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Thanks guys! Jumping back onto the D-9 build for a bit... I thought I'd get the upper wing riveting out of the way. Riveting takes some time effort and I need to be motivated to actually put in the hours so when the inclination bubbled up this afternoon, I took advantage of it. The first and most tedious step is to draw the rivet patterns on the model parts. Lots of rivets on the upper wings! Once the rivet patterns are drawn, a wheeled rivet tool is used to punch tiny holes in a linear row. The wings are then sanded to get rid of the raised plastic around each rivet hole. A temporary pastel wash is used to check the results. You can see that the wing surface is nice and smooth now compared to the pic prior to sanding. Both upper wings have been riveted. Circular fasteners along the leading edge of the wing that are added using a beading tool.

Marc, Nighthawk thank you guys for your comments! i appreciate it! now some more masking and painting.. Black RV band painted, also the code numbers , first the black 2 from montex masks, and then the yellow 1 on top.. next will be the vertical yellow bar and then i will move to the front cowling.. i have also re -painted both wingc camouflage as i wasn't thrilled with the previous result i am still learning .. thanks! S

AIMS 1/32 Spitfire PR 1G conversion with Barracuda details update. Hi everyone, interior decaling is finished using the Barracuda and kit decals plus some data plates robbed from my FW 190 Oleo leg set for both side walls, under the spare gunsight bulbs and the rear of the regulator. The camera's were also done and these decals were supplemented with white decal paper to make some patches on top of the cartridges. Hope you like

I'm more than conscious that I have been somewhat absent from the forums recently but rest assured i have been building albeit at a very slow pace. Anyhow, my latest one off the production line, as it were is the Jetmads Viggen, built pretty much out of the box. I didn't post a work in progress thread as Aigore had that more than covered with his superlative build so I quietly carried on in the background. Not absolutely perfect but I think she will stand up to the 3 ft rule if you squint. She will be making an appearance at Telford all being well. The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the absence of the antenna immediately behind the cockpit which is now ready to go on together with the boarding ladder and exquisite tow bar. So there you go. A great kit all told but not without its issues. some of the 3d printed parts are extremely fragile but respond well to careful handling when removing them from the printing blocks. The main gear door supports are to long and as a result they foul the Skyflash missiles when they are in position. I deliberately left the sidewinders off as I personally don't like the bright green colour the Swedish airforce painted them so I went with just the Skyflash. I may add them in future although i'm not sure at the moment. The canopy is removable as Iv'e added a small magnet to keep it in place. I tried to do the same with the main tank but its just a little too heavy / magnets were too small. Feedback is more than welcome.

Hello everyone, This is my recently finished 1/32 Revell Fw 190A8/R2 with the markings of “Double chevron” from IV./JG3 Cockpit modified with Eduard Löök instrument panel and seat belts. I have used Eagle Parts external weight propeller set and Eduard wheels. Paints: Gunze Sangyo acrylics Decals: Eagle Cals #99-32 FW 190A8 Sturmjager IV./JG-3 Happy modelling

A while back I put together a 4 part article for our local modelling magazine called 'Box Top Bloopers;, here's a few of the funniest. Some quality trolling from Hasegawa, with a Japanese helicopter carrier sinking a Chinese fleet carrier. Those are Chinese soldiers. Whoops, forgot my tail. Spelling matters! The little know battlefield tactical vostok missile with German troops and 70;s helicopter...cease fire they're shooting cosmonauts at me.

and the award for most depressing box art of all time goes to- P

I had such a great time with the Tornado I jumped right into another Italeri kit Although....this will have Canadian markings. If/when I get that far Filling some sink marks here and there. Adding a bit of Eduard p.e. and off we go... Thanks for looking

wheel sets from Infinity for Vampire https://www.facebook.com/infinitymodels.cz/photos/pcb.134533532587140/134533472587146/

I’m hoping that’s dealt with… Someone does….I’m on my deck having a Coors light watching my wife puttering in the garden right now (her hobby) so I don’t have access to the hobby room. But, I ordered from Hannants a die cut set of masks for the RAM panels, came with a very nice painting guide. I’ll post the information on the maker when I get back into the hobby room.

Hi guys, John here, I keep going as long as I can. As I can model a little I can also do a little work on a master the old fashioned way here and there. SBS are able to do a little of my casting and what cannot be done will have to be shelved for now. I can not design anything new that requires the computer - decals / PE but can rescale and minimal things like that. Still smiling but clock is ticking. Would like to get a few of my models made before then! So 8 years too late but whilst making this budget Revell Spitfire Mk II with the absolutely awful upper cowl blisters and oil filler hatch pointing the wrong way and too many fasteners - I thought I could make available a better cowl as need one for my PR 1G build anyway. Hope you like. £TBC Thanks guys for everything J

Finally regaining control of my Flickr account means I can start posting again, wahoo! This one was part of a private group build of all things RAF. Be that I like my trainers, the Bulldog fits the bill nicely. The kit is typical of short-run fare. The delicate scribed panel lines were almost all obliterated by the copious amounts of filling and sanding needed. A LOT of nose wight is required to keep from being a tail-sitter, I filled the nose with lead shot, and made a new nose gear leg from brass tube to keep the kit supplied plastic one from collapsing. The paint scheme came straight from the box, the kit decals worked nicely. Fun little build, now if only I could get my hands on Tarangus' Saab Safir! Denzil. Nose weight for days! Arado 96 for scale.

The DBMK kit is from factory drawings that have been worked over for 20+ years by Arthur Bentley to create a CAD model. They have been independently verified as being correct (as far as is possible) Arthur created the drawing used on the Flugwerke FW-190 and his work has been extensively published. He worked as a draughtsman for BAe at Hatfield. Will

As the restoration of TT193 gets under way by Pioneer Aero in New Zealand there will be a greater world wide awareness of the Dh103 , and keen interest in securing the to-date elusive 'accurate model'. It would seem those now closest to the definitive source material are the ex Wingnut folks of Kotare. Regarding market viability, the following are amongst those who have been convinced; Frog (1/72), Dynavector (1/48), Classic Airframes (1/48),Special Hobby (1/72), HPH Models (1/32) and the currently available AZ Models plastic kits and Oxford diecasts in !/72 plus the strange 1/48 renditions of Trumpeter with a 1/32 vacform on the pending list of Tigger Models. Not bad for a subject of ' little wide interest'. Les

Hi Woody. Have a look here: This not only a cutter. With different heads it can saw, carve resin, etc. Expensive for sure but the very best solution for the very brittle 3d printed resin. hth Thierry

Thanks for your support, folks. This kit is not simple, but I'm hoping to wrestle it into submission. This is one part where I have to be patient. I did some dry-fitting of the seats into the rail assemblies. Those assemblies (you can see them on the cockpit floor, with the solid backs) are tricky because there is no clear guide for where to glue them. That is true for much of this kit. No such thing as locating pins, and sometimes not even a ridge to give a clue. The instructions are not super clear either. I've assembled the nose gear well (top left), painted the wheels (background), and finished the pre-assembly of the side panels (left and top right). Why the patience? Because I have to glue one thing in place, wait for it to dry solidly, then do the next step. Otherwise, it falls apart like a house of cards. Right after this picture, I glued the left sidewall into place, and started to fiddle with the seats. When I did that with the rear seat, I found that the silver part at the bottom of the left side wall interfered with the seat. I jiggled it into place, and promptly broke the seal on the glue holding the two rear rails in place. Grr. Those silver parts look like they're supposed to be the landing gear handles. Yes, one of the worst possible places for a landing gear handle ever. To add to the problem, the gear sometimes had a nasty habit of collapsing if the handle was not clicked properly into place in the down position. That's why, after selecting gear down, it was standard procedure to do a 'shake test' by jiggling the landing gear handle to make sure it didn't pop up and out of the down position. More soon, as things dry and become more solid. My biggest concern right now is how will the tub assembly fit into the fuselage. I see some ridges as guides, but the width of the tub will be important. If it is too wide or too narrow (i.e. if I've installed the side panels slightly wrong), then it won't hold or might cause the fuselage not to close properly. ALF

Hey Guys here's the 1st of a 2 part fuselage assembly. I've got a few things to show for my efforts so far. You definitely feel like you need 4 or 5 hands during this assembly. Let's jump right into it - I read a few build threads and my buddy is done with this part so I got his insights as well. There's 2 trains of thought on assembling the intake itself, attach the inside wall 1st or last essentially. I took the approach of attaching it 1st. the bottom goes together well the top not so much. It's a uniform gap that will take some filler if not using FOD covers. It's pretty small so no big deal. given I'm assembling them with no stress on them there's just no way to improve this without shaving some plastic off. My buddy did the opposite as I understand it and glued the back panel to the lower fuselage 1st (before gluing it to the intake). his turned out great as well so there's 2 options here. I did some dryfitting and put it together with tape to decide how to tackle the rest. The best way seemed to be starting at the back and working forward. I sanded and got ti all to fit nice 1st, then tacked the back corner with CA. Came back around after that dried and used cement and some plasticard to stiffen up the joint. working my way to the front in the same manner it all lined up pretty darn great. Next up was some alignment tabs. Caution on the ones I did in the 1st pic below near the wing joint. I didn't realize at first that the top and bottom tabs are different thicknesses. For the final fit the alignment tabs had to be bent inward some to get everything to fit. Works but, would have been better a different way from the beginning. then the back half And the reason I'm doing it as a 2 parter...there are a number of vents and things I wanted to modify and those are best done before all the assembly so the parts are easier to manipulate in my opinion. Those very large and obvious ducts into the intakes on top of the fuselage. Left side is thinned out here to show the difference. And here the right side is completed vs the left side stock. Similarly I added some depth to the vents on the sides of the intakes as well. Will clean these up before paint. then I wanted to give some depth to the ECS vents - opened up on the left, stock kit on the right And last, even though it will be hard to see without a mirror I really thought the large vent on the lower fuselage needed opened up. A little cleanup and fill to finish it up and it will be good to go. All done for the moment. I'll return tonight I hope with part 2 of Fuselage Assembly :-)

Major paint work done. Masks removed. Looks ok, but not great. Dan

Wow... that's looking SO good, Spyros! I love these late war schemes and your rendition looks right on!

No doubt you can also use poster paint on the new Border Lancaster

Do I hear chanting? Paint! Paint! Paint! Paint!

Read this morning that TG2 crossed the billion mark without help from a country that shall remain nameless except that it has something to do with tableware. Have yet to see the movie but am most impressed with this accomplishment. TC may be smarter than some of us thought.

Lots of great photos of USS Lexington CV-16 here: http://www.navsource.org/archives/02/16.htm Yes, as correctly pointed out above, USS Lexington CV-16 is an Essex class aircraft carrier, named for the lost Lexington class aircraft carrier USS Lexington CV-2 sunk at the Battle of the Coral Sea in May, 1942. Essex class Lexington CV-16 survived the war and was extensively modified afterwards, gaining an angled deck, some hull widening, and a heavily modified island. She is preserved as a museum at Corpus Christy, Texas. "Flight Deck Stain Norfolk 250" was a stain applied to the wooden wearing surface of US Navy aircraft carrier flight decks from 1941 to June, 1943 when it was superseded with "Flight Deck Stain #21". When new, "Flight Deck Stain #21" was a deep blue-gray color nearly as dark and blue as "Navy Blue 5-N" paint, which is easier to find as a hobby paint. Flight deck stain became faded and worn very quickly by normal flight deck activities, sea, weather, and brutal Pacific sunlight. Here's how "Flight Deck Stain #21" looked on sistership USS Yorktown CV-10 as seen in 1943: In mid 1944, flight decks were ordered to be stained with "Flight Deck Stain #21 Revised", which nearly perfectly matched "Deck Blue 20B" paint, a very deep blue color when new, also easier to find as a hobby paint. In other words, the 1944 revised paint was darker and bluer than the original stain #21. But this stain, too, faded and wore quickly leaving the natural wood colors of the planking exposed. Below is a photo of worn and faded "Flight Deck Stain #21 Revised" on sistership USS Randolph CV-15 in 1945. Note that the steel tie down strips were painted "Deck Blue 20-B" (stain doesn't work on metal). The "Deck Blue 20-B" paint on steel was much more resistant to wear than the stain on wood and retained its blue color far longer. Also note that the wood flight deck planking on Essex class aircraft carriers was pine, not teak. Most sources of teak were well behind Japanese lines during World War Two making it nearly impossible for US shipyards to obtain. So plain old, easily sourced and very plentiful American pine became the go-to wood substitute for flight deck surfaces during the war. Also note that Essex class flight decks were in fact steel with a wood wearing surface. It is often erroneously reported or implied that Essex class flight decks were completely made of wood which is false. Only the wearing surface was wood. A wood wearing surface had three distinct advantages: it was much cooler under a hot sun, it is easily repaired, and it absorbs and retains splinters from shell, bomb and bullet hits rather than allowing them to bounce around causing further harm. You can read more about flight deck colors in an article by noted naval historian and researcher Alan Raven here: https://www.shipcamouflage.com/5_4.htm Hope this helps. Cheers!

Hi Guys, Some colour on the Ta152 at last. It's only the cockpit and not much at that. After a bit if Black PLW and some dry brushing with a paler grey. Some colour on details. As you can see, nowhere near finished. Regards, Bruce Crosby

Thanks, looks like quite the useful tool but based on the number of bandages on his fingers I think I'll pass. Well, that and the price.

Pffttt, ultrasonic ones are old school, try the laser cutters.... Don

Prop ready...

Engine room engineers tend to be below decks most of the time only emerging portside ! Scenes here of the man himself amongst the arrival ceremony of HMS Centuar at Singapore Jan 1960 . Cheers All

First step in converting the T-6 wing to a Wirraway wing... I've trimmed a wedge from the inboard end of the outer wing panels, so the trailing edge is now straight and the leading edges have increased sweep angle. This was about a 30-second job on my woodworking disk sander. The 120-grit paper cut through the wing like butter, more melting than sanding! I taped a Lego block (2x6) under the wing-tip to retain the correct dihedral... simple. The Wirraway wing is almost identical to a BC-1 or a Harvard Mk.1 wing in its shape and structure (apart from the additional hard-points added to the underside by CAC). The inboard end of the aileron cut-outs matches the Wirraway position, and the landing lights also match the position for the Wirraway wing. Next step is to modify the tips and then re-scribe all the surface detail...

Thanks Zac! Ok.. so the cockpit is pretty much complete now that I've made those last revisions. But I alluded to the resin nose, which still has not been fitted yet. It probably would've been smarter to have addressed the surgery required to fit the resin nose at the beginning before doing all of the cockpit painting. But sometimes we get lucky with the order and, now, looking back in hindsight, I think I dodged a few bullets. Here is the Wolfpack resin nose to convert the Hien from a Hei to a Tei. It's slightly longer than the kit nose but not as long as Ki-61 II nose, which I think is the sleekest of all Hiens. Not having made any decision regarding riveting, it has not been worked on except to smooth out the mold joint along the bottom. I decided to attack the cutting of the kit fuselage in several stages instead of trying get the stair-step cuts in one try. The first one would go completely through the fuselage, well away from the final edge so I opted to use the big blade. The ultimate cut line is marked in pencil and the big blade cut so nicely, I continued to use it. I've still left some wriggle room between the cut edge and the ultimate edge and that will be taken care of by careful sanding. The initial test fit of the resin nose was very positive. Looks great! The cockpit is re-inserted back into the fuselage for the next test fit. Looks like trouble. That extended deck in front is NOT going to fit! You can see here the mistake I made in not test fitting the resin cockpit components with the resin nose much earlier. Compared to the kit part, the front deck forward of the bulkhead needs to be removed. It would've been quite simple prior to painting and assembly but now it becomes a very delicate operation. The guns are temporarily removed but the IP stays put because it is glued on solidly. Before re-mounting the guns, the four tabs on the side of the bulkhead were scraped off. Very lucky to have performed the removal without even knocking off one of the delicate reflector glass pieces! The cockpit now has a much better chance to fit. Crossing my fingers that the gun bodies will clear. Success! Even the canopy seems to fit ok!

I bought some fine cutters from Tamiya, and they're worth every penny too. Tamiya side cutter

"The Monsun U-boats were perhaps the most special "wolfpack" in the war as they operated very far from Germany and its occupied countries, namely in the Indian Ocean out of Japanese provided bases in Indonesia. They operated out of Penang, Jakarta and Sabang in 1943-1945 and scored some hits against allied shipping. In the beginning the Monsun operations were almost like the "Happy Days" or better as most shipping in the Indian Ocean was conducted like in peacetime, however in 1943 this started to change and eventually these waters became just as dangerous as the North Atlantic." --U-boat.net I've made a bit more progress, concentrating on the upper railing. The kit offerings are definitely too thick for scale, but I believe they are salvageable with some judicious filing, which I've commenced here on the right: I've also taken the first steps towards making U-510 different than the kit by scratchbuilding the ladder which extended on the port side of the fairwater/tower, which can be seen from this photograph: And an overhead photo: Cheers, Tom

...waiting for the Drakken... Back to your regular program...

So long! Good luck!

And then finally, the most daunting task so far in this build, gluing the fuselages together. First I glued the upper pieces together, then the lower pieces. Puttied them, might need some more work after I prime it. Then glue the whole thing together. Finally together. Man this thing is huge. That's all for now.

Evening all, I took advantage of my time away from the classroom last week and finally finished this two-and-a-bit year project: Tigger Models' (the old ID Models' vac kit) of the Short Sunderland in 1/32nd scale. This has been a really rewarding project, and despite a setback when I knocked the completed fuselage with its interior off the table, making a rather messy contact with the kitchen floor, it's been great fun and relatively straightforward - despite its size. Kits like this come as a blank canvass for the builder to work his/her magic - 'bumps in plastic' is quite apt, but the shapes are reasonably accurate if not a bit primitive (picture borrowed from Tigger's webpage): The kit provides a the correct hull shape for a MkI or MkII, but with some mods the more adventurous builder could easily convert it to a MkIII/V, etc. All panel lines and surface details need to be added and the parts are devoid of any real detail, but the plastic is lovely to work with and scribes/sands beautifully. Due to the size of the parts, home-made interior bulkheads are needed, and any visible parts of the interior need to be made from scratch: Strong wing spars are also essential to keep the structure of the model sound - thick plastic card spars were made and added: The flightdeck interior, bomb room and nose section were all made from scratch and detailed with some aftermarket seatbelts: All the aerials were made from sprue and thin wire - markings were mix of home-made masks and decals: The engines were made from spare HK Models' B-17 cylinders coupled with Revell Beaufighter parts to make a reasonable representation of the Bristol Pegasus. The early-style exhausts were made from Evergreen tube bent slowly over the toaster! Landing lights were home made from some of my daughter's diamante play/craft jewellery (for the lights) and the covers were clear acetate once again heated over the toaster. Rigging for the floats came for EasyLine and reminded me why I'll never build a biplane! The kit's transparencies were used throughout - all turret interiors were scratch built. Beaching gear was also made from scratch with a friend helping out with some 3D printed wheels: Bomb racks were again made from scratch with some rather lovely depth charges coming from Tim Perry - thanks, Tim! I used Xtracolor enamels throughout the build - 6 tins were used in total! I don't like to go too mad with weathering on my models so kept it relatively clean - however you can't build a Sunderland without the distinctive water marks on the hull: A bit of exhaust staining and some fading with post-shading completed the upper surfaces: And for some generic pictures: I'm often asked how big a 1/32nd Sunderland is. I'm sorry to inflict my ugly mug on you but you can see that it is a massive model with yours truly holding it! My model represents a Sunderland MkII of 201 Squadron during 1942 in the lovely temperate sea scheme. Painting white gives me nightmares (especially something of this size) so I took the easier option. W4001 (ZM-V) was only on strength between February to October 1942, before hitting an underwater rock and being written off, thankfully with no loss of life. Thanks for those who took an interest along the way - I'm off for a long lay down in a darkened room to contemplate the next project! Best wishes to all, Tom

Well, have had this scene percolating in the ol' noggin for sometime. Wanted to do the new 1/32 Helldiver, but it seemed a bit big for what I had in mind. First a bit of background: I love the Beast. Some of my earliest memories are sitting on a fencepost at our ranch listening to my father and the crop duster that sprayed the Alfalfa fields chatting. He'd learned to fly for the Navy and flew Helldivers in the Pacific. From about age 4 on, I knew what I was going to do! I've always had a Hellidver model sitting on display to remind me of that--unfortunately the last one didn't survive the final move and needed replacing. The other piece of the puzzle is Yokosuka. I spent a large portion of my career there. 2 different ships I served on were berthed on the very piers I'm depicting. Kind of fascinating to have been stationed there and know the long history of it. The dry docks date back to the 1800s and are still there and still in use! If you watch "Bridges at Toko Ri" you can see what had been the IJN Headquarters, which is now the US Commander, Naval Forces Japan Headquarters. Here's a screen capture from Google Maps: And zoomed in a bit. Here's a picture from July 1945. I blew it up to match the size of a 1/1800 Nagato that I ordered off Shapeways. Once sized correctly I could start laying out the base. As for the scene, I'm choosing to do a large strike flown by the USN on 18 July 1945. At that point, TF-38 was sailing up and down the coast of Japan at will. There's several great write ups about the giant fleet raids that occurred during July 1945--Yokosuka and the fleet anchorage at Kure. ADM Halsey really wanted to sink the last of the Combined Fleet and really wanted to sink Nagato as that was ADM Yamamoto's flagship during the attack on Pearl Harbor. Here's some great stories: H-053-1: The End of the Imperial Japanese Navy IMPERIAL JAPANESE NAVY MYSTERIES (combinedfleet.com) Here's a great picture taken during the raid. I can't even imagine what a strike with 100 Dive bombers looked like, but that's a lot of airplanes (not even counting escorting Hellcats and Avengers) in a small piece of sky. Here's the Nagato that I had 3D printed. And here's the scene. Sorry, haven't taken any build pics other than this one. Frankly the SB2C build has been rather unremarkable. I've been using @chukw's fantastic Helldiver build log to walk me through some of the finer points. But with the gear up and crew in the cockpit, most detail is hidden. You can see I cut out the brake area--just finished assembling the Eduard PE versions. Still debating how to display it though, as I've read accounts that on this mission they dove with them closed to increase their speed. It does look cooler with them open though, so may go that route... So that's where the buid is at. A mostly OOB Helldiver and a bunch of small buildings that I'm slowly recreating. -Peter

Beautiful work John

Yep, looks good from where I'm sitting

Hello, good luck. Here is my build. https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.110087347381854&type=3 Maybe as a small inspiration.

Sean, Thank you very much for the praise and historical perspective. I think I share with most of us here that the research is half of the pleasure we get from this hobby. It’s great that you have a personal connection. Cheers, Tom

This is what I was wondering about. Chrish: have you given thought to how you are going to proceed with that? Tape? Masking fluid? Free hand (!)... Someone should sell tape templates for that! It would save hours of time.

Masking these zigzags on the aircraft was pure nightmare for me, other than that it is a very good kit that gives you a good looking model.

Fun kit, fits together pretty well. The only issue i had was having the canopy closed with the pe included for the locking rails. If you use that piece of pe do a bunch of dry fit to get it looking clean.

Still viewable on the Wingnut Wings page http://www.wingnutwings.com/ww/productdetail?productid=3193&cat=6

beautiful work John! amazing details! i like how you treated the instrument panel dials S.

Hi all, Just one last shot - the pilot figure, Mike

After a very long time, the Hog had some attention last night. Ordinance: Some gray application:

The Revi gun sight has been added to the instrument panel. I'll be putting on the canopy and windscreen soon. Revell has engineered the kit so that the control surfaces are movable. I don't particular like that idea as they would most likely flop around, droop to the lowest position (for the horizontal surfaces anyway) and wear off paint. So I am going to glue the control surfaces into place. The rudder is the first to be glued on. I am thinking about the camo finish although it is a few steps ahead. I am going to do Hartmann's White Double Chevron G-10. Anders Hjortsberg has a nice profile of Hartmann's G-10 on his Profile Paintshop website... Anders concedes the speculative nature of this profile since only the fuselage from the cockpit forward is represented in the existing photos of this machine. Anders chose to portray the bottom as natural metal with light blue (RLM 76) wing tips and control surfaces. Is an all RLM 76 bottom just as likely? Both Eagle Cal and Barracuda Erla G-10 decal sets have representatives of both bottom treatments. Should I just pick one or is one more likely than the other for this particular machine? I am leaning towards doing the RLM 76 bottom as I feel I can do a better job of it than the metal finish, which I don't particularly like to do.