Isar 30/07

Plodding along and blew the cobwebs off the airbrush, I decided to try the MRP paints and they spray well straight out the bottle. They look a bit on the bright side to me or it could have been the brief glimmer of sunlight here on the east coast of Scotland.
I hope it will look better under a flat coat, a few touch ups required then onto the dreaded mottling.

 

 
Graham

Moving on steadily:
 

 
That was yesterday, then today:
 

 
...with some light sanding.  A coat of primer will reveal how good it is but I don't think it all needs to be super-smooth and precise because this is a patch after all.
 
And talking of patches, some bits missed from the MDC model:
 

 
I'm rubbish at scribing but I think they'll look ok under some paint.  And whilst looking for the positions of these panels, a vent or two to add:
 



 
At least one image from Alain's walkaround....thanks Alain!  I'll be doing these as ever using lead foil over a former carved from resin....10 minute job.

I gave everything a clear cote, then let that dry overnight.
Then I assembled landing gears, covers and pylons.
Laying the plane to rest overnight.
 

 
The bombs was attached. I removed the closed canopy, thouched up the colours, and then put the pilot in place and glued the front window.
Most everything else was also glued in place.
 

 
Then the plane was turned upside down and the drop tank glued in place.
 

 
Except for some weathering, there's only on thing left to glue in place. The wing tip lights.
I had to check what colours they should have (since I forget it everytime  ).
What I could find was that the left is red and the right green.
 
Håkan
 
 

Some progress
Under surfaces painted
I used Gunze's acrylic Neutral grey
 





 
 

Thank you Mike and Richard.
I don't know if I've become a Jedi master but I'm no longer on the dark side of the force, that's something!
 
A bit of work gluing the 2 U/Cs and the wheels, which caused me a lot of trouble.
The ICM instructions aren't very easy to understand, and the U/Cs are difficult to glue and to put in the right position.  
I also removed all the protective tape from the 3 canopies and was unpleasantly surprised to see a lot of glue residue left by the masks.
I used methylated spirits, white spirit and F-gasoline to remove them, but it didn't work.
The only product capable of removing these traces of glue was Glanzer, which contains ammonia and respects the transparency of the parts.
I glued the spinner and its propeller, as well as the antenna mast, which was leaning very far forward.
I made a small white electrical insulator and glued it to the back of the canopy.
And I also made the 2 little indicators that show when the U/Cs are in the out/low position.
I made them with small pieces of white toothbrush and painted the red sections.
The advantage of toothbrush bristles is that they're flexible, so they won't break if I don't grip the model properly.
 
Next step: glue the 2 antenna wires and install in the display case!


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As far as the debate about RLM 83 being green here are two pieces of evidence to consider.
 
First consider this November 1943 report from E-stelle Travermünde.
 

 
The last entry is translated as follows:
 
Development and testing of a camouflage for Mediterranean operations.
Completed with an S report dated 10/11/43. Color 83 dark blue in combination with color 72 black-green for Sea-, and 70 dark green for land aircraft is proposed for introduction.
 
Additionally, the chemical recipe for RLM 83 was discovered by Luftwaffe researcher Jens Mühlig.   Farben-Kiroff-Technik recreated these formulas and established that RLM 83 is a dark blue color.
 

 
 
 
 
 

Hello all,
 
I recently Took some indoor pics of the TBD on a Carrier base I won at a contest with this build. 
 
I really always wanted to model this shot.
The base was designed by Tony Quartaro. Hope you like.
 
Rod

Hi All
 
Well, I had some yellow left over from my F-4EJ Kai build and thought there was no better way to use it than get moving on the Belgian Airforce F-16AM X-Tiger build  - it is the 50th anniversary of the F-16 After all (and mine too) so building F-16´s all year long seems appropriate.
There are a few amazing  build threads on the Tamiya F-16 kits at the moment so if you want to see how to put this kit together you should have a look at those. I have used most of the great tips and tricks provided in those - In this thread I will just show the paint progress.
 
I have used quite a number of add-on parts such as the Aires Wheel Bay and Cockpit. PWMP Tail conversion and sensors. Numerous weapons from Reskit and Masking set & Decals from Model Maker Decals.. (same company that brought us the Venom Viper Demo set)
 
Its a pretty complex masking job with layers of masks sitting on top of each other. This is just asking for paint seeping under the masks and I decided early on I would just accept spending a fair bit of time repairing the damages than trying to prevent them entirely. In my experience it cannot be avoided when using vinyl masks in 3 layers. The underside was especially troublesome having to cut out the areas for the wheel bays. I wish the masking set would have come with separate masks for these parts and corresponding cut-out parts for the open areas left behind.
All in all I am really happy at this stage.. When you unmask a model like this it is wise to remove the masks carefully to be able to re-use them when fixing areas. Especially with highly complex shapes like on the X-Tiger.  
The black shapes are symmetrical on either side so special care and attention has to be taken to make sure they are placed exactly the same. The eye is just drawn to any asymmetrical or out of place lines and they become very obvious.
All paints are MRP in painting order   1.Yellow -> 2.Black -> 3.Grey
 
The images below are straight after un-masking so there are a lot of smaller issues to fix.
 

 


 

 
 

After a busy weekend, I got a few hours at the bench today.  Making slow but steady progress.
 
The way the cowls go together, they all had this little ridge that needed to be filled.  Mr Surfacer 500 did the trick.  I thought I took pictures of them filled, but apparently not.

 
While the Mr Surfacer was drying I decided to fill this gap in the nosewheel of the Eduard set.  Epoxy putty was the answer here.

 
Way more better.

 
I also added the brake lines with solder wire.

 
The ball turret went together pretty well.  The Eduard mask set was a godsend here.  I first painted it interior green then the neutral gray of the belly.



 
I finally got the bomb bay doors on.  I held off as I thought they might get damaged as I was sanding the belly seams.  If you follow the instructions, Hobby Boss would have you add all eight bomb bay door pieces - 4 in the open position and 4 in the closed position - so, be careful with that one. 

 
The ball turret is fully installed.  It is held in place only by the plastic shaft that has to mate into a cup on the top of the fuselage interior.  I'm glad I left the bomb bay doors off until I got that in place as I was able to see the shaft and cup.  It would have been nearly impossible otherwise.  The belly plate around the ball turret will require some filling at the fore and aft ends, but nothing too bad.

 
Here's a crappy photo of the engines in the wings.  I didn't realize my phone decided to focus on the ever so important trash can in the background.  Anyway, the engines are about as underwhelming as has been reported elsewhere.  Not that it can be seen here, but I did add the eduard ignition wiring set which helps spruce things up a bit, but yeah.  A pretty poor showing by Hobby Boss.  On the plus side, their simplicity made making 4 of them a pretty straight forward affair.

 
Most of my day today was spent sanding the wings and nacelles.  The sanding required for the nacelle left a small divot at the join where the cowling sits.  So, as I closed out the night, I filled that with epoxy putty and will sand it into shape next.  Once that's done, it'll be a relatively quick rescribe and rivet job and it that should just about do it for the body work.

 
With the engines in place and a couple placeholder turrets, she's really starting to look the part. 

 
I'm debating my previous opinion of when to attach the wings.  I might be able to finagle it around my workbench and painting area, then I wouldn't have to worry about touching up any sections after gluing the wings on.  Time will tell, but I think I'm still on track to finish it by the June 6th deadline. 

I have managed to fit the vertical tails and close up the rear component, I did get a poor fit aft of the horizontal stabilizers but I'm pretty sure that's my fault as I didn't trim the exhaust turbines to fit the jet pipes, I kind of hoped I could convince it all to go together.

 

 

 

 
and I've done some advance work for fitting the wings together, I have no intention of using the kit hinges, I'll simply add a piece of evergreen into the slot and glue the outer wings to the stubs, but some sanding and carving was required to get a snug fit;

 

Thats all for today
Thanks for looking

Here I am, little update.
 
First of all, thank you all for your interest and encouraging comments. in particular to Joachim: I followed your wip, but I forgot the bulge on the wing to remove, thanks!
As for the radiators, I think I'll leave the Revell ones, albeit I'm aware how little shallow they are. my aim for this project is not to go too deep into obsessive details, but to quickly assemble the kit with the strictly necessary modifications, so as to be able to play with the colors (colour) as soon as possible.
just to clear the field of doubts, these are the bulges to eliminate:

 
Matt, the resin landing gear wells fit quite well, my only concern is their size, they will affect the upper wing shoulder and marginally the cockpit, but with a bit of cutting and sewing you can figure it out out well.
another thing to consider is that the landing gear, fragile in itself in the Spitfire, will have to be installed very carefully, having to mediate between the styrene legs and the resin bay.
 
so, with John's precious advice and studying the images of the PA944, I came to the conclusion that this aircraft was born with the "G" configuration for the cameras.

 
but it was then used with two F52 cameras pointed downwards, eliminating the housing for the upper oblique F24 camera and overpainting the relative porthole on the left side.

 
the cameras included in the AIMS set are little jewels, I will possibly consider presenting them near the plane, perhaps on board a service Willys jeep.

 
always with a view to simplifying and not ruining the lines of this plane, I would have decided not to install the cameras in the fuselage, but to keep all the doors closed, and even the flaps retracted.
doors that must be installed whenever open or closed... so using the photo-etched parts present in the conversion set, I opened the necessary holes in the fuselage. starboard:

 
and port side. the porthole will go here, which will end up covered by the paint, anyway.

 
the choice to keep the doors closed also lies in the lack of desire to reduce the thickness of the fuselage, rather chubby.

 
the front ventral porthole is in a somewhat unfortunate position, I broke the rear edge of the piece, now I will have to find a way to consolidate that area while maintaining the circular hole.

 
next step, cockpit starting, I guess.
cheers, Paolo
 

As already explained in the thread Mirage IIIS Swiss Aire Force by MatterOne, the Swiss version has an extended nose gear to enter the mountain caverns. The entire nose gear bay was lengthened so that the nose gear would fit into it. For this reason and to fit the gear bay door from the Matterhorn Circle conversion kit, I had to remove the maintenance cover right behind the nose gear bay (see below marked in red).
 


 
As a result of this extension, I naturally also had to extend the walls of the gear bay. I used 2mm plastic sheets and pimped the walls and ceiling with PE spare parts.
 

 
The next step is to paint the lines and pimp them with additional wire lines to extend the looking closer to the original.
 


 
 
 
 

Continue with the main landing gear bay. Again, the details of the kit are rather poor.
 

 
That's why I decided to improve it with the Mirage IIIc exterior accessories set from Eduard.
 

 
After I had sanded down all the raised parts, attached the Eduard PE parts and assembled everything, I painted the inside first silver then yellow-green.
 


 
After I light dirt and oil wash I added the rest of the PE parts, pimped it with some ANYZ connectors and wires to simulate pipes.
 



 
For the moment, I'm also putting this sub-project to the side.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the thread, I was not happy at all with the scale of try number 2. Especially the intakes were completely wrong. So I decided this time to start early with the intakes and I checked whether the dimensions were correct. The intakes from the Swiss version end short before the canopy starts. See reference image:
 

 
In comparison to the Italerie kit, the Revell kit is correct. BUT the first thing I noticed, the mould impressions are visible.
 

 
So I filled them and sanded all irregularities. After polishing all surfaces with 2400/6000 and 8000 polish paper, I primed the entire intake with Humbrol Enamel black gloss (21). 
 



 
After one day drying and polishing them again with polishing compound I used ALC-119 Airframe Aluminium from Alclad II to give it the shiny appearance of polished metal. I know, it wont be visible, but it was a kind of a prototyp test for the fuselage comming later. Here the results:
 

 
For the moment, I set it to the side to continue with the main and front landing gear bays.

Helos:
 

 

 

 

 

 

There was one more Scycrane in firefighting gear, but my photo was out of focus.
 
Interesting - imgBB uses two sets of image codes. If you copy the embedding code from a gallery you will come up with a small version of the image only, regardless which code you choose. if you copy the embedding cote from your starting side (the one that shows ALL your images) the embedding protocol will give you some more embedding codes that enables you to embedd your image fullsize... Odd stuff.
 
More to come
- dutik

Well, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of decals available field a green/grey A6M2 Model 21.  You may find  one scheme on a zero sheet at Fineartofdecals.com but be warned, they’re very expensive.  Other than that, Montex masks probably has at least one set of masks for a camouflaged 21.  
 
If you’re not adverse to using masks and can make your own, I’d recommend Pacific Profiles No. 5. , by Mike Claringbold.  There’s lots of profiles in that book for green 21s.  Theres also the option of up scaling a set of 1/48 decals if that helps?

As usual I started with the ejection seat, a Martin Baker Mk.3. The seat from Revell is (as almost in all kits) very basic. Only a few details and the dimensions/thickness of the seat shell are not correct at all.
 

 
So I decied to build the ejection seat from scratch useing polystyrene sheets (1mm) and pimp them with the PE parts from Eduard (32859, Mirage IIIc interior). I am quite happy about it:
 

 
The template was very detailed photos that I found on the Internet. Here is one of the many photos:
 

Next, I added some more details: 1/32 rivets (from Quinita Studio) and the ejection handle, made of yellow and black painted 1mm wire fixed in the seat with two 2mm brass tubes:
 

 
The intermediate result is respectable:
 


 
After painting it black:
 

 
I added even more details. I know, the wont be visible in the end, but I know, they are there. 
 

 
Next part, the seat cushions. I made them out of epoxy putty and painted them with a base color:
 


 
The black seat shell got a light silver brush and the cushions the final color. 
 



 
At the end, I added the seatbelts from Eduard (32860, Mirage IIIc seatbelts) giving them a little twist by "haning" one of the belts on the ejection handle. Here the final results:
 


 

Hi all
 
After a break of more than a year, I have found the time and motivation to start my Mirage IIIs J-2336 Geronimo project (again).  So, this is my third attempt. The first attempt (the 1/32 Mirage IIIC from Italeri) with NMF (natural metal finish) was a complete disaster. The airframe metal color was rough and after I added clear coat, the clear coat peeled of:
 

 
On my second attempt (again the 1/32 Mirage IIIC from Italeri), I experimented with the metallic colours from Mr. Hobby/Gunze. The result was good average. But but it bothered me that the intake and some other details were not on a scale. See below:
 

 
In the meantime, I've done some research on NMF and made a few attempts with Alclad II metal colours. The results are impressive!  Especially if the primer is right. But more on that later. So I decided to make a third attempt. But this time with the previous kit from Revel I found on ebay:
 

 
To convert it to the Swiss version IIIs, I will use some conversion kits:
 

 
- Conversion kit: MC-UVRESIN02, Mirage IIIS early conversion kit from Matterhorn Circle
- Pitot: AM-32-090 Pitot from Master
- Exhaust: MC32001, ATAR 9C exchaust from Matterhorn Circle (sold out )
- Various PE parts: BIG3364, Eduard BIG ED Mirage IIIc Part 1 & BIG3367, Eduard BIG ED Mirage IIIc Part 2 (both discontinued)
- Wheels: 632076, Eduard Mirage IIIc wheels (discontinued)
- Decals: MC32014, Mirage III C/S/RS from Matterhorn Cirlce (sold out )

Howdy folks,
 
I've just published this week's What's New update.
 
Enjoy!
 
Kev

my last built , enjoy
 

 

 
 

 

 
 

hi all,
I had this kit in the attic for a while, as usual accompanied, over time, by various aftermarket sets and documentary material.

 
looking for inspiration here and there I found my ideal subject on YouTube:
 
and, encouraged by the availability of the AIMS modification set, I decided to launch myself into the reproduction of the PA944 kite, having dedicated decals printed, together with others as part of a larger and long-term project.

 

 
In fact, the PA 944, although well documented by the film and several photos that portray it in different phases of its operational life, was not considered by any decal manufacturer, at least in 1/32 scale.

 

 

 
my intention is to complete the model with the insignia documented before September 1944, when it landed on its belly, but in any case after the invasion stripes had been partially covered.

 
and here we are. a healthy, honest 2014 Revell kit, my bread!

 
accompanied by a good amount of resin from the AIMS set, complete not only with the optional air intake, but also with several cameras, complete tail with retractable wheel, fuel pump bumps, oxygen cylinders, dedicated control panels for the cockpit and detailed instructions.
Furthermore, John is always very kind and available to help with any further information.

 
well, here we go, I'd say!
you can start from the cockpit, from the installation of the cameras in the fuselage, or from the wing.
I started from the latter, calmly... first I need to eliminate the weapons and the related bumps and spent cartridge ejection holes.

 
a little job to do without haste, and with the right tools.

 
wanting to preserve close details.

 
on the belly things are decidedly simpler:

 
and while I was here with scalpel and saw in hand, I also made room for the resin landing gear compartments.

 
the rendering of the external surfaces is perhaps a little heavy, like riveting, but overall I like it, and the fit seems more than decent. well done Revell!

 
while that of the particular nose of the PR shows some shrinkage problems: a good 2mm is missing in length!

 
since it seems like a problem that can be solved without inconveniencing John, the least worst thing I can think of to do is this: separate the nose into at least two parts, and try to adapt it to the Revell fuselage, adding after material to rejoin the two nose's parts.

 
sequitur... 
cheers, Paolo
 
 
 
 
 

Hi all,
another project saved from the shelf of doom.
after years of standby I completed this beautiful Hasegawa kit, modified to become a D-1 for medical evacuation.
I wasn't satisfied with the rendering of the diorama terrain, in particular the puddle. I finally gave up, and here it is.
 
here the link to its long term wip:
 
cheers, Paolo.

OK, there's been enough piddling about and procrastination, time to get something done and the first step is to finalise the pilot.  Having repositioned the seat he couldn't now hold the "stick" so that has been temporarily cut off.  He took a couple of hours to paint using MRP water-based paints, it's a fairly rough job with not too much of an attempt to convey light and shade etc, but it works I think:
 



 
Further harness straps will be added later of course.  I checked my references for the helmet, mask etc.:
 

 
So the oxygen tube and R/T leads will be added too.  Sitting in the airframe:
 







 

Some progress after a short break
Ready for painting
 






 
 

Here's mine after I went to town on it replacing engines, relocating wings, adding and subtracting parts and basically spending a lot of time and money.