Wegener

Paul Budzik has a rather good video at Paulbudzik.com which shows an alternative to a contour gauge for determining the shape of a bulkhead, for example. Might be worth a look. Title is ‘When a contour gauge isn’t good enough’. His other stuff is very useful too.

Anyone have dims for the RN fuselage vents? I did try to measure them from the artwork in Jennings’s set but it was tricky because of the background. Still, none of the other drawings I have even shows them, so that’s the best source I’ve found so far. The damn plane is too far away from the rope at Yeovilton to get a tape on it (no doubt for that very reason!).

I did attempt to explain this but you’d probably end up better informed if you do a www search for ‘Sutton harness Spitfire’, which throws up several diagrams which are much clearer than my miserable attempt. Radu’s website RB Productions also has photos of his assembled paper and etched brass belts, which are useful (to me anyway).

There is a FB group called ‘The cutting edge’ which is for modellers using these devices and various members have uploaded files for some of those things. There are also guides to how to use them. Might be worth a look.

Have patience regarding ‘The time capsule fighter’ - after failing to get one from the FAA Museum, I stalked it on eBay for a while and eventually one showed up at what I regarded as a reasonable (would have probably been under £30) price, which I snaffled.

Nice work throughout Max. As an alternative to lead foil (and without the oxidation risk), there is always copper sheet. I picked up some from 4D Modelshop in London while nearby for a conference recently although not had the chance to use it yet. Much more malleable than brass though.

We raised the Zoom security issue with our IT bods (part of a large US outfit which is paranoid about cyber security and has a 24/7 dept which monitors it) and they have the big boy version that they are happy is adequately secure. I think a lot of the issues are with the free version (which also has a 40m time limit apparently) so if any of your club members has a work account that they can use, that might be a better option.

Your best bet might be to get hold of an aftermarket sheet for a smaller scale kit and use that to create masks or even your own home-made decals. Almark makes some in 1/48, for example, which I found with a very quick search for '892 Squadron decals'. You might not even need to acquire the decals if you can find an adequately high resolution image of a suitable sheet.

Great progress so far. Those missile fins sound like a job for the plotter, which I assume is your plan.

I realised after completely dismantling mine that it was distinctly more effective to withdraw the needle from the front. I know all the guidance says to take it out of the back but that just tracked paint into the seal and when I reinserted it, it picked it up again. I was amazed at the amount of paint I cleaned off the needle after that, even after careful cleaning previously. Lacquer thinner is fine for Gunze but be careful if you use water-based acrylics as it can turn some into horrible gunge. Test first!

Dragon opted to mould ‘CONTINENTAU’ on its AFV tyres, on the basis that we could trim off the vertical of the U to get an L. Much easier than trying to turn an O at the beginning into a C!

It appears to be made by/for Silhouette, going by the labelling on the package. Called the 'Light hold 8 inch cutting mat'. Mine came from Amazon.

Hi Jens That was exactly my query but I concluded after some investigation that the only difference is that the Cameo can accommodate a wider sheet size. Given my requirements, the Portrait's 8" width was adequate for me. I found mine (new and unused) for under £200 on Ebay in the end. If you plan to use it to cut styrene (up to 0.25mm is apparently fine but above that it will score it) too, I was recommended to get a spare blade just for that and also to get a low tack mat, as the one supplied is pretty sticky.

Very nicely done. About the laminated prop, wouldn’t the shape of the blade cause the laminations to make a different pattern where they ‘outcrop’ (to use a geological term) on the sloping surface? If the laminations are perpendicular to the drive shaft axis, rather than parallel to it, I’d expect some curves on the blade faces as the surface crosses the laminations at an angle. From the side, they would be straight lines though. Does that make sense? I’m not saying it’s easy to do, quite the opposite, by the way!

It implies a high level of detail being possible but not that manufacturers can or do provide it, particularly with older kits. The cost of tooling a large kit is obviously greater than for a small one so including all those possible details can price it out of the target market. Plus there are always some who are happy to take a less detailed kit and add to it, whether from aftermarket suppliers or scratch. Your stuff does look rather excellent though, so I’m sure it would go down well here.