80 Years of Airfix GB

Nice looking P-40 Dan!  Love the camo!  Is that the 1/48 kit?

68GT - Congrats on the F-15, she's a looker!  What happened to the canopy?

That's a WHOLE lot of masking Frank!  Probably more patience required than I'm willing to give.....need to try some of those canopy masking sets myself!

So that's what the cockpit of a Kate looks like!  Its coming together nicely Theuns!

Well, not much of an update on the little Bf-109E-4.  I was working out of town last week and I did bring the kit along, but sadly not enough tools to do much work.  Finished the major assembly last night:

As mentioned before, fit and finish is pretty good and I love the sharp detail!  Only problems I had was eliminating the fuselage seam and rescribing the panel lines. 

Next I have to clean up the smaller parts and mask off the canopy ( before she hits the paint booth. 

Oh, and luck must be on my side because I actually found the tiny, clear gunsight in the carpet while looking for a drill bit that I dropped!!  WooHoo!!

Bish I hope its OK , I want to enter this Kate as a quick build.

I got this little airfix Kate 1/72 on saturday afternnon at out IPMS meet.

The detail is exelent for this scale but allot of it will be lost when the fuselage is closed up :-(

The build was started late Sunday morning and by last night I had the fuselage and wing assembly all glued up ready to sand! Goes really fast.

IMG_20190929_085220 by Theunis van Vuuren, on Flickr

IMG_20190929_094630 by Theunis van Vuuren, on Flickr

IMG_20190929_180142 by Theunis van Vuuren, on Flickr

IMG_20190930_063758 by Theunis van Vuuren, on Flickr

I anm stil undecided on the colours, the kit shows an all over IJN grey with green mottle and a standard green top grey bottom. I have however seen an early Kate in all over bare metal I really like, I might have to cheat with the colors LOL

Theuns

The Buffalo is finally headed to paint. A canopy mask isn't made for this Airfix kit so I bought the mask for the Hasegawa kit. The fit isn't exact, I'll have to do some touch up after I paint. I tried to mask the canopy with Tamiya tape but I just couldn't make it happen. It's going to be a neat little fighter when it's done. Buffalo. Who would name a fighter plane Buffalo?

Eagle is done.  I might go back and pop the canopy and try to unfog it.

Nice headway Dan!

I just finished painting my Condor, another fun few hours masking. I hope who ever invented the German splinter pattern had shares in Tamiya masking tape.

Thats coming on really well Dan

Thanks Bish.

Thanks Mopar Madness, Oh the classic German splinter camouflage, a real time consumer.  I remember masking up a Heinkel He 111 in 1/48, toke me just over three hours.  Nice paint job.

Svenne Duva:  For the Interior Green color, you could try Tamiya XF-3 Flat Yellow mixed with XF-5 Flat Green.

Bufflehead great to see you back in action again, looking forward to your Bf109E-4 build.

Thanks Lostagain: The Vampire is taking shape.

The P-40 Warhawk has gone together pretty well, the only to parts that did not fit well
are the two machine gun strips that are on the top of the engine caling.  I used Vallejo
plastic putty to fill in the seems. 

9 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

10 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

Next up is masking the canopy's.

11 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

15 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

With the main fuselage together and seems filled and sanded, I airbrushed on Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey are a base/primer.  The flat base really helps later paint to adhear.  Oh and before I airbrushed I wiped down all surfaces with 91% Isopropyl Alcohol.

14 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

Next up is pre-shading, I used Tamiya X-1 Black.  As a side note for some time I was never able to achive a shine with Tamiya's gloss colors.  The paint would be smooth but not shinny.  I did some rescearch and found out that the Tamiya gloss paint needs to be thinned heavy.  I now use a 5 parts paint to 15 or 18 paints X-20A thinner, next is to apply the paint some what heavy, not alloying the paint to dry in between coats, to get it wet.

16 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

First color I airbrushed was Model Master Enamel Neutral Grey 1725.

17 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

I let the enamel paint dry for a full day after airbrushing, then applied Model Master Enamel Olive Drab 2050.  Also I wet sanded the Neutral Grey with Tamiya 1000 grid sponge.

18 by Daniel Smith, on Flickr

Thanks, Lostagain.

That 109 does have a lot of detail!

Looks like that vampire took some filling on the fuselage Piers.  How has the overall fit and finish been? 

Since it’s a tiny clear peice, it would be darn near impossible to find!

Bish, MM, thanks for the welcome back!

I've only built a dozen or so airplane models, mostly 1/72 Hobby Boss Easy Assembly kits and old 1/48 Revell kits so I was impressed how detailed this little BF-109 is!  Completed the cockpit and painted up all the interior areas with Tamiya XF-22 RLM Gray.

Pit is looking pretty good!  Nice detail for such a low cost kit!

Compare that to the cockpit of the P-51B Hobby Boss Easy Assy 1/72 kit which I'm building alongside the BF-109.  Its almost laughable, but the HBEA kits do have some nice advantages.  I like them for lewbud's annual Weekend Madness GBs...I can sometimes build two of these in the allotted 48 hrs!

Now that I've got a little taste of Airfix I'm really looking forward to building more of their kits!

PS

You'll notice the missing gunsight in the second pic.  My hiatus required a sacrifice to the Great Modeling Powers so they summoned the vicious carpet monster to devour that gunsight!   Just have to continue without it! 

You’ve picked a good one Ernest.  Fit and finish is excellent. 

Good to see you back Ernst, i'll get your entry changed. Look forward to seeing you pop your Airfix cherry.

Man, I am SO far behind in this GB!  I've had family move in for a few months and my bench was shut down the whole time.  Finally have access to the bench again, got it cleaned up, so its time to get back to work!

First thing I'm going to do is change my entry.  I orginally chose the 1/48 P-51D Mustang, but I already built a Mustang just before the bench was shut down so now I want to do something different....and smaller to get back into the flow of modeling.  So here's my new entry:

I like it because it looks pretty simple (I hope) and no fine camo or NMF to worry about.  Bish, can you change my entry please?

Second thing is to go back in thread and see all the great work that's being done!  Might take me a while so bear with me!

Oh, and just so you all know.....I've NEVER built an Airfix kit before!  This will be my first one! 

Bench, here I come.....

Bish

have fun there next month frank and good luck with your entries.

 

Thanks, Bish. I don't really expect much, just a chance to show off my work...

have fun there next month frank and good luck with your entries.

Mopar Madness

I keep telling myself I’m going to buy one of those Clippers! 

 

It's a fun build. I have two on the shelf and a third still in my stash.

I keep telling myself I’m going to buy one of those Clippers! 

Modelpalooza is next month, October 18, 19, 20. Three of my entries for the show were built for this Group Build, the TBD-1, P-51D, and Boeing Clipper. The other two are "off brand"...lol...not Airfix. Just thought I'd share.

I like the looks of that Chad, nicely done.

I’ll throw in a quick update. Got the RLM79 overcoat laid down. Another few pounds of putty and tape relegated to the garbage bin! Still quite a bit of airbrush work yet to be done before I call this camouflage finished.

Bump...

Wow, you guys have been busy!
It will take some time to get up to speed with all the different projects being entered here...
All I can say is that you guys are doing an excellent job -and I think Airfix should have a sponsors link on their HP.

Speaking for myself I have gone from one Airfix kit (Monty's old Humber) to all in all 9 builds since January. Will try to get some WIP stuff on here ASAP.

@ DantheMan85,
Question to the P-40.
I painted the cockpit in a 50/50 mix of Tamiya XF-62 OD and XF-71 Cockpit Green and I am not happy with the result. To much OD.
Could you suggest a different recipe.

That Stuka is xlnt btw Chad...

A little post shading done on the Stuka. I added a hint of RLM 05 to each color to present the hint of a fade. Next will be the final basecoat of RLM 79 sand yellow.

Chad, i know that feeling. That splinter pattern has come out well.

That don't look good Ed, hope you can fix that.

Dan, nice job on that cockpit. Its coming together well.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that Viggen camo! 

Mopar Madness

My least favorite part of most Luftwaffe builds... the splinter camo! 1.5 hours of masking for 10 minutes of spraying. Next I’ll cover most of it up with RLM 79 sand yellow.  

Take heart - at least you are not doing the dreaded “wave mirror” scheme, or splinter camo for a Viggen!