AIRCRAFT - Battle of Britain Group Build (Jan 1st 2005 - May 31st 2005)

looking good Mike! I've taken to primering almost everything I build now as it helps show up places that need touch up like that...

Looking forward to seeing some paint on her!!!

Darren - I noticed on the first page where you have our builds and whether we have completed them or not, that Tweety and Jules' smiley faces appear to be a bit larger and more yellow than mine... is there something you can do about that?

time for a pic methinks

One Monogram 1:48 Spitfire MkIIa, primed and ready for painting. Note the three bottles of Aeromaster dark green, dark earth and sky acrylics to the right of the picture.

Primed using Tamiya grey primer and any seam issues that have come to light dealt with (evident along the wing root).



cheers

Mike

Darren, The Spit looks great. Very nice work.

Mike, Good Luck !

Regards, Rick

My Spit is sitting in primered glory waiting for the Spray booth and airbrush to be broken out. Meantime I am working on my Boomerang for the Aussie05 GB.

Wish me luck, all...Going to use these Eduard masks to speed things up a little!

cheers

Mike

Darren, nice job on that Spit. The decals sure look a lot better than the last time we saw it. Everything else on it is outstanding.

wow Karl... that would be an interesting looking weathering job... maybe one of those small stiff bristle brushes, paint the fuselage silver, then over coat of camo, then lightly buff away some spots...

Darren Very nice looking Spitfire mate. The camo looks great, and the decals look fine. Great work.

Rick The wait is made doubly bad because the same package will contain not only the decals for the Hurricane, but my reference book for the MS 406 for the NA GB!!

So I am now stuck doing not a lot.

Darren The spit looks great. You really can't see the silvering, and the weathering looks great.

Joe The 109 is stunning, and you did it so quickly. I'm amazed.

I know there has been alot of debate over the weathering of models of late, especially paint chipping, so I'd thought I'd mention something I read recently.

Due to the extremely harsh winter of 1939/1940, with heavy snow and ice, ground crews took to scrubbing the ice off the wings of aircraft with wire brooms! Now if anything is likely to produce major paint chipping, that has to be a strong contender.

Karl

Darren Top job buddyNice job on the weathering, looks like it's seen a few missions........
The silvering on the decals is no where near as noticable as before, Hmmm i like yours better than mine, i got the colours wrong on mine

Alright guys here it is finally!!!

Whilst I am sort of happy with the overall result, it was great fun to build, even if I did screw the pooch on the decals. Oh well, live and learn

Cheers
Darren

many thanks for letting me do this, even so quick. i did have fun and it was a first for me. i hadnt done a battle of britain bird before. and this is only the second 109 i have done. darson well done.



joe

Karl, waitng for the post to deliver modeling goodies is pure torture. Hope to see the finished Hurricane soon.

Regards, Rick

QUOTE: Originally posted by jboutin Karl, I may have a solution to your dust problem, I do my airbrushing in my garage which can be dusty so a while back I went out and bought a big, delicious store-made cake from the supermarket. After my wife and finished the cake I kept the big plastic base and clear dome. Now, whenever I paint, I put it into the cake dome and voila, no dust on it! I got one big enough to hold two 1:48 ww2 aircraft. In my pics you can see my model sitting on a black base, that is the base of the cake dome. lots of luck!

Jay Like your thinking, but my other half has already provided a solution.

She's a scrapbooker, and has a number of 12" x 12" Artbin boxes, each about 6" deep, idea; for storing models in.

Even using these I stll manage to get duct in the finish!!!!!

No real progress on the Hurricane, just a coat of Future over the repaired patches.

Now I'm waiting on the decals to arrive.

Karl

Jay - I found some low tack frisket film at my local general purpose hobby store (sells everything from quilting and calligraphy to a modest selection of models) ... it worked wonderfuly for the pattern I put on my Martlet... I was even using Vallejo acrylics which I have heard have a low adhesion (no probs on my end)

I just enlarged and printed out the painting instructions to scale and layed them on top of the frisket... used an Xacto to cut through the pattern into the frisket and had entire strips ready to lay down in one stroke!!!

Joe, nice work on the Emil.

Jay, the Typhoon is looking good. I should have mentioned that I make the tape less aggressive by first pressing it on the back of my hand. Reduces the tack some, & I've never had any paint pull. It does work quite well for hard edge camo though, don't it .

Regards, Rick

Joe, really nice work, I was wondering how you got the fuselage camo pattern that way, did you AB it or use a brush?

Well folks, my 10 year project of the Typhoon is getting closer to completion! Thanks to the BoB build and giving me the motivation to finish it, I have camo pics. Rick, you mentioned double sided tape to get the hard edge for your hurricane, I tried it on the Typhoon. it works great! the only problem I had was I think I used some double sided tape that was too sticky, I pulled off the grey paint in two spots, nothing I can't touch up but annoying anyways.

Here goes! First all masked up and ready to go



about 1hour after painting! and carefully peeling off the maskes!




I am doing a RCAF 440 sqdn Typhoon "Pulverizer II" from mid to late 1944. Apparently the invasion stripes had been removed by that time. (Pulverizer IV is the one in my sig). I had to scratch the bomb racks as Canadian Typhoons didn't have the rockets, after hours of sanding and shaping (their profile is still slightly wrong) I then found out Ultracast has a set! as the venerable Homer Simpson is wont to say...DOH! I also think the ocean grey may be a little too dark but oh-well, at least it is almost done.

next up, the hurricane! (when I can find the time) Cheers!

Very impressive looking 'Emil' Joe. Great work on the camo. Thanks for sharing.

well my friends. i offer to you the finished bird. again this is the hasegawa 1/48, me bf109e-4/7.




the other pics are in the a/c forum.



joe

Thanks Rick, I really don't want to use the old paint if I can help it!

The switch to the Grey /Green scheme stll used the BOB Dark Green. It was a compromise, as initially the RAF wanted two shades of grey. As far as the ModelMaster paint goes, paint colors can vary from batch to batch. Your older bottle obviously came from a different batch. I've noticed the same thing with all of their paints. I had started painting a model with an older bottle of paint, but ran out before I was done. Opened a new bottle to finish it & the color mis-match was very noticeable. I ended up re-painting the entire model.

Regards, Rick

Karl, I may have a solution to your dust problem, I do my airbrushing in my garage which can be dusty so a while back I went out and bought a big, delicious store-made cake from the supermarket. After my wife and finished the cake I kept the big plastic base and clear dome. Now, whenever I paint, I put it into the cake dome and voila, no dust on it! I got one big enough to hold two 1:48 ww2 aircraft. In my pics you can see my model sitting on a black base, that is the base of the cake dome. lots of luck!

A question for the british camo gurus out there. I opened my old bottle of dark green for the Typhoon and it is very different than the british dark green I have for the hurricane. I was hoping to use the dark green but it seems time wasn't so nice with this bottle, even though I hadn't openned this one either until yesterday. Would the darker british green from the BoB be acceptable or was the switch in 1941-42 to the gray/green upper surface camo a different green? I need to know soon as I have the masks on the Typhoon and am ready to go! thx

Mike, sorry to see you bail, but sometimes we all bite off more than can be chewed.

Regards, Rick

Karl - I've used that too with moderate success.... and it can't hurt! (the running future under the edges of the decal)

Darren - that's one thing I had to learn... not to be stingy with the future when it comes to decaling. The more the better when it comes to the decals setting down good...

It's been a real long time since I posted here, and unfortunately this one isn't good. Regrettably I have to bow out of this GB. There's really no time for me to finish by the time this ends. So, I'm just letting y'all know. I'm really sorry, there's not much I can do about it.

In happier news, all this stuff looks great! This was an excellent idea for a GB...

Darren I was going to suggest you try running a little future under the edge of the decal, I've heard Pix do this in the past with some success.

Another technique I've heard about is to apply the decal with Future, therefore creating it's own little Future patch to sit on.

If it's any consolation, I had exactly the same problems when I first started using Future. Now I apply several fairly heavy wet coats, and then just let it settle out on it's own.

I just need to work out how to reduce the dust contamination that I always seem to end up with!!!

Jay Can't see the pic's because I'm at work, but best of luck with that canopy. Like you I'm glad thay come in packs of two, I trashed the first one!!!

Razor Best of luck in the new job.

Karl

QUOTE: Originally posted by tho9900 Darren - I usually put two moderate coats on the fuselage, a little heavier where I KNOW a decal is going to go... Miond you not too heavy with each coat, just enough to cover, but I find with dull paints I need to reseal it after the first coat, its almost like the paint drinks up the future.. if it doesn't look glossy enough I even use a brush to touch the area the decal is going on... Good luck!!

Thanks Tom, I'll certainly put your advice into practise form now on . BTW your are dead right with the flat paint, it was almost like the paint drank the meagre coat of Future that I applied.

Cheers
Darren

Darren - I usually put two moderate coats on the fuselage, a little heavier where I KNOW a decal is going to go... Miond you not too heavy with each coat, just enough to cover, but I find with dull paints I need to reseal it after the first coat, its almost like the paint drinks up the future..

if it doesn't look glossy enough I even use a brush to touch the area the decal is going on...

Good luck!!

Hurricane is looking good Jay !

Regards, Rick

Thanks Jay, I have many friends in Calgary so I'll be there more often now that I'm closer but don't know if I'll make it to any of the shows this year.

Congratulations! that is good news ! Hey, if you get time (starting a new job, as if!?), you should try to make it to Calgary for one of the contests coming up in May or June! Vernon is a lot closer than Winnipeg!
I would say that as long as there is no pressurized containers you should be able to take them. I don't think acrylics are prone to spontainiously bursting into flame are they? If you don't tell the baggage people there should be nothing to worry about.