Christmas Airfix!

Harry, you need some Liquid Gravity, it’s not lead, you can pour it into tiny crevices to add weight. I use it for model railways, decent stuff.

The fairing over the instrument panel didn’t fit either.

Ah yes, that’s my next job. Build has progressed precisely nowhere since I came back from my weekend away, I may do a bit later.

Must resist the urge to buy that new Spitfire kit, just in case I don’t finish this one!

You can trim a load off the panel because you can’t see it anyway when the fairing is on.

Once I’d got that on I found that the canopy fitted perfectly though. I was getting a bit sick of it by this stage at 00:20 this morning.

I got that Spitfire for Christmas. My lad is making it and doing a reasonable job of it too.

tthew…

Check this out! http://www.jadlamracingmodels.com/airfix-a50173-battle-of-britain-75th-anniv-gift-set-1-72-aircraft-model-kit/

Ooh, that’d see me right through the winter, (even if started it over Easter!) Bookmarked.

That 262 is stunning

john_drummer – Member

Have a look here: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/

Mike who runs Britmodeller used to ride mountain bikes & started the now defunct ChesterMTB website. Sadly he has a long term illness that has stopped him from riding 🙁

Damn … that BoB 75th Anniversary Box Set has sold out now … 🙁

That Me-262 really is impressive! I’ve just been reading about the Me-262 in Len Deighton’s book ‘Fighter’.

That Me-262 video is utterly amazing! I just sat watching it with a big stupid grin on my face.

Slight change of subject matter for me. Been a long time since I made anything with a wheel at each corner.

Just got one of these.

It is on the build list after I’ve finished the Lightning and done the SU-27.

PSA.

1:32 Mosquito[/url]

Seems like a lot of kit for the money but I don’t know how good it is.

Moulds date from 1971 but are supposed to be ok. Nothing like the quality of the Tamiya kit but that is hugely more expensive. Lots of after market bits available now that can be used to bling it up though and for £15 seems pretty good.

That’s going to be a big ‘un

I did Revell’s 1:32 Beaufighter a few years back, raised panel lines rather than recessed 🙁 huge thing. 1:48 is as big as I like to go for aircraft, but for multiple engined jobs I think I’ll stick to the smaller scales

My lad (9 years old) said “Where will you put it?”. I stepped away from the BUY IT NOW button.

The Sea Vixen arrived today. The instructions are comically shit and the ejector seats are too small. But I knew this before I bought it.

I’ll pack the seats up and I’ve downloaded the Airfix painting and decal instructions.

Well thanks guys. I am probably going to have to buy the Tamiya Mossie. 🙁

Lightning.

Not a happy kit to make TBH as the air intake assembly is too big for the fuselage halves, so a lot of cutting and filing was required.

I experimented with ink washes for weathering for the first time too, and I’m quite pleased with the effect.

This, however, is my proudest kit achievement yet.

Spitfire PRXIX made by my lad with some guidance, but not a lot of actual hands on help, from me.

It is his first kit.

Liking the ‘Lightening’ very much HTS … what ink(s) did you use for the washes?

Was this Airfix’s 1/72 lightening? I don’t recall any major issues with the fuselage – was yours ‘warped’?

Good effort with the Spitfire PRXIX by your son.

Some acrylic washes from the local model shop. French stuff for military vehicles at £2.75 a bottles. I used a “dark tone” and a “light tone” with various mixes of the two. The light one looks like an oil leak. Washed it on and wiped it off. I then gave the whole thing a matt clear coat to flatten out any variations in the paint and to tone the decals down. I also did some different shades in the green on various panels and control surfaces.

I used it to re-weather the Mosquito from further back in the thread too. It now looks like it has crashed in a swamp, but the effect is more realistic. I painted on some silver to look like exposed metal around the pilots’ door and some of the panels on the wing and bomb bay whilst I was at it.

The Lightning is the 1/72 F.2A. There are various mould ejector pin “lumps” on the inside of the fuselage halves that interfere with the (pointless) intake tunnel assembly. I had to cut them off and still needed file off a lot of material from the intakes. If you don’t there is a gap of about 2mm when you put it all together. Tthew further back in this thread has had the same problems.

Due to my ineptitude (I knackered the radar and fairing by melting them with filler, but rebuilt them using the second kit as a guide) I’ve got another one to build, but I’ll wait a bit before doing it. My lad wants it, but it will put him off for life. He’s doing a Messerschmitt ME109 next. It is as easy to make as the Spitfire but with a more complex paint job.

Next up for me is an Italeri SU27-D Sea Flanker. The kit is a bit of a shocker. It goes together OK but there are several bits that you just glue on without any slots or guides to get the position correct. Also, they have been a bit liberal with the truth when it comes to the accuracy on the kit. It is meant to be a naval Sea Flanker with canards behind the cockpit, but it looks that they have just taken a regular Flanker and added a couple of extra wings to stick on and chucked in an arrestor hook. The canard detail is completely wrong as they don’t attach directly to the fuselage in real life but to a fairing. This suits me however as I can leave the canards and the hook off and paint it up as a SU35 with a better camouflage scheme.

The nose landing gear will be wrong, twin wheel naval spec rather than single wheel air force, but not as wrong as the version with the canards.

I think this one will be all about the paint job.

After that it is the Sea Vixen with its appalling instructions that I’ll bin. I’ve downloaded the Arifix ones and I’ll wing it from them.

Italeri SU-27D Sea Flanker finished as an SU-35.

The kit was quite frankly rubbish. Rubbish to the extent that I will avoid Italeri in the future, which is a shame as they do a load of late Cold War stuff that I would have bought.

Anyhow… The canards on the Sea Flanker were just wrong. So wrong in fact that I didn’t put them on. By ditching the canards, the arrestor hook and the naval emblems and changing the colour scheme I ended up with this.

That’s nice. Still not finished mine. Might have a crack later.

That 262 video is fantastic, the casual way he does the camo with an airbrush, and the fine stuff like hydraulic lines, the night radar antenna, just everything, really.
Love the SU-35 too, terrific aircraft, and as a big fan of all sorts of exotic camo patterns, the ‘dazzle’ camo used on various Russian planes is wonderful, works beautifully on that model.

I’m still struggling with the bodywork on my Tamiya Mercedes 300SL. Tried Tamiya rattle can paint. Too much too quickly 🙁 strip it back especially where it had run / pooled
plan B, decant the paint from the rattle can & use in my airbrush. Not enough decanted, rattle can empty, not prepared to buy another 🙁
Plan C, Revell Aquacolour (tried & tested for me) 99 Aluminium plus 01 Clear gloss. Nearly there, needs a couple more coats of clear but I’m about out of patience at the moment. I think I need to box it & come back later, when my mojo returns.
In the meantime, I have a 1/6 scale Cylon Centurion to build…

I haven’t made a model in years, but the local hobby shop had an Eagle in the window.
An Eagle Transporter from Space 1999. 😯

How much and where?

I’m in Hobart, Tasmania & it was $118Au.
I think it was an Ertl kit.

Tasmania eh? Might be a struggle to get to after work.

Tasmania eh? Might be a struggle to get to after work.

That’d be a devil of a commute.

Veal? Anyone?

HtS has lured me into this model making malarkey. I spent £40 on stuff at the weekend.

Tasmania eh? Might be a struggle to get to after work.

Bring your bike & stay a bit longer.

Great Paintwork on the ‘Sea Flanker’ HTS … is that all done with a brush?

Tamiya Luftwaffe ‘Ace Pilot’:

Have any of you tried casting components in candle wax with model filler?

Next on the production line is a rather nice looking Cyber Hobby Sea Vixen FAW2*. The kit looks good but the ejection seats are too small, to the extent that the pilot’s head is below the level of the cockpit sill. A bit of googling indicates that the seats are nearer 1/100 than 1/72 so they are about 5mm too short. I could pack them up, but then they would look like high chairs.

My plan was to take the ejector seats from a Vampire that I’ve got in my stash and make a wax mould of them in a tea light, then cast some new ones in Revell filler.

I will experiment first on a random spare part to make sure that the hot wax doesn’t melt the original component.

Has anyone tried this?

[edit]I’ll try moulding with blu-tac too, but I don’t know how it will distort or how much detail will be lost.[/edit]

*I’ve done a bit of reading about the Sea Vixen. The number of aircraft lost in accidents was appalling.

Many losses were on low level “Glow Worm” night training missions that involved illuminating a target then flying a “race track” pattern for the attack run, where the pilot got disorientated and flew into the sea. Apparently there was a weapon selection switch somewhere behind the pilot’s left elbow that meant he had to twist his head whilst making a 180° turn at 450 kts and 500ft. The second crew member sat in the “Coal Hole” had a very limited external view, so there was no additional set of eyes to warn the pilot that he wasn’t level. 50+ men were lost doing this. Today there would be an outrage, but in the 50s and 60s it was hushed up.

Glow Worm Attack

Great Paintwork on the ‘Sea Flanker’ HTS … is that all done with a brush?

Thanks.

Yes, all done with a brush. It took forever!

I like your German pilot. He looks very “German”.

Loving this model thread…

Once I’ve caught up with my non-starter hobbies of woodwork & wheel-building I might get a model to build….first model I ever built was a Handley Page Victor & the favourite was a Sea Harrier, that my brother knocked from the ceiling with screwed up bits of paper while he was revising for his A-level geography exam (the git).

Bit of an off-topic, hopefully not stupid or rude suggestion….harry_the_spider does your camera have any exposure compensation? Your models look great, but the images are coming out a bit ‘grey’ (your camera is under-exposing a bit because of the white background). If you have exposure compensation (+/- button) it might be worth setting it to +0.7 or so for the pics to brighten them up a bit….?

My camera is rubbish and I live in a gloomy 19th century cottage in the north of England, so light levels are always poor. If I use a flash it looks even worse!

Never had much luck with home ‘casting’ – seems like you need something either under ‘pressure’ (injection mold) or very hot liquid (lead) in order to pick out the detail.
Ok for diorama stuff like bricks etc but not for small detailed parts. Would be interested to hear though if someone has had more luck!

After my Sherman build I restarted a B26 Marauder, that stalled after a few days as I got bored with it. I decided to start an old kit from the pile, this is a Dragon mid production Hetzer that’s going to be an ‘out of the box’ quick and dirty build. Only the base coat was airbrushed, the green and brown was brush painted and deliberately left rough as it will be heavily weathered.
This is my first attempt at the german ‘ambush’ colour scheme.

Loads more work to do on this yet so it looks like a 5 year old child has painted it at the moment! 😀

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Never had much luck with home ‘casting’ – seems like you need something either under ‘pressure’ (injection mold) or very hot liquid (lead) in order to pick out the detail.

I’ll give it a try tonight with a blu tack mould if they have it in Tesco on the way home. The filler I have isn’t particularly viscous, so I’ll see how it goes.

I shall post some (gloomy) pictures.

I can buy a couple of resin seats for £2.99 but I object to paying £3.50 postage because I’m such a tight wad.

Interesting paint job on the tank. Were they trying to hide it in a sweet shop?

Here’s a weird cammo fact… My lad has partial red/green colourblindness so he gets some, but not all of his reds and greens mixed. On the flip side cammo doesn’t work with him. Specifically he can see female pheasants extremely clearly at some distance whilst the rest of us in the family have no chance even when they are only a few feet away. It is his superpower. How odd.

Harry_the_Spider – Member

I shall post some (gloomy) pictures.

I feel bad now…..

Interesting paint job on the tank. Were they trying to hide it in a sweet shop?

It was supposed to replicate the dappled effect of light shining through trees.

Here’s a weird cammo fact… My lad has partial red/green colourblindness so he gets some, but not all of his reds and greens mixed. On the flip side cammo doesn’t work with him. Specifically he can see female pheasants extremely clearly at some distance whilst the rest of us in the family have no chance even when they are only a few feet away. It is his superpower. How odd.

When my brother-in-law was in the Coldstream guards I asked him how they got on with him being colour blind, he said the army liked it as he could pick out stuff in the tree line that normally sighted people couldn’t. Reading your post made me think he was talking sense. I’ve disbelieved him for 37 years! 😀

Hasegawa used to make some nice model kits when I was modelling 30 odd years ago (bloody hell, just worked that out, jeez I’m old!)