The second coat of gloss white is done. I tried to get a lower angle for the pictures, but my camera keeps on auto-focusing on the wingtip, which is frustrating. Anyway, let's see how they turned out.





The orange peel on the nacelles needs a little polishing before I do the light grey.

I'll let these coats cure completely before masking the white.

Nice going Jessica. A lesser modeler would have given up. You make it seem (or is that seam) pretty effortless.

Fantastic job Jessie.

@ Stephen, don't give up your day job...

The grey is on the wings and lower fuselage. I used Tamiya TS-81 Royal Light Grey spray lacquer because it has the nice warm grey tone I was looking for. When it's cured (and today's problem solved), I'll mask off the sections around the engine necelles and spray the silver.







Today's problem was not caused by the kit! Instead, the lacquer reacted with the enamel undercoat. Obviously this portion of the enamel was not as completely cured as I had beleived it to be. Some careful sanding, possibly a little Mr. Surfacer and a respray will be needed to smooth things out.

The final paint scheme takes shape. First, mask off the areas around the nacelles and tips of the horizontal stabilisers.





Spray the silver. I R smrt. I used Tamiya silver over the Tamiya grey. No more crazing paint for this grrrl.







A quick buff with SNJ powder to bring out the metallic shine and then we can proceed to the unveillling.











The small bits also needed some paint. It won't do to forget those.

The decals are on! It looks like an airliner now







The decals behaved much better than the ones in my AN-12 kit. Roden has really improved here. The decals are nicely glossy and strong. None of them broke, they can be moved relatively easily once they're placed on the model and they respond well to Solvaset. The cheatlines are a trifle long but it was easy to trim them around the cockpit and nose cone. The tail stripes did not line up correctly at the leading edge. I'll have to do a little touching up to make them look complete

All that remains are a few touch-ups and assembling the landing gear.
I'm going out of town for a little holiday so I won't be able to work on this until the weekend.

Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion of the Roden JAL DC-7!

Roden's instruction sheet shows the main landing gear struts installed backwards. The fork at the top of the strut should lean back toward the rear of the aircraft while Roden has it leaning forward. Look carefully at the top of the strut in this picture. If you install the strut the way Roden would have you, the torque link would foul the retraction strut. The torque link should attach to the rear of the strut, not the front.

The retraction strut is a little too wide. It fouls the sides of the cutout it's supposed to fit within. A few moments' sanding will solve this problem and allow it to fit at the proper angle. There is nothing to attach its upper end to; it'll have to hang in space unsupported.

After I took this picture

I realised that the struts were not allgned with each other. I ripped them out and did a little work to refine the fit and make sure they both pointed in the right direction.

The mains are now properly alligned and the nosewheel gear is installed. The nose retraction strut that I was worried would float in midair manages to fit at the front of the cockpit floor once the nosel leg is properly installed in the mounting I made for it.

For the first time the model sits upright on its legs.

Turning to the nose wheel, we find two problems. Roden has supplied a spoked wheel that would be more appropriate to a DC-6 or DC-7B, and one with a solid hub. Neither of these are correct for a DC-7C. (Note also the torque link Roden neglected to provide for the nose leg. A little scratchbuilding will be necessary.)

The nearest wheel to being correct is the solid hub, and here we find our second problem. The hub suffers from sink marks.



The only thing to do is to fill them.



If you're feeling like a little AMS to brighten up your day, here's what goes on inside a DC-7 nosewheel bay.

Now it stands on its wheels. The finish line is in sight.





I solved the propeller tip stripe problem by drawing 1mm red and blue stripes in Paint, then printing them on white decal film. I cut out pieces and coerced them around the propeller tips. The decal has a tendency to roll into a tube if it's left to soak too long so it's a ballancing act between taking it off the backing paper too soon and tearing it, or wrestling with a 3mm wide decal that wants to roll up. I gave each a good soaking with Solvaset and now I'm waiting for it to set so I can trim it to the shape of the propeller tip.



Now all that remains to do are the landing gear doors, HF antennae and propellers.

Absolutely beautiful work Jessica! It really does look great! Thanks for sharing. Russell

Nicely done!

Roden's instructions would have you use U1 and U2 for the right main landing gear doors while using U3 and U4 for the left. This is wrong! Use U2 and U3 for both sides. There are 2 sets of gear doors on each sprue which gives you enough parts to do both sides. The others are apparently for a DC-7B or DC-6, which makes sense given that they've announced a DC-6 for future release.

Gear doors are on now. All that are needed are props and antennae.

Very nice indeed!

Mikael

Very nice work, Jessica... Crisp and clean!! Any tickets for the flight

It's Finished! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Very nice Jessie! And you didn't ruin it by highlighting panel lines.. marvellous!

BTW, where the An-12 decals THAT bad? (I have one in the stash)

They were the typical early Roden decals that laugh at all known setting solutions except boiling water or hair dryers. Patience and care will see them on your model. Oh, and it wouldn't hurt a bit to coat them with liquid decal film. If you have the military Cub, it should be easy to find aftermarket replacements for the major markings, and you won't have to coerce any cheatlines over the bumps the way I did.

I'm quite happy to report that the decals in this kit were far superior. They were glossy, strong, reacted very well to the Solvaset and didn't silver.

Beautiful finsish, that brings on the nostalgia of yesteryears airliners, when flying was an adventure.

Mikael

Wow! The kit looks like it fought back at every turn.

You truly are a master. Don't think ill tackle this one. Gonna buy the Welsh models version or the FRsin if they have one......

If you do get the Welsh kit, make sure you get one of the new ones with the resin wings and detail parts. I've been stalled on my full vac kit for years; it's even more work than this one was. The Frsin kit should be comparable to this one except that it has one-piece props and completely solid windows (which doesn't bother me in the least; I prefer decal windows in this scale.)

Here's a review of the Frsin kit. Nobody seems to have posted a review of the Welsh kit. The new one should be something like the Comet 3 I reviewed a short time ago. The old one was more like the Lockheed 749 except it had a very tricky wing centre section fit that I've finally got around to solving (I hope). Perhaps I ought to get it out of the hangar and built for everyone to look at one of these days.

Thanks Jessica. I am building the Welsh 1/144 Vickers Viscount 800 (3/4 completed) with the resin wings and tail parts. I won't do that again as the tail and horizontal stablisers were a bear to fit right with ALOT of putty and sanding to get right. Ill post pics in another thread so I can get your opinion.

The Vac on the other hand was first rate and easy to work with.

That could have been caused by the fuselage masters being made for the vac kit, and not quite fitting the new resin parts. This assumes that Densil re-used the old fuselage masters, something I have no definite knowledge of. I remember using a fair amount of filler when I did my Viscount 700 lo, these many years ago. I'd like to see how your kit fits.

For the record, I've never build a vac kit that I didn't use copious amounts of putty on. It's something chronic to the breed as far as my experience goes.

Fantastic work, Jessica. I am sorry that it took me this long to see your work on this. Beautiful job!

five star thread. thanks for sharing.
lots of great technique and problem solving, and superb result!
the custom printed propeller tip decals are especially eye catching.