stresser

Yes, often airfield buildings were disguised with shop fronts or general camouflage. Often the same for important industry buildings, as they were targets. The building I work in still has camouflage paint on the parts that haven't been modified over the years. The site still has air raid shelters too.

Pretty sure it'll never happen now. This was a few years ago, and I can't see them outpacing the super tucano. I'm more confident of seeing a modern build Bronco.

There were a couple of people suggesting that the Enforcer with a suitably updated engine and avionics would be an interesting competitor against the Super Tucano and similar types in the new low cost close support/COIN role that places like Afghanistand and Iraq need. It's a bit like what they're doing with the Bronco - that could see a come back and new production, as there is/was a company digitising all the drawings.

Thanks Eric. I think your M1C looks great. In terms of PC12 being described as 'chocolate brown' I think you nailed it with the colour. I will go with something similar if necessary.

The aviattic transparent backing decal turned up on my doormat today so I can have a crack at it this weekend. I was talking to my dad about it (he's been modelling longer than I've been alive...) and he ended up asking if I've ever heard about this stuff called paint...well I still may end up back there but not before I look at all the decal options!

I don't like to get frustrated with modelling. There's plenty enough of that in the 'real world'. I am lucky in the respect that I'm fairly tenacious with problem solving so I will stick at it. The options are clear enough now. Looks like I'll be paint stripping this week!

So where was I... The masking film turned up, and whilst it said low tack...it was still too tacky and it wasn't willing to conform anyway. I then went with blue masking tape - used a lot in automotive detailing. The non-adhesive side has a kind of waxy finish to it, so whilst I could cover the area I wanted, it doesn't stick to itself too well. I managed to get this off in two halves and on to the back of the decal paper... Then I realised I didn't want a join along the top of the fuselage. So I started again, this time giving in and using tamiya tape. This is a much better tape but costs more! This time I got my no-join along the top edge. As you can see it caused some distortion to the decal when applied for the template, and it was wrinkled - the difficulty of double curvature surfaces from 2D patches. Still, I had a go and the decal is not particularly forgiving. The substrate itself is actually very stretchy and worked ok with micro sol, however the printed pattern is very delicate and doesn't take much messing. As a result, it wouldn't work so that came off and I'm back to square 1. For the third attempt I decided to see just how bad the joints were going to be....I used the kit decals as patterns. The chequers decals are in 4 parts This makes sense given the shape of the original. By this time I had painted the fuselage a Wehrmacht Dark Brown colour as the closest match I could lay my hands on (if anyone is interested I'll put the details up). It's actually not a bad match for what PC12 might have looked like. The downsides to this approach are that you are never going to get a perfect match with the texture along the joints because of the taper, and you are going to have 4 joints which are all going to be quite visible. So I crossed my fingers the texture wouldn't be too obvious, painted the fuselage dark brown to help with the joints and dug deep into the skill bucket. Well, that attempt got to a top and a side before I gave up. The top was pretty good with a few wrinkles down each edge but the side suffered a lot from lost ink. If the print was more resistant I think that this would have worked fine, but as it was I got the print lifting on the creases, and a white line down the edge from the white decal backing. I suppose the Microsol could be softening the printed ink, and I'll have a go without Microsol in the week. I think I'll have to order the clear backing to deal with the white edges. Any thoughts on other ways to tackle this? If the clear sheet doesn't work then I'll strip it back to the plastic and just paint it PC12 - I don't want to because the texture really brings something, and I can't wait to use their lozenge fabric decal on some other aircraft, but £12.00 per sheet gets to be an expensive experiment after a while!

What a great picture!

That's a good point... Might be worth a trial

And I look forward to seeing how you achieve this effect!

And a Gnat...

I'll be going along with my Father.

I'm looking forward to seeing how the faded fluorescent orange turns out. There are some RAF aircraft I'd like to do with that kind of scheme - but not until I know how to fade fluoro colours! The kit goes together very nicely and won me a second place at Wales and West Group Air Cadet Field Day when I was around 16-17 I think. I missed out on first place because I did the correct version of the box top colour scheme (the rule was to make the colour scheme on the box top and the markings are not quite right for this particular aircraft). I took my references and showed them but to no avail...a guy who painted the camouflage in the wrong colours, but could't tell me what make paint he'd used won instead, strangely from the area the IPMS judges came from....I'd still rather be right than first! I got there by winning Staffordshire Wing Modelling Competition with the 1/32nd Revell 31sqn Tornado. Just so happened that one of the officers who turned up to look at the competition was JENGO on 31 when they put that scheme on. That was a nice chat! Sorry, I digress...

You'd have to suspect Kittyhawk will upscale their 48th scale Mirage F1 at some point considering they are doing similar with the Jag (even though I know it isn't a direct scaling function...) And speaking of Mirage 2000....Ian Black's next book is called Zinc and is going to be on the Mirage 2000. Check out firestreak publications The Lightning and Phantom books are excellent. PS, I would very much like a single seater and two seater Mirage F1.

To bring this thread up to date... I cut the cockpit panels off the fuselage and used the 'trainer' panel in the Alley Cat kit. I thought this would mean less filling/sanding. I wouldn't advise it to be honest. The effort is probably the same. I used some Aviattic wood decal for the rudder kick boards (for want of a better term...). The decal worked fine with MicroSol. Of course, with the fuselage together and the cockpit coaming on, you can see hardly any of the interior! The joints needed a bit of work, and I am still working on the profile at the front of the cockpit coaming - you can see it isn't great in the photo above after painting the steel base coat. That's this weekends job as I've been working away this week. The wings kind of click in to place I may go as far as epoxy at this joint because the wings are heavy and are held in by two smallish pins each. You'll note that I have removed the covers to the wire terminals on the wing. I can do that easily because, with my kit at least, Alley Cat provide two sets of these parts. Otherwise I would have mastered one of each type and cast them anyway. I have removed the covers because I will be using Aviattic PC12 (mid) and CDL fabric decal. Some masking film should be waiting for me when I get home so I can make patterns of the parts for cutting out the decals. It's a bigger kit than I expected.

Thanks MPK - still a long way to go before it's wonderful, in my mind anyway! Here's a bit more... The kit engine isn't too bad compared to photo's of a Le Rhone 9J. The Alley Cat kit ha the wrong version of the Le Rhone 9 ( I know they updated it at some point so I must have an early kit). I know that it is going to be mostly invisible when the cowl and spinner is on, but I have a problem with perfectionism and it matters to me that what is in the built model is correct if it can be. As a consequence I bought the CMK Le Rhone 9J and built most of it alongside the kit engine. When they are both finished I'll decide which one goes in to the model, and the other will go in the Alley Cat kit...

Thanks for the kind comments guys. This kit is an interesting one. There is some lovely detail, but at the same time it's limited run in style. Still, when all the clean-up is done the kit parts fit very well. The wicker seat is a resin component that comes with both the 'wartime colours' and 'checkers and stripes' releases. It is a really lovely part and would sell well by itself. The Alley Cat kit doesn't come with anything as nice so that one will be formed wood using appropriate decals.

Well, here goes my first build thread ever. I've wanted to build a Bristol M1C for some years now - I work in structural analysis for aerospace companies and I've spent most of my career on the airfield at Filton so I have something of a soft spot for Bristol aircraft. Some time ago I started scratch building one in 32nd scale, but I couldn't find the references I needed to do it justice. Airbus UK has/had a bit of a history section at Filton and I have checked to see what they have - and they have nothing unfortunately. Anyway, I'm coming back from about a 10 year break from modelling after some big life changes (the stash has fluctuated over this time - I knew I'd get back to it one day and most of it is 1/32nd now). I saw someone else say in a different thread that modellers have to be patient...well it's paid off and I don't need to muddle on with the scratch build with this kit from Special Hobby, and the Alley Cat kit (which I have and I'm using bits and pieces from). The different interpretations of some areas are quite interesting - the prop and spinner shape stands out. I've been quite taken with the explosion of Great War aircraft and accessories over the past few years and I've been able to accumulate a fair bit as shown below. Some of it is duplicated so I can see what difference it makes. I am very interested in the archer fine transfers resin 'decals'. I still need to get some rib stitching as Historex don't stock it in the UK. I feel that the resin parts might be more subtle than the RB productions stitching. We shall see. I started with the cockpit: Points of interest: 1. Seatbelt is by HGW 2. I used some Gaspatch buckles and fine Albion Alloys tubing for line crimps for the control cables. 3. The right hand panel sits in the way of the diagonal wire brace, so that was drilled. The real thing seem to have varied quite a lot but was fixed to one of the diagonal frames by brackets top and bottom. 4. I went a little mad and drilled out the wicker diagonals on the seat. 5. The intake tubes for the engine are a big feature of the cockpit, but are missing from the kit (both if I recall....) so they were added from metal tube stock. 6. Paints are Vallejo and Mr Colour Wood paint set. More to follow... stresser

Is that a camera port just above the tail hook?

Hello, RB Productions also has etch brass turnbuckles. I have not tried the etched brass ones yet, although they are on my desk, but I would agree with Petrov, about the Gaspatch buckles. They are very very good, but I feel a little oversize in 1/32nd. The next time I need some I will try 1/48th scale ones. Here is an example of the 1/32nd scale Gaspatch Turnbuckles I used on a SH Bristol M1C for rudder and elevator cable connections.

Yes, I look forward to buying one of those!

If this is an approved scenario from the Air Warfare College, we're all in trouble! Looks great (as ever...) stresser (old avon IPMS chum).