Mike N

Late response, I know, and I'm not able to help with the P-40 one specifically, but I can give you my opinion of the ones I have in the same series. I purchased #7 (Sea King) and #30 (Catalina), both sight unseen, in order to make up the free shipping value on a popular online model store I was interested enough in both subjects to take a punt. They are printed on glossy paper and to a good standard. Both are very light on text, giving a brief history of the development and service use, plus a list of variants - although the latter isn't all that informative on differences for the modeller. The period and walkaround photos are of good quality, but most lack any sort of caption at all, so are very limited in value! For example, the Catalina walkaround is of the Duxford-based Miss Pick-Up, but this is not stated and there is no note about the non-standard features of this machine (e.g. enlarged waist observation blisters). The Catalina one in fact has literally no captions anywhere, it's as though a selection of nice images has been used without thought to the purpose of including them. There is then a single model build article, which although nicely presented, is again fairly brief and probably won't assist in my own builds. There are no scale drawings. Unfortunately, both these books (and many/all? of the others in the series) are by an author who is prolific in output but often at the expense (in my view) of depth of subject knowledge and attention to detail. My impression of his work I've read is of editing errors that should have been picked up and text that doesn't flow very well, and the captions (when included at all!) don't add much. In summary, I would not buy another in the series unless I had flicked through and there were photos I'd not seen elsewhere. The Warpaint series, whilst slightly more expensive, is much superior in all regards unless you really want a model build section. Hope this helps. Mike

If you're referring to the plane in your avatar, the same photo is in the Warpaint book (#92 in the series). The caption states that it's HU-16B 51-035. Mike

Cash is recommended, from my experience. Card payments really struggle at this venue!

An excellent collection to show for the year. Quantity and quality, especially given the basic nature of some of the base kits. Well done, Steve! Mike

Well done, Julian! She's a beauty and something that bit different. Thanks also for the summary of things to watch for, it will be very helpful when I come to do mine. It was on the basis of your build that I pulled the trigger and ordered the kit Mike

Really coming to life now! That cheat line does sound hard work, though you've done a great job with it. If it wasn't for the fact the windows are part of that decal, I'd be tempted to paint it.

What an incredible build, Matt. All that PE would have sent me blind and loopy long ago but you've achieved a stunning result with it all. Truly magnificent! Mike

What a fantastic build, James! To my shame, this is the first time I've read through your thread (not my usual scale or subject matter, m'lud), but on seeing the finished article in the gallery I had to take a look! The cockpit and trolley are absolutely brilliant, a gold standard in weathering. Those seat belts are also incredible, so well worth the addition and effort. Well done!! Mike

That's an interesting idea, and certainly worth a try with nothing to lose... Well OK, worst case is it doesn't shift the big piece but inadvertently drags other debris into view! Still, I'll give it a try and report back Mike

Looking really good so far, Julian! On the back of this thread, I've ordered myself one Looking forward to seeing your build progress. Mike

Congratulations on finishing what sounds a challenging kit - one I have in my stash. I've made a mental note to refer back to your build for guidance. Well done! Mike

Thank you both The poor photography has its rewards in this case, hiding some of the blemishes, I'm not sure 'fun' is the word I'd use in this case, 'torture' perhaps is better Just looking at my stash spreadsheet, I have another five Mach 2 kits. I might reevaluate their retention after this, but then they are all 'the only game in town', which is how they hooked me in the first place... Mike

Here's my effort, the Mach 2 Convair Sea Dart. A pretty terrible kit, it tested my abilities and patience many times, and I'm glad it's all over. Here's the build thread if you were still thinking of getting one.

Perhaps against the odds, and with thanks to the generous extension of the GB deadline, I have finally finished the Sea Dart! Since the last episode, I've got the exhausts looking marginally better than in the base kit. I came to realise after looking at lots of photos of this area that the kit got it really quite wrong. Some of it I might have been able to improve earlier in the build - if I'd had the enthusiasm - but some is beyond my capabilities. The furthest I went was to sand the duct area into more of a round shape at the back: The metal tube exhausts are in and some filler applied to hide the gaps, but in reality there should be a sharp edge where they meet the outside contours. If I'd realised at the start, I would possibly have spent time filing out the inside, but not at this stage. The other thing about this work that has come back to bite me is that some plastic shavings and dust got into the cockpit, which I discovered to my 'delight' when I took the masking tape off. No amount of banging and shaking has managed to dislodge them. Oh well, no way I'm taking the canopy off now. For the final clear coat, I used Galleria Satin Varnish for the first time. At first I was applying it way too heavily, but I found the trick was to spray it so lightly that I couldn't even see it coming out, just the effect on the surface. It's perhaps a little too matt for my liking but I didn't bother trying to fix that. I'd had enough. Here's the end result: I won't be sad to see the back of that box... More photos will go in the gallery. In conclusion, definitely not a great kit nor my finest work. It'll be positioned somewhere near the back of the display cabinet, and if a new kit comes along, it'll be straight out and in the bin. Looking for a positive, if nothing else it has given me some experience in fixing surface imperfections... A big thank you to @81-er and @jackroadkill for hosting, and everyone for their comments and support! Mike

Great work so far, Julian! I've been thinking of getting this kit, so am keenly following your experiences with it. Mike

What a cracking result, Steve! It's turned out very well, much better than the bits in the box suggested it would, so well done! Mike

I've only just seen the announcement of the GB deadline extension, and I can only say thank goodness! I had been hopeful of completing by the original date, but, yeah, this kit had other ideas. All was going quite well. There are a few non-blue areas, which are easily missed at a glance at B&W photos but are there on the fin and nose. The masking shows them up better than the black on the dark blue: After that it was on to my favourite part of most builds - adding the decals. Here is how they started, out of the box: After about 3 months taped to the window, the yellowing had gone - great right? It was only when I came to use them that I noticed a couple of things. The serial number should read 135763, but unfortunately only 5 digits were included! Secondly, the font of the 'NAVY' text was chunky and out of proportion. So, while I had already decided to bin the start and bars (cracked and out of register), I was now only wanting to use the 'YF2Y-1' text. I found and duly ordered suitable NAVY markings, and picked up some national insignia at the Brampton show. As for the serial, I used the smallest digits I could find in my decal bank: they're a little big, but still more like the proportions of the real aircraft. There are a few stencils on the aircraft - and none on the Mach 2 decal sheet. I could find a close up of only one, and as the text was tiny I didn't worry about recreating it exactly. I simply raided my spares box for some suitable stencils and added them in roughly the right places. Then the kit threw what I hope is its last curveball at me. The exhaust area is not very representative of the original. The kit has rings for each exhaust (simply sitting against the bluff back end!), but these are not like the real deal at all. The exhausts should blend into the boat tail area. I had expected to 'just' open up the flat faces and install some tube. Here's how it began: And after opening up: I'd not taken into account the flat web that intersected the middle of the area, so it was more difficult to remove that and clean up the edges. I had previously cut some long-ish lengths of tube but I decided to cut much shorter lengths instead. To these I added sheet plastic to prevent see-through. These will get trimmed, painted, installed and blended into the back. Like I said at the top, thank goodness for the deadline extension!! Thanks for looking. Mike

That's looking really superb in the natural metal, and all the hard work preparing the surfaces has paid off. The finish line is in sight! Mike

You're well on your way Steve, and you're 'brave' to go for the natural metal finish... It will look stunning once finished Mike

Blimey, yeah don't let that happen!

When my heating system had a hot water cylinder in a cupboard, I used to put painted items in there to dry quicker in the warmth. Failing that, maybe put it near a radiator? Nice work on the Komet Mike

That looks very smart. Nice work. Mike

Thanks for the continued support, comments and likes - this build is certainly trying my patience! As noted last time, I managed to get some paint on, but it was very disappointing. Despite sanding down the primer, the texture of the paint was rough as a badger's whatsit and generally horrid. One or two other areas of - yep, you guessed it - sink marks appeared despite it being primed. Maybe I was starting to unconsciously ignore them. I then had 2 weeks on holiday (certainly needed, even if just to have a break from this) and calmed down. It would be a question of re-working the sink marks, re-working just the paint job, or binning the infernal thing. As I've never entirely given up on a project yet (although some are on a very distant back burner) but I couldn't face yet more filling and sanding by now, I decided on the middle course of action. I wet sanded the paint and then had another go: I'm the first to admit I find airbrushing a bit of a black art. I kept the pressure the same, the ambient temperature was about the same, the speed and distance of the passes the same, and paint to thinner was just by eye but was nothing special. I did use a different tin of Xtracolor X121, so maybe that was all it was. Or maybe just I had different colour socks on. Whatever the reason, I'm satisfied with how it now looks. As it's all one colour - even the 'undercarriage' bays - it shouldn't take long to pick out the few detail areas before getting the decals on. There's even a chance I'll get it finished by the GB deadline... Thanks for looking. Mike

Great to see another Phoenix rising from a C-119! There certainly aren't too many out there. Although it was 12 years ago since I finished mine, I still look upon it with great pride and satisfaction (even though I know it's not perfect). I know you'll get the same feeling upon completion. Any info you need, you know where to find me Cheers, Mike

Cheers for the comments, folks. Not had a lot of chance to get on with this recently, and it seems every time I think I'm ready to move to the next stage, something jumps out to bite me! I realised I'd not fitted what I assume are antenna blades to the tail fin, so after that I thought I'd better get everything remaining off the sprue (insert usual gripe about flash here). Turned out to be not very much but I did realise most of it needed to be glossy sea blue like the rest of the airframe so I'd may as well get them attached to something. The two rings at the top are the exhaust nozzles. The rear of the engines are blanked right at the back, not very convincing huh? They'll be opened out and some tube inserted to represent the exhausts after painting (I need to use those two small holes for the high tech coat hanger paint support). One bit not in the top photo of remaining parts is the nose boom. This was moulded so misaligned that it was unusable so I fished out a missile from the spares box, cut off the tip and attached that instead. The boom itself will be added at the end. I managed to get some paint on it this afternoon, once it's dry I'll get some photos. Cheers, Mike