spacewolf

My wife and I just got back from seeing a specialist and are giddy after learning that the scare was no scare at all.  All is well, so we celebrated with my famous chicken soup known for its magical restorative powers and a bottle of organic Pinot noir.  The soup was grand but the wine would have been better left in the bilges of the wine boat.  No matter the label, wine often leaves me waxing eloquent.  So I will share a true “There I was” story with which hardly any of you can relate.  Maybe not even Pete.  Once upon a time I was a young USAF officer on a major base down south that played host to flying units from all the services save the Coast Guard.  There were F-15s, A-7s, OV-10s and OV-1s, C-130s, etc based there.  All but the C-130s did their best to out do each in the break at mid field.  Of course, the F-15s won but the A-7s held their own, while the rest were mostly pitiful.  Since I am not rated, I never got to play their reindeer games to prove my prowess.  Later in life after I had retired from the blue suit, I bought a very nice Piper PA-12 and proceeded to fly the hooey out of it nearly every day for seven years.  Now, the PA-12 and I became good friends once it had taught me how to fly and we shared many adventures.  We went where most airplanes don’t, flew at airspeeds slower than most cars, flew formation with a B-17 with a tailwheel problem, took off behind a Dauntless, tried to catch the Goodyear blimp on a cross country flight, hovered over one spot on the globe at 10,000’, etc.  I think you get the idea.  The airplane and I liked each other and got along very well.  One day we were returning from having great fun zipping along down low among the low hills of a neighboring state when I heard on the radio a local group at my home drome called Tiger Flight.  Tiger Flight was several nerdy guys in flight suits who flew Ercoupes (If you don’t know, google Ercoupe and try not to laugh.) painted in orange and black Tiger stripes.  Their stated goal was to introduce teenagers to aviation but they mostly were involved in self admiration.  Their leader took great pride in teaching his pilots formation flying and could be heard over the local freq reporting in, switching to “Tac 2”, shifting left and right, etc - all at less than 100 mph.  I found these wannabees laughable as did others on the field, including a retired USAF fighter pilot who raced a very specialized Lancair at Reno every year.  His airplane was a maintenance nightmare and he was forever blasting about the countryside trying to work out one bug or another.  On this particular day he was up on a check flight when Tiger Flight cruised down the center line of the runway in an echelon right and called for a midfield break.  The Lancair was close enough to see it all and had several disparaging things to say over the radio, ending with, “You want to see a break, watch this.”  At which point he came screaming along at the speed of heat and pulled on the pole until you could actually hear his airplane grit its teeth under the g load.  Tiger Flight went “Oooo!  Ahhhh!” like so many Minions.  Tiger Flight 0; retired Air Force Guy 1,000.  Well.  The PA-12 and I were next in line for a landing and had a quick discussion concerning whether we should or not.  We decided we should so we arrived over the numbers with all the speed we could muster.  I announced our intentions and at midfield, I slammed the stick over and pulled as hard as I dared.  The Cub was feeling its oats that day and surprised me.  Instead of a cheek sagging groaner of a break, we simply pivoted on a wingtip and were headed back in the direction we had just come, directly over the center line where we started. It was all very helicopterish.  The Cub was very proud of itself, but now what??  The radio was dead silent and I had no idea what to do next.  It was all very embarrassing.  We had no choice but to land and taxi past Tiger Flight and the Lancair to my hangar, mortified.  We obviously had no Right Stuff at all.  Tiger Flight tried to think of a witty rejoinder, but being nerdy guys, was limited to fart noises on the radio.  The Lancair guy simply turned his back, disgusted with all of us.  The PA-12 refused to talk to me for at least a week and fouled two plugs on our next flight out of spite.  We eventually got over ourselves but it was an uphill battle.  At least that’s the way it seemed at the time.  No real relevance here or even a moral to this story and maybe not as funny as I first thought but, damn, that was a good bottle of wine.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The decal options are white 3 as per the AIMS decal option in my post above, both winter and summer, and white 4 below
 
 

 
 

Hard to beat this: https://spruebrothers.com/has08078-1-32-hasegawa-kawasaki-ki61-ki61-i-hei-hien-tony/
 
Cheers,  Tom

I miss the big lug.. never had the pleasure of meeting anyone else like him, before or sense.
 
Clear skies Russ...

Many thanks everyone !! You guys are awesome !!
 
Cheers
 
Vaughn

The right hand side profile with accompanying text from Luftwaffe Colours Volume 4 Section 2 The Mediterranean 1942-1943.
 

 
 

Rising Decal made a sheet "Unsual Emils Pt II", #RD32005, covering this bird among some Swiss Bf 109 E´s.
Instructions are not helpful on the reason for the starboard wing painting or replacement.
Luftwaffe Colours Vol 4 Section 2 "The Mediterranean 1942-1943" have some more photos of S9+DR (and other Emils of III/ZG 1).
According to this the photo is dated from late 1942.
As III/ZG 1 was hastily sent from the Russian front to the Mediterranean the schwarzen Männer (mechanics) overpainted the "European" camo using RLM 78/79.
The authors are guessing the starboard wing was (obviously) a replacement from an a/c in the original camo and there was no time to repaint it.
 
HTH,
Reimund

Hi Vaughn, I am not an expert but the photo looks like it was taken in North Africa and the fuselage code S9+DR would mean the aircraft belonged to Zerstörergeschwader 1 (ZG1) that operated in North Africa in 1942 and maybe a few months in 1941 as well.  The solid color is most likely RLM 79 Sandgelb and the wings could be one of a few different possibilities.  
 
HTH,
Ernest

This may help. Same kit build on 2 different forums.
 
https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235095302-132-dragon-messerschmitt-bf-109e-7-trop/
 
https://www.hyperscale.com/2021/galleries/bf109e7dragon32tu_1.htm

Could it be possible they might do a Betty ...........

Could it be possible they might do a Betty ...........

Now this would be a fun build.....
 
 

 

 
 
 

Well I hope that ZM will release all the previously announced versions. 
I hope that I have ample $ in order to purchase them all. I hope that I live long enough to build them. I hope that when I build them that I do a good job. And I hope that I haven't made anyone nauseous with all this hope.
 And as always; you can't have too many Fw190s.

I have not posted for a bit over two weeks.  On 07 April my father passed away unexpectedly and I was in the USA for the funeral and to take care of his estate with my brother and sister.  Normally, I would not have posted the above as I try to keep my posts here related to building models - mostly LSPs.  However, due to a confluence of events I have decided to focus my modelling in a different area for the next several months and I thought I should explain why that is.
 
My father, and his father as well, were both highly skilled modellers; their subject area being sailing ships.  They mostly built wooden ships and fabricated a fair amount of the wooden parts, mostly masts and spars, themselves (they were both cabinetmakers by trade); however, they also built all the big Revell ships.  I got my passion for scale modelling from them and my first serious build was helping my father construct Revell's 1/96 scale USS Constitution when I was 10 years old.  We spent many months on that build and the time spent next to my dad on that project provides some of my fondest memories. I learned a great deal from him about how to plan and build a kit, and I consider that timeframe to be the real start of my journey as a modeller. 
 
A few days before my father passed I happened to purchase a 1/96 scale USS Constitution from one of the members here (thank you Tim!).  I am not a susperstitious person but the fact that I bought the same kit that I built with my father so many years ago just a couple of days before he passed resonates pretty deeply with me.  I can't think of a better way to honor him then by building the same kit we spent so many great hours working on together.  So, I have decided to focus my modelling energy for the immediate future building the USS Constitution.  I am going to use all the skill I have honed over the years to try and make something my dad would be proud of; and that means I'll probably be working on the kit for a good many months. 
 
I won't be abandoning the forum; in fact I am going to start I thread in the appropriate sub-forum in which I post regular progress reports.  I won't be doing a full up build log as this really is not the forum for sailing ship build logs, but I will post photos of my progress with some comments.  Why here and not on one of the several very good forums dedicated to building such ships.  The answer is simple - my friends are here.
 
I look forward to exchanging thoughts with any of you who decide to drop by the USS Constitution thread when I start it (in a few days), and I hope this post is not overly dramatic.
 
Sincerely,
Ernest  

LOL.. I soooo wanna do that on some of the Wingnuts pages... but somehow I don't think they would be happy with me. :-) :-)  :-)
 

The rad cooler vanes and control were scratch built...
 

 

 
The turnbuckles come with the kit...
 

 
Still need to add the gun sights.. need aftermarket for them as they are not supplied.
 

A few more shots of detail.. most of this is the kit detail, I just added decals (airscale) and some piping here and there in the cockpit.
 

 
The right side had no handles for the engine controls so they were made from the resin support tree's and the copper tubing was made from copper wire.
 

 

 
Airscales WW I decals were used.. the guages seem to be a bit undersized but things worked pretty good.
 

 
I added tubing from wire and thin strips of paper wrapped around to make fittings.
 

 

Thank you so much ! That's a huge compliment !

Just to be clear - the "pre-order" is to register your interest only, as clearly explained on the Aviattic website page.
I now have a mailing list of just 300 interested parties, who are kept up to date with the trials and tribulations of getting this kit to the pre-order stage, when those on the list will be invited to place their orders before the kits general release.
These are very difficult times to be attempting anything like this project and it will be years before I see any kind of financial return - and only if it sells over a thousand units, which is a long way off yet. 
So, if anyone thinks such a multi-media, highly detailed WW1 aircraft kit is over-priced, I suggest you try it yourself!  Full injection-moulded WW1 kits are just not an option - even with millionaire backers, there simply is not the market, sadly. Multi-media kits allow a level of finesse in the detailing which should be welcomed not feared.
I sold just 320 of the Aviattic Ansaldo Balilla's. A kit many consider the finest WW1 aircraft kit yet produced. Their disappointing sales meant that going to a costly second run was just not financially viable. They currently change hands on EBay for hundreds of pounds, yet it took me three years to achieve that sales figure..
 
If you want to support such endeavours with no prior financial commitment - I just need to have a rough idea of the potential customer numbers - then please sign up for the newsletter. This kit will not be produced unless I can guarantee around 600 sales. Not "interested parties"..sales.
So that is my priority at the moment. Honing the various elements for fit and accuracy and deciding on production methods for each part.
I will not know the final production price and hoped-for delivery date until I am satisfied that the Pfalz will be the finest kit that I can produce. 
 
We are living in very difficult times, costs are escalating weekly, there are few casting and printing companies left wishing to deal with such small numbers. Most are too busy casting goblins or busty princesses for Kickstarters.
 
Best wishes, Richard
(director and head tea-maker, Aviattic Ltd)
 

The engine for this kit is printed in one piece...beautiful but very challenging to paint. I added the bolts for the mounts as they were not on the engine.
 

 

 

 

 

 
Doing the striped cloth ignition wires was..interesting...
 

 

The rad cooler vanes and control were scratch built...
 

 

 
The turnbuckles come with the kit...
 

 
Still need to add the gun sights.. need aftermarket for them as they are not supplied.
 

I'm at the 90 % finished stage..just realizing I haven't really documented it well.. but here are a few beauty shots I took today..
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
In my experience it is rare a model comes out the way you see it in your minds eye.... this one is in SPADES !!

I have been slowly working away at it, adding scratch built and aftermarket details....used Airscales WW I instrument decals.
 

 

 

Hey all, been a long while sense I have been on here but I had to share. I first saw this kit late last year, a chap in Taiwan was just kicking off his business. He mostly makes parts/ extras for kits but he was about to put out this kit and I jumped at it.
 

 

 
The detail was insane !!
 

 

 

 
Needless to say the Muse bit hard ! I had to have it !!
 
 
 
 

I repurposed a base I had scratch built for something else. The Albatros logo pins I found on line and they are held on with magnets as the base will serve for any WW I German model.
 

 

 

 
Still waiting on the Proper Plane propeller.. things are slowed down by the war.
 
Cheers
 
Vaughn