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