French a/c group build 2012-13

I have been working on my old black plastic esci Mirage IIC.  I got the wings attached and the exhaust shroud on. I need to add 5g of lead to the nose to keep from sitting on its tail.  Now where did I put that lead shot?  I'll get some new pictures up shortly

That actually reminds me, need to replace my nose-weight supply, getting pretty low on the ol' fishing sinkers.

hey.. I'm back at the bench, ,, I might start my build soon !

Yes!!!

p38jl

  What are you going to be building?

an F4u-7 Corsair, and a Caudron Racer ...

OK, I got news today that I can probably jump back in to this GB seeing how the up coming move has been postphoned for the time being.

Your moving too stik? Im getting more and more frustrated at not having a model space after the move. Still have half a room to clear out before i can lay the new flooring down. On the plus side ive discovered ive got room for a crapload of bench space. I can have 2 of my old desk side by side down the short wall.

Long story short, yes. Maybe not in the immediate future as was originally going to happen, but worst case this coming spring, and best case in around four years.  We moved just last year and it sucked bigtime. I will be thinning out the built model herd when ever this move comes.

OY, moving stinks. That being said I was hoping we'd have been out of our present location & on to something slightly larger by now. Bench space = kitchen table right now.

Yeah that is one of many reasons that I do not want to move. I have the best building set up now than I have EVER had... I hate to lose it already.... Grrrrrrr...

Alright, wing ribs that were sanded away have been replaced, then I sanded them down to a more appropriate height. (masking tape on either side to protect details. Canopy glass masked off.



A good dusting of Tamiya primer, I spotted a couple of places that my putty work needs a little touch-up. Do I fix it, or go with some extra weathering in that area? The world wonders...

I got the nose full of lead, just about ready to glue the nose on.   Not sure what I was thinking I primed it before I filled the joint lines,  just made my self a bunch more work.

Amazing how even when we should know better... we still manage to do silly simple things?! I'm in the painting stage on a Flanker - decided to leave the rudders off to make painting easier - good. In my rush to "do SOMETHING" one night I glues the afterburner cans in place - BAD!! Should have left them off & painted them separately. Ahh well, lesson learned.

I would like to get in on this GB.  I know I'm a tad late with the start but I do have a few I would like to take a whack at.  I'm thniking of either a Tamiya D-520, or an Ln-401 (?).  

Freddie from LI

Come on in Freddie, always able to add a builder.

Great updates Vance and Falconmod 

Vance actually i'm signed in with the little nieuport 17 from esci.. not with smer double engines 

bsyamato

Great updates Vance and Falconmod 

Vance actually i'm signed in with the little nieuport 17 from esci.. not with smer double engines 

opps - will fix that up!

Alright, this has taken long enough! Finally got paint on the Amiot:

The colors aren't exact, but given my lack of LHS, I went with the closest I had. I think it turned out alright. Tonight I hand painted the engine cowls and filled in some more gaps with clear glue. Tomorrow the plan is to do touch up paint and attach the final pieces (props and tail wheel.) Also tested one of the extra decals on my "experiment' model. So far it looks like these old decals might be ok. Fingers crossed that I don't have to hand paint roundels!

More to follow soon.

Thanks, Budd

Budd!! Snuck in with an update on a Saturday! ;)

Shaping up nicely, love the lines on that Amiot. How are your eyes after masking all that greenhouse glass!!!

Alright, forget where I left off! There was a little more putty-sandpaper action after this pic was taken.



It's still not what I would call show-quality, but it's good enough, don't want to stall this one any longer so Off I go.

A coat of Tamiya primer was applied...)

Considering the small size, and the fact that I don't want to mix a pile of paint just to have it sit unused, I decided I'd try (for the first time) hand-brushing Tamiya acrylics for the entire machine. Topside blue took 3 thin coats, but seems to have come out pretty well.



The green.... two coats on right now, not convinced I like it yet. I think a 3rd, lighter, coat may make the difference. Hopefully!



This little exercise is really just confirming what I already know about Tamiya's acrylics. Love them for airbrushing, hate them for hand-brushing.

Hi Vance,

Agree with you on Tamiya acrylics. Recently I bought some of their Acrylic Retarder to try and slow down the drying time, both for brush painting and airbrushing fine lines.

Haven't given it a whirl yet, but I hope it will help. I also bought some of their Lacquer thinner, which I LOVE for airbrushing their acrylics.

I think it's starting to come together, the third colour will make it.

Budd - that Amiot is an elegant machine. I thought all the Amiot's were boxy and pig ugly ! Nice job on a good scheme. I'll have to read back and find out more about this kit and build.

I hope to get back to my F4U-7 later this week. Apart from a wash on the engine, it's unchanged from my update on page 22. Where did that 6 weeks go ?

I've used the Weekend Madness GB to get myself into some good building form, so hopefully I can knock it out quickly from here.

Cheers

Tony

Nearly there tony. Shes comin along quite nicely.

More progress last night. Think I'm getting a better handle on hand-brushing the Tamiya acrylics, the red-brown seems to look good after one application.

The topside paint collection, and kit decals...


NOW it's an official Vance build, approved by the authorities...


With the last (?) touchups on the green, and the red-brown in place. The marking diagram in the Heller instruction sheet was tiny, and not all that clear to start with, so I've free-styled it a little bit, trying to get the right look of course but a rivet-counter would not be happy with me...




A few small gray touchups & then clear-coat & weathering. I'm hoping that because the green + red-brown are already looking kinda glossy that the Future coat won't darken them down too much, colour looks good to my eye right now.

I've gotten a little more work done. attached nose, pitot tubes and finished filling in seams.  next I need to paint wheel wells the start the Israeli camo on top.

Some progress on the bugatti.

Kit exhausts modified.

Real deal.

Its slow because ive only just set me new desk up. Only started back working on it last night.

It pays to look at pictures of the actual aircraft your modeling if you can.  I found that the instructions on the ESCI Mirage IIIC I'm doing has a error in it.  The two pitot tubes the are up front by the radome do not go on top of the nose but are underneath.  I only found this out after I painted the bottom of the plane! fortunately the fix wasn't too bad to deal with.

Vance correct me if I'm wrong aren't you working on one of these kits too?

I'll post pictures when I get the chance this weekend.

John

Got the radome painted as well as the first color of camo on my Israeli Mirage IIIC

Good progress on the Mirage John.

Those roundels brighten up the Morane Vance.

I'm back onto the Corsair, I've got the cowling reattached with the new engine, and most of the construction done. Just doing some checking and clean up prior to attaching the canopy and priming now. I'm going to prime with aluminium, so that I can mask it up a bit and use it to show through the weathered paint work.

The white areas one the aircraft a where I've fixed a molding imperfection in the wing leading edge, where I've used filler at the wing root, and the new firewall (sort of), behind the engine. I shortened the kit cowling by a suitable amount before lengthening again by adding this. I still need to fix the seam on the inside of the tail wheel bay and fill a little around the guns.

Cheers

Tony