3RD ANNUAL SECRET SANTA GROUP BUILD FOR AIRCRAFT

By my rough calculations - Our friend Mike "Swingr1121" is now a married man !

Hmmmm....   seems that screen name is...   shall we say - outdated ?

Congrats Man !

Chris

IT'S FINALLY DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Put the last finishing touches on the Typhoon.  I will shoot my pics this weekend and post them.  This was fun.  Now I am off to my next project. 

Thanks again raptordriver and great job on the Spitfire.  Did you paint the white areas or are they decals?

Hey thanks everyone! Yes I painted the white areas except for the tail.

Here it is.  My secret Santa Gift (Hawker Typhoon Mk.1B) from Raptordriver.  This was fun build.  This took me a while due to working two jobs.  By the end of the year I should be able to only have one job, which will enable me to build more.  Well here are some pics.  Comments and suggestions are always welcome.  Now I am off to finish up my F-18.

Very nice and clean build.

Great work!

Very nice work.  No shortage of armament there !

Nice photos too !

Chris

Im calling this one done for now. White is such a pain to paint and all was going well untill i had to touch up the crosses, i did the rest of the white with my airbrush and the touch ups by hand:

Im ashamed to say i cant remember now who sent this to me. 

Azgaron:

Hows the kit i sent you coming on?

For the last few months I've been busy finishing up 3 other builds that were started last year.  They're all done, so now I can devote some time to the kits that Zip gifted me with in this GB. 

I ran into my first snag with the fit of the Phantom.  It wasn't that big a deal - an easy fix.  The intakes are really tricky on the Phantom.  I bet they're an engineering nightmare for a mold designer.  The geometry is pretty complex.  In order to make it fit on all the other surfaces at the same time, I needed to leave a gap at the bottom.  I figured this would be the easiest gap to fill, and I'm pretty sure I was right.

I trimmed a piece of 0.010" thick styrene sheet to fit the interior curve of the intake and pushed it in so that it was flush on the inside and glued it in place with liquid glue from the outside.  I left some of the sheet sticking out, and then after the glue dried I just trimmed it with an exacto and sanded it flush. 

The same operation was performed on the starboard side, but it took a thicker 0.030" sheet.  Lucky for me these are the only two thicknesses of sheet I have on hand - and they were just the ticket !  I really like it when that happens.

After painting I doubt it will be noticed.

Model On my yuletide friends !

Chris

Some great looking work guys.

Update on the CA 311.  One thing I love about the old Italeri kits is all the clean up of the excessive ejector pin marks! 

Here's the oob office.  Not bad detail for its day but I think I'll have to jazz it up a bit.

Nice progress Dave, I am wrapping up a GB in the next day or so and then I will be starting my JU-88. Im a littlle behind on getting started but I will get it done. I think its all Daves fault. HAHA Dave thats not confined to the RA GB, its spreading.

Steve

Lookin good Dave,

That's gonna be some greenhouse !

Chris 

A little more progress lately...

The base coats of the camo pattern are down and now I'm working on "fuzzifying" the edges between the colors. 

 ***edit***

Here's an in-progress photo showing the method I use for making the fuzzy edged camo pattern.  After painting the base camo colors with a plain hard edge, I go over the intersection of the two colors with a ~50/50 mix of the two colors.  A very fine brush is used to make a line ~1/16" wide.

After this I'll go back and blend a light wash of the 100% solid colors into the 50/50 area.  The two greens are so close in color that I might not even use the wash between those two.  They look pretty fuzzified already.

Chris

Here is my Dauntless, courtesy of Aggieman for the Secret Santa GB. Thank you again Aggieman, it was a fun one. The kit was not bad. The cockpit is fantastic, as are all the other cockpits from Accurate Miniatures. Fit was alright. The wing roots were a bit tricky. Everything else went fine. I wanted to make this plane look old and beat up but i think I overdid it....US Navy carrier planes usually didn't get this dirty or chipped. And speaking of chips, I tried the salt chipping technique with sand. That didn't go over so well, so I painted on aluminum chips with enamel paint. But I forgot the turpenoid in my oil wash dilutes enamels, so the chips are kinda streaky." border="0" width="30" height="20" />. The figures and vehicles are from AM's set of ordnance and such. I know the figures look like toys. I need to work on that. Please feel free to leave any comments or criticisms.  Merry Christmas!....in August.

Raider,

So how'd ya do at the county fair ?  I'd say the presentation is very nice.  The model is very nicely built and finished.  The base and the accessories are a nice touch.  So is the face on the bomb.  I gotta disagree with you about it being too weathered though.  I've seen some WWII carrier photos that show some mighty whooped A/C.  It doesn't seem overdone to me.  Very nice !

I almost missed that little guy that only shows up in the last photo.  Since you asked about making the figures more realistic... A couple things you can still do: tone down the blue shirts with some grey wash - or just something to make them a little less "neon" blue.  You did a decent job of making the folds a little darker - that looks nice.  I usually add a very little bit of red to the flesh tone paint and use it very sparingly in spots on the people's faces just to make the skin look less uniform in color.  That seems to help a bit.  Just some suggestions.

Chris

raider83 wrote:

...And faces are tricky, just gotta keep practicing...

Agreed !   Same here.

Chris

Last night I finished the fuzzification process on the camo colors, added a little bit of color variation on the tan surfaces, and gave it the overall future coat in preparation for the remaining decals.

Here are the results:

And just as a side-by-side comparison here's the earlier point in the process from last week:

Things should progress rather quickly now if I can get the bench time.

Chris

Hey guys I've begun my P-47M from Leadaas. Wow is this thing detailed. Best kit I've ever laid hands on. I actually had a hard time building the cockpit due to all the detail... I'd freeze up, not knowing what to hit next! The cockpit is just about done, but I couldn't bear it any longer and had to post pictures.

I added a set of photo etch seatbelts and some data placards thanks to Mike Grant. I will be adding a Quickboost K-14 gunsight and  wiring behind the instrument panel, as that area will be visible. Stay tuned!

You're a modelling machine, Max. You're already working on a new model after completing that spledid Corsair!
Great looking "office"!

Very nice detail work man !

Chris

Avus wrote:

You're a modelling machine, Max. You're already working on a new model after completing that spledid Corsair! Great looking "office"!

Thanks, Avus! I've had a good amount of free time this summer. It's really the only time I can get an hour or two at the bench each night/morning. 

Thanks everyone for the compliments! I'm glad you all liked the cockpit. But now, I'm moving on to bigger, better things! Here's today's installment:

As you can see, she's about ready to be glued together! This is such an easy kit, I get all giddy. I love the color contrast of the P-47, it's almost pretty.

Raider, that is an awesome looking Dauntless and nice dio to boot. 

Chris,  the camo turned out great.

Radmax, love what you've done so far with the jug.

I have been picking away at the CA 311 and I amabout to closeup the fuse.  I have no reference picks of the inside so I improvised with misc. bits from the spares box to busy up the lackluster interior.  Wash is kind of messy yet but I'll clean that up a bit before I close it up.

Meet Giulio, Guido and Giuseppe