Subscribers’ Gallery : aircraft ‘W-Z’

I went to Cornwall a few weeks ago for a week’s holiday.
One day I sat on a beach opposite St Ives town and watched a Seaking Helicopter doing some drills about half a mile out to sea; I watched it for about an hour. I thought to myself, I have never ever made one of those.
I have now.!

This is an out of the box build with the exception of some detailing to the sonar station in the shape of some wiring made out of 0.5mm lead wire. I was initially planning to add rivet detail to the airframe but after a good friend who built the same kit added over 15,000 ‘Archer rivets’ to his build – well… I thought about using a riveting tool but again the time it was going to take put me off.
The build itself was straightforward with no real putty need just a little plasticard shim on one panel and some Mr Dissolved Putty in a few others.
The model was built in eleven days of about 12 hours over the Christmas and New Years holiday; it was a real fun build.
I finished the model with Tamiya and Gunze paints and I chopped the registration decal around to turn her from 83+12 in to 83+21 just to make her a bit different from the kit option.
Mish E.

This is the Italeri 1:48 Westland Wessex HU5 and represents an XS484 in the colours of 771 NAS, RNAS Culdrose around 1982 – 84.

I have used the Eduard interior and exterior detail sets together with their transparency mask; paints are general Humbrol enamels, with Humbrol clear, gloss cote varnishes used as required. Decals are from L Decals Studio mixed with the kit decals based on best scale representation (using photos for reference).

I have added a small amount of additional detail in the form of hydraulic pipes on the winch and various pipework on the fuselage. Weathering is very minimal (using Flory Washes) as these aircraft always look to be very clean in any photos. The exhausts were covered in bare metal foil and touched in with Humbrol Clear with a small touch of blue ink added to try and represent heat discolouration (not sure it worked!)

Best regards, Tim Haynes

This is the Italeri 1:48 Wessex which I built straight from the box and I can say it’s a nice kit and I am feeling the need to get another one or two!
Cheers, Neil P.

This is my 1:48 scale Italeri Westland Wessex HU5 converted to the HC2 variant using the Rotor Craft resin conversion kit.

The conversion was relatively simple, the main change being the resin replacements of the fuselage belly panel and cabin windows. The fuselage panel required the removal of both plastic and resin to get it to sit flush. Any resultant gaps were filled with Milliput superfine putty. The kit cabin windows were measured and chain drilled following the Rotor Craft instructions. Cyanoacrylate glue was used to fit the windows in place and to fill any gaps. The remaining resin parts consisted of various aerials and chaff/flare pods.

Other details added were a scratch built fire extinguisher and rotor brake lever in the cockpit. Seat straps were made from masking tape and various cables and wiring were fitted using lead wire in the passenger cabin. The main undercarriage legs were replaced with the Scale Aircraft Conversions items. Other scratch built items was the anti-collision light on top of the tail rotor housing and finally, a little-lens was fitted to the underside to represent the landing light. The paints used are the Dark Green and Lichen Green from the Xtracolor range. The underside was Tamiya Flat black highlighted with Tamiya NATO Black. The decals were from an Xtradecal sheet and represent an aircraft from 72 Squadron RAF Odiham in 2002. Flory models dark wash was used for the panel lines and after an application of an acrylic matt flat finish, the colours were toned down using the oil dot method.
Mark Rooks

The model was built “straight from the box”, this Trumpeter 1:48 kit includes some nice photo etching that doesn’t obligate the modeller to look elsewhere to have a great result! Plastic moulding is excellent; rivets and panel lines are perfectly in scale and they simulate the real Bird well!

My paint choice this time fell on Tamiya, XF-21 Sky & XF-50 Field Blue + XF 1 Flat Black for the Extra Dark Sea Grey; diluted with 95% alcohol so as not to cover up the detail on this great kit. Alcohol makes Tamiya acrylic pigment extremely fine. I decided to not apply lighter post shading to the Sky, but only on the EDSG so as not to “disrupt” the basic tones. Panel lines and rivets received a highly diluted wash, using exclusively Vallejo washes (light grey on Sky and dark grey on EDSG). The process is simple but it requires a bit of practice; these washes need to be diluted with tap water to allow a pointed, sharp brush to pass on every panel line or, like here, on rivets. The color excess can be removed with a clean cotton cloth just dampened with water. Dry stains can be wiped off just adding a drop of Vallejo airbrush thinner. This kind of panel enhancing system, leaves very subtle, translucent shade that gives a good 3D effect to the whole model. Weathering was completed with some oil streaks obtained with MIG enamels Python engine metal cover, torpedo warhead , exhausts and rockets received some spray of Alclad metalizers. Minor details were hand-painted with Vallejo acrylics.
Nat P.

Here’s another of my builds which I completed 2 days ago – the Trumpeter 1:32 Wildcat, Early Version.
This was an OOB model with some scratch build seat belts. The only issues I had with the construction were the poorly fitting bulkheads which required some shimming.
Wing stripes were masked and painted as the kit decals disintegrated. This was also my first attempt with spraying metallics which I feel turned out ok. A good kit all round from Trumpeter.
Regards, Vaughan

Here is my Amodel 1:72 Yakovlev Yak-28PM ‘Firebar’

• The Yak-28 is a 1960’s Soviet supersonic interceptor. The aircraft served well into the 1980’s with units trading in their Yaks for Mig-31 Foxhounds and Su-27 Flankers
• The Amodel kit requires a lot of work to produce a decent model, however this is the only kit there is!
• The fuselage, wing and engine assembly involved lots of filling and sanding and re-engraving
• Much of the undercarriage had to be re-built from stretched sprue and rod
• A pitot was made from 1mm aluminium tube and stretched sprue
• The canopy framing was achieved with Bare Metal foil, cut into 1mm wide strips
• Some panels were first sprayed with Xtracolor Natural Steel and then masked off
• The overall finish is Humbrol Chrome Silver 191
• The radome was sprayed with Humbrol 196 light grey
• The kit decals were not so good, I used a set of stars and numbers from Hi-Decal Line.

Cheers for now, Rog