Subscribers’ Gallery – aircraft 3

Thought I’d send you a few snaps of the Hasegawa 1:48th scale Harrier AV-8B I finished the other week. The kit received an Aires resin cockpit, aftermarket decals, deck was made from plastic card with the tie downs & chains from White Ensign, figs and deck equipment from Verlinden.
Quite chuffed with it as the kit is a sod to fit (nose and engine intact area).

Revell 1:32 scaleThe greatest “must-have” kit since, well, I suppose the Airfix Sea Vixen. I guess we’ve never had it so good? Bring on those Airfix Lynxes!

First impressions on opening the box were very favourable, once I got past “Gosh, It’s Red!”. It is an experience that can only be likened to opening the box of the Hasegawa RAF Rescue Sea King. It’s rare for me to start a kit the day I bring it home. Most of them sit in the stash for a while. But this one went straight onto the production line. Two more boxes went straight into the stash, along with a selection of Xtradecal recent releases.

The build was pretty straightforward, but I did need a little filler at the wing roots especially underneath between the wheel wells and the intakes.

Since I was aiming for an out of the box Red Arrow, I decided to capitalise on that bright red plastic. As has been described in the review, the plastic surface is slightly textured, so I went over it lightly with fine glass paper first. After a good soapy wash and thorough drying, I sprayed thinned Revell no. 31 enamel direct onto the plastic. The result was a beautifully smooth satin finish. The rear portion of the tail fin was finished with Revell’s no. 51 enamel.

The decals are beautifully thin and conform very well to surface curves and details. Micro Sol was barely necessary. If there is a price to pay for the thinness of the decals, it is in a slight lack of opacity in the whites, but I think that they got the balance right.

There were a few near disasters along the way though…

Disaster number one was realising that in my eagerness to progress the build, I had forgotten to add any weight to the nose. What to do? Open the airbrake wide enough to take the weight? Maybe.

Next up, imagine my horror when I peered into the cockpit one day to see the front instrument panel had taken on the appearance of a badly corroded battery terminal! I think I must have been a little more liberal than intended with the cyano that held the front fairing in place. So out came the decal sheet from one of the two other Revell Hawks in my stash, the scanner and inkjet decal paper. Every cloud has a silver lining though, when I took the fairing off, it revealed a space big enough to conceal a lead fishing weight!

Disaster number three was mistaking part of the front undercarriage for a sprue entry gate and leaving it behind when removing the parts!

The final horror. I never quite got to the bottom of how this happened, but when the end was nearly in sight, I came home to find one of the main undercarriages broken. I think the moral of that tale was not to leave your pride and joy on the kitchen worktop beneath an over filled biscuit cupboard. This had to be drilled out and strengthened with wire.

This is the Cammett 1:32nd Scale Resin kit that includes the Mistel ‘flying-bomb’, take-off trolley and attachment points for the parent aircraft the Revel He-162. The additions I made include an Eduard cockpit set for the He-162 as well as detailing the kit supplied engine using wire card and scrap brass. The engine for the Mistel comes from a Trumpeter Me-262 and after cutting off the resin engine nacelle I built the engine bearers and detailed the engine in the same way as the He-162. Finally the Mistel never flew so this is how I interpreted a late war development aircraft to look. The He-162 colour scheme is genuine and a well documented photo is in many references.

1:32 scale
Really interesting scheme chosen by Dave here. His model is the excellent Revell kit that can usually be picked up for an incredibly reasonable price. Accurate masking and a flawless airbrush finish make his model stand out. Note Dave’s nice touch in adding the pilot’s ‘bone-dome’ to the cockpit sill. Presenting his scale models in an interesting, varied way is a true hallmark of the builder – nice work!

Revell 1:72nd
1/72nd scale kits are not normally “my bag” as Austin Powers might say, but in desperate need of a submission for the quarterly round of my local club’s competition and with insufficient time to complete a 1/48th scale kit, I picked this model up from Newark Air Museum’s shop. The kit is an absolute beauty and looks every bit a Hunter when complete, capturing the elegant curves and slender features that characterise Sir Sydney Camm’s finest creation. The kit is particularly well moulded and the panel line are crisp, consistent and perfect for holding onto the oil wash that I use to accentuate the lines during the weathering stage of the model’s construction. I enjoyed building this kit so much that I built another straight after it using the Royal Netherlands markings provided on the kit’s decal sheet and you can see that model elsewhere in the Gallery. The kit took me a week of evenings to complete and had no major flaws worthy of mention; any potential difficulties can be avoided by patient dry fitting of parts before they are eventually glued into place.The parts were stuck together using Ambroid Proweld, the best capillary adhesive bar none in my opinion and after preparing the surface for painting with Alclad’s grey primer, the model was finished with Hannants Xtracrylics XA1001 RAF Dark Green and XA1004 RAF Extra Dark Sea Grey. The wraparound scheme that I chose to adorn the kit was quite challenging as I use the ‘blue tack sausage’ method to obtain the demarcation between colours and for those of you unfamiliar with that technique, let me provide you with a brief explanation. After priming, the whole aircraft was sprayed with the camouflage grey colour and then with long thin ‘sausages’ of blue tack rolled out much like a child might roll out a plasticine snake, the demarcation lines of the camouflage green area were laid out on the model. The grey areas that were not to be sprayed were then protected with a heavy coat of liquid masking agent applied between the ‘sausage boundaries’ and once that had dried, the green was airbrushed on. Within a few minutes of the green drying to the touch (and using hands protected with surgical gloves), the blue tack and liquid mask are carefully removed and hey presto a lovely tight, but soft edge is revealed!

This kit was finished using the stencil data provided on its own decal sheet in conjunction with the 12 Sqn markings and national insignia taken from Xtradecal sheet 72-046. All-in-all a thoroughly enjoyable, quick and satisfying build and a kit that can be used to produce a most attractive model in very short order.

Revell 1:72 scale
This kit was built straight from the box and with the exception of the mediocre ejection seat, the kit is a joy to build and paint. The painting process used to finish the kit is described in my other Hunter article elsewhere in the Gallery and as with the other kit, Hannants Xtracrylics paints were used (XA1001 and XA1004) and the underside was sprayed with a tin of Halfords Aluminium Primer. A simlpe wash of Raw Umber oil paint was used to weather the model, applied over a protective coating of Johnsons Klear and the flat finish was achived using Hannants Xtraflat varnish. The touches of detail that I employed to bring the model to life consisted of the streched sprue whip aerials, visible sticking out of the upper surface of the wing tips and the aircraft’s spine. The pitot tube is also stretches sprue but using the tappered section of the ‘stretch’ to better represent the pitot found on the real aircraft. The polished metalic effect on the pitot tube was achieved by rubbing SnJ Polishing Powder onto the bear plastic, which although not a very durable finish, is arguably the best metalic effect that can be achiveved on a model, especially for part that will not be touched once the model is complete.

Revell 1:144 scale
Here’s my most recent Revell 1:144th Hunter from the Abu Dhabi Air Force, sprayed with cellulose paint, gloss varnish, decals, matt varnish and pastel weathering.

This is a Lynx HAS mk.2 Yeovil 1976. It has an overall primer finish. This was an old Fujimi kit that I got off a friend that was selling some old kits off and I paid £2 for it! And what great fun it was too…I added some new panel lines and some seat belts out of lead foil; other than that it was straight from the box. Lifecolor paints were used. All in all an enjoyable project.

This is the Hasegawa 1:72 scale “Mavis” Flying Boat.
A lot of models of Japanese aircraft are shown highly weathered and some almost devoid of paint. It seems that the assumption that the paint used was poor quality and thus had a short life is unfounded. The Japanese produced some very good paints – e.g. lacquers. in all probability it was a lack of primer, and the strong sun in Pacific theatre. The poor old Mavis was a bit lumbering and lightly armed – and thus rather vulnerable. There is a story of a Dogfight between a B17 and “Mavis”!!
Very nice kit – but possibly hard to find.

1:32 scale. The basis of this model was a Trumpeter Me 262A-1a kit which was converted to the A-2a/U2 variant using the Radu Brinzan resin nose conversion. I was able to use the A-1a base kit due to the finished model not having any bomb pylons. This model depicts V555 which was a prototype machine. Radu Brinzan seatbelts are used again, as is the Aires resin cockpit/wheel well set.

Tamiya 1:48 scale. Here is my Me 262a for the gallery. It is the Tamiya 1:48th kit with Aires cockpit, engines and guns, all the openings are mine. I think I used CMK leading edges – they were difficult.It was a while ago now but I remember that I painted the fuselage decals and used the kit ones on the wings and tail.

Have you ever played with LEGO? Well, building this kit reminded me of my childhood when I played with the famous Danish toy. Everything in this Tamiya kit is simply perfect. As all parts fits nicely, basically all you need is glue. No putty, no filling, no sanding at all. To make it a little bit more difficult I used the Eduard Zoom PE set to enhance mostly the cockpit area (instrument panel, seatbelts).
The model is airbrushed with Gunze Sangyo Hobby Color paints. To accentuate the panel lines I mixed and applied three different washes made from Mig Productions “red” thinner and Abteilung 502 oil paints. I chose one of the decal options provided with the kit.

This is the outstanding 1/35th scale Trumpeter kit; one of their best by far. I used the Verlinden detail set for the cockpit and cabin and the beautiful Linden Hill decals for the stencils and squadron markings. In addition I used card, brass, wire rod and tube to further detail the cockpit as well as wire and brass detail on both rotors. I used Tamiya and Vallejo paints throughout.

Both these aircraft were made about 3 years ago. I think I split an Aires set between the two of them. I am sure I used Xtracolor for the paints. The dropped flaps, I just can’t remember where they came from. As you can see little shows on the finished products so I concentrated on the painting and weathering.”

This Phantom is an FG-1 converted into an RAF FGR-2 – you will have to make some minor changes between the two variants but these are included within the kit, with the exception of the Slatless stabs which were just filled in with some Squadron Green and then sanded flat.The Aircraft was painted in Xtracolor XA030 Roundel Blue and various Alclad shades were used on the rear section of the aircraft. The decals were sourced from various kits (Revell FGR-2 kit, and RAF Phantoms in Germany). I have really enjoyed building this project and I am sure the new owner who I built it for will love it.

James V.

Eduard 1:48th Weekend EditionThe first thing to strike you about this kit is the box that details a beautiful profile of this fighter in its role with the Republican Forces in the Spanish Civil War. The kit is beautifully moulded in traditional Eduard Olive plastic with some fantastic surface detail. The panels are a mixture of fine engraving and subtlety raised panels. The representation of the fabric surfaces is superb – probably the best I’ve seen in a plastic kit of this price, and the suggestion of the interior structure under the fabric is a real credit to the designers.

The Cockpit is well detailed with excellent detailed levers; I decided to add some small pieces of wire to reproduce electrical cabling to add a little more interest to the pilot’s office only to find that when the fuselage halves are joined you cannot see any of this work! Unfortunately the cockpit floor is a bit inaccurate but I decided not to touch it because as I was keeping the cockpit doors closed almost nothing in the cockpit is visible, including the beautifully detailed instrument panel which I spent 2 hours hand painting! Eduard provided a decal for instrument panel, which in hindsight I wish I had used. Installing the pilot’s seat was a little tricky but if you carefully follow the instructions you can achieve the angles required. Once assembled it looks great and even better with the addition of some scratch built seat belts made from masking tape and copper wire. I glued the fuselage halves together and almost no filler was needed, it’s a shame the same could not be said for the fuselage to wing joint! No matter how hard I tried I could not get this joint to close using glue alone, so out came the plastic card and green putty to solve the problem. In the end the result was ok but I am still not happy about the seam on the underside of the body to the rear of the wheel wells. Next we had the nicely detailed engine, it is a shame that once installed it is hardly visible but I like to say I know it is there. I drilled the gun barrels and venture tube using a No. 10 scalpel blade just to add a little more realism. The undercarriage is precise and absolutely in scale. At first I thought it could easily snap but when I joined them (using cyno) it becomes a very compact and rather sturdy item. The undercarriage doors are a bit complicate to install but if you follow the steps in the instruction sheet it is really easy and if I may say with all those rivets look realistic and effective. At the very end I added a piece of buff coloured cotton from the centre of wheel hub to the small hole at the roof of the undercarriage bay to reproduce gear retraction system. I painted my I-16 using my usual Vallejo Model Air paints and applied lots of post shading via the airbrush (the ever faithful Tamiya smoke heavily diluted with liquor thinner) and applied heavy weathering, using Mig filters, pigments and oil washes as I wanted to represent a battle weary well-used fighter.

This was a very enjoyable build but the best part of it for me was the painting stage. In its base colours it looked like something my 10 year old nephew would have done and it took a considerable amount of time to finally achieve the finish I was happy with.