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

Karl great news on your paint job, it would have been a damn shame if you couldn't bring it back up to scratch.

Nicholas welcome back, I am looking forward to seeing some pics of your Defiant.

Calvin wow [:0], like the man said your a braver man than I am. Great work in such a tiny scale.

Jules what happened to your Stuka, did it bite the bullet or is it still a goer?

I'm convinced that my Spitfire is jinxed, tonight I was putting the canopy on (no I didn't break it again ) and I realised the scratchbuilt armor plate, bulkhead and little black electrical thing that all sit behind the pilots head are to tall to fit the rear canopy . I could have wept I'm not kidding. Anyway tonight was spent doing some hasty butchering mods so that the canopy will fit on. Anyway, to prove this model is not a figment of my imagination, here are a couple of progress pics. Oh yeah in the top shot you can clearly see the decal silvering that I'm so bummed about.

Cheers
Darren

Darren, The Spit looks very good. Shame about the decal silvering. You might be able to hide it with some careful dry brushing of the top color over the silvered areas.

Regards, Rick

Pingtang, nice looking spit, you too Darren, hope you can fix the silvering issue. Well I finally got the camo started, I put the dark earth on the Hurricane and at the same time I also did the ocean grey on my typhoon. I'll tell you guys, don't use old paint! the Typhoon paint is a little thick and while it is acceptable for now, next time I should have just gone out and bought new bottles. I bought the paints about 10 years ago but never opened them so I thought what the heck, I'll try them on the Typhoon. It took a bit of playing with some thinner to get a consisentcy that worked some what reasonably.

Anyway, very soon I'll post some pics. The canopy is a little interesting, I've never worked with Vacuformed before. I have been having so much fun doing this build but I'm sure I would be done by now if it weren't for doing two at once.

Sounds great Jay. Looking forward to the pics.

Regards, Rick

QUOTE: Originally posted by jboutin The canopy is a little interesting, I've never worked with Vacuformed before.

When you say interesting, is that a good interesting or a bad interesting?

Thanks

I guess a good thing, when you try something new you kinda go blindly, I cut the canopy out with a bit of the vacuform edge left around it. I used surgical scissors (left over from a univrsity biology class for disecting). Then I read on the back of the instructions to use a no.11 blade and score the canopy edge lightly until it pops out of the plastic. with a little bit of careful trimming and sanding, I think the Canopy is ready for masking now. I'm learning new things everyday and I am so glad I got this vacuform canopy, it is going to look superb as I said it is my first!!

Darren Sweet looking Spitpity about the silvering, strange they should silver with a coat of Future underneath
OH yeah the Stuka is still a go but i'm finding it hard to motivate myself to finish it so i figured i'd get a move on with the 109

BTW Pingy I think i'm building the same 109 as you, Tamiya's 48 BF109 E4/7 done as an E3 in Werner Molders markings.........

Darren - great looking bird, pity about the silvering though.. Jules' idea might be right on the mark though... it's the only thing I could think of... I've gone back a second or third time with Micro-sol and got decals to settle down that were silvered... but the drybrushing seems the less potentially destructive of the two...

Jay - I used to have a set of those same scissors and whish I still had them!! those things could cut through sheetmetal and leave a crisp edge at the cut!!!

Well, here are some progress pics.

I noticed a little line on the hurricane where the fuselage halves join on the top of the nose. I am tempted to fill and sand it but I am anxious to get this bird done! You can't see it good but there is salt all over the hurricane as I am trying the salt chipping method as described by swanny, so far from what I have seen, it going to be pretty neat.



I guess the ocean grey paint dried okay for the Typhoon, even though it was old paint! go figure!



Maybe tomorrow I'll get the green on both.

Darren Good looking progress on your Spit. It's a shame about the silvering, but I think the dry-brushing idea should fix it up pretty well. Keep up the good work.

Jay Your two builds are looking very nice. The salt chipping should turn out well. It looks a bit rough at the moment though with all that salt under the paint surface. Looking forward to seeing some pics of them finished. And thanks for the compliment on my Spit.

Jules I have the Tame E3 kit, and am thinking of doing it as a E4-trop. The Tame kit is good because it gives you the trop sand filter and the E4 prop spinner. I don't think there's many other changes than that, is there?

Jay looking good buddy Paint on both looks nice and smooth from here, and to be quite honest with you mate i can only see a tiny little line on the Hurri near where the spinner goes IMO it's barely noticable and the green, clear coats weathering ect ect ect will probably make it totally unnoticable, i wouldn't worry about it

pingy Yeah mate there are more changes, but i think they were all internal something to do with the oilcooler i think, apart from that the only other thing is the stores rack which you get in the E3 kit anyway

Guys thanks very much for the kind words and thanks for the advice with the dry brushing. I gave it a try tonight and it worked a treat. It hasn't solved the problem 100% but it sure looks a heck of a lot better than it did (to my eyes anyway). I've put it all together now including the last bits of Tamiya tape over the gun ports, canopy and fixed the landing gear glued on (did anyone notice it was on backwards in the photo I posted last night , thank heaven I didn't glue it into place.
Jules I learned an important lesson out of this, one thin coat of Future is not enough, I picked up my mistake after doing the top decals, so I re-Futured the bottom and then had no problems. I'll take a couple of photos of the finished kit in the next day or so and post them up.

Cheers
Darren

Nice Spit Darson!

Mine is at prime stage and ready to go for the spray booth

Mind you, the Monogram one is not a patch compared to the Tamiya one. There is a slight warp in one of the wings that has defied correction!

cheers

Mike

Madmike, what is it with monogram and wing warping, the typhoon has one too that I couldn't fix and their old p-40B I built a while ago had a really bad one which I sort of corrected but if you look for it you can still see it!

btw, thanks for the comments! all your help has been great!

Jay, your builds are looking great. Hope everything works out for you on that salt chipping.

I asked this question in the general discussion but thought I'd ask here as well. Have any of you ever taken paint bottles with you on an airplane? I took a job in another province (sorry Jay, Vernon BC not Alberta) and want to take some supplies with me to keep myself busy until my family catches up to me. Oh... and NO... I will not be taking any scalpo's or other hobby knives in my carry on!

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.

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.

Hurricane is looking good Jay !

Regards, Rick

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!!

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 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

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...

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...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!