IT'S BACK! Secret Santa 2: Rudolph Strikes Back

Chris, That F-16 is looking very nice.  Please post some more pics when its done.  I'm looking forward to seeing some ordinance on it!

Max, that is one VERY NICE Dauntless!

Max, very nice Dauntless. I will be building the -5 version for this GB and only hope it turnes out half as good. Very nice build.

Steve

Mark - Awsome job on the Dauntless! Well done.

Chris - Great Falcon! Luv the finish.

HK - Good progress, keep on it!!

ciao for now

I guess today was one of those days when you better don't sit at the workbench:

The airbrush didn't work properly and worst of all the cockpit detached from the fuselage ... I had to rip the wings off, glue the office back in place and put the wings back on.

A major setback!  

Got some color on the plane in the last couple of nights. The plane I decided on is a Russian unit that is Olive drab over neutral gray. Seems many of my subjects are painted like this so to avoid all the planes in the case having the same looking paint scheme I switched to Tamiya paint from my normal MM enamels.

There is a total of three different colors of green on this plane, two of which are the acryls and one that is an enamel. And that enamel isn't olive drab thank goodness.

I used the different colors to try and get a weathered look in the color without adding white to try to "fade" anything.

It will be interesting to see how much of the contrast shows through the layers of clear and oils I'm going to apply to finish the weather and decals. Now on to the small stuff while paint dries.

hkshooter wrote:

And that enamel isn't olive drab thank goodness.

???????? What do you mean? Isn't OD "the color of the gods"? At the very least, it is 50% of the greatest color combo of all time!(I knew I should have pushed my wife harder to get the OD/NG bridesmaid dresses!)

Seriously, that paint looks awesome! Can't wait to see this one finished.

Thanks, Jon. I didn't realize until after I was done that I used the same decals as you did. Your set behaved alot better than mine, though.

Thanks everyone for all the kind words! I sure am glad the camera hides alot of flaws!

Very nice paint job, hkshooter!

Cheers,

Azgaron

I just had to make the 1000 post in this year's thread 

Nope, I checked. I have no shame

Outstanding paintjob hkshooter, looks perfectly weathered.

As for me I fixed my mishap and will retry painting tomorrow. 

An Easter nap by my wife and daughter gives me some bench times, woohoo!

So I'm now about 80% done with the Italeri Spitfire from Dave S.  The kit had some fit issues but nothing a little Squadron green putty couldn't handle.  The molded in gun blisters on the wing tops had to be removed and replaced with a separate piece.  I cut the original piece out a wee bit too big so filler was needed in that resulting gap as well.  As I've run out of shelf space (for the time being) I decided to build this Spitfire wheels up, which resulted in a bit more filler requirement to hide the gear insert hole since the gear cover didn't extend that far.

I finished all of the construction and filling last week, and finished sanding this morning before church.  Then with the aforementioned nap, I took advantage of that time to put down some pre-shading (no picture), then the final colors.  I've chosen a Belgium Royal Air Force bird that was operational shortly after the war.  The colors are RAF dark green, ocean grey and medium sea grey.  Well I didn't actually have a bottle of ocean gray or medium sea gray, so I substituted dark gull grey (don't know if that was a good choice or not) and light sea grey.

The pre-shading comes through pretty well in the shot of the top side, not as well in the underside shot.  But in reality that underside pre-shading looks a lot more clear than in the photo.

The last thing I accomplished was to paint some of the additional pieces - props and spinner, canopy framing, and I put down a coat of Future in preparation for weathering and decaling.  I hope to find the time during the coming week to put on the decals, do the weathering and affix final pieces, and put down a coat of flat clear.

Very nice work, Steven! The preshade turned out nice!

Cheers,

Azgaron

Looks great, Steven!

Mabye I should start encouraging my wife to take some more naps! Then mabye I'd be able to actually sit down for a few minutes at my bench!

UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE.  I'm not dead yet.  After quenching my habit of World of Warcraft, the modeling bug has returned with a vengeance.  I have got the panel lines darkened, dull coated and am ready for the fiddly bits like guns, bombs and weathering.  JMart gave me a VacuCanopy, and i was goign to use it, but seeing as this was my first attempt at using one, i cut right through the darn thing .  so i am masking the kits canopy.  I should still be able to see in to the pit.  By the next post i should be posting the finished product.

Nice work, Mist! Sorry to hear about the canopy!

Cheers,

Azgaron

Nice work so far Aggie !

Mist, nice job on the panel lines - Is that an acrylic paint/soap sludge wash - or something else ?   Looks good anyway.

Chris

You are back with a vengance Mist. You have two great builds going on and they are going to look outstanding when finished.

Steve

Klaus - ugh, hope the repairs/redone went well...

hkshooter - interesting technique/idea, look forward to the end point!

Aggieman - nice paint job... preshade looks good, sharp

Mist086 - nice work! Sorry about the canopy, I have not used any myself (2-3 in boxes). World of warcraft? ;)  Few weekends ago I was so tired and wiped, half-sick, did not want to do ANYTHING and ended up playing a marathon session of Civ3. Sometimes we need to place our brains on hold for a few...

And Happy Easter all! Cheers

The Spitfire is complete.  This was an easy build and one that I really needed considering the lengthy and involved builds I've had recently (scratch-building interiors for old Monogram kits, an Albatross and a Warhawk, in addition to building 5 P-40s at the same time).

I built this as a Royal Belgium Air Force Spitfire which is unique among my collection of USAAC, USN, RAF, and Luftwaffe warbirds.  Wheels up to hang with my other British aircraft, light weathering, and straight out of the box!

Thanks Dave S. for the great and relaxing build!  And thanks to Jon for hosting this group build (and if we do this again in '08, I'm ready to sign up).

Aggie,

Clipped wings and the Belgian colors make for a unique Spitfire.  Nice job on the build and the weathering too.  Man that was quick !

Chris

Looks awesome, Aggie!

Still working on it. Topics for tonight have been gear and prop and the whole airframe has been Futured. Gear doors are painted and ready to go on after the wheels dry. Next up will be decals and weathering.

Very nice looking Spitfire, Steven! Excellent work!

Looking good so far, hkshooter!

Cheers,

Azgaron

DrewH wrote:

I just had to make the 1000 post in this year's thread  Nope, I checked. I have no shame

Hmmm...   Must be related to that "Ninja Points" thing 

Hello everyone.

I finished the P-39 that DrewH sent me last year. Built as a P-39N.This is the first P-39 I've done since I was a kid, that one being the old Monogram kit.

This one is Eduards Profipac kit that has been around awhile. Nice kit and I now have the P-400 in the stash that I look forward to starting in the future.

The kit went together well after I got some good advice about the canopy from Mark. Wing trailing edges are kind of thick so I sanded them some. More work that I figured it to be!

Drew was kind enough to add a few AM parts to the kit, those being seat and exhaust. I forgot about the seat until the kit seat was done but I remembered the Ultracast exhausts. Some will notice I left out the gunsite. I havent decided yet if I want to try and get it in there or not. And not until I removed the doors from the painted kit did I notice I forgot the paint the windscreen frames the interior color. Next time....

I had the paint just like I wanted it until I Futured the airframe. All that color went away so after the clear dried I painted again to show some fading. At the same time I muted the decals some. I always feel like most decals look to new for a war weary plane. I sprayed the cals with a very thin dusting of Tamiya flat earth.

Unfortunately, once the flat coat went on the fading was nearly invisible again. I gave up and let it go. It's easier to see in person.

Paint is combination of Tamiya and MM. Flat is my standard Swanny mix of Windex and Polyscale. There is no other weather on this one but I may do panel lines before it goes into the case.

I never did find a good pic of the prop hub for the 37mm so I used my imagination. Triarius tried a few times to send me some info but current technology couldn't handle the file. Thanks to him for the effort!

I'm glad to have built this kit and glad to have been able to participate in the GB. Thanks to Jon for the work involved in the GB and thanks to DrewH for the wonderful SSGB gift!

Very nice job Troy. Up to your usual standards and it turned out sharp. Too bad about the faded colour effect, it looked good when first applied and was looking forward to seeing how it came together with decals etc. All in all, great job.

Steve