Airfix Group Build 2011-2012

Lewbud good finished Spit now Also nice spit and hurricane (soon need to cover this hole in my ww2 collection, actually countin typhoon ,tempest and gladiator but missing this two must-to-build)

Four glosscoats are too much even if the first time you put before decals, is already time to change the coats brand In the past i had problems with testors clear coats, hope was because mine was old.

this was the result of three layers of high thined  humbrol regular 35 glooscote,handpainted,  and the 3rd was to seal decals

after was the four layer of matt coat ,even humbrol regular 49 jar

Waiting for the stoned Spit and others airfix kits here My scout and mig-23 actually freezed for too traffic on workbench

Thanks Bs.  I'm still learning how to shoot gloss through an airbrush.  I'm an old car modeler, so getting a good gloss finish out of a spray can without getting heavy is something I know how to do.  If whatever was keeping Tamiya spray cans out of the US, and if they made US Interior Green in a spray, I'd never need an airbrush again.

And I'm done.

Some more fiddly bits added to the Mirage, I think I'm sitting in that 99% zone that bsyamato mentioned earlier!. Need to add the airbrakes & final weathering. This week will finish it off. Then.... bring on the Grief!!!

checkmateking01 - nice job on that Gladiator - and thanks for the back-story. Interesting thinking on the in-shadow / out-of-shadow camouflage. Good attempt on the pre-rigging, if nothing else, you now have great photos of what the rigging looks like!

Lewbud if you airbrushed the gloss probably your 4 layers are more than my 3 LOL 

Gunner great looking little scene

Vance the worst thing about the 99% phase is all the questions than filling the head (i forget to do something? more antennas needed.. some cable on brake.. weathering is enough eetc etc) , a dramatic phase

Waiting for the finished good dassault  

VanceCrozier

Some more fiddly bits added to the Mirage, I think I'm sitting in that 99% zone that bsyamato mentioned earlier!. Need to add the airbrakes & final weathering. This week will finish it off. Then.... bring on the Grief!!!

checkmateking01 - nice job on that Gladiator - and thanks for the back-story. Interesting thinking on the in-shadow / out-of-shadow camouflage. Good attempt on the pre-rigging, if nothing else, you now have great photos of what the rigging looks like!

Thanks, Vance.  It'll be a while before I attempt another biplane with all that pesky rigging.  I will be following your progress with the Mirage and the Grief.  Neat planes.

Good job on the diorama, gunner chris.  The groundwork complements the kit very nicely.  Looks "swell!"

Gunner, nice work.

Bs, I shot straight from the can.  Misted on the coats until I had a smooth surface.  It worked for me and I'm happy with the way it came out.  That's all that matters.

Well, it's not everyday you have a 1/24 scale kit in the stash (or under the bed) so I decided to bump the 1/72 Super Sabre and start the Harrier now. This kit will be in 3 builds, Airfix, Harrier and Falklands.

A lot of pieces, a lot not on sprues and not very well organised or numbered. I'm going to have to work out a filing system to keep track of the pieces.

I'm also adding this Flightpath upgrade set which includes resin wheels and ordinance and heaps of photo etch and white metal parts for the cockpits and engine and ladder etc.

This kit is a gift pack and has supplied some small pots of Humbrol paints so first things first some cataloguing and converting into Tamiya and Gunze from my collection.

I think I'll have to fill up the tub for this one as well to bath the parts

Cheers

hmmm, you got a swimming pool casper? Might need one, might not fit all the parts in a bath.

For those of you who have finished, feel free to grab the badge from page 1. Download it and then upload it to your own file sharing account. 

I've never seen so much brass! There are sheets and sheets of the stuff in this Flightpath set. Instructions could be a lot better though. Half of it is diagrams, the other half is written instructions. it's complicated stuff let alone having to visualise it yourself.

Anyways, here is the IP with brass pieces and some pieces for the side consoles.

Cheers

Casper.... WOW! Look at all the stuff!! So how much room will this thing take up once completed?

As you can see the cockpit on this kit is pretty sparse.

There are two not-very-fitting-at-well plastic bits for the side wall that I just threw away.

I cut off the window sills and replaced them with the FP brass offerings. As you can see on the port side, just a plastic ridge.

So while the Flightpath set spices up the IP and some of the side consoles considerably, it completely fails to add anything else to the cockpit. So scratch time. As always with my approach to scratch, I like to simulate not replicate. I tried to do something that looked good to the eye and not worry too much about what was really inside this pit for real.

It's amazing how much of this will be seen on the final kit. Airfix could have done a little more perhaps. But it's amazing what can be done with some left over PE, resin, styrene cockpit shapes and wire.

Cheers

Some more work on the brass...The ejection seat lower half

The coaming above the IP, the HUD assembly and the headrest of the ejection seat.

Cheers

Impressisve work on this cockpit, Casper.

Cute dog, too!

Here's the IP, just a bit of touching up to do on the paint job but essentially it's there. It will look better once it's under the coaming with the HUD attached.

Cheers

Shaping up well Casper!

Well, I think I'm almost done - just realized I have a blade antenna to add underneath the cockpit. I haven't built many modern jets until recently, but Dassault & Co. got the lines right on this one, a very good-looking a/c in my opinion. Airfix kit, built mostly OOB, including the decals. (Decals were mostly saved by Micrscale liquid decal film). Control surfaces were deflected. (I've left the canopy loose so I can peek inside from time to time - the canopy glass is, uhh, Airfix-thick!) Wire loop ejection handle & masking tape belts added to the cockpit. I added a laser-printed cardboard disc inside the tail to provide some engine detail. Painted with Tamiya acrylics (topside green) and Humbrol enamels (everything else). Some panel lines have been highlighted with a pencil.

Everything went together well except (no big surprise) the main landing gear. They had a pretty large flat mating surface to mount them against the inside of the gear bay - so I glued them in place expecting a good alignment, then added the wheels after. Big mistake, as can be seen in some of the pics. Doing it again I'd dry-fit the gear into the gear bays while the wheels were being glued to the gear to try & get them square to the ground.

Overall very enjoyable, apart from my decal challenge & the landing gear.

And my good buddy Fuji approves, despite being in the wrong time period & country!

i must admit that really like the shapes of f-1 , magnific work Vance

I saw a 1/72 Airfix Sea Huricaine built on the aircraft section and was "enspired" to try and "beat my old tool Hurri Mk1 into submition!"

After the third unsuccessful rescribe/messup try I boxed the thing. Today I sanded (and needless to say lost allot of detail) the fuse and re-scribed. This time with a #11 hobby blade and got much better results so I put the Sky on the underside.

I will try and hide most of my mistakes with some washing and shading tecniques I want to try.

Theuns

Looks good.Makes me wanne build a jet.

TD4438

Looks good.Makes me wanne build a jet.

Go for it TD! I stayed away from modern stuff for the longest time because "dark gray over light gray" really didn't inspire me. I like these non-typical users + camo schemes.

If you like the "unusual" colours, just look at many African air forces. They used mostly eastern block hardware and frequantly let it in the colours it arived in. You could therefore have MiG 17's in different scemees on the same apron.

The maintanance stsndards of these planes were not really to high and they were usually very weathered

Theuns

Hey Vance!

Great looking Mirage!!  Thanks for all the pics; good to see the various angles, shows of the sleek and deadly lines well!

Clever idea with the printed card in the tail!  It's a great looking model.  Love the camouflage.

checkmateking02

Clever idea with the printed card in the tail!  It's a great looking model.  Love the camouflage.

Thanks checkmateking02!

The Printed card - yep, the kit was actually pretty well detailed except for *inside the gear wells, and *inside the tailpipe, which was going to be wide open of course! I am not up to scratchbuilding all those circles etc inside that thing, and it's only in 1/72... I found a pic online looking right up the tailpipe of an F1 & scaled it down. Works well enough in the pics, and doesn't look too bad in person either. (I may do it again if I get the chance!)

I've finally started the Hawk. 

This is one of Airfix's new tooling models, which have engraved panel lines (probably too deep) and some cockpit detail on the walls of the cockpit, floor and instrument board. It's OOB except for the seatbelts i scratchbuilt from masking tape.

The fit was okay, It will need a lot of filling.

More pics coming soon...

Great job Vance  like the camo and of course the "picture in the pipe".

I've use that idea for quick scratch build of 1/72 instrument pnls  and side walls

of old timey  models

Time to get out the mini saw.

Need to remove the cockpit. I think this kit was originally a GR.3. The instructions ask to hack this front section off and replace it with the FRS.1 version.

The tape help remove a clean area

Not quite a clean fit for the new piece but putty will help that

Cheers

So more on the Airfix puzzle. Flashing galore on this kit, also ejector pin marks on almost every piece! We get spoilt building Tamiya, Dragon, Eduard and Trumpeter kits a lot of the time!

I decided to finish the engine parts off in Alclad lacquers. The black undercoat helps with creating depth in the detail of the parts.

Some more work done on the cockpit. Far from finished, possibly the most detailed office I've ever worked on.

Front view;

Front view with coaming;

Rear view and starboard sidewall;

Nearly finished the ejection seat just waiting for the harnesses to dry.

Cheers

Stunning work on that Harrier mate! The cockpit looks tge Biz

I can't recall if I entered this little 1/72 Hurri, but here it is anyway...............finally!  I thought is was a nice new tool like the Spit 9, but allas.

Almost no cockpit detail, not to much of a hassle as the canopy closes up nicely. I rescribed the pannellined 4 times and under all the paint you can't see it anyway, so I did a little post shading LOL!

The decals in this kit is actually nice and thinner than in the Spit 9 kit.

The coulour in the pix do not reflect acurately as the sun is very bright and the camera gets "confused"

Theuns

RRB nice start here, the new airfix p-40 seems a good purchase

Theuns great Hurricane

Casper again awesome harrier