The Little World

If you have shares in 3M or in the Ustar manufacturing company in Taiwan, take heart – your yearly dividend is assured. I have been masking the Douglas DC 3 and it has taken slightly more tape than would have been required for the full-sized aircraft.

You need to have a vision as you do this stuff – a hope that at the end you will have made a sensible pattern of colour and not just snipped and stuck things on for a week. I think I reduced the task to the smallest possible compass, but I’m not entirely sure I didn’t tread the same path many times – so to speak.

The basic problem is the need for four colours – white, silver-grey, orange, and black. Fortunately the Aéronavale was economical with their design – they did not ask the paint shop to draw vast cartoons on the tail or make swooping speed lines. There are no lightning flashes…as if a DC-3 could go fast enough to sport them. Lines follow rivets.

But there are still enough changes of colour to need four masks over a base white; orange tips, white top, silver-grey body and black nose and icing boots. Each masking is a 45 minute job and each unmasking a time of terror.

Note that the fright has decreased now that I use a lower air pressure to spray.

We shall see if the final result justifies the preliminary means…