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Salut tout le monde ! Mon dernier projet est terminé. Le modèle ICM est très bien conçu ; il manque juste quelques détails. Pour cela, j'ai utilisé des pièces photodécoupées Eduard et Aims. Un peu de rivetage sur les parties métalliques. Peinture Vallejo. Et quelques masques de rondelles pour l'aile inférieure car ICM s'est trompé sur les dimensions correctes ! J'espère que vous aimerez ma Charité . Malte, été 1940 Merci.

latetest news from mirek via heinz ( noon today): „Hi, we are fixing some details about future. I hope I will have some time to support HpH and we will continue.“

Things are getting lined up. Be it painstakingly slow… My hands are itching to get back to some other builds, but this will be finished first!

All blocked in, ready to sand. 10 hours in.

Very sad to hear, but not surprising. Many of the old stand by companies that did low production work require tremendous amounts of time to prepare a product for market. In addition the market is holding steady or shrinking as the population of "Historical" modelers age out, and the new modelers are in the Gundam / Fantasy model space and 1/48 scale gets more and more detailed. Plus as the modelers who started these companies get older, health issues related to age, just do not allow the modelers behind the companies to continue, and there is no value in the old school companies. Experienced this myself the last few years, with having my right leg amputated above the knee, as infection of the metal prosthetics finally had to be addressed. I scaled back for a few years, and just now 4 years after the amputation have the energy to look at making long planned for new sets and revising old sets. The goal is to be more cost effective for modelers, as incomes for the aging customer base is not keeping up with growing costs of the basics of life, along with our hobby. I may be wrong, but what we have now for the 1/32 scale, for larger kits and jets in particular, may be what we have to build from looking forward for our segment of the hobby. I wish the HPH crew the very best, love what they did, and will miss them. Have a great day all! Gary

Here we go; First step is cutting properly side fuselage window slots and installing not so nice looking transparent parts.

A bit of work completed over the long weekend (following a short visit to Melbourne's Model Expo on Saturday morning for a quick catch-up with modelling and publishing friends)... With the fuselage frame taped securely to a flat surface (upside down) it was time to attach the floor of the aft fuselage. Some Revell Contacta Professional (?!!) made quick work of this step: It was then left to dry until this evening when I carefully cut through the sellotape and tested the fit inside the fuselage... looking good! I still need to add a few more tubes to the fuselage framework, then I can start installing "furnishings" as they called them back in the 40s...

Allright, managed to get this goodie bag....jihaaa, well awaited indeed and this is really hard to come by, Revell will as ive understood rerelease Arado 196, Eduard sure will release this BigEd...but for now, who the hell want to wait, not me, side panels yes ive scratched them, but since i got this pack with alot of other goodies a want, so why not use em.... Thats the reason i did the Bf109G-6 meanwhile. Aaand triming the frame to get it fit and dry fitting....yes yes, suits me fine. Oops my hairy leg 😁...

not all hope is lost…. read my post above

Well, let's take this as another reminder to buy the kit(s) you want in time, as long as available Kits go OOP, manufacturers close down, but your stash is yours for lifetime. Regards - dutik

This is my rendition. The paint streaks was done using Vallejo Acrylics. The model benefits from Master Barrels and Quinta Studio Interior. Hope you like fellas.

Cheers. No pressure . Thank you Kagemusha. Just a small update this one. I mentioned at the start of the build that for this scale there were no decals. Having previously generated my own artwork in Adobe Illustrator and used a 3rd party for decal printing I didn't think this would be too much of a problem however the decal printer I used to use has sadly ceased trading due to health issues. This means I need to find another decal printer or venture into using masks which is (yet another) skill/experience I am lacking. Taking a "belt and braces" approach I figured masks would be worth giving a go - and thankfully for me, @mozart is helping me with the production of a set of masks. Unfortunately though the stencils are a bit of a problem and it would seem will need to be printed... so I'm going to look at different printers. Here is a (low resolution) version of my A5 decal sheet: My original printer used to provide ultra-thin 8 micron decals printed at 1440dpi on a UV ink printer. One (reasonably priced) supplier says they print at a standard 13-15 microns. I'll have to see how things compare - but I'll post the results here for anyone that is interested. Thanks for looking.

I've been slowly working on all the little bits and weathering. Hoping to take it to VA in August.

Installing the engine bearers. Still fiddling with the nose gun section in order to get the right angle. Almost there.

New start: I hope I don't ruin it

Hi, my name is Ani and my dad said I could show some pictures of the magic house we built together. It took 6 weeks to finish and my dad and I worked on the house every evening when he was not working somewhere not home. My dad showed me how to use different glue to glue parts together and he helped me to glue some of the harder parts. He also showed me how to use different kinds of sanding things to smooth the wood parts so they fit better. I was sad that my magic house did not have lights like some other houses that I saw but my dad said we could make our own and he helped me put little lights in the house and garden after he drilled some holes or made little spots on the wood to fit the lights. He showed me how to use a tool to make grooves in the wood for the electric lines and then we joined the lines from the lights to the little battery packs that my dad had in one of his model parts boxes, he really has a lot of those. I am happy that the magic house turned out so nice but I am happier that my dad helped me and we had a lot of fun together. I really love my dad and we like to make things or draw together and I hope you like the pictures of the magic house.

I am planning to finish this Hellcat with the markings of VF 1 White K21 from USS Yorktown It seems that this one is a Hellcat between late F6F3 and F6F 5. As you can see at the following pictures this Hellcat has no bulge on the cowling. So no early style cowl flap also.But the windscreen is early style and rear cocpit side windows exist.

I pulled the F-8 off of the shelf-of-doom to try to get it across the finish line. While it's only been 8 and a half years since the last post, a lot of things have happened in the mean time. Here's a quick shot to show where things currently stand. The cockpit is done, fuselage is closed up, the first coat of primer is on. The white on the underside is on. Last night I adjusted the fit of the resin front windscreen, by dipping it in hot water. The front end was a bit narrow and the aft end a bit wide. It took a few tries going back and forth to get it ok. Then it got a dip in Future. I'm also working on the interface between the wing and fuselage. The wing will be posed down, but here the putty is drying so I've just placed the wing on top. Mike

Just a brief update... things seem to be coming together quickly. The nose and tail section fitted extremely well with only a small amount of sanding required. To be fair, I did trial fit them as a semi-way to hold the fuselage halves together so I wasn't expecting any problems anyway. Where I did have a problem is with the wing joints. I knew Tolgar had the same issue and I couldn't find a way to remedy it... ... but they fill easily and won't be a problem. Again a similar issue with the tail... the fuselage interferes with the elevators. Not sure if this has now been corrected in the 1/32 kit but it is a simple job to drill out and file. I did wonder about the outer wing fit tolerance being too tight but with a small amount of sanding the wings slotted in perfectly. No messing around with dihedral... it is all just perfect - and having spend much of my time fussing around trying to get "classic" Airfix kits wings right I can only say that this kit is a dream! She has wings!!! Can't wait to see how it looks in black! Thanks for looking.

Hello, everyone! Long time, no post. After completing the "panzer of the river" dio back in February, I've started a few things but struggled to get anything across the finish line. Happy (very) to report that this one is done. It fought me most of the way, but by the time I'd gotten really frustrated with it, I was too far along to pitch it. That said, I'm more or less happy with the result. The decals have me fits and you'll see quite a bit of silvering which is just super frustrating. I opted for decals as I wasn't confident that I would be able to get masks to lay down in the wing corrugations. Turns out the decals didn't feel like doing it either. Oh well. I was really geeked about the Devastator kit when it came out, but in my opinion, Trumpeter managed to put out an aggressively mediocre kit. In that regard, I guess Trumpeter managed to capture not only the form of the real airplane, but it's whole vibe too. So, kudos to them on that front, I guess. (?) Anyway, the fit was okay in general, but I had it in my head to really detail up the interior, only to find that it's really really spartan. The whole bomb aimer's area is just pure fantasy and doesn't line up with any of the reference photos in @Dana Bell's recent book. So, it made it a real challenge to want to try to do any extra detail work on the interior. I suppose in the end absolutely none of it would be seen anyway, especially with the wings folded, but I would have known. That said, I did use @airscale's PE and 3D printed products to add detail where I could. I can't recommend these highly enough and they're almost a requirement in my opinion. Off the top of my head, I used the interior set, the prop, wheels, gunsight, wing fold, and twin .30 mount. All fit pretty well without having to do much fiddling with adjacent parts and the added detail was/is lovely. Thanks @airscale! I ordered the ASK stencil set as the kit-provided stencils are ridiculous. However, I would also suggest that the ASK set is only slightly less ridiculous as they are rife with spelling errors and their instructions seemingly have you placing them randomly around the airplane. Weird. I used the Gold Medal decals for the aircraft markings and, fortunately, they came with stencils and much more plausible placement instructions. Any issues with them laying down on the model are mine, not theirs. Highly recommend the Gold Medal set. Also, if you don't have Dana's recent TBD reference book, just buy it. It's a fascinating walk through a really weird, esoteric, and utterly mid aircraft. I digress. This is my rendition of T-14, George Gay's aircraft from VT-8 on the day he became the sole survivor of his group's attack on the Japanese carrier fleet at Midway. If anyone's not familiar with it, here's a short primer on the whole thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VT-8 Enjoy!

Hell yess, got free time, well know how to spend it well, Jihaa modelling of course 😁.... So Sidepanels are now glued, yes all were firmly cleaned with isop alcohol. And some PE work, folding, and yes PE origami, a trashbin.. Three manuals to follow, Revells, Eduard and Quinta Studios, make sure to cut and ad right parts, make sure to focus, and yes it is very sparse with reference photos, got em books, and yes using IL2 flight sim, as they sure do research on them aircrafts so get close as possible, many sources to gain some information.

Finished with decals on small parts. Moving on to the glider

Recieved mine today and all I can say is Wow! Peter has put together a beautifully packaged model and the quality of the parts has to be seen to be believed, just stunning. I will definitely be in for any of his future releases. Regards. Andy

Locals will already be aware the The Australian Model Expo is currently on this King's Birthday long weekend at the Sandown Racecourse. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I was only able to attend yesterday (Saturday), and have posted photos of the Kotare Bf 109K-4 and Spitfire Vb in the relevant thread. Here I'll show a selection of photos I took of some of the models on display. I didn't take many, and mainly focussed on the LSP stuff, so apologies in advance for that. So, let's look at those first: Airfix 1/24: Airfix 1/24: Kotare Spit: Kotare Bf 109K-4 test shot build by Sam Dwyer: Quite amazing to see two 1/32 Liberators on the same table, along with 3 Lysanders! Oddly, the only LSP jet I came across was this one: There was probably an entire table of them somewhere that I missed. The stand-out LSP entry of the show for many of us (including myself), was Les Applebee's amazing conversion of the HK Lancaster to an RAAF Lincoln: Suffice to say that my photo hardly does it justice. More in the next post... Kev

The correct term for that is: SABLE Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectency.

Really looking forward to this build. The Hellcat is my favorite US WW2 subject….and unfortunately we don’t have a modern new tool of this subject. watching with great interest. Cheers Collin

I emailed Heinz, it's true, Jiri did say he might continue with some unfinished projects in a personal way, perhaps for himself? Heinz is visiting Jiri - they're good friends - at the end of July, so will know more then. Sometimes you have to make tough decisions for your own wellbeing.

The issue would be finding a museum good enough for it.

I hope that when they return, they will invest more in Infinity Models, creating more accessible kits for the community.

Getting closer. The D-13 will be first, followed by the D-11. Latest Facebook update from Laminar Flow Design...

So while cleaning up the wings after assembly I've also turned my attention to the engine which needed lots of clean up also but so far so good Pretty happy so far but adding ANYZ connections to the collector ring was a bit stressful drilling however many 0.6 holes through just over a 1mm ring of plastic but slow and steady got there As well as the cylinders with spark plugs in place Also started work on the propeller blades, these are pretty poor with lots of flash abd poor shape around the base but more importantly missing the cuffs. I initially thought I would use some 5thou plastic card for this but decided that would probably be a bit messy so decided to mask up and use a few layers of primer/filler from the spray can and a final coat of Mr Surfacer 1500 Should maybe have done 1 or 2 coats more but I'm happy with the way they look and no glue or anything to clean up. Regards. Andy

The nose landing gear parts are cast metal. The two lower arms had cast stub axles that didn't meet in the middle and were a bit small, so the nose wheel was pretty wobbly in there. I cut off the two stub axles, and drilled out a 1 mm hole to run a 1 mm brass rod through, to serve as a new axle that goes all the way through. But the bore in the nose wheel is 2 mm. So I cut some brass tube to 4 mm lengths, and drilled them out, to slip over the 1 mm axle to give me a 2 mm OD. Now the position of the nose wheel is much better defined and overall things are stronger. Mike

I also took a few snaps of some other things that caught my eye, but there was a lot of stuff I missed, and many great models beyond just these ones. This thing was gigantic! 3D print I believe: Some civil stuff: But the non-LSP highlight of the show for me was this gigantic-scale Back to the Future DeLorean, complete with animated lighting and a superb display: I really should have taken a video of it! Among all the other excitement of the day, the fire alarm went off at one point, and we all had to evacuate the venue, which ended up looking quite surreal from the outside: So there we have it! Good luck to all the entrants with their models in the comp, and hopefully next year I'll be in a position to not only attend more than one day, but also enter something! After all, someone needs to hold down that last place... Highlights: great models, great people, and catching up with the guys from Kotare; Lowlights: the food, and the trip across town. Kev

Allright, finnished a build yesterday First Timer Modelship wich also can be found here in NoN LSP Works section So now continue with the Maritime theme, Modelkit, well picture needs no presentation, got it second hand on eBay, part sealed in bags. Will use AM this time wich i do not do often at all, so this time go all in with AM, all insignias and markings will be painted, also some scratch. Yes....here it is and here goes. First things first reset the workplace. Nice boxart. Some reference books and all AM that ill use. And the build officially have started

Another rare one here. Let’s go swept wings . (And right, no one makes an injection molded kit in 1/32) Tigger made a vacuform kit and I think some effort to make a 3D print is out there somewhere, idk. Anyway, I’m feeling up for a challenge much in the spirit of the Vigilante. Probably no 3D. Possibly rob parts from a 1:32 Thunderjet . I’ll do a take on the plane’s history tomorrow . Isn’t she beautiful though? The plan is to surface model it with epoxy clay. To keep it reasonably light,I’m building a balsa subframe under the epoxy clay. And I’m pretty confident I can final surface it with aluminum tape. I don’t think this is going to be mind blowing in detail, but should still present pretty well much like my Fury.

I've managed to complete painting and applying markings to the airframe, adding the stylized "5" over a white circle and the "2" that shows up on the wing leading edges. In the photos below the leading edge wing panels just outboard of the landing gear are just press fit, so they'll be better integrated once glued into position. Next up will be final assembly, and I realized that I last worked on assembly well over a year ago, so it's nice to bring this one to the finish line. Cheers, Tom

For me it's SABLED: Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy Doubled.

Thank you HPH. I built the La-7 and the Me-410 over the years and really appreciated your efforts.

I raise my glass to all at HPH! Thanks so much for models you made for us!

You know, me too. This project, when finished, will be just over two years duration (my 1/18 Jolly Rogers Corsair was five years!!!). These projects become part of one's life, and when they end, life changes some. Cripes has been a different project in that it has been created basically out of thin air - no existing model in which to build and modify. So a different kind of challenge, and it has really been exciting. So yes, there will be a certain amount of sadness once it's done. It remains to be seen what I will do (or not do) next. I suppose it would be helpful to list what remains to fully complete Cripes A Mighty: Elevators Elevator tabs Rudder Rudder tab Tail gear doors Tail gear door drive links Attach aft fuselage to rest of model Final paint touch-up and flat coat Install main gear and tail gear wheels/tires (already fabricated) Install main landing gear strut fairings and links (already fabricated) Whip antenna and mounting bracket (mounting bracket already fabricated) Exterior mirror on windshield Gun aiming spike on engine cowl Install Malcolm Hood (already fabricated) Pitot mast lower wing Bomb shackles MAYBE 75 gallon tanks plus plumbing So this all will probably take the summer to finish - couple months.

Gotcha. While I like ZM kits a lot, I wish they would not do such specific boxings with only one variante/one decal option. I assume the hope is that buyers will purchase multiple kits this way?

Just received this, an outstanding book on the German 88mm Flak guns.

Very accurate, Tony. I feel the same way. And it's a sure way for the big manufacturers to have no competition. Except if they are in China. Anyway we have already contacted a large American aviation manufacturer and they are at least evaluating the request. That's not to mention the immense politeness with which they have treated us. Javier Povedano Tecnikit

I can understand that. I'm a one man show, too, and sometimes it's a lot to handle, even part-time. I haven't actually built a model of my own for more than 2 years.

Started applying decals.

Actually they are somewhat useful at times. The rest - just trying to be cute. They are scaled pretty well, so gives the viewer another indication of the size of the component in real life. For instance - this post! Last post I showed pictures of hard-fought-for Rhino models of forming blocks for the empennage fillet fairings. They printed up nicely: Now to put them to work. Here I show one of the eleven fairing details sitting on a form block after using it to form and trim the detail. It was exceedingly difficult to form with its two compound curved valleys. Heavy-handed work best done on the form block; not on the model. Add faux fasteners, and it is ready for installation. Here is the first of the eleven details bonded onto the fuselage and empennage: Wahoo!! As you might guess, not an easy forming task either. And then after a couple days of hard work, I got them all finished and installed. I am reasonably satisfied, not absolutely thrilled mind you. I took full advantage of the welded seams defined on the drawing as an excuse for some less-than-perfect butt joints at the severely curved edges (three places). It's the best I could muster methinks. Take a look: The form blocks have done their job, and are now relegated to my ever-increasingly populated bone yard. Those fillet fairings had been on my mind on again and off again for months. One of those things to wring hands over. They were small, tough to handle, and finicky - but they are also done. Actually, as I near the finish line, I do not think any of the remaining tasks are as challenging. The elevators, rudder, and tail gear doors should be more straight forward. And they are next. So stay tuned as we run the last lap or two!

Aaaaand it is finnished. wanted that field worn look on Hermann Graf BF109G-6. and her is my interpret of that.

Getting there. Building up the fuselage one scrap of something at a time.

Main decals going on. National insignias are from Eagle Cals FAA Corsairs set.

Thanks Troy for your message. I’ve been wrapping up the final steps. I sprayed a coat of semi-matte varnish (super important, because MRP’s matte varnish is way too flat, not great for a plane on the European theatre), then used a light grey watercolor pencil to add some wear and tear around the engine cowl, the wing roots, and on the wings. I’ve gotten used to working with a light grey pencil (instead of silver or aluminum) because it just looks more realistic in the end. Once all those little pencil marks were in place, I sealed everything with another layer of semi-matte varnish. I took off the masks on the three canopies and wrapped it all up by making and gluing the pitot tube onto the tip of the left wing.