Lockheed L-1011 Tristar "Aeroperu" [1:144 Eastern Express] - RFI

[Alex]

2 minutes ago, Alex said:

Yeah it brings back memories.  DC-10s especially were common around airports when I was a kid.  Never see them anymore, obviously.

Although apparently (now that I’ve compulsively googled it) there are still 30 of them in use by FedEx today.  So you could see one if you wanted to.  The last DC-10 passenger flight was way back in 2007.

[jenshb]

Interesting to see how much further outboard the engines were on the TriSTar compared to the DC-10.  Would have thought that would give more problems with assymmetrical thrust...

 

[Alex]

Some progress here.  I sprayed the fuselage with Mr Base White 1000 out of the spray can.  I observed the same effect that I saw when using Tamiya Fine White Primer in an aerosol can on my last model - the paint *really* wants to pull away from the panel lines.  You end up with a white fuselage with panel lines that look almost unpainted.

The picture actually looks better than it did in person.  Left like this and topcoated with Tamiya aerosol Gloss White (as I intend to do) the panel lines would be much too prominent (and really, this is also an argument for filling and rescribing them at 1/10 the size, if I had the patience to do that...

 

So I put some more Mr Base White 1000 (from the jar) in my airbrush and attempted to go over the panel lines to make them more white.

I concentrated on doing the upper fuselage, which will remain white in the final scheme - I'm less worried about the grey undersides and red tail.  It looks somewhat better now.  I'm going to give it a fine sand, then spray the panel lines again with Mr Color Gloss White, then give it an overall of spray can Tamiya Gloss White, and that should do it, I hope.

 

On to the wings and tailplanes, I masked off the leading and trailing edges and sprayed the center panels with a home-made Corogard color made by mixing Mr Color Silver, Flat Black, and Light Gray C-338.  It does a good job of being semi-flat and looking pretty different depending on what angle you see it from, which seems to be a characteristic of the real thing in airliner photos.

 

For example:

 

 

Wings:

 

So I'm pretty happy with how those came out.  I also have the LG mostly done, just need to cut some masks to finish painting the wheels.  So this one will shortly pause until the decals (hopefully the right ones this time) arrive in the mail.

Edited April 25, 2021 by Alex

[The Madhatter]

I wish I could make airliners as nicely as this. Great work Alex 

Whats the ratio you used for your coroguard paint? It looks spot on

[Alex]

44 minutes ago, The Madhatter said:

I wish I could make airliners as nicely as this. Great work Alex 

Whats the ratio you used for your coroguard paint? It looks spot on

I don’t know an exact ratio, as I kind of added and checked the color until I was happy with it.  Guessing about 6:3:1 of silver to flat black to light gray.

[The Madhatter]

Yeah guessed you may not know the exact ratio but you've given me a great start point, so thanks mate - really appreciated as I have often struggled to get the right colour.

Edited April 28, 2021 by The Madhatter
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[Alex]

So I finally got my decals (the right ones this time) in from Nazca.  They look like this:

 

That's a scan of the sheets, because I think I'm going to do a lot of this via paint, for a few reasons.

 

1. I just can't see getting that big red vertical stabilizer to look half decent via giant decals, versus what I can do by painting it.

2. The lower part of the cheat line stripes is PINK on this sheet, whereas every photo I've seen of these actual planes has both stripes the same deep red.

 

So the scans of the decals will be used to cut precise masks for the sunburst logo (white) on the tail, the curves of the cheat lines as they approach the nose, and the "AeroPeru" lettering (I think it's plenty big enough to paint crisply if I'm careful.  I will use the decals themselves for the smaller bits like the Nazca line logo (interesting that the decal company took its logo from this era of AeroPeru), the "TriStar" lettering, etc.  I'll use the cockpit and cabin window decals from the kit (Delta) sheet, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the Delta door outlines too, even though they are (incorrect for AeroPeru) monochrome silver - the advantage is thet they are separate decals on the kit sheet.  The alternative is to cut the alternating red/white outlines carefully out of the Nazca sheet and attempt to get them down cleanly over my painted cheat lines.  Wanna bet on my probability of 8 for 8 success there?  

 

At any rate, with the decals in hand I can now un-shelf this WIP and try to advance it to an RFI...

[Alex]

Seriously.  How do you get "the bottom stripe is pink" from this?

[Alex]

Step 1 on painting the airline color scheme.  I made a Silhouette mask for the top of the gray undersides to make sure to capture the subtle curve near the nose.  Owing to the deep panel line grooves in the model, I had to use a fresh scalpel blade to cut the masking film each place that it crossed a groove, then burnish it down in with a fingernail and cover the cut with masking fluid.  This resulted in a very crisp line without paint blowing up into the panel lines grooves:

 

 

But it's a preview of a lot of fiddly work going forward to get the rest of the paint to look equally crisp.

 

Masks for the red stripes:

 

Initial placement on the fuselage

 

Dealing with the aft part

 

Still lots more to do before I can start airbrushing red paint...

[jenshb]

Looking good...

[Alex]

2 hours ago, jenshb said:

Looking good...

Thanks!

[Alex]

All masked up now...

 

And with the red paint on

 

That's actually just round one of red.  Once this is hardened off and the masking (partly) removed, I have to shoot darker red on the rudder fore and aft of the white stripe, and the red "AeroPeru" logo just above the stripes on the side of the fuselage.  That can happen in the same session as painting black for the radome, anti-glare panel, and as base color for the metal intake and exhaust parts.  Then a third round of metallic paint for those, and it's off to (hopefully quick and straightforward) decals.  We have a three day weekend in the States, and in New England it's going to rain non-stop for the whole thing.  Silver lining is that I'll have time to move this guy a long ways towards done, I hope.

[Alex]

So, two steps forward one step back here...

 

The aft end of the thing looks quite good, if I do say so myself.  No problems arose:

 

Unfortunately, I ran into some paint adhesion problems on the front end.

 

It has to be something on top of the white layer, locally, as it was only on the front and on both sides, though the port side was worse.  Not only did tape peel up some paint (stripes), but you can see that the paint on the AeroPeru logo came off with the mask around the edges.  This is Mr Color lacquer going down on top of Tamiya lacquer, so it should adhere great.  And it did on the back.  So I can only think that I got something, maybe even just skin oil? on the front.  Should have wiped down with alcohol, darn it!  I try to remember to always thoroughly wash my hands before sitting down to work on these things, but...  It's also odd that the gray layer (also Mr Color), which was painted less than 24 hours before, had no adhesion problems, front or back. 

 

At any rate, now I gotta figure out how to fix it.  I think for the logo, since I copied it directly from a scan of the Nazca decal sheet, I may be able to get away with just applying the decal over the painted logo.  That's probably easier than trying to get a second mask *precisely* on top of the faulty painted logo.  Although I suppose I could try Mike Maben's trick of dipping the mask in soapy water before setting it down.  What I know I don't want to do, if I can avoid it, is try to completely paint it out with white and then start over.

 

For the stripes, I think I can wait a day, clean with alcohol, and just re-mask.  it's a simpler shape to follow. 

 

Not going to be done this weekend, though.  Sigh.

[Brett M]

Even with the paint issue, definitely looking sharp. The bright red and white is a great eye catcher.

[Alex]

2 hours ago, Brett M said:

Even with the paint issue, definitely looking sharp. The bright red and white is a great eye catcher.

Thanks!  And yeah, I mean, that's really why to build airliners - no end of flashy liveries you can choose from.