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Iv'e only gone and committed to buying a HPH C47! I may come to regret it!

Here are my photos from the model show put on by IPMS Atlanta, Saturday. It's been about 19 months since the last show. There were a lot of great subjects on the tables...a lot of enthusiasm to get back to having shows. These photos are a good sample. I wandered around and took photos of whatever caught my eye. There are some very good LSP subjects I'm sure you will spot. I'm happy to report my Space: 1999 Eagle Transporter won 2nd place in the SciFi category! Enjoy the pics. https://flic.kr/s/aHsmX58b7k

Hello Gents, Finally I decided to start this project, totally inspired by Master Airscale Peter,to who I thank for sharing his amazing work which makes it look easier than it is, I jumped in this new field with my total ignorance and many things to learn on the process So I will be building a 109, a F-4 or a G2, still have not decided but since both models share many similarities I have some time still to decide but will be representing a JG 5 scheme for sure, I took Jumpei fantastic drawings and scale them up, and cut the 2mm acrylic and ended up with the main outline, first step accomplished, next is adding the former sections, cheers Comparison with a 1/32 model now needs some sanding and refine curves cheers

hi all, here is a little nice kit by ICM to wich I added Begemot decals, Yahu instrument panel, Rescue resin wheels and IGW seatbelts. truly, all started some 40 years ago, when I saw this picture: I collected references and the Azur kit for years (for decades!) but when ICM's kit appeared, I had no more excuses to procrastinate this project. the kit is accurate, yet somehow "heavy" and simple in many aspects. so I worked a bit the cockpit, adding flares, pistol, throttle quadrant, retracting landing gear handle and so on. the kit's IP seems interesting, but I purchased the Yahu panel with the same order of the kit, so I used the latter. not that you see much, in the end... also in the engine compartment there are the very basic items, so I added oil radiator and his air duct from scratch. I enriched the engine's rear with magnetos, carburettor, air intakes, spark plugs and wires, most of these spares from other built kits. doing the same with the front end, altough all will be buried under the tight cowling. trought slight modifications to the kit's cowling I rendered the internal rotating plate fully functioning, leaving the chance to see something of the engine. also on the rear i obtained access to the engine installing some micro magnetos on the upper and side panels, so these snaps on when you approach these to the fuselage. actually I found little references about the Shvetson M-25 engine, but assumed it was the licence-built Wright R-1820, all appeared simpler. some gyzmo was necessary, anyway. I was delighted by the Rescue wheels, a really nice product! I kept to minimum the scratches on the Karman, being the real aircraft made mostly by wooden panels. the Begemot decals where printed on a rather thick film, but after some working with dedicated liquid products and some pledge, these made their mark on the fuselage. I painted the exaust fumes as per photos, and decided to leave the flaps up due no images of these down was found by me. all in all, a really enjoiable building, I had a lot of fun with it. cheers, Paolo.

Howdy folks, I've just published the latest What's New update. Enjoy! Kev

Hi Guys, Assembly wasn't all plain sailing, I ended up with a nasty gap between the rear fuselage and the oil cooler exhaust ramp. So I wedged in a bit of plasticard, ran in some Tamiya Extra Thin, waited a bit then trimmed and sanded. Underside prior to blanking and painting. Wheel wells are already in natural metal. I cemented all the control surfaces in place except the flaps, still haven't decided whether to have them up or deployed. Minor fill at the wing roots, just a wipe on - wipe off job really. Colour scheme: I've gone completely off the reservation now. In keeping with recent models like the Mistel Me 262/He 162 and Me 262/Ef 126 which are clearly "what if" builds, I decided to paint the Do 335 as a 1946 project, with limited colour palette, all-metal undersides, etc. So the first port of call was the underside, all metal using colours from Mission Models. I've used foam to blank out the wheel wells at this point. Different shades of metal all over the place. Here's what we've got so far. The first true colour is RLM 82 from Mission Models and i added some of their standard Green to lighten the colour slightly. There is some Late Sky, the RAF type, up the sides of the fuselage, here with the 82 mottled over it. I have assumed that by 1946 there would have not been nice clean edge sharp delineation between the primary cammo colours, so I've just airbrushed a loose interpretation of the factory scheme to the upper wings and fuselage spine areas. On with Mission Models RLM 81 for the other main cammo colour and mottles, all freehand airbrushed, trying to get as close to the top layout of the official pattern as I could.

Just got the weekly email from Hannants, plus a couple of extras, one of which is regarding future releases. Whenever I get these , I only check the LSP stuff, so in that vein, my first click was on the 1/24 scale releases. Alas, there's only one, and it's from Trumpeter who are not my favourite manufacturer, but it's the Mustang P-51B/C series. I'd love to get a high back Mustang on my workbench, so I'm hoping that this will be a much better effort than their 1/32 kit, which will forever reside on my shelf of doom. Clicking on the 1/32 scale products, I'm very delighted to see Infinity Models D/H Vampire Mk3 crack a mention here. This is one that won't stay in my stash long!! They also have am AICHI D3A Val listed Fly also have a couple of Saab J-29's coming up for release too, so if you like early jets or something a little different, these could be a goer. They also have a Rotachute MkIV listed, as well as a Westland Wessex, so could be interesting. There's also some re-releases listed, including a couple from ICM with their AH-1G Cobra and D/H Tiger Moth, Hasegawa with their A6M-5 Zero and Fieseler Storch, which is one I'd like to get, and also Special Hobby also putting out a repop of ICM's AH-1G Cobra, as well as their Hawker Tempests in both MkV and MkII Hi-Tech versions. I don't have the MkII, so this may well make it's way into my stash. Some of these already have prices listed, and some don't, so I guess we can see which are likely to be released first. However, it's good to see all of these listed as this means their release can't be that far off. Cheers, Michael

Another Sunday afternoon at the workbench, I will just call this one some progress. Lower fuselage sides are now permanently attached with plenty of gap filling super glue used on the backside of the joints for reinforcement as there was quite a bit of stress on these getting it all to fit. Also I have the upper fuselage and resin intakes dryfitted, and overall, I am satisfied with the fit but there are numerous joints and seams to sand and fill to get it all blended in. Some is just the nature of the how the kit was designed, and some are building errors made by yours truly. I also have the Aires F/A-1C cockpit cleaned up and dryfitted into the nose section. As the set comes with the correct instrument panel details for either the A or C, I decided to go with it as I liked the detail in this set much better than the Avionix’s set. Moving on, breaking out the Tamiya putty, MS 500 and the sanding sticks! KJ

Hey guys, it's been a long while since I've been here. My wife had a stroke and of course she was my number one priority. It was a pretty significant stroke with complete loss of use of her left arm and weakness in her left leg. Her mind was affected too but not as badly as it could have been. She has very poor short term memory and much of our early years together are just a blur for her. She is still mostly herself and has taken up coloring which has been great for both of us. This is not how we planned to spend retirement but we are learning to make the best of it. We are lucky in that she is able to have home care 4 or 5 days a week for about 5 hours a day. That is a huge help for me. It gives me time to get out and run errands without worrying about her and once she is settled into her coloring she is happy to let me go about my business unless she needs something. I am just getting back into my model building. I have been going slow with a couple of car models but I'm close to getting my Tamiya Corsair back on television bench. I'll have to find the build log and get it going again. I'm also looking forward to catching up on all the builds I've missed. Of course modeling will take a back seat to my wife but I should be able to get back into it pretty well. It's a good escape and diversion too. Besides my wife is pushing me to get back to my hobbies. Who am I to say no? I sure have missed you guys, Al

Of everything in that list, it's the J-29s that I'm looking forward to the most. Kev

This one I had finished more than two years ago and had posted on Britmodeller. Looking back now I can see I have lingered the airbrush for some shading more than necessary on certain spots, especially on the nose... Cheers, John McDonnell p.s. Yes, I definitely love MDD aircraft, it is my last name after all

thank you guys, first former sections, cheers

Not too far to go now with the Fury build, but the few remaining pieces to fit, such as they are (or aren't! ) are posing a bit of a challenge. I'm looking at the upper nose area where guns, gunsights, an oil filler cap, windscreen and a miscellaneous vertical tube (fuel gauge?) not to mention quite a complex set of rigging wires have to fit prior to the top wing going on. The instructions aren't a great deal of help: but when you look at the real thing you get a better idea: The long tube is an Aldis sight (32 inches long and 2 inches in diameter) which as supplied in the kit was pathetically inadequate, so I raided my pile of Silver Wings kits and decided that the AW Siskin was to be the donor of an Aldis sight and the ring for the ring and bead sight, (this wasn't supplied at all in the Alley Cat Fury kit) since the Siskin is the least likely to be built. So we have this: The Aldis sight to which I've added a couple of support rods, the PE ring sight, two anonymous resin items (after some cogitation I decided the left hand one is the aerial wire insulator which fits aft of the cockpit and the right hand the unnamed vertical tube/fuel gauge, and two slightly wonky machine guns! The wonkiness won't show, I decided, once they are nestled in the gun troughs! So I cut off a slice of 2mm plastic rod for the filler cap, made a bead sight (also not supplied nor shown) and fitted the lot roughly where I thought they should go! If they are not in the exact spot I'm not too bothered, I was very conscious of the need to fit rigging shortly as well and I didn't want fouling of the rigging lines. I think once it's all painted it'll look OK, just the windshield and rigging to think about now.

I picked up a copy of the Morgan & Shacklady Spitfire bible and lo and behold there was an image of the handmade rack for the hurri fuel tanks! So removed the tanks and rebuilt with Evergreen and alu. Off to the paint booth...

Here, I present my Roden SPAD built from the newly released kit. I also used FFSMC decals and some PART PE parts as well as scratchbuilt some details. This depicts Adjudant Jacques Roques' SPAD XIII, a Swiss citizen who fought for the French, and is credited with 5 victories. I found this to be a typical Roden kit, which can be made into a very nice model with a little extra effort. Thanks for looking.

Hi Guys, Yesterday I finished up HKM's Do 335 after lots of trials and tribulations. Did I mention lots of swearing? I showed it at Wilshire Scale Model Society club meeting last night, expecting a lot of Flak but it seemed to get a good reception. I'm not that enamoured of it personally. I'm trying to get the mass of photos on my iPhone up to Flickr and it seems to be taking forever so I'll start off with some of the earlier pix. Don't laugh too much! Tyres assembled and one of the U/C legs Partial engine assembly. Nose leg and bay test fit. Taped up fuselage and wings, its flipping huge! Yahu IP. Some mission Models MMP-047 Black on the engines. I added some Eduard etch bits to the engines. this was a total waste of time! The lifting eyes on the rear engine fouled the top cover badly and the front engine ones can't be seen anyway! Rear cooling and oil radiator scoop with Eduard grilles fitted. Can't see them on the finished model! There's a bomb! Eduard's front radiators were used, Test fitting all the time! Rear engine and main fuel tank.

Thanks for the support! I've been in correspondence with Chris at Zacto models and a seamless resin intake is on it's way as I type (package tracking shows it in Canada already, ordered 3 days ago) In order to keep my interest up, I've decided to spend some time on the weapons, something I usually build last and don't really spend the time I should on. If I add them at all. In any case I've come up with what I want to add to the model (probably a completely imaginary weapons load) AN/ AXQ 14 on the center line, GBU 10's GBU 12's and 2 AIM 120's with a LITENING pod and LANTIRN pods....(or maybe just some GBU-38's) If I'm completely out of scope someone can tell me (I just don't want drop tanks on it) and some of the unused weapons, I should note that Academy's F/A 18 and Trumpeter's kits have donated ordnance. Here's some of the things I was going to add to the model. Looks like I have a few pieces left over. Thanks for looking

Hu Guys, Here's the next bit. Front engine bulkhead with some RLM02 and the cables picked out in Yellow. Undercarriage legs assembled and painted. Some detail painting in the nose wheel bay. Lots of other bits made and painted, then finally assembled on the backbone. This is actually a test fit before I Assembled the photo above. This is the real assembly prior to fitting the wings and top panels. And with the wings in place.

Hi Guys, Another thrilling instalment of the HKM Do-335A build. HKM completely missed the canvas cover over the rear of the centrally mounted 30mm Cannon. I used a part of a kit that was laying around and filed some folds into it and cemented it into place. Better than nothing. This is better! Now we're getting somewhere! A lot later on, with the Yahu IP in place and the whole cockpit cemented onto the backbone. A start painting the two engines. Front engine almost ready to put in place. Here's both of them pretty much ready to go.

A late answer, Maru, but many thanks for the compliment! Life was busy, so progress on the Fuji was very, very slow. In the mean time, I made new flap hinges from plastic strip, because most of the original ones were broken off: The upper ones are the new ones. They were primed and painted, together with the main landing gear fairings (no pictures, not so interesting). This weekend, these parts were glued onto the wings. Starboard wing: And the port wing: The flap hinges are temporary connected with metal wire. As a final solution, the same wire will be used, wit a resin bolt and nut at each side, conform the original. Both halves of the main landing gear fairings were held in place with a clothes peg until the glue had set. Note that some vinyl tubing, supplied in the kit, is added as a hydraulic brake line, as shown in the instructions. Before I add the wheels, these fairings will have to be neatened. To be continued... Cheers, Peter

I've been doing some further cleanup and more preparations to actually getting started with this kit. The hood looks good after one dip in future. I have these wheel sets available, and the refueling probe set arrived as well. The Tamiya kit rims resemble the rims on IIAF Tomcats most but that means rubber tyres. Most probably I will use the Reskit ones. I will investigate using the kit rims in combination with the Reskit tyres though. Stay tuned. The middle console. Kit vs Avionix. The kit one is not bad at all in terms of detail, but the Avionix one is slightly better. The cockpit part have all been prepped, and fit is only so-so. If I had to do it again, I would have gotten the Aires one in 1/29 scale :o) Most disappointingly, the refueling probe insert is too big to fit next to the cockpit tub. Too bad. I have photos of IIAF birds with the probe cover door on, so I will leave it closed after all. The resin also does not look healthy. Age? Doors in place: Now, let's hope I find some time to get started on the cockpit. Daunting to get started due to lack of instructions, so I will have to use photos as reference.

Glad to hear they are still going. I've been waiting for the Tunnan F for years, though if they don't come through I'm still hoping for a plastic Draken from somewhere. If I get desperate I'll do a commemorative Hawker Hunter in Swedish Acrobat markings. Tony

I went with Gunze 42 Bluegray which is the look I was going for.

If you refer to the MiG-15 this is a nice kit that does not ask for anything else than what you have in the box. The C-47 is in a different league. The surface detail is absolutely incredible but it is a pig to build and it has some major issues to go through such as the too small size of the cockpit inserts and the bad junction of the wing trading edge/ belly with the fuselage sides. I love that kit but I think that in comparison the build of any 1/32 plastic bomber is like assembling a LEGO kit!

Made some good progress this week and also got some key items knocked together for this build....started by assembling the bomb bay and radio room sub-assemblies together and checking their fit into the fuselage. The next major area to tackle was the waist..... Got the wooden floors added and then scratchbuilt new gun pedestals on the gun support floors. These will allow me to add the waist guns at the end of the build through the open waist windows Twin waist guns and twin radio guns means that I had to scratchbuild 3 ammo boxes not supplied in the kit. In this pic, 2 are kit parts, 1 is an Eduard pe part, and the other 3 I built... Since "666" had twin .50s in both waist windows and the radio area, I had to build twin-gun brackets with a post for each waist position. I kept these very simple reasoning that the crew had to do something simple that the field machine shop could weld together quickly and easily. The guns are a combination of the kit guns and some resin aftermarket guns, all of which are drilled to accept the brass barrels that will be added at the end of the build. The one gun with the socket is for the right nose window, and the other gun is for the left nose position. This represents about 10hrs of work....but it was worth it! Gil

Oh, you’ll regret it if you don’t post pictures!

LuckyModel now has a 22% off coupon for orders over $250. With $20 surface shipping, that’s just $488 (£355 or 419€) shipped to the US.

I wish I could afford one! I hope you post some photos when you receive yours, Dave. Kev

Hey all, Just an update on where this model is at the moment,..... all the trials and tribulations with this build wore me down and I put it away for a while and did some Armour and a Tamiya Bike for some relief from it. I finally pulled it back out the other day after getting a new Montex Mask set for it with the included decals of the bull's head.I ripped off the decal that I had touched up with paint because I wasn't happy with it, and made another mask out of Tamiya Tape using the new decal as a template, and sprayed the white background for the decal like I did on the other side. So now I had two airbrushed white backgrounds for the new decals,...attempt number two with them, absolute disaster, if you dont get these decals in the exact position they need to be straight away, forget about trying to move them around, they ripped, folded over, did everything but slide into position, even after the white section was polished with 12,000 grit micromesh. I'm weighing up what my next step will be. Cheer's, Jeff.

Close All I can do is paint the colors that I see. Going from light to dark, #1 grey is on, and we are painting #2 grey now. (the FS36251)

Finally an update on my Intruder. Lots of work to get here but nothing special to highlight. Although one thing I can point out is that the shape of the main gear doors (the front ones) are incorrect, I have increased the angle from the kit's 90 degrees to about 120 degrees. Super easy fix and impacts the look of the model imo. I'll detail this in a separate post. O the below shot, note what looks like a crack in the windscreen is actually an electrical wire running across the instrument coaming. Cheers, Marcel

Pictures of the finished build of the Fokker Dr. 1 'Skeletal'. I have always wanted to build something completely from scratch. This wasn't a 100% scratch, as I used some parts from the Roden kit, cowling and rudder from Aviattic. Photoetch from Tom's modelworks, RB Productions and Part of Poland. It isn't perfect, but it was a great learning experience and got me a step closer to the ultimate goal of building an all scratched model. Hope you like the result... Cheers: Kent

This is 1/32 Special Hobby Hawker Tempest Mk.V with the markings of JN766/SA-N of 486 (RNZAF) Squadron RAF at Castle Camps Cambridgeshire in January 1944. Cockpit modified with CMK seat and Eduard instrument panel. I have used Barracudacast Nose and Propeller correction set Paints are Gunze Sangyo acrylics Happy modelling

The acrylic rods arrived in the mail. I now have enough 3/16 inch rod to build several hundred Honey Badgers. After a couple hours of sanding I took a break and did some coloring instead: Draken also uses a similar scheme to this one except with white/gray/black colors. The pattern is the same. I was fortunate to find enough photos on the internet to map out the pattern. The flap/aileron piece needs to be scribed to mark out the edges of the flaps and ailerons. Then the small area between the flaps and ailerons, and the small area at the outboard end of the aileron, need to have the gaps filled. I also filled the gap at the leading edge of the ailerons with thin CA to keep any light from shining through.

Nice additional details Max. Hopefully the Siskin hits the bench eventually, it is a cool plane. Matt

Thanks Rick! The landing gear went together well and is nicely designed by Trumpeter. There are just so many parts it's quite daunting initially but you just have to take it one step at a time. The main legs are solid metal and it takes some time to clean them up. I took them to a long weekend in the mountains and did that kinda while doing other stuff, makes it a little less boring. However, the sit of the airplane on the legs is excellent, wings are perfectly level and I think she is sitting with the correct attitude also. Cheers, Marcel

Peter, Nice work on that canopy. Paul Fisher and I were playing around with this plane once upon a time. That dang canopy was by far the most difficult shape; you nailed it. Glad to see this one see light again. There are so many British subjects the have a unique beauty to them, the Firefly is no exception. Timmy!

Ah yes, very good. Let's see how much of the nose extend/retract struts we can put in, or leave out.

Like they did with "Foundation"? The only connection that series has with Asimov's work are the names (slathered with an obvious layer of "woke" pandering). It is all "flash and no bang". Don't get me wrong, the Dune sequel books are still excellent, they are just different. To make another comparison, if "Dune" was about WW2, "Prophet of Dune" and "Children of Dune" would be about the Cold War. Radu

@Paramedic An -F (dog teeth visible on box art) and a -B in Congo colours, according to their website…

This is all strikingly similar to: What Are Futures? “ Futures are derivative financial contracts that obligate the parties to transact an asset at a predetermined future date and price. The buyer must purchase or the seller must sell the underlying asset at the set price, regardless of the current market price at the expiration date.”

Holly moly mate. I remember seeing this at Telford what seems years ago now. It’s huge. Well there’s dreamers and do’ers. Good luck and keep us posted. No photos or it didn’t happen. You have to change your car now. …….

Sounds like things have been a bit of a pain with this build lately, Jeff. I wish you the best of luck with it, and be sure to keep us updated! Kev

Sorry but scum like this need some sort of justice. the thought that they just believed they could steal your hard earned belongings is just s**t. I hope they get what's coming to them especially as you helped them out in the past!

1/8th tube fits for the axle.

Hi Guys, Here's some more progress pix of the HKM Do 335A. I already had paint on the seat when I realised it wasn't right. HKM give two raised moulded bars to take a seat pan cushion, except the seat was designed for a bum parachute, which doubled as a cushion, but there should be seat back cushion. So I scraped out the seat pan and made a rear cushion from a lump of plasticard. After the remedials and a bit of paint. Now with Eduard's Colour Etched Steel Seat belts in place. Yes, I'm going for quick and easy! Next up was painting the cockpit tub. At this point I couldn't get my hands on the Eduard Interior Set, rare as hen's teeth. Airbrushed overall colours but a painful few hours brushing on the details. Sorry, I'm not the best brush painter in the world!

so here we are with a small update i haddend much time this week to build. The wife in the hospital for surgery on the knee and just back home. So what happend on this one the wings are on and for size its a A3 cutting mat the fit off the wings need work so already put some putty on and start sanding. Still needs more work lik scribbing but first im going to put some primer on to see where it needs more work Only didt sanding an putty on the top side so far a vieuw on the underside Im planning to use some evergreen to fill the big gaps and some putty. I didt my best to get the fit so good i can get but this area whas a no go beter Thats it for now. Im hoping to have a bit more bench time but will see how things go here at home Mark

Thanks Alain, strangely I find more satisfaction in improving parts then merely throwing AM in a kit. Anyway a small update. The wheels turned out great after the fix. I also needed to backdate the tail to the original config. I modified the tail years ago to do a Belgian Viper. When it was binned, I kept the tail. As the kit arrived without this, the A tail, I fixed it with a surplus piece from the Sufa kit. (with a lot of sanding and filling) Some re-scribing and filling still needs to be done but here is the basic shape) More next week Nick

Lets try spraying colors that I see in Double 0...Nope, missed it again.

Next step is the cockpit section. I have dry fit a few seats from the spares box, just because. This section was relatively easy to design, only 2.5 hours to print. Not sure if I have all of the curves right. Questionable at the forward end. Dan