mc65

thank you all! Ernest, your model is doing great, but most of all it's benefiting from your daughter's attentions, which makes it super special regardless, in my opinion! well, finally the main landing gear has found peace, and I have carried on the last things of this troubled model. forgive the bad photos, but I'm in debt to sleep, in the next I hope to conclude and make decent ones. one thing that didn't convince me was the red of the wheels. I got it back thanks to a friend's suggestion to use some Humbrol enamel, which luckily I had. in this photo you can appreciate how different the red of the decal on the nose is, compared to the nose and the wheels ... patience, I don't think I want to intervene on the checkerboard. another reason for disappointment, but it's only my fault, was discovering the Barracuda decals sheet dedicated to the P51 stencils only after closing the fuselage. placing the decals later was... interesting. fortunately my childhood was marked by "the cheerful surgeon", and thanks to that I still have a fairly steady hand! dragged by enthusiasm, I installed the last cockpit's internal parts and definitively positioned the canopy. even the last external parts have been fixed, such as antenna, navigation lights, etc. now all it needs is some weathering and general harmonization. and a base, of course. I am trying also to get the Nino Pizzichemi's beautiful pilots sculptures dedicated to P51, but at the moment I have not succeeded. cheers, Paolo

wow, the nose job is absolutely believable, congratulations!

I must say that looking at your work makes me want to go up to the attic immediately and bring down my box, to copy your creation as much as possible! terrific painting, the last additions make it even more amazing. kudos, Paolo

Iain, I discovered this discussion recently, it took me a while to read and digest everything. I do not have in mind to build a B24, I simply do not know where to put it, but having already read (and having been struck by it) the discussion on He219, I just couldn't not follow this. what to say? the phrase attributed to Leonardo da Vinci, the motto of the Amerigo Vespucci ship for decades, seems appropriate to me: not who begins but who perseveres. all my admiration and esteem for the approach and stubbornness in solving seemingly insurmountable problems (and which should not even exist, in third millennium models). cheers, Paolo

thanks Ernest and Maru, you are too generous with this dumb old model maker! well, today I have not done anything because I was ordered for "a simple ride, less than 10Km". since this discussion has taken a bit of a drift like this, I put a photo of the green part of the route: I have yet to figure out if the sweet* girl who drags me into these things is trying to get me in shape or kill me... anyway. in the midst of this alien landscape, and without even thinking about it, I had an epiphany, and I understood why the P51's main landing gear was struggling to stick firmly in place. in fact, it is almost a week that I have placed it, but it limps, flickers, in short, it is not firmly locked in its place, on the contrary, to titillate it, it comes off, despite the use of very powerful styrene glue as flex-i-file! AND THANKS! the landing gear bay is made of resin, and when it sticks, the styrene glue, there??? I could stay there until 2024, waiting for it to stick... so now** I clean everything and start again with a suitable glue and then insciallah, I finally go to the cockpit. oh, yesterday I managed to complete also the LH ammo bay. cheers, Paolo *so to speak **now I'm going to rest my poor bones, we talk about it tomorrow, maybe

Wow! big advances, here! the invasion strips are excellent, aren't you afraid that the decals let you glimpse these from below?

hi all, during my trip I took a couple of hours to visit the Tempelhof site, finding it... well, very Teutonic. It was inevitable to think of what Goering said to USAAF General Spaatz after the war: "When I saw your bombers over Berlin protected by your long-range fighters, I knew then that the Luftwaffe would be unable to stop your bombers. Our weapons plants would be destroyed; our defeat was inevitable." especially considering that the P51B I'm making flew over Berlin! well, back home I put my hand to the weapons compartment, asking myself several times why I insist with this area, which closed it would certainly have made a better impression. after an evening of curses I arrived here. I'm not very satisfied, but I keep it that way. weapons and ammunition are Gaspatch, really well made, each Browning is made up of 5 separate parts, with also some optional parts. the tracks for the belts are in the usual sheet of toothpaste tube. next session port compartment, I hope. cheers, Paolo

as regards the number of crew members, I read, I think in the book "ace if diamonds", that even when the third member was not essential, the crews insisted on having him with them in the transitions from one type to another of the same plane, or even on other planes designed as two-seaters, such as the He219. it was not a technical question but a human one, not wanting to disperse the small human group that had been created. the third man in fact would have been destined for other non-flight jobs.

Hi Jack, my P51 is already built and painted, you may find it in the "mighty 8" group also. I had the feeling the upper central fuselage was someway fat, so I forced it with clamps and epoxy to obtain a sligthly better look, but knowing before of the resin set first I would definitely use it! too late, amen.

procrastinate as long as you want, we will not stop waiting to see what wonder you will bring out from that engine!

Fortunately we're here for pure fun, Kevin... take your time, and your fun! Heaven can wait, and us, too! cheers, Paolo

Great recovery, Ayovan, it must not have been easy with that camouflage!

Great! This reminds me of a hellcat with the tiger stripes proposed by my son! great advancing on the painting, too, go ahead! I didn't know about the canopy set proposed by Jack, and now it's too late, darn!

Not far, but not so near, either! I've been sent to Berlin to the pilot expo, so I'll be away from the bench til monday at least. and also in the last session before departing, I get lost in underneath details, forgetting I'd planned to work on the guns/ammo bays, before. This will sure delay and not simplify the last works on it. all started with the drop tanks support arms: the kit's ones were so basic I decided to intervene. the originals on the left, the altered ones on the right. As often happens to me I dived into the subject until I'm satisfied with the result. Well, more or less, satisfied. So, once the tanks were completed, I glued these in place, and immediately afterwards also the landing gear, while it would have been better to work on the upper part, before gluing the fragile parts underneath. now I have to walk on the eggs, or forget about the gun bays, leaving those shut. better open these immediately, so to not even think to not work on guns & ammo belts. I hope to resume from here when at home, without distracting myself again! cheers, Paolo.

Quite amazing work on that... I love this old, dark, brittle styrene!

Welcome back, Ernest! now it's my turn to be away from the bench for some days, take advantage of that and work on your kit!

Thank you all for the interest and appreciation of this work! Bobster, here I used the thiniest evergreen foil I had cut in strips, then after gluing these on the wings I sanded these softly. The translucent effect was achieved with pre and post shading. let see if I'm able to post some pics by smartphone... hope these may explain the quite simply, altough time consuming, steps! cheers, Paolo

Maybe I'm wrong, I'm far from home so I cannot check the same parts I've in stash, but the PUR46 seems to me a sort of filter cup, as PUR63... maybe it should go on opposite specular side of 46?

hi all! this is a model I finished some time ago, but I decided to put it here since a friend informed me that we will see it around soon. in truth this model was born as a gym in view of other biplanes and as a guinea pig to experiment with materials and techniques unknown to me at the time. so I took a very cheap Roden kit and I threw in it Taurus Models resins, Eduard photoetched, Doug Kraner propeller, Uschi and FCM decals, a few pieces of WnW recovery, and a lot of time and patience. to comfortably realize the internal details of the fuselage I built the entire front fuselage strut separately. the engine is a Frankenstein's monster with Wingnut sump and manifolds, Roden cylinders, Taurus Models valves and flanges with Albion pipes and home-made details. everything was then buried in the fuselage, as it was just a gym. among the various experiments there were the reinforcements of the ribs on the wings (later improved and used recently on the Lysander) the use of Uschi decals to emulate wood, but also the use of metal pins to reinforce the structures less-than-perfect-joints together with the use of two-component glue. the idea was to make the plane used by Werner Voss when he was transferred to the Richtofen squadron, with the upper wing replaced and the third heart freshly painted on the back of the fuselage. with the under part reporting his age, at least compared to the upper one. due to the fragility of the whole, I hastened to place it on a simple base on which it could be safe. and that's it! to be my second biplane, used to understand how to make at my best some WnWs on commission, I must say that I had a lot of fun and learned several things, thanks to it. cheers, Paolo

thank you again! sorry for the absence, there were days in which I had some other things to do, but anyway I had to stop work on this damn model. in order, I made two days of passion to extract the pump from the second well. pump replaced no more than three years ago and pleasantly dead. indeed great invention, the chain hoist. then I ran away for a couple of days in Ogliastra, about 180 km from home, to walk in a mountainous and wooded area that I did not know. remarkable. especially that I got out alive, given my physical form. but as I said, the works had to be suspended in any case, since the decals at a certain point highlighted a crackle effect as beautiful as it was unwanted. before whistling everything in the differentiated garbage I re-sanded the affected areas (only the wing signs developed this effect) and gave a new coat of future, leaving it to dry well for at least three days. once back home, and recovered the use of the upper limbs, I tried with a new coat of opaque. better, I would say. on the sidelines I did a few other little things, as usual: I tried to cover the central band of the landing gear doors with adhesive aluminum, started working on the landing gear itself, and prepared navigation and signaling lights. and now, if the devil stops putting his tail on it, I switch to oil weathering. cheers, Paolo

awesome job, Thunnus!! if I have my say on the aluminum strips, cutting them with a new # 11 blade keeping it very low on the sheet can help to limit the accordion effect, but the problem is solved completely by using a good pair of scissors instead!

Glad to be of any help, Kev! well, I think you'd be doing Mark an injustice by not using those! he spent time and effort on, I guess he will be happy to see his drop tanks used in the end!

hi Kevin, great job on the wheels! perhaps whoever designed them originally had a wreck in mind! about the drop tanks, surely you already know that there were at least two types of cap, one of which very prominent, the other less, being of the flush type. in these two photos it is also clear how the union line between the two half-valves, upper and lower, was a thin line, while the Hasegawa one is quite high... cheers, Paolo

here I am, in the last few days I have tried to make the fim of the decals disappear, which required long drying intervals of the clear varnish. the attempt was to minimize the thickness of the clear coat, alternating layers of clear gloss with sanding sessions, but without much success. here after sanding to the bones and adding a clear matt layer. better, but not great. in the end I lost my patience and went to the hard way: heavy layer of futures, 24 hours of pause, abrasive pads gradually finer and finer, but with the heavy hand (in some places I damaged the background color) then clear matt layer. the same procedure obviously also went through the whole plane. let's say well, but not very well yet. I guess that this model is like this, amen. on the sidelines I carried out some little things: installed the seat, equipped with headrest and rear bag in magic sculpt, equipped with electrical cables as in the reference photo. referring to page 3 of this wip, I had mentioned the Quickboost engine exhausts. after having checked and measured several times, I came to the conclusion that the exhausts without fairing are wrong, or in any case not interchangeable with the fairing ones, being more protruding by almost 2mm per side. considering that the false walls that I have installed in the engine compartment have a thickness equal to that of the engine, there is obviously something wrong. to understand, here the faired ones: and here those without fairing. the simplest solution, if I had noticed it before, would have been to reduce the volume of the fake engine by those 3.6mm overall. pity that now not only the compartment is closed, but also abundantly painted and equipped with decals! the only thing that came to my mind, and that I put into practice before I lacked the courage, was to cut and angle the individual exhaust pipes. here is a comparative photo faired/not faired after surgery butchery. present time these are only supported with vinyl glue, but I think that anyway it will not be a very clean job... but at least these will not protrude like anteater noses, and will have the right inclination. again, see page 3 for the photos of the real ones. I'm starting to get tired of this model, I hope to be able to devote myself to weathering in the next sessions. for today as a little reward I have installed the fuel caps. cheers, Paolo

Hi Peter, just to add confusion, somewhere (but where ??) I read that the camouflaged MiGs didn't have the insignia on the wings. anyway, I find the camo proposed by Jeroan The Camo for a Nam MiG! regarding the chipping, I guess everyone has their own preferences. The mine for this are the lifecolor, diluted with water instead of the dedicated thinner. cheers, Paolo