Navy Bird

Don't forget Benny Hill and Little Jackie! Over here on this side of the pond, we also had The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine in the early 70s. Very bizarre. That may have been the first time I saw Terry Gilliam's animations. Cheers, Bill

Thanks, mates! The Crusader should be fun, I haven't built a jet in a while. I've read that the Academy kit is pretty good, both fit and accuracy, so it shouldn't be a big project. Unless I get carried away with something...but that never happens, does it? Cheers, Bill

Thanks, Stan! I love the photos that Quickboost make of their aftermarket resin. So crisp - it just makes you want to go and buy them! For this project, though, I have the Aires cockpit which includes the same ejection seat that you've shown, so you're right about that. I also have the Obscureco wing (an entire resin wing assembly) which has the flaps and slats (double drooped - the Quickboost slats are single drooped so not appropriate for an F-8J). The problem is that the Obscureco wing has no anhedral to speak of, whereas the Academy wing looks to be about right. So I will be taking the Obscureco flaps and slats and using those on the Academy wing. That's the plan, anyway. Who knows what will happen in real life! Cheers, Bill

All right, here is what I'm thinking for my next project: 1:72 Chance Vought F-8J Crusader US Navy, VF-302 Stallions Academy kit Aires cockpit Master pitot Decals by Xtradecal (who erroneously state this is an F-8E) Squadron markings are yellow and black Flaps down, wing up, slats double-drooped Here is the real thing: Gotta love this view (source): Cheers, Bill

Yup, that was mentioned in post #209. Buffalo BW-364 had 42.5 kills with several pilots. That tally was determined after checking claims against actual Soviet losses so it seems to be a good number. The source for this is Finnish Aces of World War II by Stenman and Keskinen. I believe one of the Hasegawa kits has these markings in it. Cheers, Bill

There you go talking about me again when I'm not there to defend myself! It's a true fact that I use a Paasche Model "H" single-action, external mix airbrush. But may I suggest that it's not the man, it's not the tools, it's the paint, stupid! Cheers, Bill (officially sponsored by Mr. Hobby hisself) PS. Did I just paraphrase Bill Clinton? Oh dear... PPS. I think your mottling looks very good, young man. If that was your first try, then carry on! You passed the audition.

Now what have I done? Oh yeah, some more Buffalo-ing. I painted the navigation lights on the wings, added the probe on the starboard wing, added the small post on top of the tail for the aerial wire, added the control stick (forgot all about that!), and attached the sliding part of the canopy. All that's left now is to finish the landing lights on the bottom of the wings, and lastly add the aerial wire and lead-in. Cheers, Bill

Thanks, mates! The wife got through the MRI with no problems (this was her first adventure in the torpedo tube) now we sit and wait for the report to come back. I can think of other things I'd rather do... The next one will be completely out of character! Well, maybe not completely as it is a Navy bird. Fritag wins by default since he always makes two models at the same time! He cheats! Cheers, Bill

Another fact of colour reproduction that seldom gets mentioned is that there are colours that quite simply cannot be reproduced in RGB colour-space because they are outside of the gamut. So an on-screen display of such a colour will never be true no matter how accurately your system is calibrated. Cheers, Bill PS. This is probably what drove people to use old B&W photos as their primary reference source for colour.

Very nice workmanship - beautiful! You have to love an overachiever like the Wildcat! Cheers, Bill

They've stopped denigrating each other on Internet forums, and decided not to make new tools of the same subjects at the same time? I missed that. What happened? I almost bought the AZ Hart once, but changed my mind at the last minute and bought something I can't remember. But I remember what I didn't buy.... Cheers, Bill

OK, no more wasting time, I don't think I can take anymore bollocking. That hurts! Thanks, Bruce. Nothing fancy, just some pastel dust, a paint brush, my fingertip, a slightly dampened cloth, and some shots of air from the airbrush. Always be sure to apply the pastel dust on top of a flat clear coat (the pastels don't stick to glossy paint) and I always use a lacquer clear coat. That way, you can use water or mineral spirits (white spirit) to remove any pastels that you don't like. It won't hurt the clear coat or what is underneath. No offence was meant with the Seven Deadly Finns comment - I was thinking about how deadly the Buffalo was in the hands of the Finns who flew it in the Continuation War. What was the kill ratio, 26 to 1 or something crazy like that? I read somewhere that BW-364 may be the highest scoring airframe in history. Amazing! I think I know what Pylly-Valtteri means... That depends entirely on what a bodge is. Thanks, Tony. I think it must be something we did in a former life, because I know for a fact that this life has been pretty tame for both of us! Cheers, Bill

Thanks, gents. I forgot to mention my family's latest medical calamity. Wifey, after having had those two eye surgeries, has suddenly (in the space of a week) lost most of the hearing in her right ear. It was her right eye that gave her all the trouble. She has to go for an MRI on Tuesday, as the ear doctor wants to "rule out a tumour." Lovely way they word that, don't you think? Cheers, Bill

Hi mates, The barrel-shaped bovine beastie is moving along nicely. Let's catch up on how I've been wasting my time this weekend. First, the landing gear doors supplied with the kit were a bit thick (not unlike this modeller) so we decided to make some new ones out of styrene card. Really easy to do since they are flat. I don't know if there is any detail that must be added to the inside of the doors, as they fit up quite tight against the gear legs which are nearly as wide. If there is any detail, I don't think it can be seen. Since this will be a B339E (E for England!) we need to add the typical British reflector gunsight. The USN F2A versions had telescopic sights (like on a rifle) and the B239 used by the Seven Deadly Finns used a fixed bead and ring system (although they did switch to the reflector sight after a fashion). The reflector sight was made out of some things found in the Magic Box of Fiddly Bits and is quite tiny. We'll mount that on the instrument panel in due course. Next, I decided to use a vacuform piece for the sliding portion of the canopy. The vacuform canopy that I'm using is designed for the (gulp) Matchbox and Airfix Buffalo kits which reach deep into the last century. Will it fit? Will the canopy masks that are designed for the Special Hobby kit fit? Surprisingly, the answer to both questions is - sure, why not? The sliding canopy was painted all the appropriate colours and will be attached near the end of the build. For the opening vent on the first port side panel, I used a decal. Actually, it was several decals that I had to piece together to make this shape. Originally, they were some kind of stencil for the FB-111A. It's not perfect, but I think it looks better than trying to paint it on. Now that the pilot has a nice sliding canopy, he probably should have a seat. We modified the seat earlier to look like the square-back version used by the British, so let's finish it. My understanding is the seat was left in its natural aluminum colour and most likely used a Sutton harness. I'm fresh out of Sutton harnesses, but I found an old photoetch set in my stash that claimed to be "Generic British WWII Seat Belts." Must be from an American company, or else they would have used some other term besides seat belts. Anyway, I used them and hopefully they at least do a mediocre job of imitating a Sutton harness. Prop and spinner were up next. The British Buffaloes had a circular piece of rubber right on the tip of the spinner's nose, and I'll represent that with a decal as well. I decided to do a little pastel work at this point, which was sealed in with another coat of Alclad clear flat over the offending areas. You may notice that I also added the exhaust, these being resin pieces designed for the Hasegawa kit. They were painted with Gunze H38 Steel Red. The exhaust stubs that come with the Special Hobby kit are best left, well, somewhere they'll not be seen again. I glued the seat in place in the cockpit, and the seat back rails even connect with the crossbar in the rollover pylon. The plan worked! You'll see that I also mounted the aerial mast and the reflector sight, which you can see through the front windscreen. The prop and spinner were next, followed by adding short sections of hypodermic needles to represent the wing guns. The fuselage guns don't protrude from the cowling (the barrels ended in a blast tube which extends to the front of the cowling), so using hypo needles there would be inappropriate, at least for this version of the Buffalo. I'll leave you with a couple of overall shots. We're not finished yet, but we will be soon. I've done some practicing on an old model with that dot filter technique using Windsor & Newton Transparent White (got the last tube at the art store!). I'm not happy with my technique or my results yet, so I haven't applied it to the Buffalo. We'll see how it goes. Cheers, Bill

It was Banzai Hobbies, actually, and they cancelled the order a day after I placed it. They must have seen that my Brewster Buffalo would be complete by the time of their delivery, and were quivering in fear of being taken out by a barrel. Cheers, Bill

-40C? Why that's, uh, er, -40F! Or, as we say in the lower 48 "really eff-ing cold!" Cheers, Bill

Beautiful! Cheers, Bill

Nice work, Ed! Now you have me wanting to add the Italeri Stirling to the stash. I have the old Airfix kit, but it shows its age. I love your Bushwhacker decals, great job! Cheers, Bill

Ask Nick Millman for an invitation to his "American Aircraft for the RAF" blog. There are two recent articles that analyse extant samples from RNZAF and RAAF P-40s that quite conclusively show the underside to be the same as DuPont 71-021 Sky Type S Grey. I believe there are Curtiss factory drawings that document this as well. Cheers, Bill

You must be using the wrong ones. Cheers, Bill

That's a really good idea, and one that I was tossing around after trying some experiments with pastel fading over decals using an old model. The pastels worked, I mean the decal looked faded, but it was too splotchy for me. Is that a word, splotchy? I hope that doesn't mean something different in the Queen's English than it does in the American deviant tongue. I once mentioned to a British colleague that a woman we worked with "had a lot of spunk." He looked at me quite strange - understandable once I learned what that meant where he came from! Cheers, Bill

My intention is to address the faded upper wing roundels when I get to the weathering stage. My plan was to use pastels exclusively for the weathering, but I'm not sure that's wise on top of decals. We'll see. Was this kit in the batch that you sold me a couple of years ago? I can't remember, but I think it may have been. Cheers, Bill

Thanks, Mark. I had read about the decals somewhere. Is that the reason the roundels are so far out towards the edge of the wing? They didn't want the decal to cover up something, an access panel perhaps? Cheers, Bill

There is strong evidence that the fuselage band for the fighter squadrons in Singapore was Sky Blue. As many of us have seen, there are some excellent colour photos of Blenheims from 27 Squadron that clearly show Sky Blue fuselage bands and undersides. But were the Buffaloes also painted the same way? Here is the photo that seems to show the fuselage band being a lighter colour than whatever is on the underside. The underside is in shadow (isn't that always the case?) but if you look carefully you can see the edge of the fuselage band as it crosses into the underside colour. That edge is a continuation of the colour of the fuselage band itself. If the band is Sky Blue, and it's lighter than the underside, then it's unlikely that the underside is Sky Blue. It's also very likely that the Buffalo was painted in DuPont equivalents to MAP colours, and these weren't perfect matches. DuPont "Sky Type S Grey" was their equivalent of Sky, and it had a bit more blue in it than MAP Sky. I believe that's the case, if Nick Millman is reading this he can chime in and correct anything I've got wrong. At the present time, there is no single right answer to this question. It remains to the modeller to choose what he/she wants to do. What I chose is one interpretation, and it may be right, it may be wrong. Hopefully one day someone will find a nice treasure trove of colour LIFE magazine photos of British Buffaloes in Singapore. Then maybe we'll know! Cheers, Bill

This is a great thread! I don't think CMR is part of the CMK (MPM) Group, though. CMR is owned by Mark I Ltd., the folks who make the "4+" publications. Cheers, Bill