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Sepp

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Everything posted by Sepp

  1. The P-40 is my dirty little secret.. I love 'em, and your build is fanning the flames I like the panel line/rivet detail, nicely subtle; ditto the chin oil dribble ... next thing on this newbie's how-to list. Chapeau!
  2. Lovely work, and a great subject. Following, for sure!
  3. Very nice work, that - and another for building something out of the ordinary!
  4. Hi, This build is for my dear old Ma, who's dotty about Spitfires. The markings and serial are spurious: JL-C are my son's initials; EP102 was not assigned but falls between blocks allocated to Spit Mk IXs. EP refers to my maternal grandmother's name - Eva Pritchard (and hence the nose inscription) and her birthday was 10 Feb. Mom's not had a good time of things of late - she had the dreaded virus but has thankfully recovered; her long-term partner sadly died a fornight ago. I hope she'll like it. [edited to add: serials and squadron codes masked/sprayed. roundels are Xtradecal, various resin, HGW belts, some scratch.] Where I started: Where I ended up: Build thread is here.Thanks for looking! Sepp
  5. Hello again - last update for this project! I had no need to worry about the Xtradecal roundels - they went on good as gold. The underside roundels perfomed astonishingly well over those pesky blisters: Tail surfaces and cannon added, gear legs and radiator fairings in place, temporary cockpit door removed, machine gun port patches made using 6mm Tamiya tape... nearly there! Exhaust stubs are resin - I'm afraid I don't recall whose; if I find the packaging I'll edit this post to give the credit. [edit: Exhaust stubs are the Quickboost Mk VIII set] Just one thing left that I felt wasn't right OOB... the IFF aerial. Tamiya's etch fret inclues a blank billet-shaped piece, however this pic - admittedly of an aerial fitted to a Mk XVIe - suggests it should be tapered. Right or wrong, I prefer the tapered look so that's what Eva is having! In the pic below, Tamiya's offering is part (10) on the left. On the right is QuickBoost's 1/32 A4 Skyhawk antenna set... that left-hand one looks pretty close to the right size to me and with that, the prop, the pitot tube, canopy, HF mast and Barracuda cockpit door in place .... finished. I've really enjoyed this build and I'm going to be buying more Tamiya Spitfires, that's for sure. RFI post is here; thanks for looking and for the support and advice! Sepp, out.
  6. Well, that makes the choice rather easier!
  7. Thanks for the reply! According to the infallible wiki, Netherlands operated them until 1953 so it'd be a later iteration I'd be interested in rather than from the FAA days. I see that in fact Peru operated U4s (my mistake - looks like I'll have to get one of those, too) so in the absence of any pix of one in MLD service, El Salvador or Uruguay (1954-75) it might yet be
  8. Hi all, I've just ordered a Tamiya F4U-1D and would like to do something different to the usual US Navy, Marines or FAA schemes. Looking at Wiki ( which is never, ever wrong ) it appears that the Dutch and Peruvian Navies operated the type - but I can't find a single picture of one in service with either - maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, or not trying hard enough. Can anyone help with pictures, profiles and/or publications? Cheers, Sepp
  9. That is an awesome result - you know someone's onto something when it still looks superb when zoomed right in Very, very, nice, Sir!
  10. Thanks for the support, Joachim and also for the link... I'll have a good read tomorrow. I'd like to use decals on this one but I must admit, mask and spray is looking very tempting. Never thought I'd say that, lol.
  11. Very nice rendering of a great subject. I love it.
  12. Weekend update: Masks for the squadron and aircraft codes on. The round mask is a spacer; the shape and cutout helped place it so the eventual roundel would be (approxmately!) in the right place relative to the hatch... then the other side was placed by eye. When the wraps came off, success! Happy days. Time for the upper surface stencils. Uh-oh! Multiple failures... and my fault entirely. These things need 6 to 8 hours to set up - any less, you risk them breaking up when you remove the carrier sheet; any more, they seem to re-adhere to the sheet. Saturday was a lovely day and I enjoyed it to the full in the garden... and completley lost track of the time. 10 hours later... aagh! Transfers! Not pretty. Fortunately, HGW include an alternative length strip for the stbd wing, so I cut that up to fill in the four corners and the last half-inch or so from the trailing edge, and filled the other scuffs with a very fine brush and Vallejo ModelAir black out of the bottle. I cut the "board" part off an unused "outboard" transfer and laid it over the original and the same with the "walk" part of "walkway". [Cue: seven hours of interval muzak.] Success! The O and R still didn't entirely work, so I touched them up with the aforementioned small brush. Now, if we could all ignore the fact that the both the "walkway inboard" stencils ought to be the other way up, that'd be great! I won't tell anyone if you don't. Anyway, overall, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Next: national markings. I'll be using Xtradecals for this; upper surface and fuselage ought to pose no problem but I'm slightly concerned that the lower surface roundels don't make any allowance for the blisters they'll have to sit over. Before I begin, any comments/advice? All for now, thanks for looking, Sepp.
  13. Great work - looking forward to more!
  14. Thank you! All the kind comments from modellers whose work I greatly admire are a huge encouragement... I hope you feel the same once the decals are on!
  15. Oooh, that is lovely! Welcome to the forums - you really know how to make an entrance
  16. Me again! The weather here has been lovely over the past couple of days, so I've been taking full advantage of that and neglecting my duties here - nevertheless, I have made two small steps forward: Underside stencils on. All HGW wet transfers. When they work, they're the absolute dog's doodahs and sink beautifully into the detail - do watch out for typos though! HGW recommend Mr. Mark setter, but I've used MicroSol and MicroSet with no issue whatsoever. Theoretically, you don't need to gloss first but after some experimentation it seems to me that any residual carrier/gum that refuses to wipe away just disappears on a gloss finish. Frankly, the carrier film itself is so thin that if you were to miss removing it, provided it wasn't creased, I wouldn't be surprised if it were to also disappear under a top varnish coat. Serials and inscription on. I went for a white inscription rather than the orginally intended yellow. I haven't yet decided if that was a mistake... The weather looks set to cool off a bit over the weekend so hopefully more progress can be made. Next up: squadron codes, then upper surface stencils. Cheers! Sepp
  17. Beautiful work! Love the teddy bear
  18. Hurricane would be nice - plenty of examples to use as reference, too - for me, preferably a IIc or d. Beaufighter would also be nice, but I'd need a bigger house to display it! A Hunter would also certainly work for me. Revell's offering is now long in the tooth, Tamiya would do it justice and there'd be a host of possible marking schemes, too. Westland Whirlwind would be lovely but there's no reference airframe - plus it's probably too niche for them. I'd also love to see Tamiya do a 1/32 Sea Fury. I would pay good money for that! Whatever the subject, it'd be nice to have poseable ailerons, elevators and rudder - but please, please, please, no more vinyl tyres or swappable undercarriage!
  19. Ahoy! Another small step: gun heater ducts. Don't get excited, they're quite agricultural but hidden up the back of the radiator fairings, they'll look OK; better than nothing, anyway.. The rough idea: Thin sprue, styrene sheet and the body made from a cut-up popsicle stick. The bodies have a flat face and a curved face to (loosely) follow the shape of the radiator trough skin. And in place, after sanding the styrene flanges to a more reasonable shape, and the application of Mr. Surfacer and some paint etc.: As we know, the kit's radiator troughs are a bit shallow. I didn't quite manage to terminate the ducts within the wing body and still have some space between the top of the ducts and the trough skin - but it's really close... I reckon next time, with more careful placement, I can do it - you can see that the flanges don't quite sit at the extreme edge of the radiator body - that nought-point-something mm would make the difference. Anyway, it now "is what it is", as the sayng goes. Other progress: Day fighter band is on and masks drawn ready for serials, codes and nose inscription to go on. The round masks are just spacers; all national markings will be decals. More later! Sepp
  20. Two small steps forward: Firstly (and it really is a tiny step!), the red ball now has a home behind the canopy handle: These pics show better than the previous one that the ball really is nicely spherical. The ball ought to attach to wires that run round the outside of the canopy though various tube sections to just in front of the triangular fillet at the rear. I may, or may not, add them as (1) the smallest tube I have is 0.3mm, which looks very oversize and (2) I don't want to risk getting adhesive on the transparency and ruining it. I've left a short wire tail on the ball that runs up to the transparency just in case... we shall see. Secondly and finally, all bagged up for a white coat on the leading edges before the yellow goes on: and out from under the wraps: There's just these three very small patches to touch up where the paint came away with the Tamiya flexible tape, but nothing soul destroyingly bad: Next up: day fighter band, then serials. That is all, Sepp.
  21. I've been working away at this on and off since the last post, so time for an update... The gear legs have had some attention. I started by making the precharge safety rod thingies from 0.3mm tube threaded through 0.5mm tube fastenings, and opened up the holes in the uplocks Drilled out holes to receive the end of the brake pipe behind the hubs, joined the legs and gear doors, and after some paint and bmf for the oleo made the main part of the brake lines from 0.4mm tube through 0.6mm tube for the fitings, and tamiya tape for the straps. Added 0.4mm lead solder for the flexible lower part of the brake pipes, and after some paint we have this: To avoid endlessly knocking them off, I'll add the upper flexible hose just prior to fitting the legs to the wings. None of this is in any way accurate, but it's better than nothing or the kit's rubber parts! The prop and spinner have been painted, gloss coated and decaled. I used HGW's wet transfers - I love the system, but they have some issues with registration. The ones I used on my P-51 were perfect, but the second set of those I bought were hopelessly out of register. These are a little better, but still required some careful touching up with a small brush to hide the white backing. Some random white and blue ... bits, for want of a better word ... transferred from the backing sheet. Very odd. They were eventually edited out, too - I noticed after I took the pic that I'd missed one (right hand blade, next to the white decal). The hub can stay black as the spinner won't be removable. Some of the spinner decals broke up - if you use these wet transfers, wait patiently for the decals to separate from the backing. If you attempt to coax them, they'll break up or come away from the transfer film. It was no problem to touch up the affected ones using a small brush. Then it was on to proper, actual painting! Underside first - not shown, it's grey. What can one say about that? Then dark grey upper and roughly masked with film and Blutak sausages along the edges. My first go at attempting a feathered edge. And after the dark green: There's some overspay, some patches that are fuzzier than I'd like, and some harder edges than I'd like... still, a good learning experience and I think I'll be able to pull the errant bits back into line. I'm gong to let it cure for a while then look at restoring the bits that didn't work. Then I'll leave it a day or two before giving everything a gloss coat and starting on the yellow leading edges. It's slowly starting to come together! All for now! Sepp
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