OlCabour's Hangar

This time, the work was concentrated on engraving and adding details.

• Engraving between the ribs. While this is quite long and painful to realize, I wonder if I will not have to do make second run of engraving. I'll apply some little details, and see if is necessary.

• Engraving the engines, which were really quite smooth

• The verniers are not deep enough for my taste (on the head and engines modules), I drilled and then sealed from behind with some plastic card.

• Back on the head: I fixed some details, including the support for the large antenna (on top part of the head) which is completed by a piece of tree, flatten in the length, adding support for a missing second large antenna on the lower part of the head, "piercing" in preparation to the many missing antennas.

and therefore addition of antennas using brass rods.

• I drilled all the Viper ejection tubes on the sides of landing bays.

A first run with a small diameter drill

Then a second run with a little bit wider drill

I prefer using this double run process, because larger is drill, bigger are the errors (spin, no correction possible). If there is a discrepancy, it is easy to correct the situation by being vigilant on the second run. The first run hole is using as a guide the second one, and finally, as each run is working on less material, it also prevents the plastic from overheating, melting, and/or deforming the part.

As you can see, there are 2 tubes per ribs, in 5 rows of 4 rafters. As I was launched with my mini drill, I missed a space between two rows on the first hangar, well, despite informed, I have done it again and missed another free space on the second hangar bay...

• Improvement of 2 armor plates on the belly of the animal by cutting into the plastic.

Before

After

• To improve the details, I will use parts of AFV and naval ships models, spare box, Evergreen strips, and detail sets (plastic parts or photoetched) from Wave and Kotobukiya:

As an example, here are the first details added on the landing bays and engines modules