Neil

Thanks for the comment. I deliberately tried to keep the weathering and panel line shading down to a reasonable level, it can sometimes be too easy to over accentuate the weathering on light coloured (i.e: white/pale grey) aircraft.

I got mine from Argos, seemed quite appropriate for what I needed (I could do with another one actually!). Link to it is below: https://www.argos.co.uk/product/6141303?clickSR=slp:term:display cabinet:4:37:1 You cannot fit really big stuff in there of course, but it is ample for my needs. The biggest models I have in there are, for example, 1/48 Jaguar T2, 1/48 Mosquito, 1/48 F/A-18, 1/48 AH-64 Apache helicopter, 1/48 Albacore, 1/144 C-74 Globemaster and the biggest span-wise is the 1/144 B-52. There are also various 1/72 jets and quite a few single engine 1/48 WWII fighters and a smattering of other stuff too, etc etc.

Funny you should say that ............. (next to the 'Fluorescent' B-52!). 👍

Must admit, I do quite enjoy that side of it if I am honest ...... ! 👍

I can definitely recommend the brass undercarriage set, nice and solid and should not sag over time. The set also includes the nose gear strut too, and a small brass axle for the nose wheel.

Thanks for the comments everybody, much appreciated! It is quite a cute little thing I guess, and nothing overly complicated about it and relatively straightforward to assemble. Visually quite a pleasing little model too. Thanks again! 🙂

Something a little off the beaten track, possibly, and I have fond memories of building the tiny 1/72 Airfix kit of this aircraft when I was a young lad. Here we have the 1/48 ICM kit of the Cessna O-2A 'Skymaster' and a neat kit it is too, with nice recessed panel lines and ample interior detail and of course lots of separate cockpit glazing parts which fitted very nicely indeed. The only concern I had was the main undercarriage strut for the rear wheels, below the rear fuselage, moulded in plastic of course, and not surprisingly for aircraft of this nature I suspected that it would probably sag over a period of time. To avoid this problem I bought the SAC metal undercarriage set for this kit, but soon wished I had not, because it is cast in some kind of white-metal or pewter, and is, sadly, very soft and 'bendy' and is not much stronger than the standard injection moulded kit plastic undercarriage strut! So I binned the SAC set, and ordered the Aerocraft set instead, which is cast in solid brass and is MUCH stronger than the white metal set that I threw away. Problem solved. To stop the model tail-sitting, I added approx 10g of thin sheet lead, cut to shape and fixed to the space inside the roof of the nose leg bay. More than enough room in there to add suitable nose weight. For the cockpit interior I added only seat belts, although I did toy with the idea of adding lots of etched parts, but did not bother with that in the end. Model was airbrushed in a combination of Humbrol and Xtracolour enamels for the main airframe (thinned with Cellulose thinners). Applied some reasonably discrete panel lining/weathering mainly using Paynes Grey artists oil-colour, thinned with White Spirit, and a tiny amount of pastel-chalks here and there. I did not want to go too heavy handed with weathering and such. The noses of the underwing mini-gun pods were finished in Alclad Stainless Steel, giving a nice metallic finish, and the main bodies of the mini-guns and the underwing rocket pods were finished in Olive Drab. Decals used were mainly kit ones, with a handful also taken from the spares box , such as numbers and small stencils, all of which settled down snugly using Micro Set and Micro Sol solutions. After decals were dry, an overall coat of Winsor & Newton acrylic Galeria matt varnish was airbrushed on, to finish things off. Various antennas, aerials and static dischargers on trailing edges were made using fine fishing-line. The final touch were some RBF tags, cut from printed paper, added to the underwing stores and the pitot tube. Quite chuffed with how the model turned out, and must admit I do have a bit of a soft spot for aircraft like this, something of a cute little thing, and slightly esoteric with it's 'push-pull' double-engine layout! Also, I must add a word of thanks to @Mike H for laser-etching the brass name plate on the base board, sets it off nicely. Cheers Mike ........

Superb stuff, great to see one of these on here. Very nice indeed! Regarding the colour you have finished it in, you may inadvertently be correct .............. Back in the late 90's I very nearly bought a used example of the Evo II (real one that is!) but ultimately decided against it, I really could not justify it, something that unique was just a bit too ambitious at the time. The specialist dealer that was selling the car at the time explained to me that they were all finished in what Mercedes then called Blue-Black (metalic Black) except for one single example, which allegedly was finished in Silver at the factory. How accurate or true this is I do not honestly know, but I have sometimes wondered if there was any truth to this, and if there were some way to find out!

Nope, the masters/patterns/moulds were never sold on to anybody. Troy is correct, I still own and possess ALL of the moulds and masters from the entire Paragon Designs range, at the time I simply did not have the need to sell them on. Neil.

Thanks for the comments about my B-17, but it is Neil, not Daniel. 👍

1/48 B-17G 'Princess Pat' Based on the 1/48 Monogram kit. This was a commission build I did for the artist Robert Taylor. Apparently, Robert used this model as a visual/perspective aid in the composition of his painting titled "The Mighty Eighth - Coming Home" and I have included a small pic of this painting in this selection of pictures. Robert also sent me a personally signed print copy of this painting which is, without doubt, one of THE prized aviation related items that I own. Unfortunately I took precious few images of this model before despatching it to Robert, and I really do wish that I had taken alot more before doing so! (A couple of pics of the real 'Princess Pat' are also included here). Something worth noting for all you B-17 builders is the exhaust staining above the wings, it does not exit from the vents near the trailing edges, the exhaust staining works its way around these vents. Also, the staining is not symmetrical to both wings, the starboard wing staining is drawn slightly more toward the fuselage, as it were, than the port wing.

Good to see one of these being built, I had a real one of these myself too (Blue and White, surprise surprise!). I think I am correct in saying that Hasegawa got the larger 350LC rear cush drive correct in the back wheel, I think the Tamiya kits only had ever had the hub cush drive for the 250LC in their kits. I still have an unbuilt 1/10 Nichimo RD 350 LC bought donkeys years ago, intended to build it so many times but not got round to it yet! Nichimo also made the same mistake as Tamiya regarding the rear cush drive too, they only ever included the 250LC one.

Welcome indeed, from another Norfolk resident here (Norwich. specifically 👍). I think you may find this site quite useful, a very handy resource, for all aspects of scale modelling .

Actually, a very good question. In the past I have usually used an enamel clear coat of some kind on most of my models, however, at the suggestion of some of my local club members, I recently tried something a little different, and so far have been quite impressed with the results. I have actually switched to an Acrylic clear coat manufactured by Winsor & Newton, called Galeria, and they produce a Matt, Satin and Gloss finish. They brush on nicely and also airbrush nicely too, once thinned, and in fact some people down the club use distilled water for thinning, and others use cellulose thinners (lacquer thinners, essentially). I use cellulose thinners for thinning them in order to airbrush them, and on this particular Spitfire I used the Matt finish Galeria clear coat. For the main camo colours I always prefer to use enamels, with the Spitfire I used Xtracolour enamels throughout, again thinned with cellulose thinners for airbrushing. Here is a pic of the Galeria clear coats ........

Thank you. Also, managing to find a cheap circular mirror to display it on was quite fortunate, it means that the underside can be viewed without needing to handle the model.