Construction on B-47, C-46, 707

As I have mentioned before, summer is historically not a very busy time at the 72 Land aircraft construction facility, and so it is proving this year as well. Last weekend was the annual Pug Gala (a fundraiser for Seattle Pug Rescue, which features literally hundreds of the breed in one spot) and the Olympia Airshow, one of the few Seattle-area airshows to survive. I had been planning to go to both, but found out that the 520 bridge was due to be closed all weekend. Seattle drivers are, shall we say, not known for their talent behind the wheel, so I knew this would cause a huge tie-up. Even if they were great drivers, freeway design and capacity in the Puget Sound area is awful – I-5, the major north/south artery, narrows to 2 lanes each way downtown. The traffic was even worse than advertised, so we reluctantly gave a skip to the event that my wife and I (and another couple) started 11 years ago.

The Olympia Airshow was fun, if a bit understated. Photos are in a previous blog entry. And I proved that you can get sunburned even if the sky is overcast.

Back to modelling. I haven’t spent much time in the model room, but there are a couple of projects to catch up on. The Williams Bros C-46 has gotten its major bits together, though I will have some work to do to clean up the wing/fuselage seams. Plus I need to sand off all the raised decal.

The Hasegawa B-47 too has gotten its major assembly completed, and its raised detail has already been removed. Soon I need to paint the antiglare strip Black, and detail paint a couple more gear bays. This will use a Superscale decal sheet for the 1000^th B-47 produced.

I’ve also started masking a 707 I’ve had built for a decade or so now.  It will be a Braniff jellybean, using one of Jennings Heilig’s Liveries Unlimited sheets. I’ve had issues with how those sheets aged in the past, so I will be tremendously careful while getting these onto the model. Luckily the decals are mostly logo and window surrounds instead of large tail-size pieces.

I’m working on masking the second Hawk T1 and the F4U4 Corsair racer, so hopefully they can get to the paint shop before too long.