11.30.03 » Cut it out!

The Ingram is all cut out, sanded, and ready for paint. See my Griffon page for what I think of the vinyl joint covers. Grrrr.

12.03.2003 » Lenses and Antenna

So far on the Ingram, aside from cutting everything out, I have the lenses painted and the antenna replaced.

For the lenses, I used a mixture of Tamiya Clear Yellow and Clear Green for the Green Eyepieces and View Screen and for the lights, I used a few layers of Clear Yellow, then a layer of Clear Orange to really get that amber look. The yellow alone didn't cut it.

Now the main antenna on the Ingrams head is perfectly fine as is. I figured that the large tubes are holding sensors and such.

The one on the neck however looked like crap. I was going to replace it with wire, but the thing about wire is that it is straight with no taper. I've seen it done on other Ingrams and it didn't look all that great to me.

I wanted the antenna to get narrower as it got to the tip. For this I used a piece of sprue heated ever a candle then stretched thin. I had enough to get a really long antenna for the Quad Car as well.

The other neck antenna was replaces with tube styrene to give it a sensor look. The line around the sensor was grooved out with a scribe while spinning the tube in a drill.

The springs around the antenna are copper wire ripped out from some speaker wire and wrapped around the plastic, then glued into place.

12.09.2003 » Wet Paint

The Ingram is almost done with it's paint job. I just have to do little touch-ups here and there. Afterwards, it's on to weathering, decals, and panel lines.