scvrobeson Posted July 11, 2023 Share Posted July 11, 2023 Definitely looks like they did different production runs to fix some issues with the decals. Wonder if an email to Infinity could provided fixed decals for those with the problem ones. Matt mc65 and Thunnus 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CRAZY IVAN5 Posted July 12, 2023 Share Posted July 12, 2023 Yeah, mine too , going to have to break into a new routine, I think I've got some spare Airscale decals laying about. Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeMaben Posted July 12, 2023 Share Posted July 12, 2023 I think that longer panel / hatch is an access panel. Blew up the pic and those look like screws rather than rivets. Doesn't make any difference but that's likely why it's raised above the surrounding surface. Progress looking super John. CRAZY IVAN5, mc65, D.B. Andrus and 6 others 8 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted July 13, 2023 Author Share Posted July 13, 2023 Thanks guys! On 7/12/2023 at 12:38 AM, MikeMaben said: I think that longer panel / hatch is an access panel. Blew up the pic and those look like screws rather than rivets. Doesn't make any difference but that's likely why it's raised above the surrounding surface. Progress looking super John. Thanks Mike! Screws makes sense since I'm guessing these are access panels for the cowl guns? And raised because one panel is used to cover two openings? I was able to secure a copy of this out-of-print book for a real good price ($20 shipped) from the Arawasi blog site so I'm taking my time on things until it gets here. The wheels have been painted and weathered. But only a sliver of them will be visible once they are mounted within the wheel spats. When gluing the spats together, I left the wheels rotatable so that I can orient the flat spots on the tires later. The prominent glue seam will get sanded and puttied. In order to get a more positive fit onto the wing bottoms, I added some mounting posts for the landing gear legs. This is taking a page from Alex's build but in a slightly different form. I heeded Alex's warning about the thickness of the control surface parts and decided to thin them before gluing them together. For this, I use a section of sanding paper taped onto a sheet of glass (from a photo frame). For this type of work, I use a coarser grain of sandpaper than I normally work with such as #320 or #220 (3M) The insides of the elevator pieces look flat to the naked eye. But a few swipes on the sanding block show that they aren't perfectly flat. The dark areas indicate surfaces that are lower than the surrounding areas. The dark areas along the edge will result in gaps which are difficult to correct. So I keep sanding until the all of the dark areas are gone. The parts secured with just tape and finger pressure reveal the lack of gaps along the edge, which is the desired result. The elevators can now be glued together. At this point, I decided to rough fit the major components together by tape to check overall fit. There may be some significant gaps that I'll need to pay attention to. Particularly along the leading edge of the vertical stabilizer fillet and at the wing roots. But overall, fit looks pretty good. This is a LARGE aircraft with heckuva wingspan. It will NOT fit into my Ikea Detolf display case. Sasha As, Furie, D.B. Andrus and 21 others 23 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 Great progress John! Always enjoy seeing your process. Looks like the fuselage might need a spreader fitted if the cockpit floor doesn't push it out. What are the measurements on this one? Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dennismcc Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 Very impressive seeing it all assembled, great work as usual. Cheers Dennis Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted July 13, 2023 Author Share Posted July 13, 2023 Thanks guys! The model is about 12 inches (30.5cm) long with an 18 inch (45.7cm) wingspan. Just some additional views of the starboard side to show the modified surface texture that resulted from the removal of the oil-canning. Volksjager, Scotsman, Shoggz and 17 others 20 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HB252 Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 I think, seeing the overal plane view, that you are 100 percent right in removing the oil canning efecto. I wiil do the same whit the mine Thunnus and CRAZY IVAN5 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LSP_Kevin Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 Lovely progress, John! Kev Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TAG Posted July 13, 2023 Share Posted July 13, 2023 1 hour ago, HB252 said: I think, seeing the overal plane view, that you are 100 percent right in removing the oil canning efecto. I wiil do the same whit the mine Agreed, I found some D3A1 shots in my Random folder, super super crisp and they show a very smooth-skinned aircraft. Some birds just seemed more prone to oil-canning, maybe the Type 99 wasn't one of them? Epic job with a fussy kit, John, as always. Not gonna lie though, can't wait till you bust out that airbrush! - Thomaz mc65, easixpedro, Thunnus and 6 others 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TankBuster Posted July 14, 2023 Share Posted July 14, 2023 Looks great and way better that you smoothed it out. Cheers. Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scvrobeson Posted July 14, 2023 Share Posted July 14, 2023 It really is a lot of work, but it does look very good smoothed out. I think it's time well spent. How does the canopy fit look? Will you keep it open? Matt Thunnus 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thunnus Posted July 14, 2023 Author Share Posted July 14, 2023 9 hours ago, HB252 said: I think, seeing the overal plane view, that you are 100 percent right in removing the oil canning efecto. I wiil do the same whit the mine Thank you! It's a preferential thing. I had this mind as soon as I saw the test sprues from Infinity. I didn't think it was going to be as tedious as it has been. The sanding process degrades the existing rivets and panel lines so I've had to rescribe every panel line and use a needle to poke each and every rivet at least once. But I'm pretty far along and it helps that I can space out the tedious fill/sand process with other stuff like the engine and cockpit. 8 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said: Lovely progress, John! Kev Thank you Kevin! It's a very interesting aircraft. Very elegant looking with the elliptical wings. 7 hours ago, TAG said: Agreed, I found some D3A1 shots in my Random folder, super super crisp and they show a very smooth-skinned aircraft. Some birds just seemed more prone to oil-canning, maybe the Type 99 wasn't one of them? Epic job with a fussy kit, John, as always. Not gonna lie though, can't wait till you bust out that airbrush! - Thomaz O M G... what beautiful photos! May I ask where these were from??? They look to be very early production or maybe a prototype. Look at the reflection of the hinomaru on wing in that first photo! And more evidence of the single hatch between the windscreen and engine! 3 hours ago, TankBuster said: Looks great and way better that you smoothed it out. Cheers. Thank you! I like it too. 2 hours ago, scvrobeson said: It really is a lot of work, but it does look very good smoothed out. I think it's time well spent. How does the canopy fit look? Will you keep it open? Matt Thank Matt! It looks hand-crampingly good, doesn't it? Canopy seems to fit well. I want to have the pilot's canopy closed and bombardier's open. Toyed with the idea of sawing the single piece closed canopy but I don't think that will be necessary as the separate clear parts seem to fit well. If I don't glue the pilot's canopy into place, I can pose it open or closed. scvrobeson and Greg W 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amurray Posted July 24, 2023 Share Posted July 24, 2023 On 7/11/2023 at 12:43 PM, Thunnus said: Thanks for the comments guys! Keep em coming! Hmmm... that's an interesting theory about the ground crew. I just accepted the photographic evidence of the hatch without theorizing how it got there. It didn't look like a crude repair to me. So I did some digging and found some more "evidence" of the single hatch with rivets... The starboard side of the same aircraft, which lessens the chances that both sides were repaired. A photo from Ryan Toews article on D3A Center of Gravity Markings shows a different D3A1 with the single riveted hatch. And FWIW, Hasegawa's 1/48 scale D3A1 model depicts the single hatch per side. I have not found any photographic evidence of the double hatches but there is this photo of a D3A2 with double "openings", which can be covered by the single hatch shown above. Looks as though it was hit by cluster munitions! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
amurray Posted July 25, 2023 Share Posted July 25, 2023 On 7/13/2023 at 6:37 PM, TAG said: Agreed, I found some D3A1 shots in my Random folder, super super crisp and they show a very smooth-skinned aircraft. Some birds just seemed more prone to oil-canning, maybe the Type 99 wasn't one of them? Epic job with a fussy kit, John, as always. Not gonna lie though, can't wait till you bust out that airbrush! - Thomaz GREAT photos! I've never seen hem before. What are those two structures on the top of the wing outboard the landing gear? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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