Bird Dog Part 8 Finished..

Well its finally done.

  

 

 

Well a fun scheme and enjoyable painting, but I did not enjoy the build. I suppose because I had expectations of a straight forward simple build, but with the transparencies and ejector pin marks it wasn't.

Pleased it is done, and is an eye catcher.

Bird Dog Part 7 Paint and UnMask..

Black went really well, apart from finding I was out of black so its Nato Black and a couple of drops of gloss black, that I managed to scrape out of a jar.

A bit of under spray, that I cleaned up with a sharp blade, but I'm really happy with it, I'll let it dry up for a few days, then onto the little detail painting.

Bird Dog Part 6 Paint and Mask..

Got the orange yellow on the bird dog, and masked for the black.

I used frisk film for the shapes on the fuselage, and they are a mirror on either side, a little bit of tamiya tape to tidy up and the masked curves on the nose, and then on with the black....

Bird Dog Part 5 Primed

Bird doggy has been primed..

Had another ejector pin mark to sand out on the wing. Now its ready for a white spray session as an under coat for the orange, and I think some of the wing is white anyway.

Bird Dog Part 4 Masking.....

Well fuselage windows were easy to mask, but these top windows egads, the worse things I have had to mask.

Ended up punching out some circles of tape for each corner and then fill in with strips of tape. On to primer now.. yay yay..

Bird Dog Part 3

Fuselage together..

not a bad fit, there is a bit of ridge at the joint, and the nose had to sanded square so the engine front would go on with no gaps. The top will have to be spread as its slightly too narrow for the upper wing gap and windshield.

Those internal frames bugged me, how to represent them, I could see them faintly on the plastic, so I thought let's try something. So I got a needle and scribed some lines on the inside of the screens, quite deeply. Then got some water colour black and mixed it with a few drops of Klear and with a fine brush brushed it into the grooves. Once dry I got a cotton bud dipped in alcohol and wiped the excess smudgey black off...

Also scribed the centre line as well, though I think maybe I should have done that on the outside.

Got the top glasshouse panels in, sanded and polished  down...

Superglue gel was used fix them in, and the huge gaps around them filled with gel as well. Electrical insulation tape was used to cover the wing detail, as they were sanded flush. Polish with Micromesh and then a coat of Klear.

Could do more polishing but can't be arsed, they'll do, I'm itching to get to paint, and I'm erm 'annoyed' at the cleaning up everything needs...

Had a big gap at the wing centre section, which I've filled with a section of plasticard.

Tail feathers are on.

just a small gap at the fuselage to fin fillet point.

Masking then primer and orange paint, yum yum..

Bird Dog Part 2

Fuselage ejector marks..

Tailfin and tailplane:

Wing ejector pin hillocks..

The undersurface panel doesn't quite fit flush...

on both wings...

Looking at the front upper windows, well they didn't fit very very, nowhere being flush to the upper wing surface, was thinking of using Clearfix, but my bottle has gone all hard, so will have to use what we have got.. Carved a bit out of the wing...

Now the clear bit sits proud a touch..

its not glued in, once its cemented in I'll fill around the edges, and then can sand it flush.
I really wonder if I did something wrong with it, as I had to remove quite a lot of plastic, but can't figure out what.

The rear wing windows, are really sloppy in their holes, so and have some dimples that'll be sanded out.

More cleaning up parts, I couldn't see those round circles on any photos, so I'm assuming they are ejector pin marks...

So more fine slicing and sanding. More Fill 'n Sand ahead...

Bird Dog Part 1

 

Another cool scheme that is crying out to try.. and its a New Zealand plane ZK-NAM So out with the Airfix 1/72 Bird Dog.

Those rubbish brown paper Airfix decals are a worry, hang on, no they arn't I can;t see any need for decals on ZK-NAM, hooray!