91 replies to this topic

[karimb]

Good evening everyone...

It has been such a long time since the last work in progress that i have started here...as some of you know ive been drowning in so called 'adaptation' since i moved to my new job in a new country, Qatar, and had to stay away from styrene for almost 6 months... Now is the first proper 'off time' ive had since January of this year and i am home for a stretch of 14 days...FANTASTIC

 

Good and bad news lol, so we'll start with the bad part. I forgot to bring my laptop with me, so what is happening is i dont have a good internet wired connection ( I use mobile LTE) and since my laptop is not with me and the desktop is hardwired to a **** **** connection i am still unable to upload the photos i have taken up to now. Besides the replying is also going to be slower than usual to this thread since i am using my folk's desktop, but i will be here on a daily basis at night to update everyone on the progress and im sure in a couple of days id have figured out a way to upload the photos or at least connect this beast to the LTE wifi connection i use lol...

 

Good news is i dug my teeth into the tamiya a6m5 yesterday and lord its good to be back...

The kit is a breeze to build, kinda puts other kit offerings to shame (for me at least lol)...okay let me round things up

I will be building the tam offering, and i have thrown in to good measure the eduard BigEd complete set for that kit...now alot of people have said it is not needed, and to be honest up to now from what ive seen, what's been said is true. There is no real blatant addition to the kit's superb moulding and details except thinning some of the parts by replacing them with etch...

I decided to run this one paintwise out of the box following the tamiya paint instructions as all the references i have are on my ipad and you guessed it, the ipad is back in qatar too...

 

so a summary of yesterday and today

 

Yesterday i got started on the fuselage and the cockpit assemblies. To be honest there was no need to sand or fill anything for the first time in a long while, everything just fell into place. Ive got all the subassemblies put together in chunks and put those aside. The details are super crisp in this kit and the quality of the styrene mouldings is top-notch...

Getting back into the groove, i added some of the etch to the cockpit area as half of it was not really necessary... its a shame most of it is going to be hidden between the fuselage halves. Eduard offers you some nice etched wiring bundles and nice additions to the cockpit albeit being tiny...ill make sure to take a couple of good shots of the cockpit tub assembly before closing the fuselage halves so i can post those when i get the model in the ready for inspection section.... that was it for yesterday... i also assembled the pilot figure in a standing position as i have an idea of how i am going to do a base for displaying this kit - its going to be a really easy planked base for a change from the 'everytime' used diorama base i take the photo with... 

 

Today, i continued working on the kit, left everything unpainted. I finished the firewall assembly, the 7.7 guns that i modified for etched barrels and started working on the wings.

I decided to go the eduard route and sanded down the flaps area completely as per instructions and got a go at building my flap housing from etch... took me half a day between making a holding jig and bonding the etched folded ribs to the flap housing...end of day they looked really spectacular in etch rather that styrene moulded in in the kit. they look much thinner and have all the lightening holes drilled in...looks the part !

Modified the wing then bonded those in, started work on the moveable parts of the main landing gear... THEY WORK lol, i am kindof surprised having dabbled with another manufacturer's take on the mechanism (probably copied from tamiya) those actually do the job and are pretty solid.... glued those assemblies to the main lower part of the wing, then closed the wing halves together...

Took everything in and primed them with mr surfacer ready for tomorrow's patch of paint. 

I am planning on finishing the model to look really beat up (i know everyone builds beat up zeros, but they look lovely and i have a couple of idea up my sleeve regarding this one) so tomorrow ill paint some metallizer and then hairspray. paint the interior colours, chip those away, then paint the detailing

 

The plan tomorrow is to have the cockpit painted and finished up, and if time permits take some good photos before closing up the fuselage halves

Also try to find a way to get the connectivity issues sorted out so i can upload photos of the work in progress...

 

Sorry guys this is shorter than my usual threads but ill make it up when things get rolling again...

Ill see you guys tomorrow !    

 

 

Happy to be back     

Stay safe and happy modeling 

Karim

[Out2gtcha]

Nice to have you back and building again Karim! Even if for only a little while.

[harvey]

Great to hear fom you ! Now, take some pics will ya.........Harv

[BiggTim]

Definitely want to do that kit someday!! Looking forward to this build.

 

So what do you do for a living that takes you all over the lace like that?

[Lee White]

Yay! Bookmarked.

[Peterpools]

Karim

Well back and great to know you are back in the saddle and building again. Your progress sounds awesome and I'm eagerly looking foward to see the photos when you can post them

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[LSP_Kevin]

Welcome back, buddy! Looking forward to your photos.

 

Kev

[karimb]

Nice to have you back and building again Karim! Even if for only a little while.

 

Hey Brian, its nice to have you here to enjoy the build...yes indeed just for a little while...

[karimb]

Great to hear fom you ! Now, take some pics will ya.........Harv

 

Harv my friend...pics coming right up in todays update...thanks for being along for the ride

[karimb]

Definitely want to do that kit someday!! Looking forward to this build.

 

So what do you do for a living that takes you all over the lace like that?

 

Tim, the kit is fantabulous lol...really a breeze to build

I fly for Qatar Airways as a first officer so i had to leave Lebanon where i am from, and used to fly out of, and moved there for the new job in january...welcome along for the work in progress, youll see its going to be fast and furious lol

thanks for leaving a comment 

[karimb]

Yay! Bookmarked.

 

Hey Lee...thanks for being along for the ride, i hope you enjoy it

[karimb]

Karim

Well back and great to know you are back in the saddle and building again. Your progress sounds awesome and I'm eagerly looking foward to see the photos when you can post them

Keep 'em coming

Peter

 

Peter my friend how are you? you cant imagine how happy i am to be here amongst friends again...i needed that break and getting my hands on styrene. my ex wife got my daughter around today they both passed by as Zoe is with her, tomorrow is my turn to go pick her up... alot of work done on the kit yesterday and today, and the pictures are going to be posted right up...hope you like how shes starting to look like

Im happy to have you along, thanks for dropping a word my friend

[karimb]

Welcome back, buddy! Looking forward to your photos.

 

Kev

 

Kev my friend...its good to have you along.... hows the family? i hope everyone is okay at your end and all is fine and dandy...

I hope i havent lost my touch working on styrene lol photos are below 

thanks for dropping by

 

Karim

[karimb]

Good evening everyone...

What a day lol... i had the visit of my exwife and my daughter in the afternoon...tomorrow is my turn and im keeping the little one until i travel wooohooo...

On the computer front i just managed to get the connection and the rest sorted out. I almost had a heart attack trying to get things to work, my blood pressure went through the roof lol... to make a long story short, i ended up using an old laptop that's working on windows xp, that hasnt been turned on for the past 4 years... downloaded chrome, updated whatever i could update and got the wifi working... i dont really know how good the pictures turned out to be because ive been taking them with my iphone but i resized them as usual and uploaded them...theres going to be a big bunch of those, and i am going to try to have them in sequence from yesterday until where we got today in the work in progress...

 

so for today's work (i am actually amazed at how fast this build is going lol) after the morning coffee, i prepped the compressor and got the parts in, airbrushed them with buffable metalizer from GSI creos, the Mr metal colour brand i love using and put those aside...

After drying, i airbrushed hairspray on the various cockpit parts and put those aside for later painting and chipping.

Now was time to get to work on the inside of the fuselage so i went and mixed my aotake colour (i used the tamiya template which is at a ratio of 3:1 metallic blue and clear green)...the end result looks pretty decent, though a bit on the bluish side. Since i dont really have reference material with me unlike i usually do, i am going to settle with it the way it turned out. There is alot of discussion on wether the aotake had more of a bluish or greenish tint, but oh well... the lighting is not very good for the pictures of the colour i took, ill get that sorted out next round now that i have figured out how to get the whole internet rig working again...

I painted the fuselage interior green and the wheel wells, flaps, flap areas and tailwheel area in aotake...

After that i put aside the fuselage halves and went to work on the cockpit...

Paints used were all tamiya acrylics and i can make up the list if anyone would find that helpful (to be honest i just followed the tam paint charts best as i could...)

After spraying the interior green i mixed some of it with some flat brown and thinned it further and started building up layers of faded green here and there, on the sidewalls and on the cockpit flooring...

That done, i did the paint chipping by activating the hairspray with a brush dipped in water and then went on to paint all the little details.

The eduard etch really brings the flooring and side consoles up to another level but the details are just tiny and i am not so happy that all of those are going to be hidden in once we get the fuselage halves closed up...

To bring all the details out, i used a home made wash from brown oil paint and turps and it really tied everything up together. For the black areas i used a gray wash made from grey oil paint and turps...

After all had dried up i glued on the clear parts that make up the IP instrument faces and one on the console and added the decals to the back of those...i think they look really nice...i just added a couple of drops of mr mark softer to get the decal to snuggle down on the clear parts...and that was it for the day lol

Alot of progress made in two days so i am pretty excited as to where this is all heading

I have a really close friend who's taking the time to read this, he's not a modeler but is pretty curious as to how we do things...i might as well turn him into a modeler some day as im sure hed fit right in with all the gang...if you read this thumbs up Captain Hamdon lol    

 

Well guys below the photos in sequence, tomorrow night ill be back here to update everyone on how things are progressing

Plan for tomorrow is to get the details of the interior of the fuselage halves painted, get the etched belts onto the seat, take proper photos of the whole assembly and then close up the fuselage and hide all those pretty details up forever lol    

And surely plod on with the kit, see where this is going to take us tomorrow

I hope you guys are enjoying this build although i am not my usual talktative/descriptive build type...to be honest, up to now i have had not a single glitch to write about concerning the kit engineering or regarding the styrene mould quality...

Anyways off i go, see you all tomorrow

Guys let me know if you reckon there is anything missing, im considering some oil fading in the cockpit but still havent made up my mind though...

 

Stay safe everyone and happy modeling

Karim

[karimb]