Tigger L-39 Conversion

[daveculp]

All three camo colors are now done, so time for markings.  The Draken logo and formation lights are shown here on the tail.  The logo went on with minimal fuss.  Amazingly the background color of the logo turned out to be a perfect match with the Panzer Dark Grey color.  The formation lights need some manual touch-ups as they began to lose their ink during the application process.

 

 

[LSP_Kevin]

Love it!

 

Kev

[chrish]

I missed most of this, guess I’ve been wrapped up in my own little world… some really amazing work here! Great progress!

[daveculp]

Decal design, printing, sealing and application progresses.  This is a real finicky process.  Getting colors to match is hard.  Getting the decals sealed properly without smearing them is hard.  Getting them to survive the application process is hard.  Several decals failed for one reason or another and had to be re-done.  Slowly it all comes together.  Lucky for me the camo and markings have enough pizzazz to distract from all the issues with paint and decals.

 

The forward canopy bow has broken off twice now, so I'll leave it off until the markings are all done and sealed.

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

Looks great!

[daveculp]

Normally I wouldn't post another pic so soon with only a minor change, but in this case the minor change involved a couple hours of math.  I was calculating the curvature needed for a decal to wrap around a conical surface.  On the Honey Badger the tip tanks have formation lights ("slime lights") installed near the rear of the tip tanks.  Maybe it was overkill, but I had to derive the formulas, measure the location on the tip tank to get three parameters:  small diameter, large diameter and thickness for the decal, plug those numbers into the formulae, then convert from millimeters to pixels and draw the decals in Gimp.  All for a very tiny slime light.  It needs to be cut out with an X-acto knife, which may as well be a chain saw after all the measuring and calculating.

 

 

[iaf-man]

Don't know why,but I don't see any photos here,none

[RLWP]

20 minutes ago, iaf-man said:

Don't know why,but I don't see any photos here,none

 

Second post, first page of this thread.

 

Richard

[daveculp]

I had one distant and badly focused photo to use as a reference for the rear cockpit electronic equipment, and I used it to scratch build some electronicsey looking stuff.  Recently I was provided some much better photos by a Draken insider, so I used this new information to print a new one-piece equipment part.  It looks like there is a fuel tank in the rear cockpit and the electronics is installed on racks above the tank.  This was the first time I tried to print wiring bundles and I'm surprised it actually worked.  The key is to orient the part in the printer such that the wires can grow mostly vertically.  In this case I tilted the part at a 70 degree angle in the slicer.

 

Here's a photo of the older scratch-built part and the new printed part.  The new part still has some support material to remove and needs to be cured in UV.

 

 

 

-- Dave

[LSP_Kevin]

Expertly done, Dave!

 

Kev

[jeroen_R90S]

+1

[daveculp]

 

I was installing one of the final decals and decided to try the Future trick to set the decal without it silvering.  I applied the Future and off came the paint.  I thought I had sealed the paint well enough, but I guess not        So after taking a break from modeling, re-examining my life choices,  and attending to other hobbies I started the repainting process.  So far it doesn't blend in very well.  At some point I'll have to call the repaint good enough and blame the blemishes on hangar rash.

 

 

 

 

I had already had doubts about using acrylic paint, and this event is the last straw.  I moved my paint booth into the garage, hooked up the ventilation hose, and have started building up a supply of lacquer paints.

 

 

[daveculp]

After a couple months of trying to get my mojo back I started working on the Honey Badger again.  I installed the main gear, then after fitting the nose gear I saw that I'd designed it waaaaaay too short.  So back to the CAD program to stretch the nose strut 8mm.  It's an easy fix.  Here I'm testing the new nose gear to make sure it's the right length before I spend time painting it.  The airplane should sit level, so the nose gear passes the test.  Also shown here that is newly installed are the pitot tubes from Master Model (Aero L-39 Albatross tubes).

 

I'm back in the saddle!

 

 

[daveculp]

I'll be entering this model in the Best of the West IPMS/USA show, sponsored by the Las Vegas chapter.  The show is August 27, so I have time to finish it, as long as I don't encounter any more disasters.  The model is far from adequate to compete in the commercial kit categories, but I might do OK in the vac/scratch category.  Anyway, I've decided that the "Draken International" decals that I've been tolerating all this time, even though they are grossly silvered, will have to be redone.  Sanding them off is not easy since this paint comes off in sheets, like latex paint.  I might hand brush some paint into the "holes" to build the surface up to be flat, then airbrush over that.

 

Here's a photo showing the mess.  It also shows how rough the paint (Vallejo Air acrylic) went down.  I'm sure most if not all of that effect is due to my inexperience at airbrushing, but regardless I'm switching to lacquer for all future models.

 

 

[themongoose]

Dang that paint just didn’t even stick to itself well. It’s a great looking build tho so definitely worth the effort you’re putting in to get things the way you want.