Sopwith Dolphin - At last...

Le PC10 est arrivé - finalement

I've finally reached the stage of mixing up some PC10, but only after another hard day's masking.

I always feel some apprehension when starting the process of masking, and when I finally get round to it after putting it off as much as possible I remember why. It's always extremely fiddly and takes flipping ages.

One of the main reasons for this is the undersides of the wings. On RFC aircraft, I think I'm right in saying, the PC10 pigment on the upper surfaces was carried round to form a thin border on the lower surfaces, so I'm immediately  faced with the task of reproducing this by means of masking tape. The last time I did this, ten years ago, I seem to remember I applied a strip of masking tape and then cut it to shape in situ. But this time, I thought I could do better than that. So I span up TurboCAD and used the double polyline tool to trace round the wing profile and define the thin border. Then I printed out the results and followed my usual technique of cutting through the pattern into a length of masking tape. All I then had to do was stick it onto the wing.

But this turned out to be utterly hopeless. No matter how careful I was, I couldn't cut out a mask that precisely matched the wingtip profile. And it turned out to be almost impossible to manoeuvre the mask into place once cut out. In the end, I returned to the old method of cutting the wingtip profile in situ. The technique is in fact very much like hanging wallpaper. You get the paper into place; mark the edge; peel back; cut; and fold back into position. In this case, though, scissors are no good at all, and a knife is very difficult to use without causing damage. The technique I evolved was to mark the edge of the border with a mechanical pencil, peel back the end of the masking tape, stick it to a bit of scrap and then cut to shape with a sharp knife. The picture below gives you the general idea.

This worked well enough, but it was very hit and miss, and it was rather alarming the number of times I had to peel the tape away from the painted surface. But it all came out well in the end. All the same, I expect to do some retouching to smooth out the corners after spraying.

And then there was the fuselage. Here, there are quite a few demarcation lines between PC10 and battleship grey, many of them curved. I used thin strips of masking tape, cutting them to shape with the Windsock plans where possible, and nudged them into place with fine tweezers. After this very precise work, I covered the battleship grey areas with newspaper and lots of masking tape applied in an ad-hoc fashion. At this stage, I was regretting having added the triangular baffles for the radiators. They made the job much more difficult, and I ended up having to craft little individual housings for them from newspaper and masking tape.

Anyway, as you will see from the above picture, that's all done now. Next, a coat of PC10. Then some Gloss Cote and some transfers. At this stage, it will become apparent which particular subject I've chosen. Clue: it involves a lot of Lewis and Vickers guns.