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The major assembly is now complete and it is time for painting..when it warms up a bit as I have to spray out in the garage!

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The cowlings will be painted seperately then added along with the slightly modified kit engines, props and landing gear etc. As for the props ..yes the tips on the early NAVY Trackers were Yellow. The Red, White, Red tips came into vogue with unification.

1502 was not only the first DeHavilland built Tracker but also the first aircraft to land on HMCS Bonaventure in 1957.

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Jackman: The "Z" cut is used for a couple of reasons but mainly because of the taper of the rear fuselage but also to clear the radome.

Barney

Ah, the radome. That makes sense. Thank you :thumbsup:/>

Edited by JackMan
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The painting is now finished..except for a couple of small repairs. The Extra Dark Sea Grey upper and Sea Grey Medium are Polly Scale, the Deicing boots Model Master enamel and the exhaust shields Alclad II Dark Aluminum. Wheel Wells painted with MM White.

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Belcher's decals will be started later..Mike, I hope that you are watching :whistle:

Barney

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Good morning guys. The Tracker now has some colour to it with the application of decals. I used the kit over-wing walk-way decal and it was terrible. It is a large decal so I cut it into three pieces. It was too large for the area to be covered and required a bit of trimming, then on application, it stuck as soon as it hit the model even though I used Micro Set and flooded the surface with water. It eventually laid down but I could not fine tune the positioning.

On the other hand Belcher's decals went on without a problem but as they are very delicate, we'll have to see what happens when the yellow rescue stripes are applied.

One thing that came to my attention, there is no landing light provided for the port wing! Oh well!

More later

Barney

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A couple of photos during the decalling process. The Belcher Bits decals for the RCN CS2F-1 are very thin and flow off of the backing sheet very quickly but as I mentioned before the emergency rescue decals around the side windows and overhead escape hatches are a problem. Because these decals are very thin and there is minimum carrier film, they tend to roll up into an unusable lump. After destroying the port side window markings, I coated the other window/hatch decals with Microscale Decal film which helped somewhat but still not satisfactory.

The "propeller warning stripes" broke into many small pieces and I was able to salvage most of them using a flat sable brush. As this represents 1502, the first DeHavilland built Tracker I should have painted over the escape hatch windows as the first few Trackers did not have glass in the hatches. Learning something new every day..but usually after I've completed some phase or another!

Barney...still more decals and wee pieces to go.

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Thanks Brad, it's not my best but what the.....I'll have it on the gear this morning then the tiny details will be taken care of. The serial, 1502, is going to be a problem because the very small individual numerals have to be applied by a one eyed old geezer.

Cheers

Barney

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Erik: I really do not know . The -1 Trackers did not have glass in the over-head hatches..at least the first 12. And this beast is really tail heavy so adjust the rear bumber wheel accordingly. I packed the nose and the engine cases with lead but to no avail but the rear wheel saved the day. For this I cut off the kit strut, drilled out the strut location, set the model on its gear and adjusted the new strut to suit.

Mine is no where on a level with your masterpiece

Barney

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Erik: I really do not know . The -1 Trackers did not have glass in the over-head hatches..at least the first 12. And this beast is really tail heavy so adjust the rear bumber wheel accordingly. I packed the nose and the engine cases with lead but to no avail but the rear wheel saved the day. For this I cut off the kit strut, drilled out the strut location, set the model on its gear and adjusted the new strut to suit.

I guess you should be able to determine from the registration if it's a version with or without overhead hatches. If so, the next step is to figure out if they were tinted or not. Pictures should help. Mind you, I have seen pictures of Dutch H-coded CS-2A's that had the hatches but these were painted over. As mine will be either a carrier-based D-coded or land-based V-coded aircraft, I've tinted mine. Just waiting for them to dry thoroughly because I don't want to risk taping over them. As I'm using Gunze paints this should not take more than a day or so. Plenty of time to add some stuff to the landing gear. I have packed my model so full of lead I'm actually worried the nose strut will even stand up to it. I have left the forward section of the underside of the nacelles open just in case. Everything seems all right now, but I am not taking any chances. Aiming for some light between the tail wheel and the floor.

Mine is no where on a level with your masterpiece

That still remains to be seen...I have a tendency to screw things up at the final clear coat and yours is already looking fine...for now, you have me beat ;)

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