Oh yeah, there are some non related pics for fun.  Haha!!   

There are some parts there for a stand I built myself.  I was borrowing my borthers and he needed it back so I built my own.

Stand was shaking all over the place, should have used larger steel stock.  I had to add to it.  It holds fine now.

I always mess up the fuse at that cowl joint right there.  This time I dinged it with a ball driver...idiot!

Sanding on the red lead filler.  Stuff dries super hard. Can be a pain to work with as it is so hard you can end up sending a divot all the way around.  Just have to go slow...ugh...

Airbrush is an Iwata copy I got at HF for 19.99.  It is awesome!  So smooth and only one clog and cleaning it was a snap.  If it goes bad by the time I paint another plane, who cares it was 19.99...   

Best looking, and smallest, 3rd baseman you have ever seen!!

Lay down intitial red.

Tape over the red I want to stay on the plane.

Paint blue

Had to stop and program the esc on the Protos, on the coffee table I made for the wife.  I had to make sure the table was sturdy.

Looks good so far.....

Life of finishing CLPA planes can be so brutal...  That gray is supposed to be white.  The white had trouble binding.  And this is just the begining.

To heck with this for the day off to fly helicopters for the afternoon.

A new wrinkle in the game.  Look at the flaps so I can line up the stencils and the paint had aligatored all over the place.  I some how contaiminated the paint.  I guess a drop of thinner got in there left over from cleaning.  Oh how this makes me so happy!

Strip the paint.  Reprimer and no luck.  More problems.

Go to laquer thinner and pull the covering too.  Just start over.

Block sanded flat and ready for dope.

Doped up and ready for covering. 

As of now they are recovered and primer should go on soon.

 Things were looking great until I got to the photos where the paint pulled off with the tape, OUCH!

 I can relate, I just recently dealt with the same problem at the beginning of my last paint job. In my case I wasn't using enough thinner. Once I added more thinner (like I normally do, but for some stupid reason hadn't) everything went great from there on. Hope you can get'er all touched up Doug.

Doug, I can relate, Although my story is one of stupidy rather than bad luck.

I've just finished my Chipmunk, but rather, I've abandoned it.

I had everything looking sweet in primer, and went to my white base coat. Everything was going great until I ran out of paint. Could be a good thing I guess, may have saved me putting too much on.

After laying everything out in fine line, I set about masking up everything that I wanna stay white, and hit it with the blue, I found out after a few passes that the prepwash I had used had rolled up the points of my stars, beware frisk users!

THen onto the red, where I found after a few passes, that I'd completely missed blocking out some of the white starbursts! IDIOT!.

I then went to unwrap my presesnt and pulled big chunks of colour off with the fineline. running around ahead of the fineline with a heat gun made it softer and less prone to tearing the paint.

Well after 5 hours of cleaning up all the star points and a few other things with a blade and some 800, I went back and used my airbrush to 'try' to hide my mistakes, only to have the airbrush clog, spatter, and completely fail on me. Then I dropped it and bent the needle!

After that I quietly packed up my gear and decided that I was done whether the model was good enough or not!

I swear, the longer I do this, the more I realize that finishing is all about overcoming obstacles. Great mask plan, poor paint adhesion. What are you painting with?

Base coat/Clear coat Omni Brand paint PPG clear. Same brand I have been using for years.  All new paint.  Went back to English color and the guy was very surpirsed to see what happened and gave me new white with and a little jar of binder if I should have anymore problems.

from the pictures,, it looks like solvent incompatibility,, or the base coats had dried off to much and when you sprayed the next coat it caused wrinkles,,

used to see this a lot with lacquer over enamel,,,

Hello,

The alligatoring on the flap was red paint over primer.  I think I know what caused that.  I usually never clean my gun with thinner when changing colors.  This was advice given to me from the body shop owner who flys at our field and has put out some amazing stuff.  I usually just put a little basemaker through it and move on.  I am running low on basemaker so I used thinner.  There must have been a little thinner left in the tip of the gun.  I mix my paint in a jar then pour it in.  Then shoot.  If a little thinner was left in the tip that could have contaminated the paint that first left the gun.  One side of the first flap I painted was the worst.  There was only small amounts on the other side and the other flap has even less.  The Wing has no alligatoring.

Today I repainted the flaps red using my method of no thinner only a quick shot of basemaker to make sure all is working before I dump in the color.  The red laid down and stuck the primer no problem and the flaps actually look alot better than they did before the alligatoring.  I was able to finish them out flatter.

As for the white not sticking in places, it is really weird because the paint dried and looked like butyrate white dope.  Almost a shine to it.  Whereas in the past the white has always dried dull and flat almost looks like chalk.  The guy at English Color that sold it to me was dumbfounded by what had happened and he gave me a new pint of white with a different amount of solids in it and some binder in a different can if I continue to run into problems.  The new white I have used on repairs it working fine.  He said I should have no problems with the clear going over all of it.  Fingers are crossed.

Randy, I always use a hair dryer when pulling tape.  When I forget I always get pull ups.  This time it didn't seem to matter too much...

Ouch.

In part why I airbrush things.. I hate pulling up tape and having it lift. In general the small amount of airbrush paint that goes on is not enough to cause lifting of tape or a mask.

It just doesn't leave much paint to flat sand.... and you can run into problems if you don't seal it enough with dope.

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On another note, I actually like the grey behind the white ! Looks like a Baseball insignia !

Making some progress.

Almost ready for clear.

I really like the pain scheme overall. Nice ghost checkerboard.

Looks great Doug.