Revell B747-400 Ed Force One - Run To The Hills!

Thanks guys. Very excited; off to Auckland tomorrow to look at a Mosquito! Sadly it won't be flying, but it'll be pretty sweet nonetheless.

So, when we last looked, the fuse had just gone together. Not unexpectedly there will be lots of sanding and puttying involved because of the gaps and steps in the halves. I had to unstick the halves partially in places and re-glue them to realign them, but after this it still doesn't look perfect. That's partially My mistake in not aligning the parts properly, although the poor fit didn't help.



The underside is probably the worst and will require quite a lot of work when it comes to inserting the underside plate over that hole. Those antennae are gonna have to come off, too.



Against my own advice I decided to put some effort into straightening the nose line.



After working on the fuse, I put another undercoat on wings and hori stab. Notice that I've also fitted the winglets.





A bit of splutter in the painting process caused a minor incident in the paint booth, which meant sanding down and re-spraying on the RH wing underside, where the outbd engine is supposed to go. You can see the lack of panel lines where I've sanded and re-sprayed. I'll have to re-scribe the panel lines or it'll look odd.



More work has been done on the engine pods and LP fans; final layers of colour and tadpole markings on the fan centre cones. Note that these are different, this is because the two narrower ones represent the No 1 and 2 engines that were replaced in Chile after a fracas with a ground vehicle. The bigger decals are not sitting on the cones very well, so I'll add a drop of clear coat to them.



I also mixed up a brownish hue for the aft end of the cones.



All for now.

Looking good.

No modelling today; went to see a Mosquito being pulled to bits - in a good way. This is T.III TV959 wearing temporary RNZAF markings; the most recent airworthy Mosquito to join the ever growing world wide number of flying examples; 3 now.

Beauty !
Wish there was still a 'Mossie' on the UK airshow circuit.

Well, they're pumping them out down here; the reason TV959 was moved to this hangar is because the next one is now in its place at Avspecs and is expected to fly by early 2018, it's already being touted to fly at the 2018 Warbirds over Wanaka airshow. There is a fuselage being built for The People's Mosquito lot, so the UK might not have to wait for too long for a flying Mossie again.

A bit more with the 747 before I head off to Australia next week.

Work on the nacelles saw them go together without any hassle, but there are the inevitable gaps, nonetheless, they don't look too bad.



The three different types of tadpole marking on the centre cones in evidence. Note the seam line inside the upper lip of the nacelle to the left.



For effect I ran a 5B pencil over the lines on the exhaust cones, then wiped it off using a wee bit of spit, creating a bit of weathering. Airliners are not known for excessive weathering, so this'll probably be the lot.



The winglets have been undercoated.



As has the hori stab. First coat of top colour will be applied once these dry.



Putty applied to the fuse and nacelles.



While I wait for all that to dry/harden, it's getting time to consider the stand. I want to make something relatively simple and since I have access to scrap metal, I can achieve that. Initially I didn't know what I was going to do, but I got a recent copy of Metal Hammer magazine (Rawk!) with a feature on Iron Maiden on tour and it came with this large sheet of stickers to apply to your car, bike or self; wherever your mood takes you. The circular markings are exactly the same as the ones on Ed Force One's nacelles and so I decided to incorporate one of those into the stand for effect. Note the plan view of a 747 above Eddie's head in the circular marking.



The base would be circular, based on the dimension of the sticker, with an arm emerging from the back and arcing up toward a flat section angled slightly upwards, on which the aircraft would sit. Or something like that. I made a wee mock-up at work the other night using a circular sanding disc as a template. I also drilled a hole in it to facilitate fitting it to the aircraft.



Hopefully it'll look something like this when it's all finished, only with my 744, not a 1:200 scale homebrand 733.



Fastening the stand to the aircraft is going to be a bit tricky, but I have a couple of solutions. Firstly I'll drill a hole in the bottom section of the aircraft that has yet to be fitted. I haven't drilled it yet, that'll be determined by the method I use to attach the stand to it.



The options are to either fit a piece of dowel to the stand and poke it through the hole and place a lump of resin on the other side of the hole into which the dowel fits, or to take the sophisticated option and attach a used anchor nut on the inside of the hole and cover the lot with resin, then attach the aircraft to the stand with a fastener I can find in the scrap bin. Either way, things to ponder. I have noticed that the cover sits forward of the model's C of G, so I might have to extend the vertical arm of the stand aft a little before it descends toward the base.

Next, sanding, sanding, sanding...

Freaking awesome!

Great stuff !

Great find on that sticker for you stand.

Looks good so far!

Lovely shots of the Mosquito too!

Catching up after a period away. Quite a bit of sanding has gone on of late and the fuse has had its first coat of primer, but the results are not encouraging.



You can see that Paul Bunyan has dragged his axe down the centreline of the belly of my 747.



I've cleaned up the nose and added putty to reshape it a bit and it doesn't look to bad now. Wasn't going to do this, but it looks better than I thought it might.



Wings and hori stab have had their first coats of top coat. In the photo they look a bit flat and is almost the same hue as the primer, but the colour I used is a bit bluer and of a satin finish - Pastel Grey - it's not the exact colour, but it looks good and I don't know if Tamiya do that shade of grey in their spray can range.



Next, the little u/carriage doors were cleaned up; these were covered in flash and had lots of blemish marks on them. I did a trial fit on the lower fuse and as you can see they don't fit; they have a tab to enable them to be glued open, which is shown on the left side of the picture and the other shows what the fit'll be like once that's removed. Pretty bad.



Back to the sanding and puttying to get rid of that lower fuse channel. If that were Mars; they'd find signs of life in there...



While I've been waiting for putty to dry I've been doing a bit of prep for mounting wings, engines etc. I drilled a hole in the fuse side to mount the hori stab properly and put holes in the wings for mounting the nacelles. You can see that I've started re-shaping the APU exhaust, too, which was only half formed on the kit.



The wings have had their final coat of top coat and to make the holes to support the nacelles, I got some 32 thou lock wire and twisted it into the plastic. Little lock wire tabs will support the engines when they are mounted.



I've now finished the top coat on the hori stab and have painted the leading edges and a hole has been drilled to fit the dowel to mount it to the fuse.



The undercarriage doors now have primer on them.



Meanwhile, on with the sanding of those ruddy ridges in the fuse...

Some good progress here Grant.

....and nice improvements as well. Some of my Hobbycraft builds are more mud than plastic

Good work so far!

Hi Guys, back from a quick trip to Australia and I have to move house, so Ed Force One is being packed away for a bit until I'm settled in. In the meantime, here's some pics of a Real Live One.









744 VH-OJA on display at Illawarra Airport, Albion Park. That's the red hatchback I was driving round in for scale.