Revell 1/144 A350-900 - Cathay Pacific (WIP)

[Columbia20713]

On 7/13/2019 at 1:44 AM, baldwin8 said:

 

Still good to see you are carrying on with it. Sorry about the spill issue.

 

Here is pic of mine, %98 complete, now just antennas, gloss coat a few pieces. Just noticed I hadn't painted the APU exhaust yet.

 

The result's amazing! Really neat finish that you achieved. The new Lufthansa livery, for all its controversy, fits the A350 so well IMO. 

 

For this week, I've been adding a few additional decals as well as the engines. I've also been working on adding staining to the aircraft. Normally you'd leave airliners sparkling clean and glossy, but the pictures I have show B-LRM being a little less than that;

 

 

Again, grainy and not the best pictures (taken with high ISOs..) but they show the kind of subtle staining and streaking that this particular aircraft has.

 

With that in mind, I busted out the microbrushes, Abt. 502 oil and got into staining work, focusing on the windows and doors. A little bit was done along the wings as well, not really visible in the image but it's there. The starboard side wing, being glossier in finish than the port wing, made it difficult to get the oils to stick and therefore stain it with the same kind of subtlety.

 

 

(Also, new lightbox! This was a little test I ran to see how well it'd work especially for large builds. A little bit of background shows, but nothing that wouldn't be fixed by post-processing)

 

 

 

The engines were painted and decalled as well. Looking at it, the color behind the Rolls-Royce decals should have been metal, but I can't really go back and change that now.

 

 

I also started work on the main landing gear legs and added a tiny bit of detail with wire. Most of this would be concealed behind the landing gear doors, but I figured I might as well add what I can with the materials I have anyway.

 

 

 

The Rocastmodels decals haven't arrived yet, but I'm anticipating their arrival soon. I'd then be able to move the model into the finishing stages, and see it in its final Cathay colors.

[baldwin8]

Your right about the cleanliness of airliners, it varies from company to company, very few are spotless. I love your weathering.

 

Here are some pictures  I took a few weeks ago of an A350-900 that overnight-ed here due to severe weather. I have a few others, let me know if there is something specific you are looking for.

 

 

 

 

Keep up the progress, enjoying this build.

[Columbia20713]

On 7/22/2019 at 10:26 PM, baldwin8 said:

Your right about the cleanliness of airliners, it varies from company to company, very few are spotless. I love your weathering.

 

Here are some pictures  I took a few weeks ago of an A350-900 that overnight-ed here due to severe weather. I have a few others, let me know if there is something specific you are looking for.

 

 

 

Keep up the progress, enjoying this build.

Thank you! Those pictures are really valuable, especially as references for the landing gear and staining patterns for the engines. These references are golden.

 

Again, not a lot of progress since the decals haven't arrived yet; I have to hold off from some of the decals like the doors and clearcoating the wings until they arrive. In the meantime, I've made some minimal progress over the past two weeks:

 

I added the home-printed decals on the winglets. They look fine under normal light but the direct lamp makes them look overly light and speckled. I'm happy with them though. There's something about seeing the Cathay Pacific logo on the model itself for the first time.

 

I've also attached the landing gear wheels onto the bogies; They were masked off with Gunze masking sol (the green-colored one), painted then retouched. A little more detailing work maybe and the addition of the doors on the side, then they should be fine.



Things are going slow without some of the decals arriving yet and especially because of real life schedules but it's just the final stretch of decalling, final assembly and clearcoats (and small parts) before it gets past the finish line.

[baldwin8]

Here are some more of the bunch I took. I did email all of them to the guy taking care of the Walkaround section of BM but he still has not posted them.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Columbia20713]

On 8/6/2019 at 12:46 AM, baldwin8 said:

Here are some more of the bunch I took. I did email all of them to the guy taking care of the Walkaround section of BM but he still has not posted them.

Thanks again for these! They provide a lot of insight as to how the landing gear and engines, especially, look up close. I didn't expect that the picture of the A350 tail cam would prove useful, either; Great references for how some of the more obscured parts of the aircraft looked.

 

Also, I know the updates were lacking. That wasn't because I wasn't making progress; More of the contrary, actually. The decals arrived a couple days after my previous post;

 

 

Compared especially to the F-DCAL decals, they were much thinner and more fragile. This meant that the decal borders were much less visible and they'd blend in easy with the rest of the surface without much coercion, but it's easy to make them fold on themselves; When that happens, the ink could also rub off and it's usually harder to get these to fold back out normally. The decals are very well done and I wouldn't hesitate to use them again, but being careful with them is also important. It only then made sense that the F-DCAL decals were thicker; They were much more robust which made them effective for the large Cathay-specific markings like the tail and titles on the fuselage.

 

 

With the arrival of the decals came a mad rush to get the build through the decal and clearcoat stage in time for the local IPMS Nationals. It took about two days to get all the decals applied despite working for hours straight, as there were many of them especially in the Rocastmodels decal set. The gray window edge decals were slightly out of alignment with the decals on the A350 for me; In applying them I had to cut once every four windows, but I suppose it can vary from copy to copy of the same kit. 

 

 

Particularly notorious for me were the wing decals (the black stripes) which had to be perfectly straight; Having the panel lines was a good guide but some of it still depended on eyeballing. 

 

 

All of this was clearcoated with GX100 (which, by the way, I somehow finished a bottle of entirely on this build) then polished with Micromesh and Novus Polishes. 

 

I don't have a lot of pictures of the other progress that was made, but safe to say in the rush to get it to the finish (which I'm lucky didn't seem to have any adverse effects) I made it to the deadline after days of work and it's currently in the display case of an IPMS modelling show. Once that's over, I'll be able take it home and take the post-completion pictures, and write about the finish in more detail, and "officially" conclude the build. But that's going to be about a week from now, so I'll update the thread when that's up.

[baldwin8]

10 minutes ago, Columbia20713 said:

Particularly notorious for me were the wing decals (the black stripes) which had to be perfectly straight; Having the panel lines was a good guide but some of it still depended on eyeballing. 

 

Great progress, it's looking super. I will mention a fix I had to come up with because of my wing walk decals being lifted off by masking tape. My Micron Pen as in this link worked perfectly.

 

https://www.jetpens.com/Sakura-Pigma-Micron-Pen-Size-005-0.2-mm-Black/pd/2042

 

Using a straight edged ruler as a guide. The ink needs an hour or so to dry as it can't absorb into the finish. But it was a perfect width match. If I do another airliner model I will use the pen on all walkways.

 

Looking forward to more.

[Columbia20713]

On 8/19/2019 at 2:56 AM, baldwin8 said:

 

Great progress, it's looking super. I will mention a fix I had to come up with because of my wing walk decals being lifted off by masking tape. My Micron Pen as in this link worked perfectly.

 

https://www.jetpens.com/Sakura-Pigma-Micron-Pen-Size-005-0.2-mm-Black/pd/2042

 

Using a straight edged ruler as a guide. The ink needs an hour or so to dry as it can't absorb into the finish. But it was a perfect width match. If I do another airliner model I will use the pen on all walkways.

 

Looking forward to more.

I actually used pens similar to that, but for a different purpose - Some of the streaking along the wings was made with ink from those kinds of pens. Now that you mention it, it sounds a lot better than decals or panel line accent color. I'd need that for some of my airliner builds, don't know why it didn't cross my mind to use one instead!

The build's done, RFI thread is here (wooo):