Battle For Germany 45 GB Starts Now - 08 May 06

Marc, nice work.  Big improvement for sure.

Tom, I'm no expert on Armor, but I doubt any of the KT's were green.  Overall Panzer Yellow primer or German Grey are much more likely.  I saw one pic of a KT done in Grey with winter distemper white camo crudely applied that would make an interesting model.

Regards,  Rick

Thanks for the comments re: the tail wheel everybody.

Tweety-I did not plan on taking the chrome off this since it is a small piece. But when I get to the rest of that '51 (guess I need some AM resin wheels now that I don't have hubs) I am going to try one of the methods talked about in a recent thread.

http://www.finescale.com/FSM/CS/forums/554394/ShowPost.aspx

A lack of progress report.  I had hoped to have the FW190 pit done this weekend, but SWMBO decided my time would be better spent putting up Christmas decorations.  She loves Christmas as the huge amount of decorations would attest.  Then after New Years I get to take them all down.  Oh well, such is marital bliss .

Regards,  Rick

Rick - that's why our tree broke.. all the decorations on it... (or thats what I told the wife)  I ended up getting one of those 2 foot ones with the pre-strung lights and ornaments... this year I even get out of putting that one up since Rudy is still in his puppy stage still. 

Yeah I'm not a big fan of Chrissy decorations either.

I simplified Chrissy in my place by forking out a couple of hundred bucks (a one off expense in my opinion) and purchased one of those optic fibre trees!

Now it's a half hour job at the most, and looks reeeeeeal purdy.

Just unpack, unfold, and plug in

Now, if the FW 190 camo is agreeable with Darren, then I reckon I can finish it way before time, and am planning on finding something nice and fringy to round things out for this build.

Might even have to turn my hand to armour or cars

But it's for a good cause, or so I'm telling myself. 

Karl - I usually wait for the day before and pull down the boxes from the attic and act like I will open them later... luckily my wife and I buy our Xmas presents for each other thhroughout the year and don't wait for the 25th so she is not worried about putting a tree up as there is nothing to go under it anyway! 

My progress - surprisingly this build is shooting along... I am 99% done with the upper hull, everything but the tools and tow wire etc are together.  Like Karl I will be putting wire pull handles on the hatches and those haven't been done yet, but still almost ready for painting.

All the road wheels have been assembled, mud gaurds on... I am in the middle of the turret at present so that looks to be another weeks worth of work, if only for all the spare track holders.  (tiny little things that they are) I have to rest my eyes now and then they are so small and difficult to hold to get on. 

This has been an eye opening build, while 99% of the build has been like a day at the horse races... there are parts where the parts are so tiny it takes me 20 min to get just one on.  There are parts on this thing that even in 1/72 I have never encountered the sheer "tiny-ness" of...

It's going together pretty impressive though... I like all the goodies and all those tiny parts really stick out...

The main thing that might stall me is that paint scheme, I posted a thing on it in the Armor forum, (nice bunch of chaps actually... for all their bad reputation I have heard of) and have come up with a few... but the problem is I have no concrete reference in those cases except a model someone built.  I guess I need to order some books but hate to only find they have no references to "non-ambush" camo schemes...  According to a scan of one of the reference books one of the armor guys sent me the late Tigers came from the factory with Dunkelgrun on them and the camo was field applied... so maybe I will go for something like that.. I just need a Tiger to model it on... (a real one)  Ok Mr. Fringe has now turned to Mr. Rivet counter...

hmm maybe I just will print out that same "Tweety II" decal from my N Afrika Martlet and call it Kremps Mount.. the Tiger she commanded during the war.. (did I tell yall that story??) that way I can paint it anything I want...

Tom maybe I can be of some assistance with your Tiger cam scheme problem as I have quite a few references on the KT.  Are you looking, for some color plates of a few very late war Kitties, if so I should be able to help.

I'll see what I have and send it through in an email tonight.

Progress Update

Fill and sand, fill and sand, fill and sand.....

Tom, is this the PE that came with the kit or Aber?

I'm using the Eduard sets on the Panther, and these aren't too bad, nothing so small that I can't at least see it!

The final drive covers are on, after filling and sanding the hull extension plate joints. I've applied filler to an ejector pin mark on all the suspension arms, there must be about 7 a side, so these should get cleaned up and installed tonight. Then need to start cleaning up the second set of road wheels.

I want to get all the plastic together and right before I start on the PE. The biggest pain is searching through both the Tamiya and Eduard destructions working out what I need to use, and what I don't.

Darren, that's an awful big hunk of plastic to sand!

Karl

Karl, tell me about it!  I can live with the so-so fit in some areas, but I have to be very careful when sanding as the plastic the Trumpeter use is quite soft compared to Tamiya or Hasegawa. If I rub to hard all that lovely detail just disappears.
I also found a couple of really nice ejector pin marks in the forward wheel well, I only noticed these after priming the area and they are going to be a real treat to remove.

Tom, is this the sort of thing you are looking for, the caption reads Tiger II, s.Pz.Abt. 511, May 1945



All I was reading the posts on the previous page and noted the general lack of appropriate Christmas spirit . So to get you all in the mood for the holiday season here is a shot of our family Christmas tree that I just snapped on time lapse

WOW!!!

Ok, kinda puts mine to shame

darson wrote:

Karl, tell me about it!  I can live with the so-so fit in some areas, but I have to be very careful when sanding as the plastic the Trumpeter use is quite soft compared to Tamiya or Hasegawa. If I rub to hard all that lovely detail just disappears. I also found a couple of really nice ejector pin marks in the forward wheel well, I only noticed these after priming the area and they are going to be a real treat to remove.

I was about to start a thread bring up just what you mentioned about the Trumpeter kits.  My D-9 is the 1^st Trumpeter and I have to say… I am not impressed.  I know I am not that far into it ad fit has been pretty good so far, there have been some minor fit problems.  The engine is a kit all by itself and is a major plus.  But the softness of the plastic has made me have to alter the way I sand. The one good thing about it is that it carves like a bar of soap so removes detail to make way for PE and resin is easier.  Flash and little “things” on different places of many of the parts are a pain.  The sink marks are just not to be believed.  So far there are a lot of them and in tough places. The landing flaps are just atrocious… huge sink marks are bad enough but the surface of the plastic is like a 3D topographical map.  Is this typical of the Trumpeter kits?  I will probably talk about some of the detail that has no base in reality later on… when I make the corrections and I am completely frustrated by it.  I am always up for a challenege but this was a pretty expensive kit and I expected better.

Darren - exactly!!!!  Wow what a find!  I wonder about that barrel though, is it just not colored in or is it white?  I'm thinking it wasn't colored in...  That yellow looks a bit bright too... brighter than dunkelgelb... I'll probably just lighten the dunkelgelb a tad to get that look.  (as in add a dab of yellow)  That works out splendid!

Karl - my experience with Trumpeter kits is limited, I have heard some people speak kindly of the kit they happened to be building at the time, but my experience with the HH-65 was similar to yours.  Good detail in some places, detail nonexistant or belonging to a non-military Dauphin in other places and sink holes in the worst imaginable spots.  (center of the backrest of a countoured seat etc..  places you can't get at with normal means)  I also found the plastic a little soft.  The kicker was the canopy came in two pieces, with a seam running vertically straight down the center.  It took some powerful sanding with very fine paper to get it flush.

That said, I don't see me not building another type of Trumpeter kit, just wary and will ask about it first.  I have the FW190-A8 from Hasegawa in 1/32 and it is superb!!  lots of nice detail and fairly accurate overall...  ---edit---  the only problem being at present I cannot locate the front cowl complete with engine glued in... and believe me it is a large piece... it sill show up one of these days, maybe I need to go ahead and throw the kit away so it will jump out of the woodwork at me!

Tom, you're losing your marbles, it's Darren that's working on the Trumpeter kit. Senility is a terrible thing!!!!

Darren, sounds like Trumpeter still have a way to go on the quality front, before they threaten Tamigawa.

Dave, the Carpet Monster has also been active at my house, and I don't even have carpet!!!! I pinged the engine acces panel bump stop into the ether, and haven't seen it since!

Progress Update

All the suspension arms are now filled, cleaned up and installed, along with the bulk of the the lower hull detail. I'm leaving the exhausts and jack, off the hull back plate to make painting easier later.

Still not sure about the camo scheme, as I although I'm pretty sure the scheme I'm using is correct for this GB, I wouldn't mind a few reference photos to back it up.

Karl

Karl - actually it's worse than I first suspected, it's not you, and it's not Darren I was replying to... it was Marc!!!  Oh well... pretend I never did that and I won't tell either.. 

The PE on my kit is from the kit, all the crane attachment points are what were a little hard for my tired eyes/big hands to deal with...

I decided to take a break on mine and do some more on the Bf110 I am doing for the nightfighter GB.. the decals finally got in at greatmodels so I expect them any day now...

Darren - thanks bunches for that photo!  I saw a similar paint job on a model when researching but couldn't find a reference to verify it...

tho9900 wrote:

Karl - actually it's worse than I first suspected, it's not you, and it's not Darren I was replying to... it was Marc!!!  Oh well... pretend I never did that and I won't tell either..

My mom always said I would end up causing trouble.

wing_nut wrote:

My mom always said I would end up causing trouble.

My mom always said I would marry a fat, lazy woman and starve to death... that's why she taught me to cook...  

Well Cynthia is definitely not fat...   

ok... in her defense she isn't lazy either... just lacking of talent in the culinary arts.. 

Tankmaster7 wrote:

culinarily challenged eh?  I hate school. Up at 6. Back at 1600. Work til 2030. eat. shower. Hlaf hour free time. sleep. GAAARRR. What is the point?!! I've already recieved more education than 95% of the kids in the high school anyway. Anyway the point of all this is, the fw-190 is stiil safely in the box hidden from any nasty prowling la-7's on the loose.

Tanky, wait till you have a job and a family, up at 06.00, home at 18.00 running kids to rugby, dance etc, putting kids to bed, going to the gym, finally sitting down about 21.30!!!

My advice, go to university, or college as it is in the US, that's definitely where I had the most fun!

Tom, what conversation?

Progress Update

Cleaned up the remaining set of road wheels last night, and assembled the idlers and drive sprockets. Realised that I need to install some sort of baffle below the rear deck grills to hide the lack of detail beneath, this will probably be nothing more than some black card inserted through the turret opening post painting.

Also started on the PE last night, as, having hacked off the front fenders, the Tamiya headlamp mount appears to be too far outboard when compared with the cut out in the fender. So I hacked the mount off, and I'll reattach it later so that it corresponds with the PE part. It doesn't help that the Eduard instructions tell you to hack off all the fender back to the glacis plate, only to show the fenders being attached to a vestigial section of fender over the page! 

Karl

Well it looks like all you guys are into your builds, not me however i'm too busy with life and work and all that stuff....I am waiting on another Squadron order so in the meantime i might scribe out some of those panels on the 219's wings ready for the resin bits

BTW thanks Karl and Darren for posting up those links of the 219 builds they will come in very handy......

Oh yeah Darren thanks for the email you sent about a week ago.......

And Tweets Thats one cool looking Xmas tree you have there mate......

Jules, don't go bragging just because you have a life!

Or was that a typo and you meant wife?

Karl

Lots of progress… well … let’s say work being done but progress may be a bit if a stretch.  I am way to unorganized so far on this build.  Start a component and jumping to something lese before the e1st one is done.  Engine done but not painted.  Cockpit almost done but not painted.  In the middle of that just started taping the wings together to see how the LG was going go in there.  It is very unlike me. I think it has to do with the size of this thing… that I feel there is so much detail that needs to be added or it will look too sparse that I am jumping all over the place.  Has this happened to anyone lese?  Maybe I need a break for a day or two.  Put some time in on my Airfix Boeing Clipper that I am doing as an Xmas gift for my cousion... a retired Pan Am pilot. I think this thing is almost as old as me.

Marc, I think this is the problem with larger builds. Because of their size they seem to take forever, which then means you try to work on everything at once, and end up getting nothing done. I speak from experience!

I was toying with the idea of going the full AM route with the He 162, Eduard PE, CMK/Aires cockpit, wheel bay, engine etc, but I know it will add weeks to the build, with each little area becoming a model in it's own right,  and I really don't think that I can be arsed with that.

Large projects are fine, but I think you're right, you do need breaks to work on other smaller projects, before the apparent lack of progress becomes too depressing.

Progress Update

Blanked off all the engine deck grills last night, used the kit schurzen cut into sections and simply stuck under each grill. Not pretty at the moment, but I'll spray the base colour before applying a coat of dilute black water colour into the recesses to hide the lack of depth, before attaching the PE grills over the top.

Still waiting for the PE schurzen to arrive, along with the Friul tracks.

Karl