red Dog

I'm sorry I can't help but find this funny Is that why Marines are so tough? I mean, most of us would have used a wheeled cart but not the marines I'll take a seat and follow this one, I always wanted to do a 1/32 Harrier.

Vey impressive diorama work !! It's going to be awesome seeing that B-25 on such a great base. Can't wait

Decals are on. First step was to carefully cut and align the noseart mask on the nose: then paint white And apply the decals. The large noseart decals are very thin (on purpose) and very fragile. So I didn't have the luxury to move them a lot. They were also very sticky and I was very concerned I might tear them while moving. So I decided to live with the small bits of white outline I have left. I will correct that later one with a bit of paint touch ups. There is no doubt that the white background mask was critical. The decals were indeed very transparent and wouldn't have stand so good on the semi matt aluminium without the white background. To some extend you can see what would have happened with the small Brown patch. The decals are dark colours but still don't stand enough of the airframe colour. The noseart being light colours would have been much worse The tail decals were much easier to place:

Pleasure Chuck, Testing some variation of metal colour on the wings. Alclad aluminium for the leading edge (except the leading edge in primer which seems to be a 2016 feature of Maid in the shade (that's probably going to be repainted soon on the real one but I love the spot of color it gives the aircraft I also made some tests about which varnish to use before the decals. I never tried the Gloss cote from alclad and I wanted to but was concerned a bit with the subtle oïl wash I'd give after decals. Usually I always ensure that the gloss coat is opposite to the wash (if wash is oil, gloss is water based) So I tested on the inner flaps and when I apply wash (tamiya panel line accent - which I'm trying for the first time too thanks to Chuck and his "Kicked Up a Notch serie - over the alclad gloss coat, you can clearly see that the wash diluted the varnish and a gloss/flat difference clearly appears. I think I'll revert to the old known X22 for basic pre decal gloss coat.

Thanks guys Jim, I use a Brother DCP-J4110DW and Experct choice decal paper. More than the printer, I'd think the qality of the blank decal sheet is important

Thank you Kev, the decals are always an interesting part of a model. Obviously this project will require homemade decals. I usually printed my decals at work on a laser printer. Unfortunately that old laser printer has been retired from service. I thus turned to inkjet printing on the home printer. I was a little bit concerned about inkjet being as good in quality as laser, but i'd give it a try anyway. First step was to source a few sheets of inkjet decal paper from expert choice decals. The artowrk were redone as well. Maid in the shade recently had the pinups repainted. My original artwork used the old pinup design. Since I'll do the 2016 version of maid in the shade I needed to change a few things. The first step after completion of the artwork design is to print the declas on plain white paper and check dimension and fitting on the model: Once satisfied with the dimensions, I then tape a piece of transparent inkjet decal on a paper sheet and print the decals I'm pretty glad with how this turned out. The inkjet result is pretty good and much more vivid than on the white paper. Matter of fact, this may be much better than the results I had before on the laserprinter. The problem with homemade decals is that some light colours might not be opaque enough to cover the sometime dark paint on the model. In this case, the aluminium is light but I'm a bit concerned about having a dull pinup color if I simply put the decal on the model. To give the decals more brightness I decided to create a mask so I could paint the background of the artwork on the fuselage in white before applying the decal: I created a contour mask and printed on a blank sheet of kabuki paper. I'll just need to cut the mask and use the black vertical and horizontal lines to align the mask on the model, and paint a thin white layer as background: As you see, I had to cheat a bit by rounding the contour of Corsica to make the cutting a bit easier

Very nice project !!

In the meantime I also worked a bit on the nose section: The Eduard ammo boxes were cut shorter - it's actually very easy to make them lower as the usual ammo boxes by simply snapping both top side off. Two of them were left opened with Remove before flight tags and an unsecured bottle (not a good idea I'd guess) And some details;

Some progress on the Maid. I always wondered if it would be easier to paint positive or negative masking. So after trying one way on the wing stars and bars, I decided to try the other method on the fuselage: Started with positionning the stencils the big one and sprayed white. After dry I placed the whole stencil back on, held together with a few stripes of tamiya masking tape. Then removed the stencils where blue paint would be needed Then sprayed blue and replaced the whole stencils again. and finally the outer mask can be removed and fuselage colours can be painted again. In this case Mr surfacer followed with Alclad semi matte aluminium Which one is easier then ? Well the ones on the wings were easier. Painting the stencils on the fuselage colours saves a few masking steps I was mainly concerned with a dark fuselage colour being under the stencils where white was needed, but painting the stencils before the fuselage colour is probably too much hassle covering the freshly painted stencil. Sorry if this sounded obvious from the start, Since this is my first try with stencils, I wanted to try it out and see for myself

some minor detailling of the gun pods: The fuselage is ready for priming, ailerons and rudder flight are already painted with dull aluminium for fabric covered surfaces, the tabs are aluminium and contrast heavily with the flat parts. The parts inside the wings when the aircrfat is clean are painted dark grey The flaps which are metal are painted semi matt aluminium, like the rest of the aircraft

Lovely There are at least two guys on the planet doing the same model and being at the same progress point priming with Mr Surfacer Great work, looking forward for the rest

Thanks guys I initially planned to place the printed Circuit Board (PCB) on top of the bomb bay but unfortunately the ceiling clearance is just too short. I had to trick the rear of the bomb bay with a false compartment and slide the PCB in there. Checking the lights before closing the fuselage. Two wires go out of the fuselage to the wings. To ensure the clearance for these wires I dug into the fuselage and bomb bay walls. The wires will go through the sliding mechanism of the wings. That will let me disconnect the wires should I need to disassemble the wings from the fuselage The tail connects as well for the left top tail light. Both Anti collision red lights flash in opposition, the rest of the flights are flood lights and remain steady. There are two in the rear compartment, one in the bomb bay, one in the front compartment and provisions for one in the nose compartment. The wire providing power to the PCB are routed to the nose gear bay and will go down along the nose gear leg and into the Wheel into the base of the model. Seats were added into the rear compartement of Maid in the shade. The cabin were modified to transport passengers during airshow rides. I took a bit of artistic licence in the rear compartment seat positionning. The cabin will not be highly visible anyway. The .50 mechanism was quickly detailled nevertheless Front compartment was also detailled. the top turret support will not be installed and instead two passengers seats were added on the rear bulkhead Seats are scratchbuilt and I used the eduard coloured seatbelts kits. They are far from easy to work with. They feel very unnatural because you can't really bend them naturally. If you do, the paint layer might actually pop from the PE. In some cases, if you follow instructions you must bend a part at 180° to insert a buckle and doing so you will inevitably destroy the coloured layer. Probably the last time I use these, they were included in the Big ed set but honestly, they are not Worth using. A simple painted lead sheet and cut to size with PE buckles give much better resin than full PE coloured seatbelts. I heard a lot of good about the HGW fabric seatbelts but I never had an opportunity to test them yet. The scratched floor in the rear compartement might create fitting issues when closing the fuselage so I added some guides to ensure it was moving above the internal support. In dryfit attempts, the floor got stuck under the support creating a gap at the fuselage joint. I had a bit of trouble with the Terry Dean noseweights. The longer waits naturally goes on the side opposite the inexistant passage to the nose. As the cockpit floor was glued on the other side, care was taken to ensure the weight didn't conflict with it. So I had to angle it a bit to ensure I didn't create fitting issues. I couldn't really sort the shorter weight position. the cut and the curves didn't get me a natural position so I ended up improvising. I put some spacers from the left wall so the noseweight wasn't too visible from the nose. As I didn't build the passageway, I didn't want the nose weight to be fully aligned with the large hole visible from the nose. I don't want these weight to move so I glued them firmly in place, and made sure the glue was well dried before closing the fuselage to ensure liquid glue wouldn't soften the plastic. I ended up with a bit of an awkward position with the noseweights, but who cares, nobody will know Don't mind the tail;, a wire makes it unbalanced. It's a milestone in this build. With the fuselage finally closed, the model finally could be assembled. That's were you realise this beast is huge!! Thanks for looking, Progress should now be faster

Progress has been very slow lately but the B-25 is still on my bench and some progress have been done. The biggest challenge after modifying to carb intake was to close the fuselage halves. With all the stuff I added inside, and especially the wires and the PCB and the added rear compartment floor which is missing from the kit, I needed to ensure that all was working and fitting fine before closing the fuselage. Anyway, before taking on that challenge, I wanted to do some real modelism and worked on assembling and painting the wings and the engine pods. The trick was to decide where to go with the prop motor wires. I could go through the wings to the fuselage inetrnal or go through the main gear legs. I decided to externalize the engine controls into the base of the model. So each wires from the engine are going to go through the main gear leg and tyre into the base. The wires replace kit parts J21/22 & J17/18. They enter the wheel, go around the axis and descent through the tyre into the ground where they will go through the base of the model. The pods fit fine on the wing and no putty was really necessary. Just a bit of sanding at the rear of the pod where it meets the top of the wing. the cowls were a bit more delicate to assemble, but that's mostly due to the motors fitting in there. Inside the wings I wired the landing light and the position light (using scratchbuild fiberoptics). These wires will go through the fuselage to the PCB placed behind the bomb bay. The wings were primed with Mr Surfacer 1000 and then sprayed straight with ALCLAD semi-matt aluminium. Maid in the shade aluminium doesn't really shine. The alclad reacted fine on Mr Surfacer. The US national insigna were painted with the maketar masks which I used for the first time. I used the Kabuki version and they gave me plenty of satisfaction. It took a lot of time but enyoyable time doing paintwork which is by far more enjoyable than soldering wires for the led No issue at all with kabuki on the alclad. Semi-matt aluminium is pretty solid. Mask and flat white paint Mask and then blue (H326) paint Final result on both wings Both wing are now completed and I can get some work on these two fuselage halves....

Any one got a pix of the Terry Dean nose weight installed in the B-25J I'm scratching my head to see how it is intended to be glued? Thanks

Great choice of colours. It beats the black by far IMHO

If your goal was to inspire back other modelers, you succeeded. Great collection over 3 years Thanks

What a display of courage!! Nice build I am following with interest

Yep. well I usually order in Us based shops just before coming to the US for my annual business trip in June. So I'll make sure I add this on my Us shopping list Thank you all for your valuable input

Yep I will, I definitely need such tools. Too bad it's not widely available. It seems you can get it only by UMM?

hehe, problem here is that the blades will rotate with a small motor. When I test dry, the blades fly all over the model room :)

thanks Jerry, I had the propmaster in the back of my mind but honestly I'd like to glue them next week-end so it's too late to order Bill, that's very clever and thanks for the angle Many thanks for posting that picture.

Hello gents, Any advice to avoid screwing up resin prop? I'm looking at 2 B-25 AMS resin propellers and I'm a little bit concerned about screwing up the angles when attaching the resin propeller on their hub. I already put some pins in the prop and bore matching hole in the hub to have a good contact between them. What bothers me is to find the correct angle and keep it constant from one blade to another. How do you guys cope with that? Thanks for any advice you may have

Not something we often see Thanks for posting the picture, they are inspiring

Very Neat 104 I like the subtle difference in green from the aircraft to the wing tanks.

Very nice indeed. Love the seats and the attention to detail