Floatplane/Seaplane Group Build 2012

  Progress on the Curtiss:  Painting the tail stripes because the decals had the colors reversed.

checkmateking02

You have to click on "Use rich formatting," then click on the word "Quote."  It's colored in green above the light blue bar. 

Got it, Thanks! 

Ordie: Mine appears to be from 1993. It's part of Monogram's "High Tech" series which included the PE parts. There's not a lot to the PE -- just one small sprue with maybe 20 or 25 mostly tiny parts. I'd never seen one of the "High Tech" kits until I picked this one up.

Good luck with your kit. After building three Tamiya kits in a row, this one looks to be a bit of a wake-up call. It was "state of the art" back in the late 60s, but not so much now. I see a lot of filling and sanding in my near future.

Stoutfella - Below is posted a photo of the box my OS2U kit(s) came in.  This is the current boxing - Revell instead of Monogram.  I opened one up, hoping to see PE.  Looks to be the exact same molding as yours, in grey, except no PE, different decals.  And, they cost me more than $5 each .  Darn ...

checkmateking02 - Your Kingfishers are looking good .

M9130 - If you need any further assistance with the quote function, PM me and I'll help.

M9130

BTW,  How are you guys getting the old message to appear in a reply?

You have to click on "Use rich formatting," then click on the word "Quote."  It's colored in green above the light blue bar. 

BTW,  How are you guys getting the old message to appear in a reply?

Sorry for the late reply, haven't been on in a while, anyways, the Curtiss is a biplane and I will attempt to rig it.  I have rigged once, (if ships count), and I used black thread.  I'll try piano wire first if it's not too thick.  I'm a little nervous about drilling holes in a newly finished model but I feel better knowing that someone else is trying the same thing.  If the wire works I'll probably paint it and dullcote it so it's not super shiny.

Stoutfella - Glory, I had no idea!  I guess I should break open one of my boxes and get a look see at what I bought ... thanks!

Old Ordie

Stoutfella - Good to see you up and runnning with your Kingfisher.  I have two in my stash, which I recently bought new.  Lone Star used to have a resin cockpit for it, but have recently discontinued it, so, no joy .  What are the Eduard parts you obtained for it?  I am highly curious.  Thanks!

Ordie: No aftermarket parts. The kit came with some PE details parts -- instrument panel, gun ring, etc. It'll be my first shot at PE.

I've got the first coat of paint on.  It's interior green, but I don't know what Vought-Sikorsky reallly used.

Before I put white on the undersurface, I checked for mold seams, and found a few.  These will have to be cleared up.  It's easier to see the imperfections under a coat of paint, then it is to try to find them in this clear plastic.

Stoutfella - Good to see you up and runnning with your Kingfisher.  I have two in my stash, which I recently bought new.  Lone Star used to have a resin cockpit for it, but have recently discontinued it, so, no joy .  What are the Eduard parts you obtained for it?  I am highly curious.  Thanks!

By the looks of the painting on the box, the Kingfisher appears to be from the USS Wisconsin ca. 1945, Stoutfella--unit marking is for VO-9.  Too bad the decals are a lost cause.  Wish they made the little Donald Duck tail emblem about ten times smaller.  I'm looking forward to seeing your build.  

Good to see it Stoutfella. I built that thing a while ago but with wheels, not floats, in a pre-war scheme.

Greetings,

Getting ready to start my Kingfisher. It's the 1/48 Monogram "high tech" version with PE detail parts, which will be a first for me. I built the original issue of this kit back in the late 60s, but actually picked this one up a few years ago at a model railroad show for 5 bucks. Seeing it on the sale table rekindled my long-ago interest in model planes and, well, here I am.

The kit hadn't been started when I bought it, though it looked like a few pieces had been twisted off the sprues. I sprayed the interior with Tamiya yellow green a while back when I had the airbrush loaded up for something else, but that's all I've done. The decals are toast, of course, not helped by the fact that the box got wet at some point.

Building this one will definitely bring back some of those teenage memories. Looking forward to it.

JTBuckley

... I tried my hand at rigging the floats together on my arado.. As I said before -  I won't be using wonder wire as it is too thin and looks out of scale on this huge 1:32 plane. I found some thin metal wire with my scratchbuilding supplies and it looked about right so I gave it a go...

Buckley,

By your estimation, how would wonder wire look on a 1:48 and/or 1:72 biplane?  What do you think the best scale would be for a realistic look, re: the diameter of the wire?

Your build is coming along fine - the rear seat cushion looks absolutely real to me, nice and used.  Great look.

Ordie

Oh, that plane is looking great, JT.  Good job.

The reason I was so concerned over the size of the rigging wire was just about every reference photo I had the rigging was thick and prominent and one of the first things I noticed.

this is a better picture...

Those Kingfishers look awesome. Good luck on the tiny masking it looks good so far.

I tried my hand at rigging the floats together on my arado.. As I said before -  I won't be using wonder wire as it is too thin and looks out of scale on this huge 1:32 plane. I found some thin metal wire with my scratchbuilding supplies and it looked about right so I gave it a go.

Also-- I didn't drill any holes prior to painting (bonehead move) so while the holes look rough I plan on touching them up with some white glue and paint.

Here's a close up..

Here's a shot of the cockpit of the plane..A couple pieces apparently came off with the masking - I'll figure that out later..For what looks like wooden 'armrests' on the side I stained wooden popsicle sticks and cut them to size. For the 'wooden' backrest in the rear of the cockpit I simulated it with testor's wood paint and raw unber streaks.

Thanks, Ordie.

Well, near disaster happened.  The cat got among the planes, and knocked four of the six onto the floor before I got the liquid mask on them.  I only found three, so my build is now down to five.

From now on, I keep them where the cats can't go--although they can go a lot of places.

M9130 - Looking real good so far.  Your red and yellow washes are creating great patinas on the wings.  Real nice.

checkmateking02 - Man, those are tiny!  Can't wait to see 'em painted up.

JTBuckley, M9130, checkmateking02 -  You guys are making a great "first wave" of builds through this gb.  Your builds are all interesting and off the common track ('exotic' is what I'm driving at there ...).  You gents are making a good opening run for us.  I haven't started mine yet, so I'll be in a future 'build wave' myself, with a Tamiya Rufe, which is a more typical kind of build, to my mind.  I'm really enjoying following along with all three of your builds.

Progress on the Kingfishers.  First a photo of three of them, all cleaned up and ready for masking.  For something so tiny, Trumpeter achieved quite a respectable level of detail.  You can discern the canopy frames pretty well, especially on the rear ones.

These next three shots show how I am masking the canopies.  I used narrow strips of regular old 3-M tape from Walmart and outlined the canopies first.  Usually I trim the excess at this point, but I thought I'd experience this time, and fill in the center with MicroMask, then do the trimming.  I figure the liquid mask will hold the tape in place better.

When the MicroMask gets dried, I'll post a couple of pictures of the results.

Thanks for looking.

And--kudos to the other builders; nice progress on your projects.

Thank you, sir! This is my first time posting any of my work online and I've appreciated the postitive comments immensely.

As for you.. A biplane, eh? Any rigging involved?

BTW The Arado is looking nice Buckley!

I've got the floats assembled, last coat of black on the fueselage, and am starting to pre-shade the inner wing panels with red and yellow enamel washes, (brass wing radiators on the actual plane), and mixed the colors for the tail stripes.  One of the flaws with this model is that the red and blue on the tail are reversed on the decal, so I'm going to paint the tail stripes.

I don't really like the clear styrene.  It's hard to see the imperfections, mold lines, etc.  What I thought I'd do this time is to mask the canopies, paint the interior color--and then clean up the seams and sprue points.  That ought to make them show up better.  We'll see.

As for Wisky, the build is posted over at the "Force of Nature" group build.  The ship is named for the state, but the state was named after the river, and the river is a force of nature after the spring snow melt and a lot of rain.  A few years ago, the river massively flooded at Stevens Point and Wisconsin Rapids.

Interesting- I can't wait to see your progress. Personally I have trouble with clear styrene so I'll hopefully learn a thing or two here...

Also, the USS Wisconsin is a beautiful ship- be sure to include a couple build photos of her.

I guess so the canopy looks clear.  Several ship model companies are doing their planes this way.  Others still just do a solid casting.  Not sure what I like best.

With these thingies, the first coat of paint I apply is an interior one.

Just in case you can see through the canopy.  

Actually, masking the canopies is the easy masking.  It's the camouflage and demarcations that get tricky, trying to go under the horizontal stabilizers, around the wings, etc..

I used masking tape and MicroMask on the Devastators.  Of course, the MicroMask pulled off paint so there was a lot of brush touch-up.

This time I'm going to try poster tacky as a mask.  A great experiment.

Whoa! Those are tiny. I can't believe they come molded in clear styrene...Any idea why?

Thanks, Ordie.  1:700 is pretty small; the hardest part is the masking.  I built about 17 Douglas Devastators for the "1942 GB," to fit out my USS Lexington.  It was a challenge.

Below is the requisite photo of the box. 

I am building the USS Wisconsin, BB-64, using the old Fujimi kit.  When I took a look at the observation planes they included, they appeared to be Seakings, not Kingfishers.  Wisky had Kingfishers as shown in the photo below.  This plane is said to be rescuing a downed pilot from USS Shangri-la, CV 38.

Next is a shot of the spures.  There are twelve aircraft in the box.  I need three for Wisky, and, looking ahead, a couple for the USS Alabama--so I'll probably build six and use up the sprues.

Last is a close-up of two of the planes.  First order of business will be detaching them from the sprues and cleaning up the sprue points and mold lines.

Thanks for looking and the opportunity to join the group.