HB252

Thanks
Aerocraft exhausts have great effect on its look. It s absolutely impossible to continue with trumpy's exhaust parts

One last glam shot before I seal it all up.
 

Some progress;
Painting of the upper surfaces
 

Weathering work in progress.  Main "agent" is Flory's "Dark Dirt" wash supplemented by well-worked yellow ochre oil paint
 





 
More to come.

This is my MAIN concern relating to instructions in modern kits, at least the ones I’ve built: Border Models, MiniArt, Z-M, Italeri. 
Especially when dealing with radial engines, one drawing is shown viewed from the front and the next is from the back, one from above, the other from below, etc.
Since most of the pistons (apparently) look the same, it’s very easy to do it the wrong way. Every drawing deserves close scrutiny. Some even need enlargement to show all the details.
I admit that quite a few times, I had to dismantle an assembly to rebuild it during the course of my recent builds.
Debonder, James Debonder is my name.
Thank you Maximus for the caveat  and  to the show!
Cheers,
Quang

Painting has started by lower surfaces.
I used Gunze Sangyo Neutral grey.
 

I guess I'm not the first one to build this kit!
 

 
Starting with the cockpit as usual.
 

 

 
Some interior grey green.
 

 
Then a little aluminium.
 

 
And a bit of black here and there and alu on the other side of some parts.
 

 
Something with the pics on my site ain't working, so I can't show more pics at the moment.
Have to sort that.
 
Håkan
 

Today s update
 

 

thank you all!
you are always very kind, reading the previous pages in sequence it seems that everything always goes smoothly, or almost. in reality I make messes that are increasing in frequency and importance in an alarming manner...
specifically about the decals, Denis, the answer to your question can be summarized like this:  

 
Let's say I tried, but getting decent blank decal sheets, or a serious print shop, isn't that easy here in Sardegna. furthermore, living in the countryside, thanks to power surges, I have already burned two printers (as well as five shutter motors and three kitchen hood extractors) so I gave up on doing it myself or trying to turn to someone nearby.
my decal sheets are processed by me and sent via email to a company on the continent, who sends them to me finished. inevitably some adjustments always have to be made, but overall I am convinced that I wouldn't do better, I would never dream of being able to create something like your "Furie" on my own.
the next step would be the cutting plotter: I bought it but I haven't gotten to know it, while I see that you are way ahead, the Yak's stars are beautiful!
 
as I was saying, I hadn't mentioned the oil dotting work done before gluing the struts, although this technique has its importance, especially on a camo like this, where the outlines of the various colors tend to confuse the eye if not aided by a polychrome glaze.

 
then I noticed an error on the serial number: in the Istituto Luce video you can clearly see that the letters "MM" are smaller than the other characters, and I should know this well, given that I had foreseen them in the customized decal sheet... so I gently removed the large ones from the kit and put the small ones back... what a mess.

 
and finally I glued the upper wing, holding it under pressure with rubber bands. although the joints are extremely precise, the upper wing has that bit of dihedral that needs a little help to be positioned in the best possible way.
in this photo you can see (poorly, held in tension by the weight of the two tweezers) a copper wire in place to test the radio antenna, of which we'll talk about later, since it's usually the last thing I put on.

 
once I was sure that the wing was drying well, I put just a little black and raw umber oils on the belly of the fuselage and positioned the landing gear, after soldering the corresponding electrical wires within. the trick worked, and the excess cable was pushed into the fuselage without problems. here you can also see the butterfly valves of the oil coolers, a nice detail from the Eduard set.

 
I was then able to glue the tie rods between the external uprights: for these I had done a series of experiments with guitar string, copper, brass, tin, evergreen rods, trying to obtain the lenticular, or at least flattened, shape that they have in real life.
no way. in the end I used some elastic dressmaker's thread, which itself has a flat section, taking care not to roll it up, thus obtaining a decent emulation. To make my life easier I had installed sections of Albion Alloy alu tube at the base of the struts. in this way it was enough to put a drop of superglue in the tube and then push the end of the thread into it.
in this photo you can also see the aileron control arm. those in the kit are excessively thick, while in the Eduard set they are nicely thin. to compensate for the too wide seat and to have a good bond, I filled it with black superglue, which is slow to dry and slightly rubbery.

 
The kit includes two types of flame dumpers, compared to at least four types documented photographically. leaving aside the German ones (who used the CR42 along the lines of the Soviet Po-2) I decided to install the type also documented in the Fiat original manual, even though they were not installed at the time of the reference documentary. let's say that it is a poetic license based on the fact that the group to which this specimen belonged was the one responsible for the experimentation and implementation of night hunting: if these extensions were not installed here, they were not installed anywhere else... and let's face it, they are really beautiful to look at! 

 
...they really look like motorcycle mufflers...  
here you can also clearly see the now painted cockpit edge padding, the base of the antenna support on the fuselage and the eyelet which will be used to tighten the cable. you can also see a little step of the decal on the fuselage. a slightly smarter model maker would have made the lower edge coincide with the frame of the fuselage truss, disguising it better.

 
the elevators have perfect gluing supports to position them in a neutral position. Since I wanted them a little lower, I inserted some copper pins, a little job that took two minutes.

 
carried away by enthusiasm I also placed the venturi.

 
whose scratchbuilding work is almost invisible, and useless, except with the macro and from this one angle!

 
navigation lights, usual heated and colored fishing line covered with UV glue. starboard one...

 
...and port.

 
and the two pitots, right and left. the ones in the kit are well made but a little oversized, I remade them in aluminum tube.

 
well, now we could install the antenna wires to complete this job, if it weren't for the fact that I failed on this one too. 
 
and here we need to open a parenthesis regarding the radio apparatus. just skip the boring dissertation, if you don't have in mind to build a nocturnal Fiat: normally the CR42s were not equipped with one, while the CNs and only a part of the daytime specimens were. Unfortunately there is little specific documentation, in the photos you can only glimpse a few wires and a very short vertical support on the back of the fuselage. in this shot, which is the reference one for my specimen, you can see the vertical support more or less in the center of the white band on the fuselage, in addition to the already mentioned difference in size of the serial number characters.

 
in this pic however you can also see a bit of wire and an insulator, apparently between the top of the fin and the back of the fuselage, towards the vertical support.

 
so I got an idea, obviously wrong, also based on some drawings by Topdrawings, whereby the antenna was made up of a "V" starting from the external rear struts and whose vertex connected to the diagonal between the fin and the fuselage. I went crazy installing some eyelets in the struts (obviously making a mistake and first placing them at the bottom instead of at the top) and then finding this shot... you can see very well in the background where the wire equipped with the insulator starts from: not from the strut, but from the trailing edge of the upper wing, just before the aileron.

 
it's a shame that I noticed it when the uprights were installed.
cutting away the eyelets now (copper wire well planted in the longitudinal thickness of the strts) seems like suicide to me, I decided to leave them there, they are almost invisible. and so far so good, so to speak. I got a stomach ache when installing the new eyelets in the wing trailing edge, with the wing already glued in position! but with a little unconsciousness and apnea...

 

now it's ok, maybe: I want to point out that this antenna is largely my invention: I don't know if it was also on the right side, nor how it was actually connected to the fuselage. so by nosemeter I imagined that the "V" was isolated at its vertices, to continue with another cable (the diagonal) towards the fuselage, where further isolated with respect to the eyelet that kept it in tension, it was connected to an insulator (ceramic ?) to enter the fuselage and reach the radio. my interpretation is also due to the details, without explanation, provided by Eduard.

 
Well, now maybe it's finished, but before declaring it so I'll think about it a little more, and touch up all the small damages due to the above corrections. just to be on the safe side, just a quick electrical check with everything installed and closed. underwing lights:

 
and instrument panel/gunsight/compass lights.

 
good, good, in the next few days I hope not to find any other flaws and to be able to take some decent photos of the finished model, but let's wait to say it.
cheers, Paolo
 
 
 
 

Some progress
 

here I am!
forgive me for the time between one intervention and another, I can let time pass through my fingers like water in a stream...
 
after completing the camo I had given a very light veil of yellow on the wings, to make the colors uniform compared to the trend of the same in the fuselage, more shaded and mixed together. and then I masked and gave it white, always MRP:

 
before applying a coat of pre-decal clear gloss I very gently sanded some areas to highlight the rivets, for example near the cockpit, where I also made some scratches to suggest the passage of pilots and specialists. and then... decals! as I was saying, I had a customized decal sheet printed for the creation of various subjects, including this one. so apart from the fasces and the technical data on the tail, the rest is up to me.

 
whose film is a bit thick, while those of the kit are discreet, even if they made me think the worst, then and there.

 
sure, they could have been applied a little more... let's say that the decals are not the strong point of this kit, as far as I'm concerned.
the savoy coat of arms is outrageous, anyone does it better. I should have a Special Hobby sheet somewhere, but I couldn't find it, ergo I went to cannibalize an Italeri one.

 
the writing with a shadow relating to the serial number is well done, except for the detail of having provided the decal sheet of the serial number "XXXX" instead of a series of numbers to be assembled or even just four numbers at random.
my solution was 50% successful: the serial number is correct, the dimensions are also correct, but they have the black border on all sides!

 
I tried the only thing I could try: touch up with a brush with gouache. and to think that my mother was worried about me losing diopters thanks to Edwige Fenech!

 
even the fasces in the fuselage, damn...

 
alright. gouache, triple zero and a little luck...

 
other dividends from the custom sheet, the stickers on the propeller blades. the first one here is good, I'd say.

 
another small problem was getting the subalar fasces to talk to my electric contacts... here I risked doing serious damage, but it went well in the end.

 
oh, all this done, and after a further coat of gloss, sanded (all repeated a couple of times at least, with some further application on the sides of the fuselage) I gave a coat of satin and began to position the struts, preparing even the few lines provided.

 
in reality I proceeded in pairs of uprights starting from the center: positioned a pair, checked the correct position with the upper wing resting, glued them at the bottom. pause for reflection, another couple and so on. in the necessary intervals of time I dedicated myself to something else, for example the gunsight mirror.

 
or the position of the spotlight in the cockpit.

 
Having archived these two little things, I placed the only transparent one in the kit, very well made and very precise: even just the thickness of the paint in its seat bothered it, I had to bring the contact surfaces back to the bare styrene.

 
once the windshield was in place I created the padding with two coats of vinyl glue, easy peasy.

 
and I implemented/rebuilt the generator for the underwing lights and the venturi tube, changing the propeller blades on the first and rebuilding the second from scratch with brass, aluminum and styrene.

 
and that's enough for today, I would say... coming soon upper wing, landing gear and various trinkets.
bye bye, Paolo

damn how long!
 
the wait for the colors was long, and honestly I don't know how worth it it was: I wanted to try the MRPs, which are very airbrushable and already diluted, but not very opaque, with a thousand thousand shades that are difficult to manage, for me who have the eye denied with colors.
furthermore, once given they are absolutely not "revisable" like acrylics... with the latter if you are really not satisfied you arm yourself with Chante Clair and a toothbrush and start from scratch. with these NO. they cling to the styrene of the model (or to the primer, it's the same) with the same obstinacy as the old Humbrols.
However, they have a very high fineness of pigments, so even by applying several passes, thickness is not created.
 
okay, enough chatter, let's see what I've done? before seeing the colors in action, a small "technical" parenthesis: to connect the lights to the ground I found this solution. I stripped a wire from a phone charger cable and soldered it to a 1mm brass tube. the tube crosses the wheel from side to side, so that at the bottom I will have a hole in which a powered pin can provide the electrical contact, as well as stopping the aircraft at its base, while at the top I will have the flexible cable and in a position which will allow me - I hope - to be able to play on its length simply by rotating the wheel. the width of the landing gear leg will finally allow me to be able - if necessary - to stow the extra cable that I may not have been able to fit back into the fuselage through the lower wing.

 
a lot of talk for little substance, in short.
well, we were talking about the colors: the four samples on the left are MRP, the fifth on the right Lifecolor, while on the model there is a first layer of MRP sand. I think you can see clearly how none of the MRP "giallo mimetico" corresponds to the only Lifecolor proposed in the regia aeronautica's color set.

 
here on the right the Lifecolor and on the left the MRP closest to it... in the end I decided to mix two of the MRPs to obtain a more or less credible base, the one now on the model, but not yet saturated.

 
here it is after at least four (!) glazes.
For me, used to the building thicknesses of Lifecolor or the covering capacity of Tamiya, Gunze or AK, it was brutal, having to apply so many coats just to get a decent base. given that, in addition to being poor with colors, I am also incapable of managing camouflage like this freehand, so I traced the spots in pencil at least on the upper wing.

 
even the spots turned out to be a PITA a notable source of caltrops: both colors are a mix, and this is the third edition after several retouches, always with the remote help of my helpful friend, the color master.

 
paradoxically I am more satisfied with the stains on the lower wing, done in a haphazard manner without much study.
It's true that here the surfaces are tiny and therefore easier to manage. the spots on the fuselage are at least simpler, having a completely different pattern and documented by the photos.

 
here the problem lies in the fineness of these colors: each splash must be passed over at least three times to give it a minimum of consistency, which requires skills that I obviously don't have, unfortunately.

 
the nose is a completely separate matter, in period photos you can see a pattern of more or less horizontal lines, apparently darker than the blotches on the fuselage, which thickly and roughly cover the lower part of the engine cowl. in the upper area there is a color that could be black or dark blue grey, the two colors used by the regia for night fighters.

 
now it's drying well, then white for the band on the fuselage and the cross on the tail, and the transparent gloss in view of the decals, either from the box and custom created ad hoc for this little project.

 
see you soon, I hope!
cheers, Paolo

Some more progress on the wing
 





 
 
 
The location of the wingtip lights should be corrected. They should be located on the upper and lower surfaces of the wing.
 
 
 


 

The problem with ZM is that they take longer to develop and release the models than Kurt Tank took to develop the actual plane.

Hellooo!
Another small update.
The canopy has been started, but not finished (just plonked on for these pics).
The wings (top only, haven't attached lower wings yet) have been base-coated, gloss varnished and decals have been applied.
They look awful at this stage, but with the addition of watercolour pencil washes, rivets, chipping and various stains, etc. they should come up OK... Hopefully.
Made a start on the exhausts. Will leave them as is until later to see if I need to knock them back a bit, once the rest is done.
It's coming together, but work and distractions keep getting in the way.
 
Cheers,
 
Kels.
 
 
 
 
 
 

upper fuselage and wing camouflage almost completed 
 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 
thanks!

national markings painted using masks
 

 

 

 
 


 

some pre-shading here and riveting.
 
a draft camouflage sketch for osterermann's machine ..
that's an interesting profile with two different camouflage schemes .. 2 in 1! 
 
i am not sure yet.. i think i must have an in depth research of how exactly was the starboard side painted, what colours , what pattern etc..
i am also looking  for references to the shades of green used by JG 54, ..
 
 
but you never know...
i may end up with a tropical scheme!!!   (marseille !!!)
 
thanks for watching !

...rlm 76 applied and time to mask and paint the crosses
 
some photos from the painting sequence..
 

 

 

 

 

 
   
 
thanks!
 

Watching this one with interest since I'm in the middle of building the standard version of this kit myself. But instead of the Wolfpack engine, I am using the Wolfpack resin nose for the Tei.
 
 
I don't have access to the instructions from the special edition but the standard kit instructions show the placement of both the right and left cockpit panels.  The left panel is C12 (highlighted in blue) and the right panel is C11 (highlighted in red).
 

Some progress
 





 

Here we go;
 
As if it was God's command, we started from the cockpit again.
 



 

Decals started to be placed.
The Balkenkreuzs on the wings are from the kit decals. The ones on the fuselage are from my spare box.
sqd decals were made as customized years ago
Thanks to Pastor John @Pastor John for his confirmation regarding the upper wings decals.
 

Another new project dripping from my bucket list:
This is 1/32 Eduard (Hasegawa) P-40N Warhawk with the markings of "Klawin Kitten"
 

Painting is completed. A glossy clear coat was also applied for the decals