Christer A

Thanks Iain!

During the last few week, Aussie Eight #2 has been taking shape. This time, it will be the indian example Ace of spades, Blue roundels and that lovely desert paint-job that looks so good. This one will have the cockpit closed, so without further ado this is how that turned out It sure dues help to go to a Plastic summer camp with a few likeminded and just build for 48 hours more or less straight, because now it looks like this Time to order those resin engine covers, by the dozen!

Thanks Martin! First layer of primer is now in, and it looks quite all right actually. There might be paint soon!

All of a sudden, all the major construction was completed! Tomorrow will se primer...and probably lots of sanding / filler än more priming.

Hello! No need to paint NMF om these little buggers. They were painted with an Aluminium Lacquer with a quite uniform finish, except for the Steel heatshield in the tail, above the exhaust.

Time for the disaster to strike! I got a set of Montex masks for the Airfix Tomhawk, which I duly started to attach all over the model. This should've raised some alarms. A 1mm gap all around the upper wing roundel is not ideal... Stubbornly, I carried on regardless I did cover all gaps with some maskol. What could possibly go wrong? The paint got on all right-ish Some paint splatter on the fin, but I thought I could live with that. And then I started to remove all the masks Roundels that were not round, misalignments and paint runs all over the place. Sigh. I sanded everything off, and will repaint the affected areas.... Next time, I'll use decals! In the meantime, I'll head off to an IPMS summercamp for 3 days, for some therapeutic modelling. No Tomahawks will tag along on this roadtrip, but the little Yak-23 and a Spitfire VIII and a secret project will!

Looking mighty fine now! Great save in the tall wheel. Don't torget to add the 18 fan bladets in front of the engine

Great looking Hog! They look the best in Euro-1 I reckon, so a good choice there!

So, let's resume the normal Tomahawk business then. Looking at the Academy battle axe, and the instructions a few times I noticed that I had missed the yellow leading edge bands. Even though two roundels were in place there was no way to sneak around it. Time to break out the tape and spray (and pray!) It seems that Post-it and Tamiya's white tape for curves does not lift decals. Whew! After that it was just to carry on with all the decals. Most important part first! I just love Cartograf decals! I wonder about the stencils though...I have two sets of them, but since the machine was repainted in the field, maybe they didn't bother about the stencils? Or maybe they did? As I pondered these hard questions I read through the Barracuda decal instructions one more time. Ah yes, it says right there that this aircraft did not carry yellow id bands. That's just typical.

Ouch! Good luck restoring the nose! You've done a cracking job on the painting! I wish I'd known about the QB bangseat when I did mine, but on the other hand it might not have been available then.

(Do a stripe-less one then!) I'd say the under fuselage stripes turned out fine! No underwing stripes then?

Thanks Rob and JB! I've been a little distracted recently, but it's all in good spirit! At our local IPMS we had our annual event: Speed modeling! A few volunteers starts at 1830 with the same kit, and 2 hours later we let the audience vote on who made the "best" model. This year we build this, which I'm led to believe is some kind of ground target? After two very short hours that disappeared in a flash, we got this for the exhibition table. Naturally, the geezer that usually wins something at Telford every year had prepared pre-cut masks to make this Israeli tank as a Swedish one, in splinter cammo. Naturally he won. I was not last, bot not far off Blue-gray with white stripe didn't cause any hearts to beat faster unfortunately, so I finished third from last place . But it's my first tank EVER! And I did weather it with pigments, and some washes and also post shade it, to no avail. Oh well, I'll get them next time! Oh yes, the Tomahawks.... Its stickers time for those. Pictures will follow!

No, this little bugger has not been forgotten! In fact, I have been painting the front end of the Derwent Added some strips of plastic to get the nose wheel well/airflow divider to fit better And finally settled on a cockpit color. This time I'll go with Tamiya RAF Dark green 2: Once I've retouched the cockpit dials, instrument panel and so on it's time to close the fuselage. Finally... it was supposed to be a fast build.

That looks rather spiffy! Good luck with the stripework