Since I was already finishing the new rocket I decided to clean up and refinish the old one at the same time. Besides, I hated the black/red color scheme (it seemed like a good idea at the time).
I polished and patched up the original Cobra’s old balsa fins lightly with epoxy and refinished the tubes and nose. It wasn’t worth filling the seems on this old girl. Several coats of primer for both with lighter and lighter wet sanding between coats. It was after taking hours to paint with my airbrush that I decided that I needed a faster method of painting….these babies were too large to paint with a small airbrush. I picked up a more “automotive-scale” airbrush and things went a lot smoother.
The newer version gets several light coats of thinned enamel with more wet sanding between coats. Then a few final coats to get a mirror finish. I was very please with the surface quality on this bird–it was my primary goal to get a mirror like surface and I pulled it off.
Some details that were painted separately, some masking/painting of the fins and the girls are ready to fly!
