Happy Birthday Casey!

For Casey's 5th birthday, I finally presented to him his WWI Red Baron Fokker DR-1 Triplane.

He sure liked it, especially the turning propeller!

Happy Birthday Casey!

Touch Ups!

Today’s the day and at the last minute I had to repaint the nose section since the propeller rubbed on the white section when I was adjusting it with a paper clip back on July 14th. A lot of masking and a can of spray paint did the job and all looks good (had a bit of a panic with family due to arrive shortly). 

Tonight’s the night to present the gift, hope this unique present will please Casey...

According to my notes, it took me 35 hours to build not counting any research time.

Complete!

My goal was to complete the project for Casey’s 5th birthday which is on July 18th.  My wife kept telling me I it would be close and with only 4 days left (technically 3 days since his party is on the 17th) and tonight I am very glad to have competed it. It wasn’t an easy build but was lots of fun and it will sure look great hanging from his ceiling. I had some difficulties making the propeller spin properly but got it to work thanks to a paper-clip and the machine guns look menacing! Can’t wait to present it to him at the party!

Iron Crosses

Tonight I finally got to place the iron crosses on the tri-plane! I’ve been waiting a long time to get to this point and find that it has added a lot of personality to the aircraft.

Fixing Old Wounds...

After a long delay I finally found the right moment to go outside when there was no wind, not too hot, not too cold and the family was quiet. I painted the repairs from the January crash and completed the white areas, everything is looking good!

Casey’s First Kit

Today I had Casey assist in assembling the parts to the shuttle. Despite the beginner level even I had some difficulties joining some parts together. Together we completed the assembly and placed the stickers, I choose Discovery since it is my favorite shuttle and also an appropriate name. It’s a small little project that will be proudly displayed by its new owner in his room. Hopefully this will be the beginning of a new past time for him…

Got Paint?

With a bit of disappointment I found out that the kit is all in white plastic when I thought that the black markings were painted or separate pieces of plastic. It’s the first time I buy a snap kit and was not aware of this. Since Casey who is 4 ½ is too young to paint such details I decided to go ahead and paint the shuttle black sections and accessories. Nothing fancy but just enough to give it a nice appeal, two coats of flat black should do the trick!

Space Shuttle

While in a toy store with my 4 year old son Casey we checked out the scale model aisle and the Snap Tite Space Shuttle caught my attention. We had built a rocket out of cardboard weeks earlier and Casey is really into rocketry. It was only 10 bucks so I decided to pick it up and hopefully start an interest in scale modelling for him. It also reminded me of when I was young and my father built me the same model, it was the first model I every had and so it will also be the first model for Casey (with his help of course).

I might as well fix it...

Since I will have to add new tissue to the damaged sections I decided to correct another issue with the wings which I was not happy with.

The two white sections on the top of the wings had been painted flat white and unfortunately underneath was a gloss red coat which created an undesired cracking effect. It was light but noticeable so I went ahead and removed the sections so that I can add new tissue and repaint it with a gloss white.

Examining the Damage...

Well, after yesterdays nightmare event I examined in detail and started the process of determining the repairs that will be needed. I removed the damaged sections as can be seen in the photo below.