jannie

OK, I think what I will try and do is to repair the damaged paint on the vertical stabilizer (as well as some damage aorund the cowling - which I airbrushed a week or two ago, wanted to check if perhaps it just need some more curing time. Once it is repaired, I'll spray some kind of gloss coat, check how it reacts and if OK then decal it, followed by a semi-matt coat. Logic says to just throw the model away as well as the paint - 4 bottles of various RAF coclours, say about CA$30 in value - for some that is one evening's beer money (except for the time spent....) Thank you all.

Hi Graham & Casey I am baffled - "Poly addon"? Not a word about this on the bottle label - never used any 2-part paints ever on a plastic model ever since building my first plastic bag Airfix model back when General Electric was still a Private.... (2-part paints were common back in my R/C flying days - that avenue of pleasure has been closed for years now as Basil Fawlty would say). I am rather distraught about this - was really looking forward to finishing this kit. On top of the weird behaviour of the paint itself I would also add that the Dark Earth and RAF Dark Green appears much darker that what it should be. Darn, I should have been posting around on this website and asking before firing up my compressor.... You can "buy" positive reviewers who would do opinions on any and all items for a price, anyone familiar with CBC TV's Market Place here in Canada can attest to that.

Hi guys This question / recounting of my experience with Mission Models paints may possibly get me into trouble... So, I retired about a year ago and finally starting to clear the backlog on my "shelf of doom" (about 6 or 7 of 1/2 built models). Getting literally hit by a truck on my way home from my Retirement Party didn't exactly help me get back speedily into buildng models - No, I wasn't drunk, the truck driver "didn't see my weenie li'l Mazda" and proceeded to swerve right into me - destroying my car and causing me months of wrangling with the Insurance people (always happy to take your money but they just hate having to pay out, ended up having to sic some lawyers on them) and then followed by weeks of trying to find a replacement vehicle, even after doubling the Insurance payout from my savings. My "models backlog" included the old venerable 1/32 Westland Lysander (in a RoG box, but originally Matchbox), and I have been rearing to get going on it again. Problem is that in my Old Age Innocence I went and bought a whole selection of Mission Models paints. I finished airbrushing the fuselage yesterday and wanted to start applying decals. This is now 24 hours later (actually more I think) so I kinda would have expected the paint to be properly cured by now... HOWEVER, my usual surface preparation for decaling includes using Microscale's Micro Sol on the target area before laying down a decal. The moment the Micro Sol hit the surface where the tail flashes are supposed to go the paint itself dissolved way faster than any paint remover I have seen before. Crikey!! Is this my punishment for wanting to try something new and not sticking with my old trusty Model Master enamels? I read and re-read the instructions on the bottles - not a word about having to spray on a protective coating first, no warnings about decal softeners etc. Perhaps I should have taken a hint when I noticed that the paint in the cowling area, laid down more than a week ago, has almost no "mechanical" strength (resistance to abration etc). So... Basically I guess this Lysander is really cursed, I just don't have the energy to strip and re-paint (it's the canopy masking that is the real killer for me). Back to the Shelf of Doom! Did I miss something that was not stated on the bottle? How do you guys use it?? FWIW before I even started airbrushing I cleaned the model using rubbing alcohol t nake sure no oils from my hands are left etc etc. The paint itself is manufactured in California, USA - I do hope that it is sole in the UK as well and that you have experience with it. Any advice WELCOME! Jannie in BC, Canada.

Hi Zoran! Also please mention to anybody insisting on "fixing" the Esci kit, to also invest in a Vacuforming machine... You're going to need it to make a new cockpit roof section in order to reproduce the bulges over the crew compartment somewhat accurately. I feel bad for bashing the old Esci kit like this, TBH I think I read somewhere that it was based on air-to-air photographs taken in the early 1980s and NOT on any kind of technical drawing (as it simply did not exist at the time). It was likely a case of it being a kit released to satisfy current interest at the time.

Beautiful build - and the first time I have seen this kit actually finished. I built the old Esci Tu-26 and consulted a number of articles about how to fix the issues - f.i. lengthened the fuselage by almost 2 centimetres, totally rebuilding the engine air intakes, nose radome profile etc... But in the end, after comparing to the Trumpeter kit and references to what the plane ACTUALLY is supposed to look like in all dimensions, the Esci Tu-22M (well only kind of a 22M, even after the mods) ended up in the trash can.

Fantastic build! Thank you for this trip down memory lane as well - I recall building this kit W-A-Y back in the mid-1960s (and some of Pyro's model car kits). Back then proper plastic model cement was a luxury (I was a kid of around 10 years old, growing up in a household where both my parents were products of the Great Depression - let's just say plastic models were viewed with disdain) (and that is a severe understatement), so I had to use my imagination when it came to painting - I would love to imagine that it may have looked something like that!

Fantastic build! And for some reason I feel an urge to go and re-read Donald Jack's "The Bandy Papers" book series again 😀

Holy moly, utterly stunning! Especially considering that you worked with the Classic Airframes kit - I have built my fair share of CA kits over the years (and still have a couple unassembled ones in my stash) but no experience of the SM.79 kit, so I am assuming that it had triple the issues than some of the other CA kits

Extremely well done. I built the Pacific Coast Models kit some years ago (in 1/32 as well)... This must be an Old Age thing but looking at the replacement resin nose from Barracuda, YOUR Revell Tempest and my PCM Tempest and you can beat me with a stick if I can say which is better / more accurate etc. Crikey, I must be getting ready for the "Home".

Hand-brushed? Crikey, don't ever bother to buy an air brush, rather spend the money on more kits! 😄 Beautiful work BTW!

Amazing job, Nikola. I have this kit in my stash and every time I want to build it, I take one look at the molding quality (like you said, "shot") I think to myself, Now do I REALLY want a P-61 in 1/48 THAT bad? ...And back it goes into the stash again. I commend you on doing such a great build and to use an English idiom, turning a pig's ear into a silk purse!

Hi Mottlemaster I just so happen to be working on the exact same Revell Do217 + Lone Star conversion -> Dornier 217N-2. You probably have noticed by now (unless your example is in much better shape than mine) that the rear cockpit fairing is pretty much useless. Seems to me the best way to go about fixing it is to just use the kit canopy and NOT cut off the rear portion - rather figure out a way to turn the round turret opening into a square hole, IOW use the complete canopy. Interestingly the nose replacement casting on my conversion kit is in much better shape (minimal bubbles) - if Lone Star was a mainstream company I would have said perhaps yours was made on a Friday afternoon, but like most garage Industry things they were likely all done on a Sunday afternoon. Perhaps some beer got into the resin mix in your case? -- Jannie

What?? This is the old SMER kit? Superb rework, real modelling at its best! A well-known model builder has a signature that reads something like "There are no unbuildable model kits, just some that are not worth building" - well you have turned that adage on its head for me! Heck, I SOOO want one now. ...On a side note, was this the aircraft type that Douglas Bader flew when he had that infamous accident? -- Jannie in BC, Canada

Thanks for the suggestion, Francis. TBH, after reading Prof. Tilley's comments, I'm of a mind to "abandon" the Revell kit and invest in the Imai kit... I have seen it from time to time on Ebay. I'm not really a "Mr. Moneypockets" - it's just that the Revell kit is (other than size-wise) somewhat underwhelming compared to the Imai version.

Good day all I feel rather embarrassed for asking this (so many people on so many forums who view obsessive Accuracy in model kits with disdain), but in the early 1980s I built the Imai kit of the Cutty Sark - this was the 1/120 scale version. I considered it to be a pretty accurate model and it captured the sleek lines of the original ship extremely well. I never considered the Slide Rule and Scale Drawing approach when building it, the kit was just a complete pleasure from start to finish and that is all I recall. Imai did actually include scale drawings from the Cutty Sark Museum, so I assumed that it "probably is accurate enough". Unfortunately the model did not survive the collective childhoods of my kids that were born soon after (my son at age 5 wanted to impress his little sister with the sheer distance he can throw a tennis ball - inside our home, I was not that impressed myself though to put it mildly). Anyway, I consoled myself that I will "one day" buy the larger Revell 1/96 scale kit of the same ship. ...So I did actually buy the Revell kit and it has been sitting in my stash for the past 15 years(!!!). Something that strikes me every time when I want to get going on the kit is that the hull seems somewhat "beamy" (too wide when considering the ratio of hull length vs. beam/width), compared to how I remember the Imai model. Many of the early Revell or Monogram kits - I think the Cutty Sark dates from the early 1960s - are somewhat known for dubious accuracy, dating from a time when plastic construction kits were more often than not thought of as toys. Do anyone have any comments in regard to hull shape accuracy of the Revell kit? I have tried to google around and there are lots of build progress discussions but seems like Accuracy in regards to these old Revell kits is a taboo subject. -- Jannie, almost ready for retirement and clearing my workbench...