Sepp

Cheers! I'd love a Kettenkrad - maybe next year

You did!

Back again. I forgot to add in the above post re. the engine: the dynamo, which sits on the front of the engine received some work, too. The kit's offering is a single lump, but it should have a separate cap secured with two screws - duly scribed and Archered. I've not painted the cap yet, as I still don't know what scheme it'll wear. Part 2 - the frame. Before getting stuck in, it is perhaps worth repeating what others have said about this kit - namely, the plastic does not respond at all to Tamiya thin or extra thin cement, and MEK seems to frighten it into a literal jelly. "Normal" Tamiya cement, though, works fine. Be prepared to spend a lot of time removing parting lines, too. And so... Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear... There appear to have been two teams working on the tooling for this kit, with two distinctly different ideas of what the it should look like. The outer parts of the rear rack are moulded to the support legs; I've removed them as it will be much easier to address the poor fit of the centre part "off the bike". The legs seem to differ in height by around 0.5mm, too, so there will have to be some fettling when the rack and mudguard go on. At least, despite the flaws, the frame sits reasonably square. The kit would have you mount the engine before painting, but this would obviously not be ideal, so the first job was to remove the forward mounting bar, drill the frame and replace with slide fit tubing. Much care required here, as there's not much material left once the holes are cut. Then it was just a case of sand and fill, sand and sand again. Getting there... The four white filled slots are where the kit would like you to locate the fuel tank - they don't exist on the real bike, so they're gone. I don't think the people who were responsible for the throttle quadrant had ever seen the drawings for the frame. A lot of reshaping required to get the majority of the body to fit, then a lump of filler to shape the rear end. Eventually, I was happy with the plastic surgery, and whaddya know, the engine actually fits. Phew. The white dot rectifies another oddity; the left side of the kit frame has a hole through which various wires pass. No such hole exists on the left side of the KS750, but does on the 600 - which makes me think again that there was some confusion between the two - understandable, they're very similar - and I've come across quite a few pics online that are mis-labelled. Photos exist that show the welds on the upper forward part of the frame and the frame legs to vary from agricultural to completely ground away, so after much rumination I've decided not to add them*. Whoever owns this bike has taken more care than was felt necessary in WWII. And so to the fuel tank. The kit would have you build it with the hinge on the left: which I duly did. If you could kindly ignore the fact that the hinge should have five leaves, not three, that would be great: only to discover - or rather notice - that in just about every pic online, the hinge is on the right, e.g.: So, with a fresh blade, I removed the button/knob/cap and hinge as carefully as I was able, and swapped 'em over: You know what's coming, don't you. Yes, that's right. While looking for something else... At least there seem to be a mahoosive number of different combinations of features on these bikes. It seems that no two are completely identical in layout. Ah, well. Lastly for this update, another 'wut'. The joint between the two hinged parts of the rear mudguard is depicted with a raised panel line.... in 1/9 scale? Really? Scriber out again. The two required wingnut fasteners are not included in the kit, so will be added. Again, lots of sanding to remove extraneous surface blemishes. That's all for now - there will be a short interlude while I go and gently coax parting lines off 120 spokes and try to get eight rim halves to fit seamlessly. Joy. Thanks for looking, Sepp, out. *At least, I think I have. You know how it goes....

Ahoy! Apologies for the delayed update - seasonal flu wiped me out for a while. Part one - the engine. Not a lot to say about this other than it serves as a metaphor for the entire kit - some details are really well done, others are... wut?! The parts as provided generally fit OK - the exception being the clutch lever which is too short, too big at the base and generally a poor rerpresentation of the real thing. I considered entirely re-working it but decided it won't be very visible, so it could just be tarted up. I forgot to take a pic of the engine before making the various mods, but these pics 1 2 from a build on Small Tracks give a good idea of what the kit offers. Note the inlet tubes end in a blind lump - it should have a bolt top and bottom, so some carving was required here. This part of the engine is in the "wut" category, as it looks nothing like the real thing. The spark plug leads are a mystery, too - in just about every pic I'd seen of a KS750, the leads enter the block just forward of the inlet tubes (note how short they are, compared to the kit's rendition). I was beginning to wonder if the designers mixed up the KS600 engine with the 750 when working the kit up (first pic 750, second 600) when I found this pic, which is pretty much the only one that shows the plug lead behaving per the kit. Oh well, I moved them anyway. Another oddity is the top cover, which protects the magneto ignition unit and carburettor. The real thing is split down the middle and should feature variously two, four or six ventilation slots on each side; the kit's is a blank, single piece - forgivable, but I wish I'd spotted the omitted slots before I'd glued it in place. The kit includes the magneto unit but not the carb - an odd choice as the mag is completely obscured by the cover, and is thus redundant; otoh, omitting the carb means you'd need to do a LOT of work if you wanted to display the model with the cover opened or removed. The cover also ought to have lettering (START - BETRIEB) moulded in next to the rich start selector (the paddle on the top of the cover) The KS750 air filter on the back of the engine is either the pan type included in the kit or, for dusty conditions, a nifty three-can vortex filter (first pic). Sadly, the latter is not included in the kit, so more work is required if you want to depict an Afrika Korps etc. machine. Where I am now: I've carved the inlet tubes to look more sensible and added rubber boots over the joint (appropriately sized heat-shrink tube, glued on), added various missing nuts, studs and/or bolts to the crank case, cylinder heads, inlet tubes and clutch lever, moved the plug lead entry points, added the spring to the cluch lever, added the gearbox dipstick cap (red thing on the right side), added the missing retaining lip to the battery shelf, and replaced the moulded battery strap with lead foil. It is currently my intention to replace the kit's vinyl tubing with lead wire or similar, which is what I've used for the battery earth lead, plus heat shrink for the terminator. On most pics, the earth connection is made to the top bolt on the crank case joint. I did find one pic where the connection is made as depicted in the kit, so went with that to save a lot of messing around. Every time I think I'm done, I notice something else to add - there ought to be a grease nipple between the studs on top of the kick start unit (behind the battery), and I need to open the fuel line entry point (blank U-shaped bit on the right side of the top cover). Incidentally - the kit includes the fuel tap, but omits the line entirely. A final engine oddity: if you refer to the box art - which apparently depicts a finished kit - you'll see a large red wing/butterfly nut, which is the oil filler cap. This feature is not included; you get a plain hex bolt - on my kit, it was badly mis-shapen, so I've replaced it with a cap concocted from scrap. I have some wing nuts on order; if one looks suitable, I'll change it. Time for a spot of lunch, then part 2 - the frame. Sepp, out.

The 'missing' bit of the right-hand hood rail is part of the right-hand cockpit wall/door/hatch insert, which you will encounter in step 24

Right enough procrastination - I mean research - time to start... and after about 0.5 seconds, out-the-box went out-the-window. First up is this sorry object, which purports to be the sidecar footwell planking: and ought to look like this: Using some lime wood strip and thin plasticard, I came up with something inbetween the two. The slats are closer together than they should be as I'm not sure how much room there will be in front of the seat base when I slip it in once the sidecar is assembled. If there's more room than I have anticipated, I'll revisit, and open up the slats. I still haven't decided what colour(s) this will end up, but while looking around I came upon this build by Michael Benolkin on Cybermodeler which I thought interesting, so it will either be an alt history post-war Breton military bike or a modern civvy restoration - either way, it'll need an "open" headlight. Hooray: the kit includes rims for both covered and uncovered lights. Boo: it doesn't include a reflector shell, so you're left with this: which is not much help. Fortunately, I recently bought a Kotare Spit which includes two spinners. These have a nice socket at the tip, which will do for a bulb holder: After scraping out the mahoosive ejector marks (no insult to Kotare, no reason to be subtle inside the spinner) and some rounded off clear sprue (coloured to represent the selective yellow bulbs used in France until the '70s): It's not wonderful, but behind the lens it won't look too bad on the shelf. Small start, but that's all for now - next: engine and frame. Sepp

This build is bonkers, but brilliant

To clear the palette between aircraft, I'm going to have a go at Italeri's [edit: or rather, Italeri's re-pop of ESCI's] ancient KS750 kit. I last made one of these when I was about 14; I recall poorly fitting parts, wobbly wheels and a host of other horrors, including awful vinyl parts and hoses. How much of that was my lack of skill will shortly become apparent.... Obligatory box shot: I haven't yet decided whether to follow one of the included schemes (which are quite nice), do another wartime machine, or add it to my what if/alt history collection - but I'm intending to build it mainly OOB... we'll see how long that lasts More shortly. Sepp.

Mind bogglingly good, this is

My paternal ancestors were Breton, and Paramé nr. St. Malo is my spiritual home (also my actual home for five years, back in the late 80s/early 90s). As anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm a massive francophile Once again, excellent job on the gear bay and leg!

Superb - I love it!

As promised, RFI is now here.

Ahoy! As promised, now the New Year is out of the way and my new, improved, backdrop has arrived, a slightly worn what-if/alt hist Hurricane of 390 (Breton) Sqn RAF, some time around the 1941 markings Order change: Build thread is here. Thanks - again - for looking, and all the encouragement. Sepp, out.

Looks like I'm gonna have to learn figure painting and diorama construction. I'd prefer an H-4, but hey ho.

That seat is phenomenal. Chapeau!

Me again. Recalling this minor hiccup: If it helps anyone, I first very lightly sanded round the edge with 6000grit cloth, then gave it a soak in warm water followed by a good dose of MicroSol. The offending item then lifted off good as gold. Replacement went on nicely - better than the first go, thankfully. After a satin coat, I gave it my first go at battering-up a subject - bear in mind I'm still in "learn as you go" mode; some things worked, some didn't. Wear and tear was Uschi silver metallizer, aplied as dry as I could get it with a cocktail stick. Not-quite-worn-through paint was metallizer applied very dry with a micro cotton bud. You can tell I started on the left wing - much too heavy-handed; by the time I reached the right wing-tip, I was very much more comfortable with the process. After that, and faaaar too much oil/dirt streaking on the underside, I added more filth and exhaust staining with pastels. Pictures suggest that muzzle staining didn't extend much beyond the tape patches, so I didn't add any (btw, inner patches are Tamiya tape, outer ones are papier maché made from newspaper and white glue, formed over the parts from my other Hurricane). I should've left the cartridge chutes alone, too, but by that stage I was... enthusiastic. Lesson learned: less is more. I've seen people write that when you get to the stage of thinking "just one more...", stop, walk away, and revisit later. This is good advice. I originally intended the kit to have the HF aerial, but the kit depicts the stub seen on VHF-equipped aircraft. I made the taller spring retainer/mast from flattened Albion tube pinned into the top of the rudder, once the stub was cut off. I then changed my mind, so no wire, but she retains the "old" HF mast. After that, it was just a case of adding the various flying surfaces, gear and fwd mast. Funny how one moment you have a pile of disparate bits, and the next - done. The three handles on the canopy (one ext, two int) were made from Albion brass rod. Exhausts were coloured using pastels with the stub ends highlighted with HB pencil. I'm glad to be finished with this one. Not my best work, but a valuable learing experience. The kit and I fought each other from day one - it's a perfectly reasonable product, but it has its foibles and I need to exercise more patience. Anyway - at least I finished it in the same year I started Proper RFI pix to follow, once the merriment has subsided. Thanks for all the encouragement and for stopping by; I hope all have a very happy New Year, and a productive and satisfying 2024. Sepp, out.

Good question, and yes the stripe width was laid down in an Order - but it appears 126 Sqn either didn't get the message or chose to ignore it, as 5J-L was definitely painted likewise.

Welcome aboard! No need to be nervous, just enjoy yourself - it is supposed to be fun, after all! I can attest that people here are friendly, and very happy to help with tech details, "how to" advice and/or mojo support. Looking forward to seeing your build progress

Loving this. I swore I wasn't going to buy another kit for a while as I already have enough last well beyond my being able to complete them all ... but, you know how it goes; gonna have to get one of these.

Yes - fortunately for me, the top coat usually hides all sorts of horrors.

Me again... Decals on. In the end I mainly used the kit's stencils, with one or two from HGW that looked better than Revell's offerings. Roundels are Xtradecals, fin flashes are from the kit (the Xtradecal ones were slightly too big to fit on the fin). The non-slip panels are strips of Archer's texture decal, with some scratched away and applied over Ushi metallizer: The only minor inconvenience was one of the upper surface roundels cracked up over the tiny bulge. I discovered that Vallejo's blue wash is almost exactly the right colour, so it touched up AOK. It looks a bit "gobby" in the pic - couldn't get a decent pic due to the gloss - but it's fine in the flesh: Then I had the bight idea to add some paint wear round the blast tubes and outer guns (just visible in first pic) to suggest repeated patch applications and removals before adding the 'current' red patches. After removing the masking tape I'd used as a limit guide: No idea how that happened, as everyting was under a good coat of gloss - I must've missed a bit! Oh well, can't win 'em all... Time for coffee, and a sulk while I wait for a replacement from Hannants. Gawd the paint looks crap in these pics, lol. Back soon (hopefully) Sepp.

Thanks, Kev. I'm working on doing a full A-Z and 0-9 in a couple of styles. When done, yep, I'll gladly upload them

After (another!) hiatus, more progress. I added some Archer rivets which will also do duty as raised screw heads (I don't have the patience to go the whole hog, so went for the areas round the nose and tail where I'll possibly show some minor paint wear): Knocked up some masks. The serials have strokes that scale to 1.25ins, because the 1in version looked too .... spindly. And - finally - started throwing paint around: The edges between the green and brown are too soft - I need practice to tighten them up in future. No pic of the underside because plain sky isn't really interesting. And she now has an identity. Not a good picture - apologies. There are one or two bleeds to touch up, but nothing disastrous. Next job is the exhausts while the paint sets up, then I'll give it a gloss coat and start on the (HGW) stencils. Back soon...ish, Sepp

Lovely work. And it reminds me that I really must get on with mine!

Excellent film - thanks!