80 Years of Airfix GB

Those seats come out very nice Mark.

It would not surprise me if some of those other issues are down to old molds. I am sure over time they must get damaged and if theres any dirt in them that will effect the parts. Given what you have done to the rest, i am sure you can deal with that.

MrStecks

Well Pat, if it's anything like the 1/32 Omnibus I'm working on you will have to make some serious mods just to get the thing together.     I hope your kit will be less of a struggle than mine.  Looking forward to seeing it.

Cheers,
Mark 

Hi,

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your build too.  I don't think that I've actually ever seen that model anywhere before. 

PF

Tales of the Omnibus - Chapter 1  (cont.)

Today was a big day, as the assembly of the lower seating deck commenced.  I had previously glued in the forward wall because it was easy to square up to the deck.  That particular bit of Airfix engineering was splendid.
Today the side walls, benches, and the rear wall (with the doorway) were put together.

The right wall went on easily, without any problems with the fit.  I did a ton of dry fitting while making all the modifications to the interior walls, and that paid off when it came time to glue them up.

The directions called for glueing the benches to the walls before glueing the walls to the deck, but my dry fit tests told me that was going to cause problems.  So the benches went in after the walls were in place.

All walls and benches in place!  WooHoo!  And this colorless fellow seemed impressed enough to wander in and take a seat.  I still need to do some minor filling, sanding, and paint touch-ups  around the rear wall corners.

The floor of the upper seating area isn't glued on yet, just resting on there because I wanted to see it.  The fit is really good and those gaps will get pulled down when I glue it up.  As you can see, it's all painted up and ready to go.

As I started laying out the parts for the engine section, my one-handed driver showed up and sat down.  I had to shoo him away.  Still don't have a plan for addressing his hand problem.  Not really worried about it at the moment.

And so we come to the end of Chapter 1 of Tales of the Omnibus.
In Chapter 2 we'll start working on the engine compartment.

Cheers,
Mark

Mark, that is some very impessive looking build. I like those fare boards, did they come with it.

Thanks Bish.  Yes, the fare board was molded in on the part and then the decal went over it.  I was concerned for a couple reasons, mainly because these decals are probably as old as me... hahaha, but also because the fares were printed on white, but the white field of the board is much bigger than the decal.
Thankfully the white of the decal matched up well with the FX-2 that I shot on the board.  Unfortunately, only the big text is actually letters, the rest are just black blobs of ink.  Definitely not Cartograph decals.  LOL

Since the interior areas will be out of reach once the upper deck goes on, I had to get that decal on early.  I hope the rest of the sheet works as well.  Some of the others are rather big, so I'm concerned about them tearing.  It's possible I will slice them up ahead of time and realign them when they get applied, just to make them a bit eaiser to work with.  We'll see. 

Cheers,
Mark

MrStecks

Tales of the Omnibus - Chapter 1  (cont.)

Well, the saga continues.  A couple nights ago I laid down some paint on the benches that will be in the lower seating area.  I noticed the plastic had a strange texture to it, a bumpiness that I think was an attempt to make it look like leather but was way out of scale.  I decided to see how it would look with paint.  The answer?  It looked like crap. 

Hi,

The surface of the seats in the Humber kit looks very similar to what you describe for your omnibus.  As such, I will probably sand them a bit before painting them - thanks for the heads up .

Last night I got around to taking a closer look at my kit and discovered that there appears to be 2 or 3 broken pieces and another 6 pieces missing .  The broken pieces look fairly easy to glue back together and fortunately 5 of the 6 missing pieces look like they will be easy to scratch build or 3D print.  One is a missing healight casing and one is a small piece of trim off one of the front fenders.  Since I have the duplicate mirror image of these pieces off the other side of the car, they should probably be easy to copy.  And three of the other missing pieces are for "stowage pockets (I think) that go on the inside of the doors (they kind of look like small satchels with a flap).  Since I have one of them I think I can scratch build the other three (even though two are of a slightly different size).

The last piece though appears to be a one-off piece that may be some sort of engine mount.  The instructions that I have only show a very rough isomatric sketch of the part, but since its under the car, I could probably even get away with it missing.  However, I intend to at least search the internet to see if I can find any sprue pics etc for the model to see if I can scratchbuild up something anyway.

Can't wait to get started.

Pat

hey cool stuff here to .... Im in with something its in the mail 

crown r n7

hey cool stuff here to .... Im in with something its in the mail 

 

Tease.

Mark, those decals certainly lok the part. I bet you would have to get up real close to notice its not all written out. Thats a nice addition.

Look forward to seeing you get underway Pat.

Pat, sorry to hear about the missing parts... but it sounds like you've got a good plan on working with what you have.

One of the things I discovered when researching this Omnibus kit is that a lot of people reported missing parts.  So the first thing I did with the kit was take a thorough inventory and separate all the parts into plastic bags for each step in the instructions.
Thankfully I had a kit with all the correct parts.

Although... I guess in a way it was missing a lot of parts, given how much scratch built stuff I've added to it.  hahaha

Cheers,
Mark

Tales of the Omnibus - Chapter 2

Started working on the engine compartment.  After a series of dry-fitting tests, I decided I needed to add a "floor" piece between the chassis members for the engine box to rest on.  I just wanted more support for the engine box than provided, with how the kit was designed.  This also will keep the front of the chassis members from spreading or pinching in during the rest of the build.

The new bit of plastic being glued in:

The new floor installed:

Here the firewall is dry-fit to see how everything lines up:

And the engine box is dry-fit too.  Everything fitting nicely now.  (still working on the seams of the engine box when this pic was taken)

Engine box primed up and ready for masking and painting.

I wish I had taken pictures of the glue-up process for the engine box.  The directions for this kit don't really give you an order of assembly.  Each step is essentially just an exploded view of all the parts, and you have to figure out the best step-by-step assembly.
I thought at first the best way would be to work from the firewall forward, but the "guides" on the firewall are aparently just for show.  They don't really help align the parts during glueing.  So I started at the radiator and worked my way back.
It worked out well, but was extremely fiddly.  Sorry I didn't take pics.  I think I was so focused I completely forgot.

Cheers,
Mark

Hi Bish,

I've got a project running to build the little Airfix armour kits that I built as a kid again. I've completed the Stug III and M3 Lee, and I'm currently working on the Matador and 5.5 inch gun, which I would like to enter here. The next two are the Panther and Tiger, so I'll enter those as well. There are a total of 12 that I want to complete for this project.

I'll take some photos of the Matador soon.

Cheers

Tony

Be nice to have some more armour Tony, i take it these are 1/76th scale. Iwill put you down for those4 for now and then can just add more as you get to them.

Some more nice work there Mark.

Nice work Mark. I've never seen that kit get built. I confirm that my armour kits are all 1/76 Bish, sorry for the omission.

Regards

Tony

No worries Tony, i'll get them all addedat the weekend.

Thanks Bish. Current status of the Matador..I've done a little more since I entered it.

Cheers

Tony

Hey Bish, finlly getting under way on my next entry, the P-40B.  Working on the cockpit:

God to see it up and running AA.

Looks good Tony.

Thanks Bish. Next update. The canvas cover has its base coat, as do the wheels and 5.5 inch gun. I'm using Humbrol enamels for a change, I usually use acrylics these days. 

Armor_Aficianado - Can't wait to see more AA.  I liked the Mustang you did previously.

taxtp -  Nice work on the Matador Tony.

Cheers,
Mark 

Tales of the Omnibus - Chapter 2  (cont.)

Managed to get the engine cover painted up.  I happened to do the detail brush-painting in the morning, and discovered that my hands shake a lot less in the early hours.  Interesting.
It could probably be better, but I'm quite happy with it.  Next I will shoot the aluminum color on the radiater and it's shroud.

Got the "cockpit" details in, and here it is dry fitted to the chassis along with the engine box.  I like how it's coming together.

It's hard to see the details of the driver's controls, since nearly everthing is gloss black.  There's only one large lever missing, which will go on after the whole thing goes on the chassis.  Since this area will be hard to access after it's affixed to the chassis, I'll do some chipping and weathering around the foot pedals and other doohickies before glueing it in.

Also, in an earlier post I showed the horrible ejector pin marks on the rear wheels.  Here's a before and after of one of the wheels.  I couldn't get any sanders in there, so I slowly and carefully used a blade to scrape down the EPMs.  It looks a little rough, but I think once the wheels are painted and have some dirt and grime on them, they should be fine.

And finally...
Victim numbe...   I mean... Volunteer number one, is all set for some paint.  I think he looks slightly terrified to experience my first attempt at character painting firsthand.  Can't say I blame him.  hahaha....

Cheers,
Mark

Mark nice progress with that omnibus.

Tony so thats a Matador. (car commerical form way back) cool truck.

AA Nice start .

Bish Just came in my entry to this G.B. Airfix 1/48 hawker seafury fb.11. Im going to paint it in alclad high speed siliver,  maybe Burmese or cuban 1958 airforce??

Mark, I believe I stated at the beginning of the GB that I was intrigued with your Airfix Omnibus. Well, I still am and am enjoyng watching it come together.

I used to be able to reply to a page at a time, now it's a post at a time. Getting old, I guess. No disrepect intended to anyone, plenty of good stuff going on here, not just Mark.

PFJN

Hi,

When this Group Build was first announced I had a couple ideas for some kits that I wanted to build, but it looks like I never actually signed up to do any of them.  Just today though, I got a copy of the old Airfix 1/32 scale Humber Staff Car and thought it might be a good kit for this build.  As such, if possible, I'd like to sign up to build it.  I am almost done with a couple French Tanks that I have been working on, and only have a few small things left on my Race into Space Build (which I have unfortuately been dragging out for a while).  So hopefully I may be able to start this Airfix kit this weekend.

Pat

PS.  I'm not fully sure yet though if I will do it straight out of the box, or if I might want to make some mods.

 

Pat, sorry, some how i seemed to have missed this post completly. Doing some catching up and fortunatly spotted it, so got you added. Glad to have you on board.

crown r n7

Mark nice progress with that omnibus.

Thanks Nick.  That Sea Fury looks like a cool kit.  Can't wait to see it.

Greg

Mark, I believe I stated at the beginning of the GB that I was intrigued with your Airfix Omnibus. Well, I still am and am enjoyng watching it come together.

Thanks Greg.  I'm enjoying it too.  It was infuriating at first, how every single part needs some king of fixing to make it work.  But now I just laugh and shake my head.  (And while doing that I am usually saying "...this ****ing kit.")

Cheers,
Mark

Tales of the Omnibus - Chapter 2  (cont.)

Finished up the driver's "office," with some weathering too, and glued it in place.  Then I glued the finished engine box onto the chassis.  I'm so glad I added that bit of flooring under the chassis.  Really helped seat the engine box properly.

Here are a couple shots of the steering wheel before I glued it to the steering post.  Sorry my camera was having a hard time focusing.  I added the little half-dome bit of plastic in the center, since the kit didn't provide anything there and the pin at the top of the steering post just poked out of the wheel looking silly.  The sterring wheel was first sprayed with a flat tan, then I brushed on a dark brown over it to add the wood grain effect.

And so we come to the end of chapter 2, in the Tales of the Omnibus.  In chapter 3 we'll build up the walls and the benches of the upper deck.  Wait 'till you see the benches!  A bit more scratch building is on the way.

Cheers,
Mark

Bish please put me down for a 1/48 Hawker Fury aswell,hope to start it soon.

Theuns