American Eagle ATR-72 1/144

[TheChronicOne]

Sprayed up the plane and some of it oragne peeled so I had to come back with sand paper and I went over most of the fuselage then sprayed it again with white appliance epoxy. This time it looks like the fuselage is 100% good to go and all I need to do now is make sure the wings are finished properly then it can sit and dry up and gas out for a couple weeks then I'll put the decals on. In the mean time, I'll get the landing gear and doors and all that stuff worked on.

[TheChronicOne]

Painfully slow progress on this one, but progess none the less.

So, at last I finally got the fuselage finish the way I like so I decided to let the thing sit and dry for no less than two weeks. I think it's been closer to three weeks, now, so that's good. I've been having paint problems with out-gassing creating crazing and the like so I'm taking steps to void it and on this build I really really don't want to wind up with a crappy finish. It's probably far from "show standard" or whatever but *I* like it, damnit, so it's good enough. The wings are a bit "off" but I'm hoping the subsequent coats of clear after I decal it will even them out.

Anyway, after all that drying time, I picked it back up today and have painted the black areas on the bottom of the engine nacelles. Easier said that done, for sure but they're on there. I need to touch them up a wee bit but they look good enough I suppose. I also painted on the red and green nav lights. At the moment I can't find any other detail stuff to paint. Some of it is covered by the decals.

Speaking of the decals, I see a problem already. The bottom part of the cheatline goes on top of the wheel wells and they stick out quite a bit so I'm going to wind up having to make cuts in the decal. I'm going to save this for another day because it's going to take concentration on my part. Kind of a bummer, really, but the sheet gives extra fields of red (the color in question on the cheatline) and blue for doing patch work so hopefully between careful measuring, cutting, patch work, micro set, and micro sol, I can keep from butchering the whole ordeal... wish me luck.

For now:

[TheChronicOne]

After all was said and done, I found an area on the side that was sunken in so I tried to repair it.



I was going to keep it nice and tight then just paint it white with acrylic then put a little floor polish on it. The idea was that the cheatline decal would go over it and hide the variation in finish but the lower portion stuck out...... So, I had to do a "quick mask" job to cover the engines where I painted black parts on the bottom and to keep over spray from straying too far. Wound up looking like a diaper!!!



The repair wasn't perfect, either. It's still ever so slight indented right there but it's not going to be noticeable once it's all said and done so I'm going to proceed with the build.

Other work done is the cleaning up of the gear and getting those primed. I also primed the props and spinners but I think I might have to go back and do some sanding on the spinners themselves. All that is left aside from that are a couple gear doors that need primed and painted and the remaining parts are antennas that I'll paint after they've been glued on.

SO.... anyway.... not much to show for it but I am definitely gaining ground on this one!!! I'm not rushing it. It's a pet project and I'm trying to let the paint gas out thoroughly before I decal it then go over it with gloss coat. The clear and the appliance epoxy are the same brand so will work together, supposedly, but I'm not taking any chances. I recently had a couple disasters trying to mix brands of paints and I don't think I'll be making that mistake again....

[F-27pax]

Looking good!!

[TheChronicOne]

Why, thank you!!!

As luck would have it, I'm working on this one at this very minute! I haven't in a good while... I've been letting it sit so the paint adequately gasses out but I've today finally built up the gusto to tackle the remaining fiddly bits. To that end, I painted the gear doors, some struts for the gear, painted the wheels and tires and turned around and matte cleared those whilst gloss clearing the doors.

Aside from things like going back through and doing tedious detail painting (which I may be done with already anyway), there's only one thing left to do before I start decalling and that is to get the props and spinners to the point where they fit on the engine nacelles and to also paint them. That's what I'm doing now in fact.

[TheChronicOne]

Short run shenanigans afoot! Nazca decals on a short run F-Rsin kit. If I screw this up, that's a chunk of money in the toilet (and waiting time, they come from Germany!!) so let's hope this goes well the first time.

I've cut the cheatlines into 1/3s with the middle section being the part that sits atop the reversed curve that I need the decals to conform to. I have my micro set and micro sol on the ready so.... I have all I need aside from prior experience with NAZCA and limited experience forcing flat things into curves that would elongate them under normal circumstances. I predict I will likely be needing to use some of the spare decal material that came on the sheet, so I'm glad it's there!

[TheChronicOne]

I had to fix the little red wing tip piece. It's no longer crooked.

[Ansett A330]

Really nice. Well done!

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks!! I turned today into a "big push" on this one and have progressed quite adequately!! Here she is as of now. In a few days I'll get back to putting the rest of the transfers on. They're progressively smaller from here (naturally) so I'd rather start them on a new day. Some of them are VERY wee... like these little line decals that go on the radome. Yeesh!

Also, before I get carried away, I'm going to need to take some spare material from this sheet and apply them to something so I can spray my clear onto them and see how they react. I recently went to do a "seal in the transfers" final coat of gloss and it did NOT react well with the transfers.

[RayS]

The ATR looks nice in those markings.

An Italeri -42 mysteriously found its way into my stash the other day. So I look forward to making it look as nice as yours Brad!