"Battle for Mogadishu" ***COMPLETE*** 24oct09

Avus wrote:

Camo - Are you TRYING to drag me into another build!?! HAHA!!! That picture would make a nice one. All you'd need to do is find a nice big rock and poof, there's your base. Two things on the pic though .... 1) love the guy just loungin' in the back and 2) .... the guy out front w/ the binos is about to wet his pants!

The last picture is  good close-up. These are the details that I wish manufacturers would put into their figures. Everybody makes their figs with closed cuffs, etc. Almost like they don't study pictures before they sculpt. Uh oh .... another ...

camo junkie wrote:

notice there all (mostly all) of m-14's! did that on purpose.

yeah .... I saw the pattern ... (sniff, sniff .... I miss my girl. )

Thanks for the pics though. I'll be adding them to my stash.

Just thought you may enjoy this video (little bird insertion)....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pquwl45tb-o

8x man insertion, 2x Little Birds, and a nice .... big ... door charge. Nice!

Seen that one too, but it never gets old. Thanks for posting that up though ... it does help me w/ my placement if the helo in my dio. In the vid, you see them coming in almost straight down to the building instead of grazing in as I had seen before ... although now that I think about it, that's more at the ground level.

I think this will help me in balancing helo and the building size I want/ need.

Thanks again, Ark.

arkhunter2002 wrote:

Just thought you may enjoy this video (little bird insertion).... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pquwl45tb-o

At 0:54, on the roof at the lower right, one of them trips over! lol

Grimmo wrote:

arkhunter2002 wrote: Just thought you may enjoy this video (little bird insertion).... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pquwl45tb-o At 0:54, on the roof at the lower right, one of them trips over! lol

HAHA! Nice catch! .... he totally ate it. And the best part about it is .... I'm sure that he knows this video is out there, AND he knows he did it! HAHA!!

So .... here's kind-of an UPDATE ....

Well, I should probably call it a BACKDATE ....

I spent the better part of tonight tearing apart the helo back into halves and the cockpit interior. Long story short ... I started in on painting the cockpit & interior but b/c I had closed it all up like a dummy, I found it very hard to paint. I also tried to weather the exterior a bit, but failed miserably. I used a highly thinned tan, letting it bleed into the panel lines and letting it hug the rivets. It actually looked pretty good until it dried. Even though I was really careful, some of the thinned paint dried looking like a spilled stain on the helo's outside. So, I switched over to a really broad brush thinking I could cover the entire exterior w/ the thinned tan creating an overall dirty look w/o the stained look from before. It worked fine, but no the look I wanted. So now the frustration really set in ... I wanted to start over, but I had already done work on the cockpit. Respraying now meant loosing the detail work. So, I decided to really start over.

It sounds funny, but I'm actually happier now that's its in pieces ... I feel like I can move forward.

So ... where do I go from here? Well, I'm going to finish out the interior like I should have before. Then I'm going to respray the 1/2's all black before closing them back up again. As far as after that .... I have no F-IN' clue!!!!

Weathering this black exterior is throwing me for a loop. I searched the forums here, and the internet, and found a few discussions, but I'm still drawing a blank. I know that using a wash of thinned tan is what I want/ need to use, but I don't know how to apply it w/o looking screwed up.

Any suggestions for this would be GREATLY appreciated!

Thanks Camo. You might be right, but I think that tearing into it last night was a pretty good remedy as well. As stated before, sure I've taken about 10 steps back, but I'm at a better "starting" place now, and I'm happier w/ it. I'm focusing on getting the cockpit/ interiro finished up this morning and that's really all I'm focused on. We'll tackle the exterior when I get to that.

Its definitely been too long since I've done something other than figures!

I have been out of the loop lately ... went to the field on a training mission this past weekend. Made a couple of jumps, and humped around the woods a bit .... rolled my ankle and nearly broke it, but all in all ... it was a very relaxing (in a kick-in-the-balls kind of way) couple of days.

Hopefully, I'll be able to post some pics of the finished interior later on today ....

Sorry to hear about your mishaps, MC.

About the washes: what I do (but it's not my invention) is apply an acrilyc gloss coat over the base paint (black in your case) and then an enamel wash with the desired color (tan). It doesn't need to be precise. Let the model rest for maximum half an hour and the use a soft cloth soaked with enamel thinner to remove the eccess wash. As a result you'll get tan only in the recessed zones (panel lines, arond the rivets etc.)

Here's a guide of what I'm talking about.

HTH

DAMN! .... Avus to the rescue!!!! Just one question though .... do you wash it at home, or do you have to send your cape out for dry cleaning? HAHA!!! Thanks for that, Avus.

But seriously .... should I also be applying the decals from Cobra before I wash? I.E. ... Paint, seal, decal, seal, then wash/ weather? Seems that would be the way to go, but I just wanted to make sure that my "math" was right....

I just spend a good minute of my morning reading and researching aircraft ... specifically the F-117 since its black (and I'll be building one later as well) to see panel lines, etc. And I was just thinking about if I should have covered the model w/ a clear coat after the base coat. It just popped into my head that the surface created by the base coat may not have been smooth enough to let the wash creep only into the recesses, thus when the thinner dried ... paint was left where I didn't want it. Hmm .... hind-sight sucks! I'll be following your lead when I get back to the exterior ... as well as finishing the interior as well I guess.

Since I have the helo in pieces, I'm going to add in a little more interior detail. I think that I was in too much of a hurry before and skipped over some stuff that I wanted to do. Besides, I just had to remind myself that I'm not on any time-table here .... advice I think we can all take at one point in time or another ...

Avus, don't be sorry about my mishaps ... the ankle was my own dang fault for not looking where I was stepping. Besides ... when else am I going to get the oppurtunity to look out the window as I'm working on my model and see the wife mowing the yard!!! HAHAH!!!!!

(Don't tell her I said that!)

modelchasm wrote:

Besides ... when else am I going to get the oppurtunity to look out the window as I'm working on my model and see the wife mowing the yard!!! HAHAH!!!!! (Don't tell her I said that!)

i should've thought of that!

Avus wrote:

About the washes: what I do (but it's not my invention) is apply an acrilyc gloss coat over the base paint (black in your case) and then an enamel wash with the desired color (tan). It doesn't need to be precise. Let the model rest for maximum half an hour and the use a soft cloth soaked with enamel thinner to remove the eccess wash. As a result you'll get tan only in the recessed zones (panel lines, arond the rivets etc.) Here's a guide of what I'm talking about.

Avus - After looking again at this article ... and doing some more work on the helo, I've realized that most of the detail on this kit is raised rivets w/ some recessed panel lines and the article's technique calls for scribing everything. Have you used this technique w/ rasied detail?

modelchasm wrote:

... when else am I going to get the oppurtunity to look out the window as I'm working on my model and see the wife mowing the yard!!! HAHAH!!!!! (Don't tell her I said that!)

I guess being at home has it's bright sides!

modelchasm wrote:

DAMN! .... Avus to the rescue!!!! Just one question though .... do you wash it at home, or do you have to send your cape out for dry cleaning? HAHA!!! Thanks for that, Avus.

Actually it's a special fabric that needs no cleaning. You should see that other guy's, Bat something, cape: it's all messed up!

modelchasm wrote:

But seriously .... should I also be applying the decals from Cobra before I wash? I.E. ... Paint, seal, decal, seal, then wash/ weather? Seems that would be the way to go, but I just wanted to make sure that my "math" was right....

I see it this way: when the real helo (or aircraft or tank or jeep ...) comes out of the factory it's all (more or less) neat and clean. It get's dirty and worn when used. So on my models I apply the same process: first I make a "brand new" model painted and decaled and then I weather and smudge it.

So my suggestion is to finish the model with all the bells and whistles first (maybe leave the tiny parts that can snap off off)and then weather it.

modelchasm wrote:

Have you used this technique w/ rasied detail?

With raised detail, yes, with raised rivets no. It works the same: it leaves the wash around the raised details.

modelchasm wrote:

... the article's technique calls for scribing everything ...

Re-scribing the panel lines is not mandatory since in most cases the lines are deep enough, maybe just give it a pass or two where you sanded the model deleting or reducing the lines.

If you're worried about the result try the technique on a piece of scrap plastic; it's an old trick, but I seldomly think of it carried away by the enthusiasm of a new build!

Got to go: there's a young kitten stuck on a mammoth tree!

Avus wrote:

Got to go: there's a young kitten stuck on a mammoth tree!

Thanks again for clearing that up ... I just put on a new base coat of the black. We'll see how it goes ...

... you don't wear tights do you!?! Never understood why super heros do that ... its just weird....

camo junkie wrote:

its the closest thing to a woman all those comic book nerds have model...c'mon!

... I'm not going to go there. I know psst is lerking in the shadows ...

chris knows me well enough to know when im joking...he wont take it personally. besides he's a big boy and knows the truth when he hears it!!

Got to go: there's a young kitten stuck on a mammoth tree!

I was asked to rescue a cat in a tree once, (I'm with the SES volunteer rescue in Australia), and just said to the cat owner "Have you seen a cat skeleton in a tree?"

She thought about it for a few minutes, then said "No?"

"Good then. We're off." (if they can get up, they can get down.)

I've been really bad about loading pictures lately ... I think it has to do, ironically, w/ all the extra time I have on my hands. Funny how more time = less crap that gets done!?!

N-E-way ... that's how you spell it, right, Psst? ... ... I thought I'd post some pics of where I'm at right now. Not much of an update, as there's not much progress ... really just something to look at I guess....

Here's what I've found when playing with tints and Future, trying to come up something to tint the windows. Its a little hard to see the clear styrene, but the top piece was dipped in Future mixed with a little of the interior black from MM. The bottom was dipped in Future mixed w/ food coloring that was mixed to a black (per instructions from the net). As you can see, the food coloring mix really came out as a brownish color ... even when it was dipped multiple times.

Here's some pics of the new building I'm planning on using. I'm still not sold, as the tail boom really hangs of the back of the base. But then again, its not too noticable when you're looking at it from the front. May still play around with this some more ...

Also test fit the pilots in the cockpit. For the co-pilot, I've got him checking gauges and the other arm will be holding onto the wire handle in the door frame.

Part of the console w/ Futured guages....

More detailing of the interior after I tore the helo apart. Since I have it apart now, I changed the center of gravity of the helo to be right over the aluminum shaft that mounts the helo to the base. You can see the lead shot on the back of the interior wall (2nd pic).

Here's a shot of the outside, before repainting. I thought I'd post this one to show how the first wash messed up the paint job...

As always ... any C&C's always welcome....

scott, i didnt have a problem with the last building but...i understand your desire to "get it right"! progress looks good, especially with the helo!

well, which do you prefer? Does the larger building look better b/c it incompasses more of the helo "into" the dio?

Wahoo! Let the building decisions torment you too......

Haha, good luck...

hahahaha whaat? Wait, so I'm a comic book nerd right now?

And whats wearing tights have to do with not being able to get girls- I'd think the tights would be the problem, not an alternate solution

And yes- that's spelled neway. There's also "gotchya" "whatchya" "what-rya" ...it's not my fault, blame txting.

So as far as the updates and the building issues. I say go with what you think is better, they look quick enough to throw together, so if you're not happy with it (or you are happy with it now) don't let us tell you one way or the other haha

But... I like the bigger building- while I like the cut away roof (it looks like you wanted to get some detail to show in the inside of the building? Maybe a few bad guys?) I don't think it fits with the helo. If you'd have the bird landing the way you pictured, it looks like there are two things going on

• 1. The building in "real life" has a full roof and walls and in the 1/35 version it's a cut a way view for the sake of the viewer (which is just not my thing, never been into that style) OR
• 2. The building in "real life" has a partially collapsed roof like it was it by a mortar and the helo's going to touch down on it to drop off the D-Boys and the unsound structure is about to collapse under it's weight and the Delta force is going to fall in on top of the bad guys. Which is a pretty cool crush tactic, I've never heard of it, but they are all top secret and stuff so I can understand that.

I dunno, it's your dio, I think my only problem is I can't tell if your modeling a building with a cutaway half roof or a partially destroyed building.

If it's a cutaway roof- I think the cutaway rule should extend in that plane as I have no problem with that style (as in that's the edge of the dio so anything on that plane would also be cutaway like it was cropped out of the "picture"). So maybe have the helo coming in from the finished side? You could then get the front "attack" view of the bird with the troops hanging off and then see all the Somalis freaking out in the house because they think that the top of the line in tactical shooting is waiving an AK around from the hip and running reaal fast.

As for the detail on the LB, you know I think it's awesome- love the copper wires, and did the pilots come with the kit?

I'll Photoshop you a picture of what I think you might be able to do. It'd basically be flipping the front of the building around, making it the back, then having the bird coming in in a similar fashion. Got to switch computers though, hold on while I lurk from shadow to shadow.