Monogram Mafia Group Build

thanks, Tal Afar, "Bad Moon" is just a plane I made up.

Working through the weekend, and checking up on the group build.  Hey Owl, is "Bad Moon" an actual plane that you modeled or one of your own design? Like the green trim paint all around.......

Hammer, thanks for the cool Airacobra story. I have not built the Eduard kit, but have long admired the Monogram kit, ever since I saw it hanging from a buddy's basement ceiling back in middle school. Finally getting around to working on my CAF P-39 and am amazed at the fit.  First produced in 1964? Crazy, wish I had held up as well! LOL

Thanks to everyone for showing your work; a great time for comradeship and sharing of ideas. Hope to be building again in a few days. 

the real red baron

nice you like the morning usn coming through the window dont you

al i got to say about your build is

I sure do! If I could, I'd take pictures outside. Natural light gives the best photos, I think.

I have 2 of those on the bench now.  One is just in need of paint, and the other needs some repairs (cat incident).  Both CAF.  You can usually find them on eBay pretty easily.

redraider56

ahhhhhh....good luck finding that lol

EDIT: now that I look, theres actually 2 on there

nice you like the morning usn coming through the window dont you

al i got to say about your build is

Hans von Hammer

redraider56:

...why would you need to look for one on ebay?  Didn't Revell just re-release it a couple years ago?

 

I want the CAF Ghost Squadron boxing of the 'Cobra that Monogram released back in around '82...

Hans are you looking for the complete kit or do you just need the decal sheet?

The Mustang is finished! I present to you, "Bad Moon"

OWL

ahhhhhh....good luck finding that lol

EDIT: now that I look, theres actually 2 on there

redraider56

...why would you need to look for one on ebay?  Didn't Revell just re-release it a couple years ago?

I want the CAF Ghost Squadron boxing of the 'Cobra that Monogram released back in around '82...

Hmmm just reading that made me give it a look-see and the P-39 does look like a fun little build Hammer.  Btw, why would you need to look for one on ebay?  Didn't Revell just re-release it a couple years ago?

neat story Hammer...

Tal Afar Dave

Monogram P39: Thinking about it

Just to give ya a little nudge, Dave, since your siggy mentions it... Here's our (CAF CenTex Wing at San Marcos, TX, circa 1988) P-39 getting a little ramp-work done after a pre-airshow flight...  Blew a hydraulic line somewhere under there, and two of our tireless Ramp-Rats are frantically trying to get her fixed & ready to make her take-off time for the actual performance...  With the open panels, big fluid puddle, heavily weathered (for a Warbird airshow performer)I think it'd make a sweet little diorama, either the one depicted (or even better), set in the South Pacific, or N. Africa.... 

This bird had a history of being cantankerous, with little things constantly breaking until someone suggested that they ditch Ivan's paint scheme and change the paint and markings to it's original U.S. Army  Airacobra scheme... I'm not kidding about the thing breaking down either.. Although little ever happened to it in the air (thankfully), the thing would be post-flighted thoroughly after a show, pulled into the hangar, and (with no one ever near it) break down overnight, just sitting in the hangar... It was rather maddening for the P-39 crew..

In 1990, she was rolled outta the paint shop for AirSho 90 with a new Snake-skin and the problems (I called them "Gremlins from the Kremlin") vanished, almost overnight! 

None of the annoying little problems they had with it before have ever re-surfaced, and with just the regular routine maintenence checks and repairs peformed, it's been the "Sweetest little airplane I ever worked on, ever since we got rid of the Red Stars", according to her crew-chief...

I'm huntin' for another P-39 on Ebay right now, even though I've built it about a dozen times...  Built the Eduard kit too, but the Monogram kit is an overall better fit (I had to shim the wing roots on the Eduard kit with styrene strip) and has more fuselage detail than Eduard's...  Eduard's has better intake details, and the landing gear struts and their bays & the wheel-wells are more detailed, but it seems to me that Eduard concentrated on detailing stuff not easily seen, and there're no engine or gun-bay details at all, although one could scratch-build and kit-bash (The Allison Engine from the Arii P-40 would fit with a little minor surgery) those details... But for the price of the Eduard kit, one would think that kit-bashing and scratch-building would be needed only for the smallest of details..

I don't like Eduard's cockpit doors either, since they're molded 100% in clear.  That means you can't display the model with the doors open and windows down, unless you perform some delicate surgery on very brittle clear styrene and cut the windows out of the doors. 

The Monogram kit has only one door that opens (the starboard one), but that's ok, since the left door isn't to be used except for an emergency egress, and it can't be opened frm the outside anyway...

ANYway... Just thought the P-39 might be fun for ya... (And it gave me an excuse to type up another CAF "War Story", lol...)

This CAF/Monogram P-39 is done with the "Fill Flash" and three overhead (regular 3-bulb ceiling fixture with those cockamamee coiled fluorescents) lights... I used a piece of light sky-blue poster board and sprayed some flat white from a rattle can onto it for a back-drop.. Then I adjust the color of the picture until the "sky" is right, then *Snap*..

 The figure was painted with Testor's enamels overall, with the face done in Testor's Model Master Radome Tan for the basic skin-color (my preferred skin-color for Caucasian troopage), then given a wash with oils (Burnt Umber, Raw Umber, and Yellow Ochre),  and dry-brushed overall with Tamiya acrylics, then sprayed with Testor's MM Dullcoat...

The eyes were just dark slits as the pilot is squinting in the bright, South Pacific sunlight with a small black dot in the center of the slit, and the same thin line was done for the eyebrows and a touch of pink for the lips mixed from Crimson and Titanium White oils.  It's also photographed from the same distance as the figure above, but I used the "crop" feature to enlarge it it to a ridiculous size, lol...

That's why you want to keep your viewers at a foot away from your 1/48 figures..  The un-aided human eye can't focus on anything closer than 4-6 inches anyway...   Having a figure that's an inch and a half tall magnified to the height of a GI Joe is pretty unforgiving too, lol... This guy looks like he had a lip-job and they'll blow above 15,000 feet ASL.. He looks pretty good at scale viewing distances (above) though... 

Basically, it's a setting on your flash that sends the flash out in oblique angles to the direction of the lens, rather than the flash focusing directly on the object.  It's a "softer flash"...I'm not a photographer but the term is "Flat" lighting, IIRC...

I use an overhead light and the "Fill Flash" setting on my camera, generally, and I also, using WinVista, fix the photos after I download them by changing the lighting (by brightening the photo and and adding or taking away some contrast) and then cropping with the photo-editing program in Vista... The cropping feature also does the phot in a close up, making the cropped area sometimes 3 or 4x the size... I use it for detail shots... That's what I did here with the Spitfire. It was a shot of the entire fuselage, and not a lot could be seen in the 'pit.. Once it was cropped, however...:

...whats "fill flash" ?

You're right.. You got juuust a skoshi-bit of silvering going on there, not white ink...  Can you use a "fill flash" and some indirect lighting instead of full flash, and light-colored background?

thanks, hammer!  But the decals are not off register. I'm looking at them right now, and there is no white along the edges. I think that the white showing up had to do with the flash on the camera....

Had the same issue with my decals being slightly off-register with that white comin' out past the blue on the Nat'l insignia... Same thing with the Balkenkreuz on the Ju 87D...  Ended up doing all Monogram/Revell kits with VERY close trimming to the primary ink, even if I gotta nip a little off the decal itself to ensure that the white doesn't wind up on the model... That's OUT-standing work blending that windscreen into the fuselage, Owl...

here are some more pics. The first one is a shot of the top, showing off the paint scheme. The second is  a sneak peak of the decals! The revell decals work great, but are a bit see-through.  Finished pics soon!

OWL

Did somebody say "meth lab"?

In case folks here dont know what one looks like, here is an easy identification guide

Yesterday I was able to get the fuselage glued together on my F9F. Once I get the seams sanded smooth I will take and post pics. The F-86 is running just a tad bit behind. I was not happy with the kit exhaust and am looking at modifying or taking the intake and exhaust covers off my Academy F-86 for use on this one... decisions decisions...

Heh.. When a HazMat team gets called to a trailer park fire around here, it's a meth-lab...

Scariest thing in the world to me... Rednecks dabbling in BOTH science and chemistry... Makes me start sweatin' like Lindsay Lohan in a liquor store...

Good for Hammer.. sounds like a good plan.. !

and same on the smoke detectors.. I'm on a bunch of fire emailing lists, and I dont want to read about some guy out west's trailer burning down and they can't get close enought to put the fire out 'cause of all the burning plastic.. HAz Mat teams had to be called in...

ps.. Been there.. done that.. it sucks...( wasn't sprue tho )

Just doing a quick perimeter walk... Pony's lookin' good Owl.. Dunno what paint scheme you're after, but I'm a big fan of spurious markings and paint schemes, just to mess with the rivet counters, lol...

Then they can't do ya with somethin' like, "You painted  'Bad Penny' as she appeared in August of 1944 with the Upteenth Fighter Group, but the kill markings and pilot-name you have are wrong for that month, as Colonel Soanso was still a Major then, and also didn't score his 19th kill until November of '44.. 

Prior to that, his crew-chief had painted the Varga Girl pin-up from the August '43 issue of Esquire (to go along with the nameof his girlfriend, Penny), back in September of 1944, after he took command of the Group in October. However, he changed the name of the aircraft to 'Bad Girl' after getting a 'Dear John' letter from her announincing she was marrying a guy that was 4-F, from Bugtussel, Tennesee, who was the shift supervisor in the munitions factory she worked in.. So your rendition is completely wrong for that kit... A little more research on your part would be in order before you go decaling a kit" ...

Yeah, I've met those guys at shows...

The trailer's no new one... It's small, 10 X 60, 2BR, but I only paid a thousand bucks for it, so I ain't too worried if'n I gotta bail on it down the road..  That's less than two month's rent for a 2BR apt in my building... The lot rent's only 175.00 so I'm ok, especially since I'm keeping my job here as the apt building super...   Instead of the free rent, I'll get paid now, and it's more than the lot rent & the trailer's average utility bill combined...

My Master Plan is get the park super's job (the folks doing it right now are an older couple looking to become either Arizona or Florida permanent residents), and they got a double-wide with a big yard that comes with the job... I figure by the end of summer I'll be completely out of the chair and/or crutches and can handle more of the work.. Right now, I still need it in the house after a little bit of walking with the cane, but the hip's getting better every day.  Getting the second hip replaced this fall, probably in November/December , and then I'll be 100% by next Spring...

PS: I got smoke detector's hard-wired, along with battery back-ups... This ain't my first trailer, just the first one ever in a park, lol.. 

CallSignOwl my 51 wont be NMF will be my first OD P-51D, I will however try and give ya a run for your money 

But first WIP pictures of the Streak Eagle are in order. She is all ready for masking and paint. The nose probe I made on my little lathe from 3/32 brass, didnt think I could still spin diameters that small, the small dia at the tip is .040 dia. The antenna in the cockpit on the rear deck is made from a bit of evergreen plastic I had layin around, sanded to shape. The fits on this old Monogram kit have been very good as you can see from the small amount of Mr Surfacer I used as a filler. I did use some bondo in a few areas to clean up sealed hinge points, and vents that we sealed. Oh and the gun port on the right wing. And the canopy fit very well, I usually have to fight with the crystals  a bit on these kits.

Most impressive Owl I bet you need shades to look at that one is direct sunlight. You are a true artist with NMF finishes.

thanks everyone! and vetteman, don't be too hard on yourself. I'd love to see what you can do with your mustang!

Crazy work on that Mustang, Owl! Looking forward to the progress!

WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am gone a few days and you all go crazy building, and Don Hammer is moving an wow !!  Playing catch up will take a week, great work one and all.

Hans love your Stuka, I cant say I have seen one in winter camo. It gives me ideas for my Stuka I have on the shelf. Hey I am trying my first, well, its a mini dio finally, and have been reading some on Shepard Paines site.

CallSignOwl now being an official member of your fan club, your Mustang is turning out to be a show stopper. Beautiful work you are doing with the foil and paint scheme. I can say at this point that I am not too sure it would be wise for me to follow your P-51 build with mine, I fear I will now have to be trying to keep up with the level that you have set.

Echo the above comments OWL,, I like the green with the NMF. Going to have to try the foil technique one of these days also!

Nice NMF, Owl!  Encourages me to try using foil, too.