The Little World

I have written before about my technique of painting the canopies of my aircraft – how I use a bow pen to add the framework at the end of the build. It is closer to my past experiences and very effective in most cases. But looking at the glass nose of the Ilyushin I knew it was not going to work.

Neither was the idea of using a liquid mask – these are fine for oddly-shaped windows than cannot be effectively masked in any other way. But they can be wobbly – and Sergey designed this one with rigid Soviet windows.

So it was bite the bullet and break out the masking tape. Fortunately my dispenser of tape from Ustar has some pretty thin rolls and two of them proved to be very close to the width of the windows. I rolled them out, stuck them on, burnished them down, and set about separating the panes with a sharp knife.

Note that I am reverting to the crudest of methods here – even the burnishing was done with the aid of a satay skewer. It is rather the best tool for getting into tight corners.

The larger windows in the nose could also be done with masking tape, but the two-part construction of this clear part meant that there was always going to be a visible seam down the centre. Never mind – if it all came out well a frame line could be painted to obscure it.

You’ll note a rather large patch of putty on the tail plane surface. This is repeated on the other side at the top – the tail surfaces were not exactly perfection when you tried to match them to the wings. I’m glad they came out as well as they did.