Borsos

Great watchmaker‘s skills on that interior!

Great progress! I am late at the party but hopefully not too late. As I also have many of the Azur French kits in my stash, including this one, I‘ll follow with great interest. I already ordered the 3d-printed seat, too . I am very curious how this kit will develop in your hands. Best regards, Andreas

You are pretty fly for a crazy guy!

When I take into account HpH‘s prices for larger resin kits, the quality of Border‘s models (I have the 109, the Ju87 and some armor kits, all amazing; and quang‘s pictures of his 190 are the definite proof) and Squadron‘s price of less than 75$ for the Border Kate, my decision is made. You might be able to buy a whole Akagi kit in 1:35 from border , not just a part of it’s decking, for the price of a HPH Kate… Andreas

I counted no less than 11 unbuilt 109s in my stash. Enough is enough

Might be old information, but on their Facebook page Kotare announce kit no 32009 for late 2024. The only other information they give is that it will be „Not a Spitfire“ . Andreas

Thanks a lot to you all for following along this build and commenting! there are the final shots in the gallery: (and yes, I eventually added some exhaust stains …)

This is the 1:32 scale Azur kit which is oop for quite a while. I am not entirely sure if that’s such a huge tragedy…. despite of being still the only kit of this plane in 1:32 scale it has lots of errors and inaccuracies of which I tried to fix at least some. I followed here the scale plans by Marek Rys (Topdrawings No. 104) and the pictures in Bartlomiej Belcarz‘ monograph from the yellow mushroom series and the good old Squadron/Signal Publications 180: French Fighters of World War II. I was honored with some 3D-printed propeller blades from Waroff which are a huge improvement over the ridiculously short kit parts. With the release of a new, modern kit of the Dewoitine D. 520 by Dora Wings, the Azur kit finally can go into retirement. I started this kit in June 2022, long before rumors of a new kit from Dora Wings got on my ears, otherwise I think I would have waited for it. Markings are Berna decals. How stressy and long this build might have been, I learned quite a lot during the process starting from rescribing all the panel lines and riveting the airframe and ending with getting more practice in vacuforming new parts and trying out new airbrushing techniques. And for me the Dewoitine is one of the most beautiful airplanes that were ever build so it was definitely worth the long journey. I am looking forward in anticipation to the Dora Wing release, I‘ll definitely build another Dewoitine. Andreas

Looks wonderful!

I am waiting in anticipation… especially for the Border 1:35 scale Kate …

But not before the 1:35 scale USS Yorktown tower with a 1:35 scale Devastator…

Now I think we‘ll see a 1:35 scale Val in the not too distant future…

Looks interesting although too late for my Azur kit build. But I’ll definitely pick up a Dora Wings Dewoitine…

You urgently need a bigger cabinet.

The AK Crystal is the glue of choice for clear parts I think. It dried relatively quickly (it was sticky after about 15 minutes) and the bond seems to be way stronger than just PVA. At least you seem to know where your tools are. My workbench is often so messy (especially when it comes to the end of a project) that I frequently can’t find what I‘d need most… I definitely need to clean my workbench very soon! Well, she’s fnished. That was a long journey! Why no exhaust stains? Well, I‘ve only seen Dewoitines in German service that show exhaust stains, and these look very stark. Could be caused by the lower quality fuel they used. In fact I haven’t seen any French machine from 1940 showing any exhaust stains at all. So I decided to leave them off for some days and rethink if I‘ll add some very light stains or none at all. Better pictures with neutral background as soon as possible and after sorting out the exhaust question Andreas

Have you noticed that I glued the canopy hood the other way round? Corrected

There was no way to save the canopy hood. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t get it clear again although I ended up using tooth paste for polishing. So there was no other way than to go the hard way. I cut and sanded a stamp out of balsa wood following the dimensions in the scale plans. Then I vacuformed a new hood. Masking and painting… …and attaching the new part to the fuselage. Ironically the new part fit way better than the Squadron canopy hood and I only needed to add some glue. These are the darker spots on the frame. When it’s all cured, I‘ll cover it up with matt varnish it looks much better now and I am happy again. Yes, thank you for the hint! I even have a bottle of this glue at home. But the stuff I had used before was the other one on the right.

With propeller and rudder added, I‘d normally say I get closer to the end. Just some small bits still missing. (I had had to repaint the rudder entirely because I had destroyed the finish by dropping it into a tiny puddle of thinner. Enough to ruin the paintjob including the decals. This time I did one step after the other and cleaned my airbrush booth carefully.) BUT the blurred parts of my photo (I always use just my mobile to take pictures. Modelling is my hobby, not photography…) cover up where desaster struck: i had prepaired the rails for the mobile part of the canopy by indicating chamfers with paint. Seemed to be good enough for me when the most part of it would be covered by the hood anyway. (And yes, now I see that sloppy panel line, too. But just now on the photo. Another place to get back later) I don’t use vacuformed canopy parts too often, but I actually did once or twice in the past. But I never ever had so many troubles like this time. Despite of careful masking with Kabuki tape (or „washi“ tape, the stuff Tamiya uses for their masking tape, too) I destroyed the first paint job by lifting the paint with the tape. The paint adherence of the vacuformed parts is very bad. I went over it again (hence the slightly darker camo brown on the hood) and tried to glue it in place yesterday evening. No success with special canopy glue (on the basis of PVA… the hood just laughed at it). No success with UV glue that simply never actually cured (I don’t know if it was too old…) In the end — it was late in the evening and I just w-a-n-t-e-d to finish that (never a good basis for satisfying results) — my mad hands grabbed the super glue. You can clearly see what had to happen: This morning it looks just even worse. After this devastating example of self-inflicted stupidity I did the only rational thing I could have done: I sweared like a coachman, went to bed and left it till the next morning. After the boys went to school, wife and baby still asleep, I removed the canopy hood and decided not to bin the whole model yet. I‘ll try to sand and to polish out the worst effects of the superglue. I have no idea how to attach this bloody piece of a vacu canopy onto that fuselage, but I will stay away from superglue this time. I‘ll rather use my nail gun….

the propeller: at the top the kit‘s spinner with spare blades from an ages old Spitfire kit. These were longer than the ridiculously short blades from the kit but had definitely the wrong shape. At the bottom my vacuformed spinner with Waroff‘s 3D printed blades that he sent me so generously. They only received some strokes with fine sand paper and looked perfectly well; no printing lines or what soever. I think I went a little too far with weathering on the propeller als the Dewoitines of 1940 never had so many service hours. But well… I love weathered aircraft

Oh what a pity. but I’d stay away from using white spirit as it does affect MRP laquers. I clean my airbrush with white spirit and I do this also when I have used MRP laquers. The white spirit removes all paint residue flawlessly. Andreas

That looks frantastic. The naive person in the back of my mind had thought „maybe light spots on dark green are easier than the other way round“ but there’s of course no rational argument for that. Maybe spots are at least easier to spray than these „smoke rings“ this plane is famous for… however I really like the way it comes out!

Hello all, no excuses — I was more than lazy here. But I‘ll finish that one here now, it’s getting ridiculous how close I am to the finishing line. I had two of these figures in my stash. They are, I think, from Alarmi, and are Italian pilots. I thought it wasn’t too much of a problem to convert one into a French pilot In fact it took longer than expected. As always the devil lies in the detail. The French parachutes were different, the French wore single-breasted overalls without cuffs and no sandals… In the end I also did my best to give him an Ariaile flying helmet. The head is from Hornet, the boots are made by Royal models. Here he is after priming and shading from above. And here under some coats of Acrylic paint. I also finished the new propeller with the 3-D printed blades, but forgot to take more pictures during the process. Andreas

I start standing on my seat leaving sink marks on my chair and waiting when this kit is finally available… Andreas

… as it‘s so long oop, it’s all there online: http://www.gruppofalchi.com/files/1975-106-1975-ScaleModelAircraft_Woodman.pdf

Very nice start on that FW-190. i especially like the chipping in the cockpit. Andreas