80 Years of Airfix GB

That Gnat makes me want one. Nice work.

Cheers

Tony

Hellcat Drone Update: Like I said, I like me some red airplanes. The Hellcat has been out on the paint bench getting its drone colors. Drones were colorful but they didn't lead a very glamorous life as their colors might suggest. I preshaded with Tamiya Rubber Black Acrylic. I think the color is too dark and my application was too heavy. I should have used a grey color for the preshade. After the airplane sits over night, I'll give it another shot of red to see if I can mute the preshade a little more. The red is Model Master Insignia Red enamel and the green is Model Master Willow Green enamel.

Likeing the look of that frank.

TJ, thats nice with those on.

fotofrank

The drone is almost ready for paint. I sanded the whole model to knock back the rivets and panel lines. I glued on some of the small bits before paint so final assembly wouldn't be so tough. The canopy mask is from Pmask for the Eduard F6F. With some cutting and slicing the canopy mask now fits an Airfix kit...lol.

 

My first thought with the light finish and black cowling?

That's one fat looking Zero there...

Seriously great job on that Vampire!

Thanks Piers, i will get the final pics done at the weekend.

And that is a real beaty. The bare metal has come out great and looks even better with the orange, thats a great choice of scheme.

Thanks for taking part, will get the roster updated as soon as i can.

The Vampire is really nice! The orange nose and tail really set off the NMF. I need to find a Vampire kit...

Here it is. The drone is completed. F6F-3K Hellcat Drone Aircraft 17. We're ready for the Battle of Palmdale: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Palmdale

This is my second drone. The first is a 1/48 scale Otaki F6f-3K with a yellow tail, aircraft 12. The kit is built pretty much out of the box. the exception being the cowling from a Hasegawa Hellcat kit. That cowling is much nicer that the kit cowling. The model was primed with Alclad grey primer and preshaded with Tamiya flat black. The red is Model Master Insignia Red enamel and the tail is Model Master Willow Green. The aircraft numbers are from Techmod and the national insignia are out of the scrap box. The exhaust stain is Tamiya Rubber Black shot with my Sotar 20/20. I used MOdel Master Dullcote to seal the paint and decals. Seems the Dullcote caused a halo around the national insignia. I was going to seal the model with Alclad Semi Matte varnish but opted for the Dullcote. Bad decision. Anyway, here it is:

Lovely job on that frank. Great to see another one of these, thank you.

Bravo Frank!

Thanks, y'all. The build actually turned out better than I expected.

Great work Frank,

Love me a colourful plane. That is a super subject well done.  Do Airfix have a scorpion model to complete the battle of Palmdale? That was hilarious...

I just checked out the first page again and was really wowed by the finished models! Great work by all! I have the 1/144 HMS Snowberry on the bench right now but would never finish in time. 

Cary, i agree with you there, great line up.

If you want to post the Snowberry, please don't worry about being done by the end of Dec, yu can keep posting after that if you wish.

lostagain

Great work Frank,

Love me a colourful plane. That is a super subject well done.  Do Airfix have a scorpion model to complete the battle of Palmdale? That was hilarious...

 

I don't know if Airfix has an F-94 but there are several kits out there: Revell, Sword, EMHAR(?), and Lindberg. I'd opt for the Revell if I can find it affordable. I do have a Revell F-89D in my stash though.

 Man I'm really bad about keeping myself updated with everyones' progress here.

I do have an update on my builds, but first I have to give my hats off to lostagain and fotofrank since they're on the last page of the thread!

That is a beautiful Vampire lostagain!  The metal finish came out great and I love the color scheme with the bright orange sections! 

frank, suberb rendition of the Hellcate Drone!  Never seen that version before...very interesting contrast between the red and green sections!  I live how the preshading came out!

I wish mine were further along, but at least 99% of the assembly is done and all of them can go into the paint booth!

The BF-109 will be displayed with canopy open and flaps down (nice that the kit has that option!).  The landing gear, propeller assy, canopy and flaps are just dryfitted in place so that they can be removed for proper painting.  Still missing a couple of very small parts which will be added at the end (so my clumsy fingers won't break the off ).

The P-51 will be displayed in the basic flaps-up configuration.  Sanding the seams on the kit tires required redoing all the tread pattern....too much work for me so I just replaced them with a resin pair from SBS.  I wanted this plane to have 500 lb bombs which aren't included in the kit so Eduard Brassin to the rescue.  Also replaced the molded on MGs with .007 brass tubing.  Like the BF-109, most of the periperals are dry fitted at this point.

Last is the FW-190.  I decided I wanted to display this on a stand since I had a few of Airfix's clear display stands in the stash.  So landing gear up for this one.  Mostly OOB, but I did replace the molded on canons with .009 brass tubing and since the molded on pitot tube broke off () it was also fitted with a scratchbuilt brass replacement.

Yeah not much, but we're getting there.  Trying very hard to get these done by end of year!

The paint stage is generally where my momentum dies!  I like those brass cannons.

Bufflehead, are all three of those kits 1/72 scale new tool? I really like the FW-190. Don't forget to put a pilot in the seat. The brass hardware really adds to the kit.

My little Red Arrows Gnat is finished 

Looks like they called it Gnat for good reason.  That's a tiny little thing!  But very cool nonetheless.

TJ, i will check out your Gnat tonight, some hosting sites don't show up on my work PC. And yes, look forward to seeing the 110 kit. I'll get that added as well.

Well done Frank, Lost, and TJ!