I’ve seen videos on the Internet showing how to airbrush a
checker board on an airplane. Nevertheless, the method shown there works well on
flat or almost flat surfaces, where the squares are truly squares, but not for
the cowling of any airplane, where the "squares" in fact aren’t
squares, because their "horizontal" outlines follow soft curves toward
the front of the cowling. Therefore I had to develop my own method for the
making of the checkerboard on the cowling, and it was a very complicated
process.
The first thing that I did was to measure the length of the oval
that corresponds to the rear of the checkerboard pattern. It was done by placing
a strip of flexible masking tape along the edge, and cutting it exactly where it
completed a loop. I measured this strip and it was 72 mm long, so I decided that
the bigger squares would have 3 mm sides, so each oval would have 24 equal
divisions, six divisions per quadrant.
Then I cut another strip of flexible masking tape, and placed
dots at one of the edges; the separation between adjacent dots started as 3 mm
and was reduced for points near the opening of the cowling. Then I placed this
masking-tape template over several places on the cowling, with the long side
perpendicular to the rear edge of the white portion of the cowling, in order to
have several sequences of points that would be used as guides to draw ovals that
were parallel to each other. With another strip of masking tape I joined the
points and draw the ovals with an "F" drawing pencil, these ovals were
parallel straight lines when viewed from a side.
To draw the "horizontal" lines that intersect the
ovals, I first measured the perimeter of each oval with the method I described
above. In the case of the outer oval, it was easy to mark the 24 divisions
because each measured exactly 3 mm. For the other ovals, I used the technique
that I described in my previous ARC article (featuring a TA-4J Skyhawk) to
divide their length in 24 equal segments. Once each oval had its own sequence of
points, I used another strip of masking tape as a flexible ruler to join the
points and draw the lines.
My first approach to paint the black squares was to place a
strip of masking tape along each oval, one by one, draw the vertical edges with
a 0.2 mm rapidograph filled with black china ink, then draw the
"horizontal" edges in a similar fashion, and finally fill the center
of the "squares" with black paint. On the first oval I realized that
the china ink seeped under the masking tape, proving that this method doesn’t
work, and I had to quickly remove the china ink with alcohol.
Then I decided to brush paint the squares with slightly diluted
flat black enamel. I used a 3/0 soft brush along with another fine brush that I
converted to an "extra fine" brush, in fact thinner than a 10/0 brush.
It was a long and difficult process in which I took my brush painting skills to
the limit (I’m including a photograph I took to the cowling when less than
half of the squares were already painted; this photograph also show the outlines
of the unpainted squares.)
After the checkerboard was done, I sprayed a coat of flat clear
over the cowling to get an even finish on the whole aircraft. I then painted
some chips on the front edge of the cowling, glued the cowling to the fuselage
and the propeller on the tip of its shaft, and the model was finished.
I dedicate the finished model to my beloved son David in his
32nd birthday.
Thanks for your watching and patient reading. Best regards!