KiwiZac

Having recently seen a rotary-powered E.III replica fly I've suddenly fallen in love with the type so I'm eagerly following your progress Jim. A kit I'd not heard of and I for one am glad "Build it!" won!

Man, you forget to check in for a month or six and you miss all sorts of cool stuff...!

Hello! My avatar is a photo of me already, so here I am with a lovely local lady a couple of weeks ago:

 
And with the same machine (Spitfire Mk.IXc PV270/ZK-SPI) a couple of months back, this time sans hat and sunnies:
 

I feel foolish for saying this, but I had tears in my eyes and am shaking my head looking at the most recent photos. It's just so damned pretty.

I'm very excited to see this come together "for real". Well done on your work so far!

I feel foolish for saying this, but I had tears in my eyes and am shaking my head looking at the most recent photos. It's just so damned pretty.

Simply beautiful work, Marcin!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/159342774@N07/albums/72177720310909688. 
All, 
       After waiting for what seemed to be an eternity, the kit was finally released. I’ve wanted to do an Erickson Air Crane for the longest time, in a large scale. At the start of my journey, I decided to roll the dice, and see if I could get any information directly from Erickson HQ in Oregon. Not only did they help me get started, but they answered questions that I had along the way. 
        One of the main areas that I needed  help with, was the Fire Tank itself. They provided me specific photos I needed to get started on scratch building it. The next hurdle, was the orange color of their aircraft. To my surprise, they sent me the actual paint code for me to match. 
         These are the following items that were scratch built. The entire Fire Tank, the tool box/cargo container in front of the Fire Tank, the landing gear struts, (The kit comes with single wheels on the rear struts. “Bubba”, the aircraft I modeled, has dual wheels and the rear struts). The steps that go up to the tail rotor gearbox. I used everything from plastic card stock, to brass tubing to get the job done. The decals came from a company in Germany. They are fantastic. 
         It took quite some time for the scratch building. I learned a lot along the way. Erickson was a huge help in making this project a reality.  
 
Christopher
          

Thanks for the kind words Chuck. I very much look forward to seeing an Airfix Spitfire "kicked up a notch" 
 
Thanks Kev, glad you like it.
 
Hi Gilles, many thanks. Much appreciated.
 
Just a quick update on the misaligned flat spots. 
I've had a go at sanding them back a bit. 
As @JayW pointed out earlier, there's plenty of meat left. 
I didn't go all the way flat though. Just enough to be disguised by a grassy base so that the tyres don't actually look punctured. 
 

 
Hopefully it looks ok. The flock of this grass mat is very short. The final base is likely to be longer and more in scale but I needed to get a flavour of how it will look.
 
As you can also see, I've added the gear doors, wheel centres and dust covers. 
All that's left to complete on the undercarriage is connecting the brake hoses. 
 
 

As it turns out, this build is getting perilously close to completion 
I keep looking for jobs to do and realise there's not alot left 
 
One thing I had been mulling over was how to recreate the gun port coverings often seen on WWII RAF aircraft. 
After help from the Aviation resource forum I learnt that the tape squares were pre-formed and 8"x8". My calculations made this equivalent to 8.4mm in 1/24th scale. 
Airfix provide decals which I could have used but you know me, why make anything simple, right?
So instead, I mixed up a brick red shade and painted some cigarette paper. Cut that into squares and used diluted PVA glue to adhere them to the airframe. 

 

 

 
The intention was to create a little more texture than the decal would have given. 
As you can see, I intentionally haven't been too careful with the placement in an attempt at realism. I doubt the fitters in the field got rulers and squares on these. 

Engine plumbed and ready for weathering:
 









 
 
 

Decals made according to my design at MF Zone, I recommend it :-)

Link:
Custom decals
 
Varnish and polishing:
 
Engine assembly:


 
To be continued

'Pit port side has now received all of the Eduard stuff that the RF set didn't provide. Now it's on to the starboard side details.
 

A little more done and learning from my MkI early build I found I had huge problems fitting the the wing assembly to the fuselage following the kit instructions and gluing the fillets to the wing so this time I glued the fillets to the fuselage hoping for a better fit
 

 
I do love the way Kotare have captured the look of the wing fillet to fuselage joint, it looks very good indeed in my eyes.
 
After a test fit and taping the fuselage together I dug out my now out of production Department of Correction Rotol propeller out. This is a really nice set and a shame they are no longer around but the fit is really good on the Kotare kit
 

 

 
Here are the blades which as you can see they have gone to the extent to depict the brass sheath on the leading edge
 

 
Looking foward to getting this painted, decaled  and weathered!
 
And a test fit of the lower wing to the fuselage to see where we are and the general look of things
 

 
So far so good and definitely got a better fit of the wing assembly with the fillets glued to the fuselage halves instead.
 
Regards. Andy 
 
 
 
 
 

Thank you. It really does provide some solace. I can escape and free my mind for a bit in something I truly enjoy and love.

Ok, part 2: flat coat on, light dirt added in. Ready to bring the fuselage together.
 

Cockpit finished, resin seat and HGW seatbelts from the box. I added Eduard instrument panel.




Thank you John, I decided to bend underside fuselage part to met with fuselage halves.

Hi all,
I started Special Hobby High Tech 2 kit Tempest MK V. Its a mix of nicely done details, not worse from mainstream kits with old-time imperfections bonded with their earlier short runs - for example cockpit collides with wheel bays, wheel bays with wing halves, gaps between fuselage and wings. I will skip adding engine, its a petty but this requires cutting and trimming plastic, lot of work basically.
I found this scheme of Tempest from first years after war when RAF stationed in Germany. Fortunately Montex was producing mask for PCM containing W2-Y. Some details like bell and question mark was not provided.





I will add Eduard PE with IP and some cockpit details.



This is my idea on spinner correction, I glued plastic "core" from old droptank then poured few layers of two-component epoxy glue. When it cured I sanded and used Tamiya (thicker) and Gunze (thinner Surfacer 1200) for correcting small imperfections.



Cockpit ready for paint,  rear "wall" needs to be sanded to not expand fuselage.

I feel foolish for saying this, but I had tears in my eyes and am shaking my head looking at the most recent photos. It's just so damned pretty.

I'm a latecomer to this and, wow, what amazing work so far! I'm at a loss for words! Utterly gorgeous!

Beauitful!

Good morning to all
 
I would like to share with you my super detailed cutaway of the old Airfix 1:24 scale Ju87B.
I just love this kit and decided that I wanted to do something a little different.  I wanted to make a cutaway of the Starboard side plus the wing. After searching dear old Google for hours to get some sort of info I started.
I built this many years ago and sold it on, so the photos are from way back! ....so apologies for the quality of them!
 
I haven't been active on here for a long time as I have moved back to the UK from Bulgaria.. so I do hope I remember how to load the photos! 
 
Cheers......................
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Thanks a lot for taking a look!
 
Cheers
 
Fozzy
 
 

Hello, all.  If you've been following the build thread, you know that this project was nearing completion.  Tonight, after taking the afternoon off, I finally crossed the finish line.
 
As has been my modus operandi of late, I wanted to more or less recreate an historical photograph.  For this project, I chose this photo:

It's from a fairly well-circulated set of photos and film that were taken either for training purposes, propaganda, or the news reels.  In some of the other shots from this series, there's a movie camera crew just out of frame to the right.  So, there was something big going on.  Also probably explains why the pilot's exiting the wrong side of the aircraft.
 
Anyway, this photo was taken in July of 1943 on Espiritu Santo.  The pilot here is one Lt. Virgil Ray, great uncle to our own @ARay87.  He did a pretty great write up on Lt. Ray at the WW2 Aircraft forums, so I'll point you there for a great in depth look into the man.  Sadly, Lt. Ray was lost in a storm on 13 October, 1943, just a few months after this photo set was taken.  Rest in peace, Virgil. 
 
I wanted to do this particular aircraft because it had red insignia surrounds (and I've never done those before) some pretty (ahem) unusual weathering.  It wasn't until a few weeks into the build that I really realized what I'd gotten myself into.  A couple highlights:
I sculpted the crew chief from the waist up, using only premade hands and head.  I also had to modify his ankles so he would stand up straight on the wing.  The base figure was the standing pilot figure included with the Corsair kit. I had to resculpt the pilot's lower legs because the Black Dog Resin figure was in ETO heavy gear.  It's still not perfect, but it's a lot better than it was. I also had to resculpt the pilot's hands as the stock figure's hands were nowhere near where they needed to be.  I had to build 2 palm trees from scratch.  I used Luke Towan's method, but also wrapped the trunks in masking tape to give them a little more texture.  Each tree has 38 fronds.  I could fit 12 fronds on a sheet of paper in my cutter.  Each sheet took 65 minutes.  You do the math. I added a ton of wiring detail to the cockpit, engine, and landing gear bay  
So, in all it was a pretty challenging project and a lot of fun (except the palm fronds) that really pushed my limits, especially the sculpting parts.  See the build thread for full details on the sculpting adventures.
 
Aftermarket parts used were:
Barracudacast plain tread wheels Anyz canopy frame Quinta studio cockpit interior and harnesses Black Dog Resin pilot figure  
Though my dio is not a perfect 1:1 recreation of the source image, I feel it captures the essence of the scene.  Anyway, I hope you enjoy.  Tomorrow, I have to build new floating display shelves in the model cave as I have officially run out of display room.
 





 

 

 

 

 



 



































 
Sorry, no under belly shots.  The plane is not attached to the base, but there's no good way to set or hold the a/c upside down with the figures in place.  It looks nice, you'll just have to trust me. 
 

This is my Hasegawa 1/32 Spitfire Mk Vb that I converted into a Royal Australian Air Force Mk Vc.   This build is dedicated to Tolga Ulgur who has shown us on many occasions just how well Hasegawa's Spitfire kits build up.   I think they did an amazing job of capturing the shape of this aircraft at a time when 3D scanning hadn't even been thought of.   The kit is a very simple one, parts wise, and is adorned with raised surface detail.  This was my first attempt at fully re-scribing a model and, in retrospect, I was a bit heavy-handed with the scriber.   I added Aires' Spitfire Mk V resin cockpit set which is a vast improvement on the kit cockpit but which seems to suffer from somewhat sloppy pattern work - certainly not the 'tight', crispness of Aires' more recent resin sets.  I scratch-built the wheel wells and radiator and dropped the elevators a tad.   I bought some nice resin wheels but couldn't use them because Hasegawa's gear struts aren't moulded with stub axles on them.  Instead, Hasegawa chose to mould the inner side of the wheel hub onto the strut.  Damn!!!   Fortunately, the kit wheels are very good and I simply rounded the tyres a bit more.   A HGW seat harness set, Barracuda Resin wide cannon blisters and Master Details turned metal Hispano cannon barrels were also added to the model.   The model was finished with MRP Mr Paint and SMS lacquer paints, which are both a dream to spray.   All markings, except Jimmy Cricket, were airbrushed with the aid of Montex masks.   Having been compelled to undertake this conversion (to get a Mk Vc) I've just heard a rumour that Kotare might produce a Mk Vc kit - Doh!  Isn't that typical of our hobby?    Comments and polite critiques are welcome.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

 
Here are a few images of the work in progress:
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

my last built  :