Eye In The Sky GB - January 2010 - October 2010

Cool video! Thanks for sharing Randy.

WOW what a lucky b****** , er I mean person!! Thanks for sharing the link!!!

Well Aggie....I did it...I bought myself a 1/72 hasegawa hawkeye...the JASDF..looks good....now I only need to find time to start  it.

Carlos

Hello Aggieman and all,

I got caught up on taking and uploading pics so I ould post here as promised. As you may recall, I am also doing the 1/32 Westland Lysander (Revell). I began the model around Jan 15th.Here's the beginning pic:

I put together the cockpit and framing as directed.As I later found,most of the problems with this model started here.Since I am doing a closed forward canopy, I didn't spend a lot of detail time here.I am satisfied with the IP, but should have spent more time on the figure:

I tried to follow the instructions for the pit,but they were pretty vague.Looking through the entire instructions,it became clear to me that the most important part was the placement and angle of the wing spars. That meant an awkward fit of the forward part of the pit and IP into the fuselage

.

Let me post this now and get to the rest in a few,

Regards,

Stensciene

Carlos, looking forward to the elves new project!!!!! I read that was a nice kit!!!

Sten, great start mate!!!

to both of you!!

Hi all,

Had some ISP issues, but got back online this morning. So, I got the pit and interior framing assembled and painted.When I put it into the fuselage, I found that the forward part fit nicely, but the IP was too low and forward, and the pilot seat/figure was too high.I don't see where I went wrong on the instructions,but I went ahead,trying to make sure the wing spars were where they should be.Also note-to make sure the engine and cowling fit correctly and was at the right angle, I needed to put some putty in the seam forward of the canopy and sand the daylights out of the nose:

I put together the fuselage,wheels and cowlings,installed engine/cowling/prop, and masked and installed the cockpit canopy pieces,As you did, Aggieman,I started to get really frustrated with some poor fit issues.The side canopy pieces needed some surgery, as did the wheel assemblies. I noted exactly the same fit roblems with the wheels and struts as you did, Aggie.Here it is looking really lumpish:

Even though I was discouraged, I decided to keep going and try to fix the problems later. The biggest issue was the wing fit. There was a pronounced tilt to the model, so I stuck the model over a radiator for an hour, then glued the bottom of the wing struts to the wheel legs,then the tops of the struts to the wing sections. I sanded off most of the positioning flanges (should have sanded it all before gluing), then used an old brush to put CA on the wing spars. Then I put on the wings, and sat for 45 minutes holding the wings in the right position. This did the trick, putting the wings in the right position. I then spread a thin layer of CA in the seam between wing and canopy and feathered it out. I really hope this 'sticks' because there is not much surface area. This pic shows the area (a little later on with the priming undercoat)

So I let that stuf dry, and started in with fixing problems.I started to like this model at that point. More in a few-Regards,

Stenscience

Back again,

So, the previous post show the progress up to last week. I let everything dry and cure, then set out to fix problems.The main issue,alignment, was taken care of by making sure the wings were set properly. I am happy with the result. The flaps got sanded thinner and installed just slightly dropped.The wheel cowlings took a bunch of sanding,putty, and fiddling.The lens covers are too big and chunky-they got mostly sanded down flush and I will polish after the painting is done. I used globs of CA to fill the gaps in the wheel assemblies, and at the bottom of the struts. I hand painted the interior canopy frame colors over the mask. I did a bunch of sanding and a little fill on the engine cowling. I then hit the whole thing with Mr Surfacer 1000 (primer), then a sprinkle coat of Testors metallic aluminum and gloss black enamels from rattle cans. Let that dry, then 2 coats of gloss black enamel over the whole thing.I am going to let that dry/cure for about a week. Next will be grey and green acrylic brush painted camo on the top and sides of fuselage, decals, and finish coats.Since I will be away next week, the next progress will no be until the end of Feb.

Here are some pis:

Happy with the wing position and slight dihedral:

The model from behind:

Most of the wheel problems fixed:

I think it is starting to look good:

A closer look at the front end-I lost a lot of detail painting on engine, but easy to get back later:

Best regards to all,

Stenscience

Stenscience, you are doing well with this turkey.  I see some of the areas that I had difficulty with where you appear to have had more success than I did.  Glad to see you stick with it since I threw in the towel on this kit.

Stenscience ohhhhh but she is lookin sweet very well done, hurry up I wanna see more !

Very nice indeed Sten!!!

Thanks very much for the comments, Aggieman,Randy, and Simpilot. I was  very pleasantly surprised at how well the model came together after I was able to get the wings into the right position. I am waiting for the black paint to completely cure before I do anything more. The last coat went on Sunday morning.When I checked last night, it was still slightly tacky. Due to the impending storm, I may have an unscheduled day off tomorrow, and if the paint is good, then I will put the camo colors on the upper surfaces. I am almost tempted to leave the model basic black cause I like it like that, but I want to finish the model. I decided to do the 161st Squadron scheme and markings, which will leave most of the black. My biggest concern is how well I did on the canopy masks, but I wont find out until the very end.

Bring on the snow....

Stenscience

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, so here's what's up:

I went to the hobby store to find "burnt iron" for the leading edges of my Vigi. The only one they had was made for airbrush only (already thinned.) So, I airbrushed the areas on the wings and the engine outlets.

After airbrushing, I sealed with future so I could mask the area.

While masking, I missaligned a piece and went to fix it. It pulled off all of the burnt iron paint! I removed the other mask and it did the same thing! AAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Now what? Is there a way to make the paint useable for a brush? If so I'll just hand paint the areas last.

Hey look, that guy with the Storch didn't bail out!! :)

And now for my update, titled "The good, the bad & the ugly"! I'll blame it on being distracted by the Olympics! (Apologies for the picture quality, left my tripod at work & hands are apparently not that steady!)

Leaving the door open on the other side so I can see all of the interior detail... so I figured I'd take my first crack at the "cut-them-yourself" masks on the other side. (That little stack on the left will all get cut out.) Knife blade wasn't quite sharp enough on the first few edges, had to replace blade & keep going. I'll use a little Micro mask to make sure I haven't missed any spots.

Cabin floor & rear set installed. Weathering looks a little off in the pictures but seems fine to my eye in person.

Cabin sidewalls. The piece in the lower left is the underside portion with all the stitching, more on that later...

OK, here comes the bad... Well , first the two halves were glued together. Hard to get all those little alignment pins into place - there are three in the dead space behind the rear bulkhead, one inside the cockpit that eventually supports the pilot's seat, and one which is also the mount for the IP. Doing it again, I think I would concentrate on making the topside seam perfect, then gouge out all the holes for the pins (from below so they wouldn't be seen) then add the pins & glue them. Fewer thing to worry about all at once.

Then Vance broke the rules & for some reason clipped off the little support piece that protects the slice that hangs over the door opening. I think I was planning on installing the wing spar & then got onto something else? Superglue at the break & then at the connection to the spar eventually fixes this.

YES! cabin floor + lower section placed inside

More of the cabin interior, looking backwards.

Now here comes some of the ugly. Hard to see in this pic, but look closely & you can see that despite all of the alignment pins etc., I have ended up with a step in that upper join, right side (in the pic) is slightly higher. A little filler putty & sanding required, not that big a deal I guess.

But as you may have noticed earlier, I also have a big gap between the sidewall pieces and the lower piece. There is triangular bracing near the cockpit that obviously needs to line up, so I superglued that section as best I could. The tail end of the lower portion slots into place at the rear too, but when both of those connections are made, the entire lower portion bulges leaving a noticeable gap.

Note the wing spar is in place now to avoid any more breakups on that long skinny bit!

Gap-filling superglue to the narrowest areas, epoxy putty to fill in the larger gaps. Kind of slopped on in a hurried, epoxy putty driven rage I guess! Sanding & smoothing tonight.

After I realized the lower portion wasn't fitting, I took it out & examined all the interior framework etc that I installed. For the life of me I can't figure out what I did to throw alignment off. (Have heard nothing but glowing reviews of the kit, so I'm assuming I've done something to it.) And now that I've stopped to think about it, maybe sanding the trailing edge of the lower portion would have fixed the issue without so much plastic surgery. Anyway, the patches I've made don't look to have any effect on alignment of the wing supports etc., so I should be alright from here on in!

Vance that Storch looks like a tough one to build but you are pulling it off very well. It does seem to me that was a complicated airframe anyway. I am looking forward to seeing more of it.

Thanks Vetteman. It is a complicated bunch of supports etc inside the cabin, but any review or buildup I've spotted has said that as long as the instructions are carried out perfectly, it falls together. I'm sure the modeling forensics team could figure out what I did to it if I gave them access!

The good news - I was testing the wings + wingspar last night (in between rounds of sanding!) and I don't think I've lost any alignment. Should be smooth sailing now. more pics in a couple of days.

PROGRESS!! And just as importantly, I'm feeling good about the Storch again - I had "a moment" there a few days ago...

Cabin etc. from above. The metal insert for the landing gear is in place, engine is now mounted, trying to figure out the best way to show off some of that detail. I plan on leaving the door open anyway, there are flaps & slats everywhere, I'll just leave the access panels open I guess. A little more smoothing to be done to my putty job on the back.

Ditto,

And here it is while dry-fitting the upper cowling, wings and tail feathers. Note the size of my standard Exacto knife... this bird is bigger than I thought it was going to be! I see a bunch of painting coming up this weekend!

That Storch is looking great!  I'm anxious for the weather to warm up again so I can finish my current projects which will allow me to get to my PR Mossie

aww c'mon - how cold could it be in Texas!!

Thanks B17, now that I'm starting to check the various assemblies I think this is going to go together fairly quickly over the next week or so. Assuming work doesn't interfere of course!

Vance

Vance, the Storch is looking good.

how cold could it be in Texas

For those of us unaccustomed to cold, these last few weeks have been incredibly cold.  Sure it's not what northern folks are used to but that doesn't change the fact that it's been very cold in Texas, even outside Houston, this winter.  Shoot, we even had some snow where I live in December.

Vance the Storch is looking great mate!!!! Glad to see you have worked it into submission.

Yes it does get very cold in Texas!! When I was in tech School at Shepperd AFB, Witchita Falls, TX, One day it got down to 2 degrees F!!!!!! Snowed about 6 inches. Busted a water mainnot far from our morning assembly area and absolutely covered a  small tree and froze, quite pretty! Needless to say that tree was history, was just pushed over by hand, snapped like a twig!(pardon the pun)

I have to go outside to paint with my airbrush, so I am at the mercy of the weather.  I won't be able to paint unless its above 50 degrees F, 55 is even better, so I've been on hold for the past two weeks, especially when we got just over a foot of snow last week (yes it does snow occasionally in TX).

I've tried painting in colder weather once before, but it just ended up really bad, and I had to strip the paint and redo it once the weather warmed up.

Dupes, what have I done!? I think I've insulted Texas!! Aggieman, SimPilot, B17Pilot.... I've been corrected gentlemen 

I had heard that Florida was cooler than usual this year, with a chance of frozen oranges all around but didn't realize that Texas was in the cooler section too. Of course, if it's too cool to do anything productive outside, it's always nice & warm at the modeling bench.

Cheers to cool modelers everywhere. (pun definitely intended!)

as a resident of So. Fla I can say...ITS COLD!!!....anyway,,,,very nice looking Storch!!! Keep it up!!!

Guys need help.....anyone got some pics of the innards of a E-2Hawkeye or a good site with good pics???? I am going to order the Squadron walk around but would like as much info as I can get.

Thanks

Carlos

I think I've insulted Texas!!

No offense taken.  Texas is the largest state in the continental United States - one can drive for more than 800 miles and still be in Texas!  Having said that, it's a huge state with wildly differing climates from one area to another.  The panhandle area does frequently get snow, whereas the Houston area, where I have lived my entire life, rarely sees snow.  (It has snowed here roughly 8 times in my lifetime, and I'm in my early 40s).

LOL No offense at all Vance hehe. I live in Australia now and it snows here too, and we are one of the dryest continents. Global Warming?! HAH!!!!!!!!

Carlos, I haven't found much but here is a page with shots of the IP

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://uscockpits.com/Special%2520Mission/E-2C%2520Hawkeye.JPG&imgrefurl=http://uscockpits.com/Special%2520Mission/Special%2520Mission.html&usg=__M3xke1iqpqcSQd2XPJSbEcPcDug=&h=481&w=735&sz=77&hl=en&start=13&itbs=1&tbnid=lSmq99hvKUnP-M:&tbnh=92&tbnw=141&prev=/images%3Fq%3DE2C%2BHawkeye%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://passionavionsdechasse.ifrance.com/photos/cockpits/E2C%2520Hawkeye.jpg&imgrefurl=http://passionavionsdechasse.ifrance.com/cockpits.htm&usg=__SZdJhsBEVuoe3x6KVW2kSyJ0gPU=&h=1351&w=2072&sz=167&hl=en&start=68&itbs=1&tbnid=P0ekVGij8hoAqM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3DE2C%2BHawkeye%26start%3D54%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1

Here's a page with some interior shots of monitor stations that might give you some ideas of how to replicate the interior, which I presume your kit does not include.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.spyflight.co.uk/images/jpgs/grumman%2520hawkeye/grumman%2520e-2c%2520cabin.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.spyflight.co.uk/hawkeye.htm&usg=__jT9ynD0-qF7EKi3JmwK0Ar7PJ_8=&h=342&w=344&sz=36&hl=en&start=98&itbs=1&tbnid=rf7XMV9AdpZSGM:&tbnh=119&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3DE2C%2BHawkeye%26start%3D90%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1

Another interior shot (scroll to the bottom)

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.usnavy.com/images/hawkeye.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.usnavy.com/navy_jobs/&usg=__mkUSo9bcWu4bzaEB9EwMNZeMrj8=&h=571&w=800&sz=107&hl=en&start=309&itbs=1&tbnid=cLRlURfdcOhz0M:&tbnh=102&tbnw=143&prev=/images%3Fq%3DE2C%2BHawkeye%26start%3D306%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D18%26tbs%3Disch:1

Yeah Aggie,,,,,thats about the same as what I have found...the IP one is very helpful....thanks...

I wish I had a cut-away view of the fuselage.....I will keep looking.

carlos

Carlos PM me with your email addy, I think I can help with a cutaway of an E-2C! Last scan I did was a big file, so will have to email it to you rather than post it here.

I remembered once I sat down on Sat that I used trusty ol' Humbrol for the interior rather than the quick-dry acrylics. Slowed things down a little waiting for the stuff to properly dry (but I love it for hand-brushing), but I'll show a couple more pics. Slower progress than I was planning on... so while I had the RLM gray out I popped open a little Hasegawa '109 to work on too. Nice to see something throw together so quick while I'm creeping along on the Storch!

upper cowling now in place (sniff sniff, kills me to cover up the details!), but I think I may be displaying with the entire lower cowling detached. Tail feathers in place, rudder offset a little bit. Even with all kinds of dry-fitting, there seems to be a natural gap between the elevators and fuselage. I'll do some research before the paint hits it, just in case. Elevators... I was going to drop them, then realized that I'd have to do a bit of a zig-zag cut with the exacto blade (no razor saw, I'll have to invest soon) and got a case of "I don't wanna hack it up-itis".

Note to self - hit that prop with a shot of dullcoat. Skis are just dry-fitted, I'd rather paint them seperately. Lots of detail on the engine still visible if I go this route.

Pilot's seat in place... I chickened out on the harnesses, the rear one would be completely covered by the folded-down gunners perch anyway... but I could still add to the pilot's seat. Thinking about it today - thoughts!?

And one of the cats, looking thoroughly unimpressed by the whole thing. The good news is that she looks but never touches!

Looking good Vance!!!