"Hello darkness my old friend...", aka J-ABLO redux

bradycros said:

Any progress to report?

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Sorry, had a lot stack up on me the last three weeks. A couple of client business trips, up to Canada for 10 days with my wife (purely pleasure) and then my son's wedding yesterday evening (see attached). So, no work until today shooting the first coat of Duplicolor Filler-Primer and the Bondo Spot Putty. Will sand tomorrow and hit with another coat.

Second coat complete. Took a little longer because, after sanding, I added a bit more SuperFil in a couple of spots to get the NC/BT seam "just right"--probably one more round of filler/primer and I'll be ready for the top coat.

Lookin good

Top coat (actually six coats with wet sanding between coats 3 and 4) of Duplicolor "Wimbledon White" is complete.

Excellent 'resurrection' thread so far.

awarded 5 stars for the attention to detail and thoroughness... + with the title you brought back a memories of an awesome outdoor Simon & Garfunkel concert friends and I attended while stationed (Army) in Germany in the 80's.

Diosces said:

Excellent 'resurrection' thread so far.

awarded 5 stars for the attention to detail and thoroughness... + with the title you brought back a memories of an awesome outdoor Simon & Garfunkel concert friends and I attended while stationed (Army) in Germany in the 80's.

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Thanks! Now close to decal stage and its gonna get even better!

Let's see, I was in the Stuttgart area in '87/'88 working for the old Telefunken. IIRC, those were more Madonna/semi-disco days and a lot of frothy Pilsner.

dixontj93060 said:

Let's see, I was in the Stuttgart area in '87/'88 working for the old Telefunken. IIRC, those were more Madonna/semi-disco days and a lot of frothy Pilsner.

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Cool..man it's a small world. Stuttgart rocks.
Was in Aschaffensburg 81-83 but forget the stadium/town we saw S & G. Weekends we always got out of town and explored all the burgs/parks/schwimbadds in Germany. or the Sachsenhausen bar/pubs.

Heylands bier...

We saw the cover band Sound Selection quite a few times, ever see them?

My apologies for the off topic nostalgia..sigh..

A decal cutting session this morning (courtesy of Stickershock)... Lots of trim work though as I am trying to make it true to the original decal set size and fit.

Getting pretty close to the finish line with the decals now applied. Below are a few pics from all around the rocket. Note that the finish has a matte as it is just the the Duplicolor wet-sanded with 600 grit. I'll get to the clear coat (on Wednesday most likely) to give it the final sheen and protection for the decals/paint.



Moving left...



And left...



And left... Actually this view is the most disturbing. The busy-ness of this angle is really the biggest deviation from the original BSD Diablo decal set. The original set had the vertical lines wider set crossing two fin locations and overall they were much thinner, not dominating the rocket, so you could get the "Diablo" lettering alongside the vertical lines. But, hey, I'll take what I can get as I love this rocket.



And then from the aft end...

Awesome!
Please be sure to post launchpad/in flight picture now.

Diosces said:

Cool..man it's a small world. Stuttgart rocks.
Was in Aschaffensburg 81-83 but forget the stadium/town we saw S & G. Weekends we always got out of town and explored all the burgs/parks/schwimbadds in Germany. or the Sachsenhausen bar/pubs.

Heylands bier...

We saw the cover band Sound Selection quite a few times, ever see them?

My apologies for the off topic nostalgia..sigh..

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Sound Selection no, but there was a little bar in the town of Backnang that we used to frequent that pulled in top Blues bands from all over the world--amazing really for that small town.

Also spent much time in Garmisch-Partenkirchen and St. Anton watching World Cup Skiing events, doing our own skiing weekends and taking part in the night life. Seems like each bar in throughout Germany and Austria had a different personality (good memories...).

Kudos to David Reese in capturing pictures at Thunderstruck last weekend. Here's my J-Ablo making a swift ascent on an I300T.