In Oz
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