Finally beginning to shape up.

I am including one picture that has already been posted, to give an over view of the airplane.

I took all the other pictures of my "Sea Vixen" this morning. The bottom details are about complete, and I have started the top. This took a few weeks since I had to make special inking templates for the shape of the doors, and had to make special flexable straight edges to ink the curved areas. I also made properly sized  stencil type decals that I used for placards on the doors.  (The decals are about 1/16", so us young-ins will need glasses to look at them) Now I have to make some special templates for the upper engine bay doors.

That's looking terrific, Tom.   The panel lines make it come alive.   You've added just the right amount.   Will be anxious
to see the top side when it's finished.

Cheers.

Warren Wagner

Thanks guys.
I used a Rapidigraph pen #2 for most of the panel lines. The wing fold lines are drawn with a #2 ½ Rapidigraph pen. I have numerous detail pictures of “Sea Vixens” thanks to Airliner.net, and a poor 3 view, that shows some of the panel and door locations.
The location of door panels is “fudged” due to different proportions of the stunter. The doors are different on the top in the engine bay areas and there are red X’s to indicate no step areas. The red lines will be done with a #4 Rapidigraph pen using Rapidigraph red ink. There is a plastic model of the “Vixen”   that shows some of the doors, but it is not even close to the actual airplane.  Another option for the red lines is a red Sharpie, but the Sharpie lines tend to get wider as you use them.  
Some of the old paint issues showed up, but hopefully I have most of them hidden. The actual airplane is finished in high gloss urethane, unlike so many military aircraft that are flat.
The panel lines are purposely under stated, and the top lettering on the real airplane is black in most cases, but there is some contrast between the black and the blue/gray color of the airplane. Weathering on many stunters is over done. I will never show hundreds of black rivets. I worked in the aerospace industry all of my life and we worked hard to make the rivets disappear. In many case we actual install rivets slightly high and shave the heads to make them totally disappear. I have never seen an airplane with every rivet head painted black!

Very Nice, Tom.

Bill

Here are some of the top details. More touch up and fitting to do, before clear coat. Looking at it I think the interior of the inlets should be black. Boy, is this tedious!

Very nice, Tom. I like it.

Tom, keep up the good work. It's looking great as I see it.

Oh, Clint, love the jeep.......

That is looking awesome.   It should really stand out after clear coat.   

Tom it looks like you have gone way beyond Jacks plane in detail. I think there is a scale builder hidden in you trying to get out. I like scale but they are so boring to fly in CL .
Ed

Ed,
I admire what some of the scale guys do, but I love flying. The white coats are about to arrive for this one. If I attempted a scale project. the white coats would have to put me in a straight jacket.

Dennis,
My friend Jack Sheeks deserves most of the credit. He is probably crazy designing an airplane with all those curves. When I saw the only Sea Vixen that is still airworthy that Red Bull returned to the Royal Navy colors when they completed using in airshows, it became a must build. Thankfully there is a lot of closeup details on Airliners.net. Not many closeup details are available for most airplanes.

Attached is a closeup of the rudder on my Vixen. The full size airplane has many of the placards in black stencils on the dark gray.I am also attaching  pictures of the Vixen in the Red Bull colors before it was repainted to the Royal Navy scheme.

My plans are to have the Sea Vixen and the OTS Curtiss Swift at VSC March 2012.

Looks real good, Tom. Can't wait to see it in person.
Chris...

You know the tip to stopping a canopy fogging up is to drill a little hole in the back of the canopy.

You know the tip to stopping a canopy fogging up is to drill a little hole in the back of the canopy.

That rarely works anyway. I do it to all my planes and half of them fog anyway.

Bill,
That is exactly how I vent the cockpit. Been doing it 25 or 30 years. A 1/8" hole in a non-visible area is all it takes. This method works great and I never have a canopy fog. I don't want a hole in the canopy.

Randy,

I don't know about a fan, but I forgot to put in a miniature Jepperson approach chart.

Wayne,

The "Sea Vixen" is ready for clearcoat. Just have to find more money to buy it. The price of Clearcoat has gone way up like everything else.

The "Swift" has 2 coats of crystal clear dope and that is held up by high humidity. Two more coats and it will be done. But being an oldtimer I am finishing it with dope. The "Hobo" will be hinged and plumbed this week.

So all the current projects are close to completion and then on to new projects.

I will show the "Sea Vixen" again when the clear coat is finished.

I generally no longer add holes to prevent fogging. I found if you seal the internal structure 100% You get no buildup of moisture.

Even here in KANSAS I have had a canopy pop loose because the air expansion had no where to go.  It only takes a pin hole to let the air out and in.