1/72 Zvezda C-130J-30 Hercules 37th Airlift Squadron

[keyda81]

Not a ton of progress over the last few days, mostly just putty, sand, prime, repeat on the engines, wing section, and fuselage.

Masked the canopy, which is going to have a few scratches in it. I'm going to see if I can use a bit of Pledge floor shine to fill them after it's all said and done. The wind screen was dipped in that prior to masking.





Wing section primed. Very minimal sanding on this. Leading edges, and where the upper wing pieces meet the center section. Then a bit of rescribing.



Engines ready to be put on the wing section.



The neat thing about assembling the props. You can put them in a static feathered position, or in flight. I was worried about that, because it doesn't say in the instructions that you can do it either way, but there is two notches in the prop blades for either position. Obviously mine are in the in flight position. Also got the tips painted white.





Getting rid of the seams where the sponsons attach underneath was pretty easy. Still more sanding to be along the center seam though.



Engines mounted to the wing. Little tiny bit of putty, and a bit of sanding on those joints. Not bad at all though. There is supposed to be a seam there, but a few of them were just a little wide.



Threw the landing gear doors on. A few small, easily fixable gaps there.



Still more sanding to do on the upper center seam as well.



Hoping by the end of the day I can have it ready for paint. But I won't get to that until at least Sunday.

[BlackSheep214]

[Stikpusher]

[Stuart]

Superb Progress!

[keyda81]

Thanks guys!

I squeezed in a bit of time today. Glued the wings in place last night, and added some putty along the seams, as well as sprayed the props black.





Added the steel edge to the blades while waiting for primer to dry on the plane.



After two rounds of putty, sand, prime, repeat, and some rescribing of the panel lines I'm satisfied enough with it.



There are some imperfections, but I know what will happen if I pursue perfection. I will make it much worse than it was.



It's gotten to be rather large, and a bit cumbersome. So the more I mess with it the more likely I am to bash a wing into something, and break a seam loose. I should be able to get around to painting it on Sunday.

[Duke Maddog]

This has been a blast to follow! Yeah, one of the most difficult thing for me are filling and sanding the seams on the fuselage of large aircraft like this, as well as the wing joints. This closely followed by getting the canopy/windscreen to fit right are the biggest reason none of my large 1/72 scale aircraft turn out well. You've done a far more masterful job on this than I could.

[TheMongoose]

That thing is bigger than all the 1/32 stuff i do! Gonna look great on the wall. All that realestate looks really smooth.

[keyda81]

Thanks guys! But don't count your chickens before they hatch though. I've struggled the last couple of days with paint. This is what happens when I try to pursue perfection, I screw it up. I think I have managed to save it, but it's going to have it's flaws.

My first mistake was deciding to do the paint Saturday evening while I was tired. I should of left well enough alone, and just waited until Sunday. Mistake two was not listening to Stik when he said the overall color was AMC grey. For some reason I had it stuck in my head that it was too dark. So I picked a lighter shade of gray, nope to light. Tried a slightly darker one, nope still too light. So frustration was already mounting at that point, and then I had paint performance troubles. I've run into the "dusty" paint issue before, and I know what causes it. I was spraying directly on the surface, same PSI I always use, and the over spray was bouncing off, and settling in other places, and causing the dust. Even more frustrated, but I cleaned it up as best I could and called it done with the overall color, which looks super light in this pic taken in my paint booth.



Now onto Sunday. I masked off the wing walk area on the top of the plane to be painted a slightly lighter shade of grey.



Now here is where mistake number three comes in. I had the not so bright idea of painting the black outline that is around the wing walk area. I was afraid the decals wouldn't line up with the painted area, so more masking.



Once I painted it and pulled off the masking I got a nasty surprise. A ton of tape residue stuck to the model. I've never had that happen before, and it's not new tape, same rolls I've been using. At this point I'm super pissed off, and had to put it down.

So now Monday's mission was to try and get the tape residue off without damaging the paint. I tried goo gone in a small spot with a Q-tip, and that takes paint off, so next was hot soapy water, and just scrubbing at it with a microfiber towel. Took me about an hour to get most of it off. At that point I decided I didn't like the width of the black outline, it was much too thick. So I masked it off AGAIN, and attempted to thin out the lines. Well that failed miserably. So I masked off the entire thing for what felt like the millionth time, using a spare decal from the kit to map out the areas so I could get the shape right near the tail, and repainted the top section the lighter grey.





Threw a gloss coat on it last night.



I'm sure it will look fine from a few feet away hanging from the ceiling, but it still irritates me that I just didn't listen to that little voice in the back of my head telling me I shouldn't do things, lol. Today's agenda is some detail painting, and decals. I'm still nervous about the wing walk outline decals lining up properly.

[Stikpusher]

Keyda, your last couple paint sessions may be a tale of woe, but the results look real good in the photos. Funny thing about that AMC Gray, it sure does change in appearance depending upon lighting conditions. I suppose that’s why the Air Force chose the color because it does blend quite well. And yes, pay attention to that little voice! We do tend to learn from our mistakes more easily than from successes. What not to do stands out more than how to do it right again. I’m with you on the concern of the decal walk ways. If you have to repeat the process some day, Tamiya makes some masking tapes in 1mm and 2mm width rolls, which are ideal for such masking. Just spray your area flat black first, tape off the stripes, then do your other colors over that. I stumbled upon that technique when doing a ship waterline boot stripe years ago.

[keyda81]

Thanks, and yes it does! I can't believe how different it looks in my paint booth compared to on the bench. I do have the smaller width tapes, and now that you say that I should of done it the way you suggested, black then grey, not the other way around. Hoping they will line up alright, at least decals have some give in them, and I should be alright. Not sure about anyone else, but I know once I get so far into the process I'm waiting for something to go wrong. Hopefully I'm past that now, lol.