Chinook progress

A few more hours spent on the Chinook, in between the Viper cockpits and installing the swing and slide in the yard. It needed a wavy line near the bottom to ease into the the pitch black underside.

I spent just under 3 hours on the decals. Now I remember why I prefer armoured vehicles over airplanes!

I removed a few of the canopy masks too early because I was curious to see how well the paint job was, but maybe I shouldn't have done that. The 2 coats of varnish (1 gloss to receive the decals, 1 matte to seal in said decals and remove the gloss sheen) have made the canopy less transparent. I have no idea what product to attack those "glass" panes with, as the Alclad varnish seems very durable. Another lesson learned in patience?

Just when I though I was about done, I tried fitting the loading ramp in the open position, which is really needed if you are to see anything of the interior. You can guess that it wouldn't fit already? It's a weird thing. When fitting the canopy, I concluded that I fitted the interior too far forward, blocking the canopy from closing. Now the ramp at the back won't fit because the rear wheels are too far back? So either the interior is too long, the cockpit is messed up or .... Anyway, I'd recommend against building this one with the ramp open. I fixed it by adding about 2 mm of styrene strip. The result was a bit wobbly, but as the ramp was pushing against the wheel's anyway, I superglued them against the oleo's, making it a lot more sturdy. Both landing gear and loading ramp are now a lot less likely to break.