SPA Modeler

Bruce, truly sorry to hear this. I have a contact that is pretty well know in architectural circles in Boston/NY and is now a partner in a firm up that way. He studied at the University of Kentucky. While not a few blocks away, it is closer that Italy.

The build looks great and is coming along. Your processes still confuse the heck out of an old, one-eyed, gray haired doofus.

Thanks, Lyle. I don’t know what to do but we need a Plan B.

An ongoing philosophical debate:

The greatest gains in model building come from the external surface preparation. Most of what we as model builders fight is evidence of our passing. The simplest level would be the loss of edges when sanding. After that come “construction artifacts,” which could be glue blobs, but is more often then not a texture problem. The twist-tie ring is made from soft bendable wire which is very susceptible to sanding or grinding, so I am doing my best to keep it pristine.

The SMER plastic is tougher than Chinese made, almost as tough as Hasegawa/Fine Molds grey plastic, which is, I believe, the near perfect alchemy of workable plastic.

Steps so far:

One: remove the molded insignia. If this was an Aurora sourced plastic project, I would keep them. The triplane was molded in ruby red plastic like their 109. I plan to keep insignia on the Mustang, but since this is a repop I had no qualms about removing them everywhere.

Two: cockpit upgrade. keeping the belts off just makes it a lot less stressful. There is way more space in that opening then in a conventional WWII fighter to drop in the formed belts and adhere with a few drops of white glue. I kept as much of the cockpit as Aurora designed it, but relocated its position. I did not use their instrument panel since this was a fantasy on their part and could easily be left off (and in so doing, come closer to reality). I did not add the hanging gauges and the upright compass stand. I had it in my head that I would keep things simple in order to finish this kit.

At the moment if I wanted to ignore the seams I could assemble this kit in 15 minutes. We all could. I don’t even think instructions are really necessary.

Never doubted you and your work. It is fun to follow.

Don’t overthink your build Bruce. Feel it and flow with it. These kits were indeed designed for rapid assembly and then to be handled. They have a bit of toughness inherent in the design.

I’m sorry to hear that Carlotta may not get accepted into UCLA. But since that has not yet come to pass, she may also still yet be accepted. Don’t get down about it until it’s official. Think positive!

Thanks, Carlos. I was not clear about her acceptance. They will accept her. They want her to study online in her home country, not come here. The campus is currently closed and in a hybrid situation with some in person instruction mixed with online classes.

I’ll try not to overthink. Like I wrote Lyle, I think I could build this and paint it in 48 hours at this point. Not that I would want to do that.

Ah yes, closed campuses. Well that should wind down with the coming year and the vaccination programs now under way. The UC system loves to crow about their foreign student acceptance. If she is already in, then it’s just a matter of waiting out the virus situation.

I think most colleges across the US are going remote anyway. She’s not alone, Bruce. Even the community college my wife works at are going remote for the time being.

Today’s progress report: So today I completed my intended goals for yesterday. I added instrument decals to the IP, RAF WWII type, rather than the WWI type that I had planned to use but were invisible because they needed to be applied over a white background.



Then I drybrushed and touched up the seat



And lastly, I touched up the inside colors.



Next session I can install all the interior parts and close it all up.

Carlos: Those burnished tonalities are the bee’s knees! Rolling thunder, hoss.

Lo, there was a new light box. GK Surfacer.



Another view. I gots some edges to finesse. Overall, not bad, considering the amount of sanding and filling to get here.



Everything I have surfaced, sanded, primered, poked, prodded and palpated.



A closer view.



Just for giggles, here are the kit guns.

Looking real sweet Bruce! Excellent progress! But man... those kit guns... cutting edge 1950’s technology...