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And then with the wingtips extended and cowling buttoned up, as spotted on deck prior to the raid on Pearl Harbor. (the extended version of the wingtips has too thin a coat of paint on them. I will fix this at some point...) And one of the undersides, for completeness

Big update.. Wingfold has lots of PE.. Techmod masks for outside, insides were done using the carrier as a template MRP paint was used... Jig required to set wheels plus brake lines added to gear: Techmod decals were used, some finesse was required for the port side insignia to fit over the air vent scoop as solvaset had zero effect on the decals. Walkways were done using ammo paste. Getting close to done... Now please go to the Ready For Inspection forum section for the final reveal....

Well, the big Trumpy Avenger is done. For those that have followed this build it has been an adventure. Her she is in her glory, warts and all...

A.M.U.R. Reaver will offer new PE Set next week. There is set of four patterns for different effects, from fine regular grains to irregular stains and splashes. I "played" them yesterday using 1/24 P-47 wing for metallic paints effect test. They are very thin and flexible but very robust, because they are made of 0.05 mm stainless steel and will serve all the lifetime.

The fuselage is coming together, though the cockpit framework is impractical (at my skill level) to make as per kit instructions! The combination of some warping, of tight tolerances and incompetence means that I'm taking a pragmatic approach of not bothering with the cross members (all the bits at the top) which in truth won't be seen but which are there to give structural strength......in theory.) So I'm just doing the two side frameworks with seats attached and that does away with all my lining up/squareness issues.

My first Bf 110. 1/32 Revell kit HGW Seat belts & wet transfers All colours MRP Finished.

By far my longest, most involved project to date. Many people followed along and offered advice and encouragement on my build thread, but I would like to especially call out and thank Ryan (A6M) whose expert advice on all things Zero was immensely helpful and made this a better model than I otherwise would have been able to build. I tried to up my RFI game a bit on this one by purchasing a cheap tablecloth to use as a background and actually digging out my old DSLR (versus just taking iPhone photos). Perhaps for the next model I will further improve on this by ironing the tablecloth... First some shots featuring the detailed innards of the forward fuselage, plus the folded wingtips.

OK, I'm "moth'd out" for today!! The two halves ready for joining apart from the front IP in the starboard half, of which more later. With hindsight I'm not sure fitting some bits in one half and others in t'other was the most brilliant idea because trial dry fits were difficult to the point of impossible, the key factor being the exhaust pipe, so I eased it off for fitting later. Things then became much easier and the top join is acceptable at this point: though I wasn't happy with the front IP which was a bit skewed......so I took it out......hmmmm! I intend altering the profile of it slightly so that it seats better in the fuselage, though whether I'll ever get it back in again is another matter. Sunshine and golf tomorrow!!

OK! With my Zero project officially promoted to the display shelf, we're off to the races with this model. I'll have some photos of plastic shortly, but for now, the scheme I'm going to attempt: This is obviously going to be a mask-making challenge, even with the new Silhouette machine on deck. According to ICM's info, the camo pattern was painted on both upper- and undersides of both wings. I'll have to deviate from the kit build sequence enough that I can do the finished paint scheme on each wing and the fuselage separately, then join them. Need to get the fit dialed in the bare plastic so that no filler is needed, if at all possible. Because every project needs to be harder than the one before, I guess. I hope to pull this off without using any decals at all. I scanned the kit decal sheet: None should be terribly hard to do as masks *except* for those pesky little white Kanji characters at the bottom, which need to go on the vertical stabilizer. May take a few test runs on plasticard to sort out how I want to do those.

Some more views of the "opened up" mode.

Browsing the net for pics of Argentinian wartime Mirages, i stumbled upon pics of a 3D printed Pucará, the groundattack plane used in the Falkland/Malvinas conflict in 1982. It was 1/64 scale.....wait a minute, maybe i could get it double the size? I mailed the attached email and a guy named Luis answered. he is from Venezuela. We sent a few mails and he said he would be willing to modify the 3D files for me and have it printed by a friend (that luckily lives in Europe, better yet in Austria!) for the moderate sum of 110€ including shipping. i jumped at the opportunity, since i like building planes that are not likely being kitted anytime soon. i had him make the canopy a seperate part, 2% smaller so i can vacform a clear part, as well as hollowing out the fuselage to be able to have a scratchbuilt pit and gearwells. that was in the end of July - and yesterday i recieved it. didnt know what to expect, because resolutions can be very different. when i saw the main parts, i was really impressed. i will have to sand, but most parts are pretty good from the beginning. this is what i got:

here you can see the join between the rear fuselage/tail. its also split across in the middle to help with printing a fine line has to be sanded off here. you can also see the resolution of the printed parts. as i said, some sanding required..

ah ok, thanks Mike

Thanks, Anthony! I've got the fuselage together now, so I can show you what are hopefully some images that more represent the final result. Again, all much larger than actual size. I need to install the instrument panel next, and then firewall: Here's a quick test-fit of the new spine parts: And below you can see the rough proximity with the seat: I feel much better about this build now, as you can see it all coming together, and everything is starting to work. Kev

speaking of sanding: the material is pretty hard, i have to get some coarser sandpaper. this is the outer wing sanded/primed/sanded/primed, it came out pretty smooth

Not sure if it has been discussed anywhere else, but working on the new kit, It is made of ABS (or something similar) and normal styrene glue will not work on it. I was a little suspicious of the plastic it is made of when the sanding dust smelt like the same plastic that I use in my 3D printer, ABS. This was confirmed when parts that I thought were glued together started to fall apart or pulled apart with ease. I used Revell Contacta and Tamiya Extra thin, and both of these failed. I have subsequently started using glue that lists its ability to bond ABS plastic and have not had any problems. Eric.

And so my Hasegawa 1/32 Fw 190 D-9 is finished representing Red 1 of JV 44's protection flight and flown by the the Staffel Kapitan Lt. Heinz "Heino" Sachsenberg (104 victories). The models was finished in Mr Paint RLM colours which were a joy to use and the decals were by EagleCals. This model was supposed to be a straight from the box quick build a year ago - but instead became a money magnet! After market sets used were the following Quickboost props Quickboost Super-charger intake Quickboost exhausts Aires cockpit Aires main gear bay Barracuda wheels Eduard canopy mask Eduard Spiral mask Eduard landing flaps Master MG 131 and MG 151 gun barrels - and also pitot tube HGW seat belts and control surfaces EagleCals decals as mentioned above. Added to this list during construction were two of my own AIMS products - 32PE014 Fw 190 Hatches and Latches and 32D024 Fw 190 Oleo Leg markings (I just could not resist getting AIMS into the build somehow Three other after market products were bought and had to go in the bin but apart from those headaches I really enjoyed building this exotic bird of prey. The model finish was rather simple thankfully as Tamiya 2mm wide flexible tape seemed to fit the scale perfectly. And so with the Mr Paint White Primer masked off the RLM 23 was applied. Once this was masked off the RLM 76 and late war greens were applied free-hand using the many photos of Red 1 as best as possible. Hope you like the finish photos. Please note only the first two photos show the red lowered and locked landing gear indicators as I forgot all about them till after checking the photos. Best wishes and stay safe, John

all parts have holes printed into them with pins to align them, a very good idea that will help get everything square

Been working on the canopies and trying to make the individual sections interact with each other better. Made some success, but it still needs working on.

Yesterday’s package from KH. Hopefully the MH-60S will be here soon.

Clive was a good instructor, but the intensity of a 45 minute lesson always left me feeling worn out!! I've been making a few refinements. Firstly the rubbing strip along the fuselage, it was there to take the wear from pulling the blind flying hood backwards and forwards: but my subject "202" isn't fitted with a hood nor, from what I can see, the rubbing strip, so off it comes! I wasn't very happy with the footstep at the front of the nose, it needs a metal surround and should be deeper. The inner part is leather: So a few minutes with some 10 thou card and the Silhouette cutter: I made the inner slightly deeper but started to go through the resin so this will have to do! More tomorrow I hope.

Hi to all Contact Resine resin accessories have finally arrived for spinners, propellers, controls surface, wheels: the original part (propeller) Now I'll take care of correcting the compressor filter instead: here you can see how the filter was cut with a rounded shape: and here as proposed by the Trumpeter kit: let's proceed with the Kintsuglue modeling paste that will allow me to model the part until the desired shape is obtained and correct the filter cut: apply a small amount of paste on the affected part: I have to let the modeled part harden for 24 hours and then I can sand it, modify it and paint it easily: result of the correction of the cut of the air filter and simulation with the resin parts of Contact Resine: That's all for this session. Thanks for the attention George for more info & pics:http://www.adventurephotomodels.com

Fuse is now closed. I also made the front cowl removable.

Back in June, I started designing and 3d printing a line of glue and paint bottle holders to help stop my clumsy self from spilling so many things on my workbench. Once I had the holders I needed for myself, friends started requesting custom ones for their own bottles and from there, I came up with a plan to sell to the local club once we could eventually meet in person again (at this rate... in 2039?). So with that... introducing the Arsenal of Holders (or ArseHolds for short). I put a price sheet together if anyone is interested, prices are a fair bit lower than similar products (you'd be surprised how inexpensive some of these are to print!). The price sheet includes photo examples and my email to contact if you're interested in anything (or PM me here on LSP). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/19_pPrYFguFJAvQCoqK1eqe2fHpv6QCae05e_eDtVMO8/edit?usp=sharing I took it a step further and made bottle holder shelves to completely fill out the space in my HobbyZone shelving cubbies as well as the space on top of the shelves holds more than the HobbyZone bottle holder products designed to sit on top - these haven't been priced out yet for sale but I could probably be convinced if someone really wanted them. I welcome any constructive feedback and suggestions Thanks everyone, Mike

This may be old news to some, but I thought I would share. The Polish Aviation Museum in Krakow has digitized and made available hundreds of documents, photos, log books and printed material. There are notes and manuals of Polish aircraft and interests of course, but there is also material on French, British, German, Russian and Czech aircraft amongst others. As an example, I've included a link to a number of manuals/pilot's notes for German aircraft. Thought they might prove useful to some. If you click on each of the photos of the folders, there are manuals for different versions for each aircraft. https://muzeumlotnictwa.pl/digitalizacja/index.php?/category/64 If you go to this main page, you can click on the "Nowa strona" (transl. "new page") to go to a resource that has material more or less catalogued in folders: Ksiazki - Books, Albumy - Albums, Personalia - Personal collections, Dokumenty - Documents, Czasopisma - Journals/Magazines, Instrukcje - Manuals, MLP - Muzeum Lotnictwa Polskiego, Inne - Miscellaneous. On the bar that says "Stara strona" (transl. "old page") there is an enormous list of digitized material of all kinds. http://muzeumlotnictwa.pl/muzeum/pl/biblioteka/ I spent a fun afternoon just poking around, and found amongst other things, more 303 Squadron Mustang photos and pilot's notes for the Spad 61 c1! Hopefully this will help someone. Richard

A flight of A-4s from the same squadron heading into harm's way with a load of Mk-36 Destructors, of note different intake warning markings, one doesn't have any numbers on the wing, only one has the anti glare on it's nose and not to mention a couple of them need a good wash: Jari

Step #3 finito. Starting to get into the torsion bar frame and supporting structure, I did work ahead and added the flat traverse box mount to help true the ladder up.

On sale now: www.icm.com.ua - CR. 42 LW , WWII German Luftwaffe Ground Attack Aircraft (100% new molds) - Kit on sale, September! Juraj

as the cockpit cutout

Engine with its initial coat, and some work on the Sutton harnesses. These are the PE ones supplied with the kit which don't actually need to be that flexible because I know from experience how thick and unyielding the leather sections are! And a little "in-cockpit" entertainment of one of my training flights!! PS Should you have the patience to watch most of this, ignore the last 7 minutes or so because my Go-Pro fell off my helmet!!

Not much in the way of modelling has been happening as I've been busy on outside jobs which need to be done while the weather is good, but I have been plodding away. First up was to get some paint on the undersides which was NMF on the real thing, I can't imagine that it was polished so I went for an aluminium colour, in the end after airbrushing some samples I settled for Xtracolor High Speed Silver (X038) and was pleased with the finish. It does not show up very well in the photos though. Next up was some careful masking and making a handle on the undersides so I could hold and move the model while I was airbrushing it. For the upperside colour I got in touch with Nick Millman who suggested DI Black Green would be the one to go for so I settled on Sovereign Colourcots ACJ01 Black Green which Nick reckoned was a good match for D1 when he reviewed the Colourcoats Japanese paints. The result was a very dark green, but then again it is called Black Green. I did remember to paint the frames on the canopy but forgot to paint the cowling, never mind it won't take more than a couple of minutes Cheer Dennis

I have gotten the lower wings to a point where I need the fuselage to align some details, so I have started on the fuselage. The seats are mounted on two rails running through the fuselage. The seat backs are aluminum and the rest is wood, except for the control stick assembly. The basic fuse sides. Don't know why these links are showing and not the pictures?

Thanks once again, Brian and Spyros! I can at last show some progress with the painting. I've been reliably informed that RAAF Tiger Moths were painted silver inside the cockpit area. I'm also pretty certain from photos that the internal framing on the added cockpit windscreen and hood were painted the external colour - in this case, Foliage Green. I decided to proceed with the idea of silver below the cockpit sills, and Foliage green above them, and ended up with this: Unfortunately there's not much going on in a Tiger Moth cockpit, so the result is a little underwhelming in terms of colour and detail, especially since in this version all the hardware was unpainted metal too. Don't worry about the messy wash residue behind the middle diagonal former, as the seat will hide it. Speaking of the seat, I've finally been able to finish it, ready for installation: Thanks to Uncle Les for the fire extinguisher label decal, which I duly managed to apply upside-down. Still, it creates the effect I was after, and with this photo being 4x the real thing, I think it'll look find inside the cockpit. I should be able to close up the fuselage now. Excitement! Kev

Sept NEWS - 8 complete bombs, slick body for USAF and light ablative fire-retardating coating for U.S.Navy, decals as usual. 10,00 eu for each set.

Hi to all we pick up where I left off. correction of DB 605 / A engine calenders: I make a thin strip from the sheet of metal to finish the internal moldings and then fix them correction of the external fins of the cowlings: those of the kit appear slightly undersized creation of the closing rails for the cowlings stops: The idea is to be able to insert the cowling on two self-made tracks (as in the real model) so that it can be held without gluing it and to be able to optionally open or not the cowling and show the DB 605 / A in all its positions or keep the perfect closure and show intact its camouflage. Daimler Benz DB 605 /A preview note: the cables and the various connections are sent back to the insertion of the engine inside the fuselage. detail of the compressor fan: 1- I open the compartment to rebuild the fan seat with the help of a low speed electric cutter: 2- I remove the excess parts, sanding with the cutter with a round head file and finally I brush up with Mr. Surfacer 1000 liquid putty 3- I apply the micro-blades obtained from a thin flap of sheet metal inserting them delicately and individually close to the very small self-made pin and obtained from a residue of resin wrapped on the tip of the cutter scratch building of other metal parts: MWP (Metal Work Panels technique) : cloning panels : modification and detail of the oil tank : wanting to keep the hatch open, I had to build both the internal and external part of the tank including the hatch and the power inlet. Also in this case, the connecting cables are returned with the motor switched on dents in the auxiliary tank : it seems trivial and perhaps stupid but I can assure you that the realistic effect that is reproduced is absolutely interesting! after having glued the two shells I made small and light depressions with the electric cutter at low speed so as to simulate the classic dents suffered by the tank often stacked against each other on the ground in the fast succession of missions after having adequately sanded the interested parts, I reviewed and standardized all the work with a couple of passes of Mr. Surfacer 1200 DB 605 motor insertion and cowlings closing test with the changes made: result OK! A- "open" B-"closed" final gallery: thanks for your attention. George for more info & pics : http://www.adventurephotomodels.com

Ok, I'll join the big tank club. https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50371541317_d341167090_k.jpg

Thank you Lothar and Joachim, meine deutschen Freunde! I’ve had a few hours bench time today since it’s been raining all day so no golf, no gardening, no walking! So the engine’s in place, all of the cockpit items too and everything is set ready for closing her up. I’ve drilled a couple of holes ready for some wires later in the build. The next bit is nerve-wracking.....

i have no idea... its white

Oooh, crikey... I'd love one of these! <must be sensible> <must be sensible> <must be sensible> <must be sensible> <must be sensible> <must be sensible> Look forward to seeing this come together - great subject! What's the material - ABS? Iain

I'll just go pick up some more MEK from the hardware store - that stuff bonds pretty much everything under the sun including ABS

In a perhaps related topic, I noticed Tamiya Extra Thin made more of a mess of my latest Eduard 1/48 MiG-21 compared to the older one I built. Instead of a ghost mark, more a tide mark. Plastic looks the same, but feels a bit softer. Maybe I got a bad 'un?

Tamiya Extra Thin will work on ABS plastic but you need to be a bit generous with it. I recently built a Sabre Models railcar kit that was ABS and used Tamiya cement. Most joins were fine but a few needed a second application of glue. Tamiya does make an ABS specific cement.

thats the idea how it should look:

I have made the tail surfaces by laminating 0.010" skins embossed with the rib detail onto 0.020" cores. I have cut the ailerons free from the wing and made the pulleys for the aileron cable system. The ailerons are operated by an external cable system. The pulleys were made on my lathe. Thanks for looking.

Last update.

Like it or not, 3D printing is here, and it's not going to go away. As the population of modelers ages, the eyes aren't what they once were, and the hands may not be as steady either. If a modeler chooses to go this route, it's his (or her) prerogative.