Not gone, just resting!

It’s been a while since my last post of things carrying on, rather than finishing, so, let’s see where I am!

The 1/144 Minicraft P-51D Mustang has been almost finished for a long time, and remains in this almost stage! The aircraft is in silver, or, Revell 66 rather. The tail, and the propellor tops, are in Revell yellow, whilst the cowling is in olive drab (I can’t remember which one, Humbrol 116 I think). The spinner is in Tamiya white. I should point out that I tend to use the most convenient paint, rather than anything specific, unless I am really going full tilt on a model. Unfortunately I damaged the decals, but, luckily, I had the same decals from an earlier one I guess I destroyed years ago.

The Eduard 1/144 BF-109 has been sprayed in Humbrol 65 enamel, both underside and sides. Likewise the Academy BF-109 was sprayed the same, at the same time. Unfortunately, I forgot that I was holding the model by the tail, so, it wasn’t sprayed! Since then, I’ve also brush painted the tail. I use Humbrol enamel 65 because I have some, because enamel makes a lovely finish, and because it’s similar to RLM 65, which is the correct colour. I’ve also partially masked it, that is, using thin strips, I’ve outlined the areas to be masked, on the sides of the model (the RLM 65 sides extend upwards, to almost the top of the fuselage). Using thin strips allows one to turn the masking easier, to follow a contour, or, as in this case, to bend, as the prototype scheme did. Had a small accident with the propellor, where some paint thinner splashed onto it, and took off some of the paint. Guess it’s back to the paintshop for that!

The other models I had been working on were two Hasegawa P-40’s. These are carrying on nicely, but then, they are Hasegawa kits! Hasegawa kits in 1/72 anyway tend to follow the pattern of a the underside of the mainplanes being one unit, along with some of the fuselage. The problem with this method is that it means that the unit has fit in several planes, perfectly. Many kits result in ’steps’ at the back (where it joined the back of the fuselage), especially as one tries to make the wingroots perfect. This is not the case with these kits. A quick swipe with a sanding stick sort out some irregularities, and, then, a perfect fit. Really quite remarkable!

If the under-wing unit is a characteristic of the Hawegawa kits of this era, then, the other is moulding in too much, such as antenna, pitit tubes, gun barrels, and even aiming devices. Whilst potentially a good idea, reducing fiddly work load, it’s actually bad for two reasons. Firstly, they easily break off, and secondly, if one if sanding down an item, they can get in the way. This was the case with the P-40, where I found it difficult to get around the gun aimer, to smooth in the join. With another Hasegawa kit, a Shinden ‘George’, I broke off the antenna.

This kit was made for the Finescale Forum’s Mad Weekend Group Build. A Group Build is where modellers on a forum, follow a thread (usually) where they post posts and pictures of their build, that follow a theme, usually with start and finish dates. I found this Hasegawa N1K2-J Shinden ‘George’ for just £3 at my local hobby shop (often called an LHS on forums), because it was sans instructions. Still, a very simple kit, like the P-40’s, so I reckoned I could finish it in a weekend. Well, I might have, if I had worked at it properly, and not used enamel paints!

The first part went well, and it fitted nicely. However, I soon found that Gunze Sangyo acrylic paints do not brush nicely. I was using no.58, interior green, as it seemed to be fairly close to reality. Yet, the paint didn’t go down nicely. In had to sand it down, a couple of times, and thin the paint, thence, a few coats. One nice touch is that the cockpit can be fitted from underneath a completed fuselage. Not much interior, but it does come with a decal instrument panel. I used some light dry brushing of silver to bring out the seat, but I managed to forget to put in seat belts (I realise as I write this!).

The engine went on well. I painted it in black, then, over painted it in silver. I know that’s backwards, but it looks good! One major change I made during the build was to use Slater’s Mek-Pak. It’s weird stuff, which sometimes produces a great bond, and sometimes doesn’t! I apply it using an ear bud (not a used one!), to both parts to be enjoined. Still it flows well, but it dries so quickly! In places, I used some Zap-A-Gap instead, where it had to be an excellent join, or there was a slight gap.

The fuselage around the cockpit wasn’t as good a join as could be expected, but the wing roots were perfect! Yellow strips painted on (Revell yellow again), with a few coats. A slight sanding turns them matt, which is perfect. Next up, the underside, which is either natural metal, or light grey, but I’m going for the latter, for which I plan to use Revell SM371. This time, it’s because it’s close, not because it’s an opened tin (it’s not). Topside will be an Imperial Japanese Navy olive, probably Humbrol 116. Props will be Revell ‘military brown’, which is similar to Humbrol 10, plus flashes of yellow.

The Eduard 1/144 ME-262/C-92 kits (three of) are progressing with the seats/cockpits painted in Xtracylix RLM66, and the seat cushions in Humbrol 186 (because it happened to be available!) which is a decent dark leather. Next up: seat-belts (in 1/144, strewth!). This is for the Finescale Forum ‘ME-262′ Group Build.

Finally, some work on the Eduard Roland, that is, I painted the engine in Metalcote aluminium. Not much!

Next time, some more progress, and some pictures too…!

More endings

The Revell Lancaster is dead! It had been working well, despite needing more work that one would expect. The fuselage required a lot of filler and sanding. Possibly it was worse than a new kit should be, but, not as bad some older kits, so, I went on with it. There were problems with the fitting of the dorsal turret, but, eventually it all went together. At this point, I was finally looking forward to the build, after all the earlier problems. The next stage was to fit the bomb-bay doors. I had already decided to fit them closed, so, as a single unit.

However, the bomb-bay doors didn’t fit. When I say that they don’t fit, I mean in both planes. They were a fraction too long, but also too narrow! I could have coped with being a fraction too long, and, indeed, I sanded them a little, which made them fit. This just highlighted the problem of the bomb-bay doors being too narrow. It wasn’t even evenly narrow. Basically, it just didn’t fit. Quite how a modern kit can not fit, I don’t know. It may be that I didn’t assemble the fuselage well enough, but, that would mean that the fuselage didn’t fit well enough, and, anyway, the error caused would not be enough to explain the lack of fit. Here’s an image of the bomb-bay

So, Lancaster was binned, or, rather, put to one side, either for my Godson to use, or to be used for experimenting with paint (having huge mainplanes). The decal sheet was nice, so, I kept that in my decals spares box! Another model bites the dust…

Two more models that bit the dust were the Heller Fieseler Reichenberg Fi-103 (piloted V-1 flying bomb) and the Bachem Ba-349 Natter. Basically, these were both simple kits, but, were flawed. The Natter was the worse of the two, as the canopy didn’t fit particularly well. Also, the aiming sight broke off! Worse was to follow as the rear tail planes just didn’t want to play ball with each other. This may have been my fault, but, either way, I was soon losing faith and patience. The paint for this was Humbrol enamel 41, which seemed to be most accurate.

The sister model (the aircraft came as a double set) was the Fi-103. This actually went together rather well. However, I mucked up the masking of the canopy. The paint used was the Revell SM378 enamel, for no other reason than I had some lurking around in an old tin, and it was the right sort of colour (maybe). With both aircraft, I tried to use Maskol. However, it’s just not good enough. It spreads badly, and rubberises too quickly. The other problem with the Fi-103 model is that it’s difficult to get into some parts to sand and smooth them. A modelling knife made a reasonable effort, but, ultimately, I was disappointed both my this, and my failure to mask the canopy well enough. Whilst I could have rectified this, I was, frankly, fed, up, so, it was sayonara to the kits! Here is the Fi-103, followed by the Natter

The end of the orange.

So, this past few weeks I’ve done a little bit of modelling, but, also, quite a bit of model disposal.  I’ve also, finally, taken some pictures!  A few people have asked me for them, so, let’s hope they meet muster.

First up, there’s the Tamiya 1/72 Bell X-1.  I read somewhere that this model wasn’t originally Tamiya, but some other Japanese company.  Certainly it’s an interesting kit, of an historic aircraft.  The kit comes with not just a good (if slightly peculiar – but this could be correct) cockpit, but also the interior bits for the fuselage.  This might seem like madness, until you realise that the kit also comes in a clear version. As for my modelling, well, the kit fitted like a dream, and, the main undercarriage supports the body well, keeping it off a surface.  There’s a choice of canopy, but, with a strange triangular plug between canopy and fuselage.  It might be prototype, but, still strange!  At this point things went a little, well, kaka! 

I began painting the canopy, by using two strips of Tamiya tape, then painting the black between them.  This was going fine, indeed, too well, because I then, finding it so easy, I decided to freehand paint the rest of the lines.  Looked easy, was difficult!  A lot of time was spent cleaning up errors, and then, adding in more layers, to the point that ridges of paint built up, which then needed to be sanded down, and then corrected, etc.  Still, eventually it was done.

I left the kit for ages, years even, at this stage, with a few lines needing tidying up, etc.  I then decided, a few weeks back to finally get on, and finish the job.  Normally, I mask each pane, then paint the aircraft, but, this time, as the framing was both intense and a different colour to the fuselage, I decided to mask the canopy completely, including the framing lines.  The triangular plug had the interior painted interior green to match the rest of the cockpit (Gunze Sangyo).

At this point, with the canopy cleaned up, the triangular plug was attached, and then, fell off.  Eventually, with some various applications, I managed to get it fixed, and thence, masked (I covered the canopy in masking take, and ran a knife to remove the excess), fixed the canopy to the fuselage, ready for spraying!

Finding the right shade of orange is not as easy as it sounds.  Some people use Tamiya orange, which isn’t bad, use othr oranges, or even make up their own shades.  However, I think the best orange is  Testors Acyrl Brilliant Orange, an acrylic paint.  I have a mini bottle of it, marked  919936 & FN12, from a set of paints I bought at Wal-Mart (in Texas).  Before painting though I wanted to prime it, so I sprayed it Revell enamel 81, Service Brown.  Personally, I’d call it chocolate brown though!  It looked quite neat in brown, but of course, this was just being used as a primer.  The reason for me using a primer was that I was unsure of how well the Acryl would evenly cover a surface that wasn’t even in colour.  By using a dark enamel, I would have a good surface upon which to paint.  The enamel was thinned with Humbrol enamel thinner, whilst the acrylic paint was thinned with a small dose of Xtracrylix acrylic thinner.  I find this thinner quite effective, even if it is a tad expensive.  Here’s the model, just after spraying.

However, although the paint job seemed fine, I made errors elsewhere. Firstly, one of the decals, which settled down well initially, then wrinkled. I had already noticed that one of the undercarriage legs wasn’t straight (still not sure which one, maybe a mix of both?), but, at least that problem was soon solved when one snapped off! The front nose gear then gave me grief, followed by the other other fuselage undercarriage leg. With a wrinkled decal, broken legs, and a canopy which didn’t fit properly (and some glue marks on the inside, from the triangular plug), I decided I was fed up, and binned the project…

To air something finally

There’s been quite a bit of activity since my last post.  I’ve resurrected a Minicraft 1/144 Mustang (more in the next post), and done some work on it.  I’ve also pulled an Eduard 1/144 BF-109 out, but nothing yet.  I’ll discuss these in more depth next time.  However, for now, suffice to say, painted the Mustang, including the interior.

No development on the Lancaster (except dropping it again), but the Academy BF-109 has had the small tidying up, and then, today, I sprayed the blue underside, or, rather, re-sprayed.  I used Humbrol enamel 65 a reasonable match for RLM 65.  Of course, I could be wrong on that, but, it looks OK to me, and, anyway, paints can look quite different from different batches, different manufacturers, plus, over time paints change colour.

For this model, which I’m trying to complete to reasonable standard (even though I’ve mucked in places, see earlier posts), I’m spraying the paint.  I’ve not spray-painted in a long time, probably not in 8 or 9 months, maybe even more!  Spraying enamel is harder than spraying acrylic.  I used Humbrol enamel thinner, and mixed it in a way I was taught a couple of years back.  Basically, it involves  putting the paint, and the thinner, into the bowl of the airbrush (it only works with gravity feed airbrushes), then opening the crown, to cause air to feedback into the bowl, resulting in bubbling, and hence, mixing.  I have been told that one should put the thinner in first, but, well, I don’t.  Maybe I should…?

Anyway, I tried spraying, on a plastic lid of the takeaway boxes I use for storing kits.  It was a disaster!  I used my Iwata as it seemed to be the only airbrush which was in OK condition.  However, it wasn’t, resulting in a complete clean, not just the usual quick clean I do.  I’m guessing that the last time I used the airbrush I didn’t clean it, or indeed, the others.  Quite why is a bit of a mystery, as I’m usually very fastidious about such things.

Anyway, I have a few airbrushes: an Iwata HP-C (gravity feed, medium bowl, dual action – the original one, there have a couple of models since) with a medium head; a Badger 200GF (gravity feed, small bowl, single action) with a fine head; a Badger 150 2F (suction feed, dual action) with a fine head; a Badger 100GF (gravity feed, small bowl, dual action), and an early Badger suction feed, single action.

So, in total, 4 airbrushes.  There is also a another one, a simple one, which is external feed, but it’s not boxed, and, for much model work, not up to the standard needed.

However, as I’ve talked a lot about airbrushes, I should explain a little about them, before I move on.  In essence, an airbrush mixes an air source and a paint source, into a single stream of air, carrying the paint.  Air sources can be bottles of compressed air, as sold in model shops, tyres, or, best of all a compressor.  I’ll talk about these another time, but, for now, suffice to say that, unless it’s pressure regulated air, it’s a pain to use.  Personally, I use an unbranded airbrush that looks identical to a Revell Omega (top of the range), but which contains a regulator, a air-tank, a display, and a water trap.

Airbrushes, to mix the paint, use two methods.  They either mix it in a mixing chamber (internal), or, directly in the air stream outside the body (external).  The latter is much cheaper, and, of course, no dirty mixing chambers!  Externals give the user the ability to regulate the air flow, using a level, handle, button, etc.  The paint is stored in a bottle under the airbrush.  The bottle will then have a tube leading from the inside of the bottle, via a hole in the lid, to a nozzle.  The nozzle will usually be adjustable (normally by being on a screw top, like a Coke bottle), to determine how far into the paint stream he nozzle projects.  As the air runs over the nozzle, the Venturi effect causes a vacuum, which sucks the paint up.  Adjusting the nozzle can cause different paint mixes.  The air too has a nozzle, and, mixing these two can cause different spray patterns

The bottle and nozzle are completely separated from the air.  The entire paint area is a bottle, a tube, and very simple nozzle, making cleaning a doddle.  Moreover, the airbrushes can be picked up cheaply.  I’ve seen a Humbrol one in 2007 on sale at Hobbycraft for £9.99, and the Revell one for a couple of Pounds more.  Whilst prices might be a little higher today, you can get one for not very much.  My own one is one I bought in America in 2007, from Badger, but procured cheaply in Wal-Mart.  It’s quite a nice one, nicer than the others, which some smart design.  The bottle fit into a nice clip, which then clips them to the body, whilst the control is a nice lever, and the body is smart, feels nice in the hand, with a ‘tail’ to counter-balance it.  Excellent!

One might then ask the very pertinent question: if externals are so good, why use expensive internal airbrushes?  The answer is that internals allow good regulation of the spray size and pattern.  Control is the single most important factor in airbrushes, and it’s why they can be so expensive, more than 30x the price of a cheap external in some instances.

Using the different nozzles can allow for adjustment on a external, but, it’s hard, and fiddly.  Even my Badger, with easy to use nozzles, is not as good as internal.  The internals are split by the following types, and come in any combination thereof.

The first major difference of the internals is the way you control the airflow and the paint mix.  The typical internal airbrush is T shaped.  One end of the T is the ‘business end’, the other is a counterbalance (or tail), with, sometimes, some additional controls.  The lower line is where the inlet valve is, with the air-line feeding into that.  Some airbrushes have little or no tail.  One that I rather loved just had the control behind the needle, but no real tail.

Above the inlet valve will be, typically, a button.  Spray brushes, and some airbrushes, have a valve control in front of the valve.  These are called ‘triggers’.  Depressing the button opens the valve, allowing air in.  The air, in a typical airbrush, will run in a separate line, and thence, join the paint forward of the bowl.  The user can regulate how much air is allowed in.

The user also needs to regulate how much paint is released, and this is the major difference.  Both systems work by moving a needle, which sits in the bowl, and, by opening and closing, regulates.  A ’single action’ airbrush will have the button, but, at the back of the tail is, normally, a dial of some nature.  Often you will see the back of the needle here too.  Moving the dial turns a screw, which adjusts the needle, regulating the paint flow.  As soon as you apply air then, the paint leaves, to the level pre-set.

The other system is called ‘dual action’, possibly obviously!  Here, the button is the same, but, the needle control is built into the button.  The button can be depressed and raised, to control airflow, but, it can also be pulled back, to regulate paint flow.

Single action airbrushes are not necessarily inferior, as for most work you do not need to adjust the paintflow, and, indeed, some of the best modellers around use them.  Moreover, a quick twist can adjust them.  However, for some specialist work, a dual action is far better.  For example, where paint starts, and finishes, within a viewable area, and has a ‘feathered’ edge.  Still, this can be done with a single action too.  Really, it’s down to the individual as to which one to use.  Single actions are cheaper, and, can be less fiddly to clean (the small level, which sits behind the button, can be a pain).

The other main differences in design revolve about paint.  Basically, there are two main types: suction and gravity feed.  Aztecs, and some others, also offer side feeds, but, then, Aztecs are quite different in design from anything else!  I won’t cover them here, but, suffice to say, their design, whilst interesting, is often derided for it’s difficulty in cleaning and maintenance.

Suction feeds have a similar set-up to external, as you might expect.  The big advantage of them is that you can rapidly swap bottle of paint over.  However, this often isn’t needed!  Moreover, you lose paint in the transfer pipe, and, you can be caught out by the delay in the feeding (as the paint travels to the mixing area).  Still, they are popular.  The other type, and the one used by just about everyone I know, is gravity feed.  Here a bowl, often fixed, sits above the body, just in front of the ‘button’.  The paint drops directly onto the needle, and thence, to the mixing area.  Bowls can be small, medium, or large.  Some bowls can be removed too, but, opinion differs if this is a good or bad thing (removing bowls makes them easier to clean, but, can also paint to creep into the joint).  All airbrushes suffer from the paint source getting in the way.  Small bowls reduce this problem.  However, they can cause other problems, in, when painting large areas, needing more re-filling.  Badger have a unique solution, in that, they sell an airbrush with no bowl at all, just the slot above the needle.  This just a small paint storage area, so very little paint, but, it makes sense for some detailed work.

Most airbrushes also allow a choice of heads.  Needles must be matched to the head.  Badgers, for example have notches on the needles, with the heads marked F (fine) and M (medium).  So long as the needle is either F or M marked correctly, the set-up will be OK.

Airbrushes do though require cleaning.  Paint build ups will kill or impair their ability to function.  You’ll be amazed just where paint can go in an airbrush!  I clean mine by stripping them down, and immersing them in lacquer or cellulose  thinner.  In the old days, this wasn’t a good idea, as the thinner attacked the plastic seals, but, it seems to be OK now.  However, I still remove the one between the crown and body on a Badger, as it slides off easily.  The nozzle on a Badger is smooth, and hard to remove, so I generally clean it attached.  The one on my Iwata has flattened area, enabling me to use large tweezers to turn it.  However, I’ll leave airbrush cleaning techniques for another day!

Suffice to say, once cleaned, I was able to airbrush again!  I cleaned the Iwata and the gravity feed Badgers.  The old Badger has a valve problem I think, as whilst I cleaned it, it didn’t play ball.  The last airbrush I’d put aside, and didn’t find until after I had finished for the day!

Spraying the Academy was, at first, a bit of a pain, until I added some more thinner, swirled it around, and then, bingo, it worked!  Slightly rough surface, but good enough,  However, I’ll sand it with tissue paper, before I spray it again.

There is more, but, for now, I’ll leave it there!  Y’all enjoy your modelling!

Clearing up, clearing out

Well, I’ve gone through my part-built kits, for two reasons: one I want to clear some space; and two, I want to take part in a ‘group build’ on the website ‘finescale forum’ for a weekend build, and so need a kit which will be simple to build.  Check www.finescale.com, or the forum itself on http://cs.finescale.com/forums/ for details.  Anyway, I found a Minicraft 1/144 Marauder, which had had a lot of work on it, but, was sans propellers.  That went to the bin.  Later I found a box of odds and sods, and yes, you guessed it, the missing props.  Too late now to rectify things.  Oh well, such is life.  I also found an Attack 1/72 Panzer I.  I’d spent ages drilling out the holes in the wheels a couple of years ago.  220 holes I believe, all tiny, all drilled out (I put the wheels on this block of unusually thick stiff polystyrene and drilled into that with a tiny hand drill).  However, the kit was awful, and then there were the tracks…  I’d tried to use them, but, when one snapped, I snapped, and now, it’s gone!  I’d weathered it quite nicely I thought, but, ah well, moving on.

With regard to the other stuff I’m working on, well, the Lancaster hasn’t advanced much, in fact, not at all in truth.  Not sure why, because it is advancing nicely, but nevermind, these things happen.  The Academy BF-109 has moved a little, as I’ve masked the canopy.  The central section was masked in Tamiya tape when I was working on it all that time ago, but the rest in micro mask.  See my previous post on the Airfix BF-109 to see how it works.  Other than  that, not much, but, at least it’s ready for spraying (almost).

Ooops, I forgot to post this on September 26th 2009!

Airfix BF-109 finished, sort of

Well, the Airfix BF-109 is finished!  Sort of…  It’s been finished, but not in the way that I imagine Airfix envisioned.  The starboard mainplane unfortunately lifted and moved slightly.  Was it poor fit, or just a poor fitter; the model or the modeller?  Either way, it was not good, and so I decided not to waste some excellent decals (or at least, unusual ones – Finnish and Italian).

So, I reasoned to just finish it any old way which looks OK, and to give it to my Godson (or a friend’s son).  I reckoned to finish it as a Soviet one, assuming that the Russians ‘asked’  the Czechs to give them.  There were two reasons for this, firstly, the Russians tended to just paint their aircraft in one colour, green, and secondly, I had old and not particularly good decals for a Soviet aircraft.  Actually, I had though of using some decals for a JAK-15 early jet, which would have been contemporary with a test S-99 (a BF-109 produced by Avia post-war, one of the few with the DB 605 engines, before they switched the S-199 with the Jumo 211 engine), which is what I imagined it would be.

Anyway, the decals I used were the one from a PM Model SU-21, which were had the same stars and number format as the one from the JAK, I used them.  PM Models have amazing decals.  Amazing in that they’re yellowed before they’ve even been purchased!  Really awful to look at.   However, I used the old technique of taping them to a window for a few days to bleach them out a bit.

As far as the model goes, I decided to use a new method I’d been meaning to try out for ages, that is, using micro mask to mask the canopy, as opposed to using tape.  Masking a canopy is a tedious process, as any modeller will tell you, so, using a liquid makes sense.  I have tried using Maskol before, but, hated it – it’s too ‘rubbery’: hard to put down, and then, it lifts too easy.  Micro mask is far more viscous, and so flows reasonably well.

Using a cocktail I flowed the micro mask into the corner.  Painting was simple, just whatever green I could find.  Not wanting to open a tin of fresh paint I looked around, and found some Revell SM 361 enamel, a sort of semi-matt Humbrol 105.  As I didn’t care too much about the model, just wanting to splash something on, so I could get it out, the paint was brushed in, in a few lightish coats.  Actually, it came out uneven (the paint wasn’t brilliant – it was just about dried up), but, that was probably close to reality!  The wheels were Humbrol 21 black shiny, with Revell acrylic 09 black matt, with the suspensions in Revell enamel silver.  Not accurate, as it should be pale green, but, hey, it’s fictional, and, quite plausible (as is, indeed, the whole assumption).

The decals went on reasonably well, but with loads of silvering, but, that was only to be expected.  The positioning was as close to reality as I could get.  Surprisingly, the decals, silvering aside, were reasonably good.  As far as the final fit, well, the intake, which needs to be fitted later, needed some sanding, being a very tight fit.  Still, no glue was needed.

The nose painted red, which is probably about right (a Revell enamel red), and the propellers in shiny black, Humbrol enamel no.21.  Funnily enough, the green, being paled out in places, with the red nose, and black props, looks like an Avia S-199 in Israeli colours.  Of course the S-199 is basically the same aircraft, although the props are very different.

The micro mask didn’t work out quite as well as I’d hoped, but, I maybe after I’ve done it several times it will be better.  That’s not to say it was bad, but, rather, sometimes it would not go into the corners, and, occasionally, went too far over the canopy.  Still, it looks reasonable, so, I left it.  The other thing I tried to do was to install the radio wire.  For this I used fishing wire, the thinnest I could find, which is 0.005″ with a 2Ib strain.  One thing I learnt is not to try and do both ends at the same time!  However, doing it one end at a time worked out OK.

So, my BF-109 is finished.  Sadly, I managed to slide a decal by accident, so, one of the stars is half-way down the fuselage.  However, I doubt whoever gets it will mind too much.  I commend this model to the world!

Ping Pong

All seemed well: the Lancaster was coming along nicely, sealed it up (I’ll come onto how in a sec), clamped it down, and left it on top of the printer (flat surface).  A few minutes later there’s this loud burst, thence, one clamp flying towards the desk, and one Lancaster fuselage attempting to fly sans wings, engines, or, indeed, any ability.  For some reason, one of the clamps, those cheap plastic ones, snapped, sending it flying in one direction, and Lancaster in the other.

Luckily, the only damage was the pilot’s seat and the instrument panel behind him separating themselves.  During the build these had shown themselves to be rather immune to staying attached, so, no surprise there, and I think repairable.

One technique I leaned a while back, but have never used, was to glue the fuselage in sections.  In this instance, just the nose, which has 3 joining points ‘cowling’, front of turret ring, and underside of bomb-aimer’s hole.  Well, it was a pain.  If one bit fitted, then the other side didn’t.  In the end I managed to get them mated, but, under pressure.  I used Revell Contacta, primarily because it was around.  It’s OK, but, if left around, and dries, it gets stringy, and has all these ‘threads’.

The final result needs a lot of sanding, with a bit of a ridge, but, cleaned up, should be OK.  Just, that darn dorsal turret, which needs to be incorporated into the fuselage, is giving me grief.

The Academy BF-109 has had the cockpit rear re-painted in RLM-02, from the erstwhile Color of Eagles range.  So so job, but, should be OK ‘under glass’.

The Airfix hasn’t moved much, bar testing fitting the upper wings.  The lower one’s fitted perfectly!  Good job Airfix.

However, looking at the kit, I noticed something rather off-putting.   The instructions give you options, but, they don’t tell you which aircraft has which option!  Well, that’s not entirely true, for some they do give you options, but it’s all 3 options.  Does that mean that any of the 3 can use the options?  Hmmm, not good.  However, not saying which canopy or filter to use is just daft, really daft.

One other thing is that the illustration of the Finnish aircraft has a call out for 33, matt black, which is correct, but the illustration shows dark green.  Most peculiar.

Anyway, more next time, but that’s it for now!

Old ends, new starts

After a rather long hiatus, I’m back in the modelling world!  Back in March I dropped out of the modelling world, although, in reality, I had ceased modelling back in February.  A lot of kits were left in the part-completed state.   As modelling follows life, so, after a long hiatus of life in general, I’m now in position to enjoy modelling.  Saying that, I doubt I’ll go back to the old ways, which means not buying loads of kits, and not buying all the magazines.  They were good for when I was concerned about producing excellent models within the modelling community, but, this is a different form of modelling I’m doing now, more personal.

Anyway, from the old days I’m working on the Academy BF-109E3/4, and I’ve also bought a kit, an Airfix BF-109G6, both 1/72.  This is the new moulding, just released by Airfix, but, more on that in a bit.

The Academy kit I had assembled to a reasonably high standard, with all the knobs painted, etc.  Not sure about the fit of the instrument panel. but, it may be correct.  However, one of the tailplanes, and support, had broken off.  Painting was just RLM blue underside, and the cockpit, although it needs some more touching up, and re-painting behind the seat/back of the cockpit.  The filling/sanding seems to be pretty good, very smooth, but I’ll need to wait and see.

Since then I’ve re-fitted the tail and support, but had the support from the other side fall off!  I also brushed painted the spinner and propellers in RLM 70, using some of my erstwhile ‘The Color of  Eagles’ paint (basically Vallejo sold under a different brand).  It looks good, and dries nicely, even brushed painted on as it is.  Saying that, it is pre-thinned for an airbrush, so, it should brush nicely!

The Airfix kit is in many ways an interesting mix.  It’s one of the new kits, under the ownership of Hornby, and replaces the old BF-109.   The other new kit is the Spitfire, but, that sold out almost immediately, so I can’t comment on it.

First impressions are very good.  The kit comes in a real box, with a lid, which is made of  decent material.  There are 3 decal options: a German of WWII; an Italian of WWIII; and a post war Finnish option.  The German does not come with a Swastika, or, even the components of one.  Whilst I can understand why they do this, I think it’s a shame.  However, that aside the decals seem to be nice, and the schemes are well illustrated in a large full colour printed sheet.  In fact, this pull out sheet would do justice to a 1/48 scale model!  So, so far, so good.

Indeed, this good impression carries on, with all the kit sprue trees being nicely packed in plastic sealed bags, with the clear being in  a separate bag.  The instructions are large, more of a booklet, and this for a 1/72 scale aircraft!  As for the plastic, well, it’s typically Chinese, with that faint pebble-dash finish.  Still, as the kit is made in China (by Trumpeter maybe?) this shouldn’t be a surprise, nor, indeed, is the full colour pull-out.  One nice touch, which goes back to the old days, is that there’s a small history of the aircraft, and, it’s Imperial first, with metric in brackets.  Now that last thing brought a smile to my face!

It’s at this stage that things go a little downhill.  Get past the list of safety instructions, and then you realise that the instruction diagrams are large, really large, and don’t really need to be A4 sized.  In fact, they look like old Airfix instructions, enlarged.  Already you might be thinking that they’ve cheated and made them large to, well, make the booklet seem large, and important.  Then you find that the last few pages are for notes, and are blank.  By now the illusion is being broken, but, so far, you’ll hang on, excusing this.  That is, excusing until you look at the instructions and realise that there is no interior bar a seat.  No instrument panel, no floor, no side parts, no control stick, no blanking plate even behind the seat, nothing.

Now the illusion is broken, and you’ve just realised that you shelled out £5.69 in this case, for a kit that looks like a 60’s hang-over, despite being a new mould.  The seat is joined to the side walls by some rather unrealistic pins.  Even this is not as it should be as the seat looks way too small (this could be because nothing else is in the fuselage!  Moreover, the fit, well, not as expected, but more on this below.  At this stage you might look at the kit again, and realise that there some flash, which for a new kit isn’t really what’s expected.  As for the parts, well, the gates that join them to the tree are rather large for a new kit, and, not always well placed.  The seat is a good illustration of this, with two gates, one which exits onto a pin (good idea), the other at the side, by the top of the seat, which most certainly is not a good idea!  Could it not have exited onto the back of the seat?  Far more sensible.

Two more points about the cockpit, before we move on.  One is that a pilot is provided, but I don’t use them.  The other is that the seat has a slot in it, just like Airfix kits from the 1960’s.  This is fine if it’s to position the pilot, but, it’s not.  It’s not there on the real aircraft either.  So, why the heck did Airfix put it in?  Actually there are many questions I have, such as, why not give at least parts of the interior?  It surely couldn’t be that expensive, and, well, makes you wonder why they bothered.  I’m not an Airfix basher, and I wish them well, but, I’m just confused, unless this kit is just an update of an earlier mould, but I believe it to be new.  Still, the kids probably wouldn’t mind too much, and maybe that’s the point?  One little thing, which I wish all companies would do, is to include decal seat belts.  If you’re paying for a full colour decal sheet, how much extra for seat belts?  In 1/72 they would look fine, with the canopy closed (which it has to be in this kit).   It’s not just Airfix though!  Tamiya offer decal seatbelts in 1/48 scale (which is not so appropriate) but not in 1/72 scale!  Oh well…

The next part was closing up the fuselage.  Here I encountered a problem.  It wouldn’t fit!  It seemed that the only positive effect of the seat was to be too positive, causing the fuselage to have a gap.  This might be fine for Watford, but not for the kit.   The interior was painted, before I forget in Xtracrylix XA1203 Schwarzgrau Matt RLM66 (the correct interior colour for a medium or late war German fighter, early war fighters being RLM02 of course).  The areas not seen easily, but viewable through lack of interior were painted good old Humbrol enamel 33 matt black.  The RLM66 was also painted on the ‘floor’ of the cockpit, which is the topside of the mainplane piece.

The solution was to use a reasonably strong cement with some filling qualities, in this instance, Revell Contacta Cement tube, and 4 clamps!  These are just the cheap ones you pick for a Pound or so, for a large pack, from Pound shops, DIY places, etc.  Small, crude, badly made, but useful!

The result was good, except for the underside of the rear fuselage, which has a gap.  Still, one odd thing, when I test fitted the mainplanes, I expected the gap to cause a problem, so I would have to cut away the original cement, and re-fit.  Yet, the fit was perfect!  I’ll fill the rear fuselage gap, and leave it at that.  Result!  The only problem, as such, is that the large gates, as mentioned before, will need to be sanded and maybe filled too, out.

The end of a stashed era

A couple of days ago I did something I had been dreading…  I sold most of my plastic kit stash to Hannants London.  I had had around 600 kits, split half/half between larger kits (big small scale stuff, such as the 1/144 scale Globemaster, as well as 1/72, 1/48, etc scale stuff) and my largish collection of 1/144.   It was painful, but, the fact that Hannants London didn’t even want most of the 1/144 scale stuff basically lead me to keep it, and some of the larger bits.  So, I know have, 1/144 scale aside, maybe 50 kits, or enough to keep me going for, well, a few years!

It was quite painful though, and the bare bookshelves which used to be stacked high with kits are testament to the fact that, whilst I’ve only sold half my stash by quantity, by mass it’s really most of it.

Still, sadly, I needed the money, and, if truth be told, I’ve moved back to my older love, which is dynamic, or flying, modelling.

As for modelling itself, well, I’ve done a little, and the Lancaster is ready for sealing up the fuselage.  Now I just need to be motivated enough to do it…  TTFN!

Bin there done that

Well, my stash of part-built models has been reduced.  Did I work hard, and get some done?  No, not quite.  Rather, I chucked 2 models into the bin (the DFS and the Phantom), and gave 2 away (the completed Fi-103 and the near completed Natter).  The 2 that were given away to my Godson, who finished the Natter off.  Nice to know it’s gone to a good home!

As for working on models, well, masked part of the canopy of the BF-109.  I dislike masking, as it’s so fiddly, and easy to get wrong.  Still, I did a reasonable job, so far.  The method I use is to make up squares or rectangles, then apply them to the model, overlapping where needed.  Other methods involve putting down too much masking tape down, then running a fresh blade around the edge to get the right size.  This might be neater, but I’ve never quite mastered it, so, I stick to the small squares method.  When it comes to masking tape, I only use Tamiya tape these days.  Other tapes simply don’t cut the mustard.  Saving on tape, when it’s not expensive anyway, is a false economy.

A little bit of fixing in the interior of the Lancaster, as some bits came loose.  I’ve also use the Skyservant window in the front of the Lanc, and, whilst not perfect, it’s not too bad, quite acceptable.  Next step will be to close up the fuselage, and to attach the wings.  At this stage, it will, at least, look like an aircraft!

So, a little glacial moves in the plastic modelling arena.  TTFN!