AEROPOXY

1/48 , thanx.

Ikarus IK-2 + Rogožarski IK-3 - 1/48 AEROPOXY Old, early 2000's resin kits, out of production for a while. Quick build from stash. Both kits, IK-2 and IK-3 are out of production for a while, but just work on new remastered and retooled IK2 / IK-3 , using latest published research and data, printed in Kagero books, Thanx for looking.

Thank you chaps, And yes, Ken, its free for publishing, RGDS

Well, at the end, must explain, why not follow the LUKGRAPH painting and decalling instructions , and chose yellow top wing scheme. First, its more colorful , and to me, represents 1930's Naval aviation "standard". So, i do little research and found , that 7738 , from CV-2, USS Lexington, 1931/32, have few paint scheme incarnations , after some overhauls, and in part of its service life, have yellow topsides, clearly shown at this photo, where wing topside is darker than silver undersides. 7738 photos found at Papermodels forum, explaining source of these pics. Also , was puzzled with paint description given by Lukgraph, Admiral blue ; Silver and Light Gray , generic, but not enough for me. Found this Esoteric 1/72 scale vacuform Boeing F3B-1 kit instructions, and Colorslide decals , where exact FS is given and paints stated as: Orange Yellow FS 13538 ANA 506 Gray FS 16473 ANA 512 Strata Blue FS 15045 Using color conversion charts, closest paints i have in my stock are Revell 310 Lufthansa Yellow, Revell 350 Lufthansa Blue and Humbrol 175. With some scale effect blending , hope this is real representation of Boeing F3B-1 from USS Lexington.

Boeing F3B-1 Command Aircraft by LUKGRAPH bought at 2019. Moson model show , at LUKGRAPH stand , waited till Jan.2020 to start work on it , Overall, nicely enginered , well casted and finely detailed , one of easiest to build resin kits i work on, and i build it a lot , to mention just few labels , Preiser, MDC/RB, HPH, Legato, Fisher, Omega, Planet, NKR, Montex ... Not counting my own, Aeropoxy range kits... (they are out of contention) :-( Starting by the book, nice illustrated 16 pages A4 instruction. Cleaning and assembling, Cockpit, Fuselage, Engine, Subassemblies, Priming with Mr Surfacer, Wings, tail, struts, with copper wire made anchors for bracing , drilled and glued, and painting, Silver, Yellow, Revell 310 Gray, Humbrol 175 (now discontinued , use any Hellgrau 76) Blue, Revell 350 Windscreen, 0.1mm thin clear acetate foil, cuted using provided template and glued to the etched frame with MrColor gloss lacquer. Decalling , over Humbrol Clear gloss varnished surfaces , Somehow, i do not take pics of rigging process, (which take whole sunday afternoon) but this is done in usual way, using 0,2mm fishing line, and microtubing as a turnbuckles, drops of superglue and later spanned with hot screwdriver tip. After decalling, started with final lacquer coats to gain high gloss finish, using recomended MrCollor GX100 ... what a disaster... Dark blue instantly became light gray and dust white..., Almost a month of work , instead of RFI topic, was candidate for RFTB , Ready for trash bin... But, after overnight drying, old, trusty Revell 01 gloss and Humbrol Clear brings salvation. Almost all the traces of dust removed , just few spots i must to overspray with Revell 350. After a subtle wash and weathering, Boeing Command Aircraft was ready for inspection, here:

WIP here: Thanx for looking,

Same weird logic of cutting have my Graphtec CraftRobo cutter, sometimes function "COMBINE" in Corel X4 helps to reduce randomly rolling and cutting here and there, sometimes not. After 5+ years of use, i still not have answer to this question. If someone have the answer , will gladly read it and learn something new.

Retooled and reboxed,

Thanx for the nice words, to all. Yes, full interior completed, despite more than a half will never be seen again. But i know what's inside... Wings, i do it separate, see the photo attached, connected with four 2,5mm steel wire pins. Canopy was made by instructions , and real plane wartime photos , no changes. Squaring wings and tail is troublesome , but in few dry fitting and adjusting steps , looks OK. Fuselage was little warped, but its thin, and with all the inner rib structure , fits more or less OK, need some superglue as a filer in some places. I love Walruses , build Airfix an Matchbox in 72, SMER in 50 and looking for new Airfix in 48. Uggly plane, but story behind its name is great. And, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

WALRUS build finished in march 2017. but not posted at LSP, till now ,

Thanx for all the nice comments , i do my best to complete this Helldiver as such kit and subject deserves. In past few years i build few HPH kits and some other Large scale resin kits, and have no problem to build any of them with some basic modelling tools and techniques. Last two HPH kits i buid were Walrus and Helldiver, and both are built in some 6-7 months of work. Both are well engineered, perfectly casted, accurate and detailed , for kit produced in resin. Decals are good, in fact, pretty good for this Helldiver, with just Microscale decal set and coat of Pronto (Future) they copy all the tinny engravings and rivet lines. My main problem is photo etched set, i do not like it , its generally ( for any kit) too 2 dimensional for my taste. And Helldiver flaps assembly, drain last drop of modelling energy from me , i do not even want to remember how many times i leave this subasembly aside and leave it for a week or two , doing other less demanding builds , to cool down. I could recommend this kit , its not easy to build , it will take lot of time for parts cleaning and preparing for build , but main airframe build is pretty straightforward. Be prepared for lot of research as instructions is confuse in some parts, and some parts are skipped , i have few unidentified parts left , despite i checked all the steps of assembly instructions . But once you go to the painting and decalling, all the work pay's off, i do this in just three days, in 3-4 hrs sessions each day. And at the end , frustrating flaps build is main focus point on this kit, and this structure could not be build in any other way than photo etching. So, any one with lots of time, nerves and some money , should not hesitate to try this Helldiver build. Thanx again,

WIP here:

Bombs and HVAR's assembled, HVAR fins replaced with 0.5mm thinn styrene sheet parts. And now, beatifuly casted canopy parts, removed from casting blocks, sanded and polished, and masked , inside and out, Primed with interior green and glued to fuselage, central canopy part was wrapped, so, need to be glued one side first, and after glue sets , with gentle "push" glued on other side, and, its spray time ... first, pre-shading then rest of paint scheme, applied, and decals glued, and, after 6 months , with stop and go work on this Czech produced HPH Helldiver , i could sat and relax with best Czech beer , KRUŠOVICE. Pics of assembled model, will be within a hour in Ready for inspection topic... here:

Its time to finish this story, model contests are over,for this summer, in meantime i finished all the illustrations, technical drawings, color profiles and text for Rogožarski IK-3 book , published by KAGERO , week ago, http://sklep.kagero.pl/en/rogozarski-ik-3.html And was finally free to complete work on Helldiver, in past 2-3 weeks. After few try and fail attempts to made wings removable, which never looks good, i quit and glue it , and make living easier to me, and work on Helldiver continues . Then goes tailplane assembled and glued, Engine compartment, needs some trimming to fit well, Engine+cowling and PE cooling flaps superglued, Position and signal lights, glued, sanded, polished and framed with PE parts.

Do some airbrushing mask for blue painted markings and PA-11 style paintwork, and print decals on my home laser , and clear decal film, and after painting and decaling, fuselage "coupling" tubular structure was made , from rounded styrene profiles. and Wagner Twin Piper , or Piper Bomber, is finished, more photos , RFI here: https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?showtopic=75401