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Hi everyone, first time poster here. Recently finished a 1/72 scale King Tiger from Dragon. Thought I would share the results. If you think this should be moved to the diorama section, let me know. Thanks! Photos taken on my phone and square cropped for instagram, sorry about that!

I'm having a bit of a ponder over on the TID Tug so . . . Now I'll be truthful, nothing was further from my mind than a 1/350 boat ( I was given this model by a good friend who always seems to be leading me astray). I was looking around for something from the etch set that might help the tug. No joy on the part but I got to looking at the detail Dragon had included with slide moulding Now with things on hold on the tug, the fact that I've never built anything smaller than 1/200. There are some very nice multi media kits out there in 1/350. The fact that I have an involuntary tremor in my left hand which is never going to get better (I mean that as an encouragement to others, not an excuse). There was no time like the present No promises that this can be completed but here we go ....... Start of main guns Superstructure So far so good Thanks for looking in Kev

Dragon Models is working on a new tool 1/48th Messerschmitt Bf.109E kit - ref. DR5550 Sources: http://platz-media.com/blog/2019/09/22/2019-ahs-dragon/ http://www.platz-hobby.com/products/9386.html V.P.

Firstly the Dragon Me262A-1a. Not the easiest kit with some poor fit in places. Lots of detail and some very small etched metal parts. Finished with Hataka and Vallejo colours in an RLM 76, 81 and 82 scheme with decals of Yellow 5 KG(J)6 from Xtradecal sheet 48-179. z20190908_202705 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202649 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202640 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202630 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr Secondly the Hasegawa/Dragon Me262B-1a. Essentially the same kit as the A-1a with some extra bits. Again finished with Hataka and Vallejo colours. Decals again from an Xtradecal sheet. z20190908_202908 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202858 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202846 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr z20190908_202832 by Derek N.Ferguson, on Flickr

Lt Dick Winters undertook a reconnaissance at about 0830, after which he collected a team of 12 men from his own and other companies. Beyond knowledge of the general location of the gun emplacements south of Le Grand Chemin and without information of the other side of the hedgerow, Winters' team attacked Brécourt Manor, located three miles southwest of Utah Beach and north of the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. There he discovered No. 6 Battery of the 90th Artillery Regiment, consisting of four 105mm howitzers connected by trenches and defended by a company of soldiers. Pictures of the tree line in the grounds today Map of the Gun position. Unfortunately my only reference was the Band of Brothers series, as the chap that owns the manor doesn't let visitors into the field. My build to capture the break in and the first Gun.

Cleared off the bench I'll try to finish this Russian truck. We shall see...

This was done as a quick build between projects, and only took eight hours work to complete. It would have been quicker, but the escape rocket mast is VERY fiddly to put together, with more parts than the rest of the rocket put together, and the lack of proper instructions doesn't help. Also the main body of the rocket is presented as tubes, presumably to eliminate sanding of seams; it doesn't. There is a prominent mould seam down both sides of each of the four sections, and a lot of sanding and polishing smooth is still required. As it was a quick build, I didn't research the colour scheme too much and just followed the instructions on the box, so there are inaccuracies. No weathering was done, as this thing was only used once... Only one pic, as it doesn't look much different from the other side. Cheers, Dean

At 17.15 on the 25th of April 1978, in Swan Hunters Neptune Yard, the wife of the Secretary of State for Defence performed the traditional christening at the launch of what would become HMS Exeter, D89. She was a Type 42 Destroyer, second batch, and carried Sea Dart missiles along with a Mk8 4.5" gun. She would go on to serve with distinction in the Royal Navy for over 28 years. Several months later, in Frimley Park Hospital, with a much reduced crowd and to a lot less ceremony, (Although I wouldn't put it passed my Dad to have opened a bottle on my head, may ask him about that) I appeared. A batch one Son, armed, eventually, with large front teeth (x2), ginger hair (as launched, over time this has thinned and darkened) and a warped sense of humour. Would go on to do a lot of stupid stuff (distinction in stupidity) around the world until being tied up (married) at the same time as Exeter was put into Extended Readiness. So this is my entry to the GB, HMS Exeter D89 1/700 by Dragon. I also have the Skywave/Pit Road boxing of this kit so I may do two entry's, well see as we go. At first I was going to build her just because She was launched in '78, was a RN ship, and there was a kit of her avaliable at a sensible price. But the more I looked into her service, and history, the more I found strange mirrors to my own life. -Falklands in '82, Just as I started school and the first thing I really remember watching on the news with my Dad, who's ex RN and had only been out a few years then. -Gulf War, same time as I moved to Secondary school. -A score of deployments to places I've subsequently been to myself. -She entered Extended Readiness at the same time I stopped wandering the world and got hitched, so She stopped having fun at the same time as me! She'll be spruced up with the White Ensign Type 42 Destroyer Photo Etch, which happily comes with enough parts for two kits(I know one set is for the extended batch 3 ships, a bit of trimming may be needed). I'm looking to do her as She was in the Falklands, with her hull coated in an experimental vivid bright blue co-polymer, anti-fouling boot topping. She also had a black stripe up from the boot topping to the funnel as the Argentinean Navy had their own Type 42's. I'm not sure that I'll do her in a sea scape, I want to but well see if time allows. Obligatory spruce shots, All untouched and in the bags, even the PE which ironically was delivered today, Just in time for the kick off of the GB! I'm really looking forward to this group build, think it'll be a lot of fun! Sorry for the long introduction, couldn't help myself! Well I'm ready to go, will be posting progress soon, and a bit of the history of the ship as we go. Any and All welcome to join in and see what happens to the kit, should be interesting. Happy Modelling All Geoff

This is my Dragon 1/35 IS-2 that I picked up at Telford last year for £20. It goes together well & is quite uncomplicated for a Dragon kit. The figure is from Mini Art with a Hornet head. Any comments, criticisms & observations welcome. Pete Thanks for looking.

Hi, I'm coming in with another one... Yes, I think I got the GB bug on me. This was actually my first plan for the Specialist GB, but the Tiger PAH-2 beat it to it. I brought this kit and a Hasegawa 1/72 CF-104 with me for my hitch in an offshore rig off the coast of east java. And I thought might as well sign up for the GBs here in BM. My plan is to build it as P-61A-5 NO, with "The Virgin Widow" nose art using the Kits-World Decal The night before I packed it, I sprayed some Mr.Color Green Zinc and Tamiya Yellow Green on the cockpit area and wheel well... Why? because it could be a bit hassle to paint in my cabin or my office. I didn't have the mood to start the build the first week here. But when I finally have the mood, I realize all the seats are wrong.. So I modified it a bit to at least look better under the canopy. cut, plastic stripes, and few bended wires later.... yes it not much, crude, and going to need filling and sanding.. but finger crossed it will look better than the original Cheers, Mario

Lt Dick Winters undertook a reconnaissance at about 0830, after which he collected a team of 12 men from his own and other companies. Beyond knowledge of the general location of the gun emplacements south of Le Grand Chemin and without information of the other side of the hedgerow, Winters' team attacked Brécourt Manor, located three miles southwest of Utah Beach and north of the village of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. There he discovered No. 6 Battery of the 90th Artillery Regiment, consisting of four 105mm howitzers connected by trenches and defended by a company of soldiers. Pictures of the tree line in the grounds today Map of the Gun position. 2 Dragon kits so far,

Enjoying the build and all the research on my King Tiger, but one is not enough, so I have delved into the stash and decided to start this as a weight watcher special Battle of the Bulge entry, or as the Germans called it Wacht am Rhein. No zimmerit, the kit will be OOB except for an Armorscale barrel.

With the varnish still drying, I'm calling this one done and photographing it. Aerials need to be fitted and, rather distressingly, I appear to have lost a small part that fits on the rear of the commander's hatch This is Dragon's Sherman Firefly 1c. I've had it in my stash for years, always meaning to build it , but put off by the individual track links. I haven't the patience to put them together, and bought AFV club's T62 Track for M4 VVSS. No idea if it correct for this Sherman, but I wasn't about to put those links together. Having bought the tracks, I put them somewhere 'safe', which meant I 'lost' them, then 'found' them, only to 'lose' them again as I didn't have time to build the tank. Roll of a few repeat iterations and years, and I finally manage to get both together, start the build, then stop the build for house improvements i.e. double glazing and replacement kitchen. I finally get up the gumption to restart the build, got to the point of painting it olive drab, only I discovered I had sprayed faded olive drab - a sort of sand. Back the tank went to the shelf of doom as I figured what to do. I normally do aircraft, and turn to tanks when I get fed up with the rigours of getting perfect finishes on planes. However, my tanks are usually completed as fresh out of the factory i.e. a simple paint job, with no weathering. I finally worked up the enthusiasm to get going on this tank again, and decided to spread some sort of dark green over it in a desperate attempt to make it look sun faded. Basically I sprayed a little, brush painted a little, dry brushed a little, splashed it all over a little, and relied heavily on transparent burnt sienna and burnt umber for the rusty bits. I don't really have a clue what I am doing, as I normally go for a pristine finish. After about a half a day elapsed time of faffing around like this, I'd had enough and decided it was time to fit the AFV tracks. First a clean with soapy water. Then a coat of Halfords Flexible Vinyl spray. I find it is gives a good base for paints. However, when dry fitting the tracks I noticed they looked a little tight...too tight in fact to fit the tracks. Undaunted I simply stretched the tracks, and soon one began to fit better, and then the other one snapped in half! The air turned blue for several minutes. In the end, I worked out a plan. Stick the broken track together with the overlapping joint provided by AFV. I used superglue, rather than the technique of applying a hot screwdriver to melt the nibs on the joint. Then I offered the track up to the tank, ensuring the broken end met over a lower wheel. The track was then stuck to the road wheels with copious quantities of super glue. I wasn't really enamoured by the Dragon kit. Attachment points seemed vague to non-existent, while the front sprockets wouldn't fit; needing a bit of hacking. It also seemed over engineered. You can see part of the problem with the left front track. It looks splayed, much Wall-E when he got squished. You might also note a little raised bit in the middle of the right track. There were a few other areas which caused me much lip pursing. I like my old, simple Tamiya tank kits. I sort of painted the yellow triangle, but tried to make it look as is this was a tank that had gone through quite a bit, with the crew having to repair and paint bits. I didn't bother with unit markings. Quite a few photos I see of Fireflies show no unit markings; either deliberate or simply hidden under much grime. Also, it occurred to me that if you were in Panther or Tiger country, the last thing you need is a nice bright, colourful unit insignia to make it easier to spot you. Alternatively, I could have loaded up the tank with all sorts of equipment, and thus neatly hide any unit markings. I was too lazy to do so. I have another, exciting, tank to be getting on with. I photographed the tank in the garden in full sun. In many ways this was a mistake. The sun tended to remove contrast and sort of bleach out the colours. The faded tops and sides do not look as sandy as on the model, and the green I splashed about is simply not green enough. Sigh. Better efforts required next time. Just for the record. My camera/lens combo is a Canon 800D with a Sigma 150-600mm contemporary. I simply stood about 3m (10 feet) away from the tank, zoomed in, and photographed it. I had a minimal field of depth. It seems to work, and provides a nice hazy background. I was too lazy to switch lenses. The overhead shots were obtained by me leaning out of the first floor bedroom window. 🙂 🙂 🙂 Glad none of the neighbours were about. I shall now take my next, continued build, from the shelf of doom. A King Tiger (Late). I have the turret built, but that's about it. I will complete this one, before tackling a Tortoise and then Crocodile. Angus

Dragon's Fw 190D-9 has been replaced by the Hobby Boss kit, a much superior offering with much better fit all around. I had bought Dragon's kit in order to have Gerhard Barkhorn's decals. The kit itself has many moulding defects, big gaps around the fuselage/wing section (which is solved by adding a spreader bar aft the cockpit), the propeller blades don´t have locating tabs, the aircraft sits too high on its gear because of a manufacturer idea, it comes with steel PE parts which are nigh impossible to cut from their sprue with a regular hobby knife, etc... I decided to paint the model as Oskar Romm's aircraft, which in reality had the old Fw 190 canopy instead of the blown one. The model was brushpainted with what I thought were the Revell equivalents of RLM 82 and RLM 83 (Bronze Green 65 and RAF Dark Green 68).

I have had this cyber-hobby kit in the stash for a few years so I have dusted it off and I will throw it into this GB. The plastic has just been re-issued as a 2 in 1 kit by Dragon, I have always fancied building this scheme with the charging Knight on the turret, so it's as it comes with just a new Armour Scale barrel. Here's the obligatory box full of bits picture: Wish me luck, it's covered in Dragon zimmerit!

Which is the better kit, Dragon/DML or Eduard (old)(weekend) Fw-190A-8. If I go on a US website I get Dragon/DML, if I go on a Czech website I get Eduard. Now I would like to hear it from the UK crowd. I am looking at general fit and dimensional fidelity. They can both be gotten for about $17 here. I would like some justifiable opinions.

Heres my proof of life picture, not sure how I'm going to display the beast. I've got some ideas, I've picked up some figures just in case.

A bit of fun since I have a surplus of red stars.

With the bombing of the Japanese home islands increasing, the IJAAF was on the hunt for a newly designed interceptor capable of penetrating the fighter screen and attacking the bombers. When U-1224 arrived in Japan in February 1944 she brought with her plans and details of the Messerschmitt P 1101, a single jet engine interceptor along with their new stand off wire guided missile technology. With the coming B-29 raids on the home islands, the Japanese thought this was just the fighter for them, commissioning Mitsubishi to build the aircraft. The Mitsubishi Ki 90 Thunder Lord was only built in limited numbers, serving with the 520th Temporary Interception Group, the first to see combat with the new jet in March 1945. The group comprised of Senior flight instructors and the most talented flight students. Escorted by the groups Ki 84 Hayate's, the Ki 90 scored significant success against B-29 formations, being able to penetrate fighter screens with a 200mph speed advantage and stand off at a safe range while launching their X-4 wire guided missiles at the formations. Despite their success, there was never enough in service to change the outcome of the war. The kit itself is the Dragon 1/72 Me P 1101, with decals from the spares box. The kit itself goes together nicely and makes into a smart looking jet.

Firstly Tamiya's Fw190F-8. I quite enjoyed building this one. Pretty good detail and fit. Finished in a mixture of Hataka, Xtracrylix and Vallejo paints with the kit decals 1. 2. 3. 4. Secondly a Dragon Fw190A-8/R-11 nightfighter. Not such a good kit. Some poor fit and over-complicated in places. Finished in RLM 74/75/76 in Hataka, Xtracrylix and Vallejo. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Hello and good evening everyone. I'm back.......well, starting to get back into being at the bench after having to withdraw from the GB Panzer IV due to some medical and personal issues to fix; my apologies to everyone who finished and congrats on a great build from all. Even though I didn't drop by any contributions as regards comments etc....I followed avidly on all your builds. Thoroughly enjoyed everyone's progress. My medication prevented me from being able to positively contribute both at the bench and on here as a forum with some chat etc. ...but I'm back and will slowly get up to speed. I have a few projects on the go that I flit between like a butterfly, medications limit concentration at times............ Here's one that I'm slowly,,,,,very slowly plodding through. I'm working from a walk around set of images from the Ferdinand that's resides at Bovington at present (the one from Maryland). Had some issues with it as regards the Dragon kit itself and the moulding in places as regards fit. The rear sponson construction that I think was added at the time to form the Ferdinand from the prototype Tiger chassis.....took a long time to sand and pair down to make fit and line up the chassis........ There's a lot of weld lines omitted from the kit itself that I'm working through adding, a very intricate PE set from Aber that I'm going for; even through the kit itself is a Smart Kit with PE included. Nice metal barrel and host of metal parts etc to get into over time. SO HERE'S WHERE SHE STANDS AT PRESENT.....WELD LINES TO ORDER OF THE DAY. FRONT GLACIS WITH ADDITIONAL BOLT HEADS SUPPLIED BY MASTERCLUB. One note to add is the front drive wheels. There's no position marker of any sorts provided by Dragon to set them in place. I recommend taking a peek at some actual photos of that area of the chassis to get the position as close as possible. I set them wrong and had to remove and re-set...... WELD LINES ADDED ON BOTH SIDES FOR THE MUD SCRAPERS AND IN REVIEWING THE BOVINGTON FERDINAND, THE ADDITION OF SOME VERY HEAVY WELDS TO HOLD WHAT I BELIEVE IS SOME SORT OF ARMOURED EXHAST COVER....I IMPROVED THE TEXTURE OF THE COVER ALSO WITH SOME ADDITION OF LIQUID CEMENT AND FINALY....EVEN THOUGH NOT REALLY SEEN ARE THE GRILS FOR THE EXHAUST (OR AIR IN TAKE) WELL....can't say when the next update will be....but it's nice to be back on the forum to some extent, slowly is better than nothing....🤗.......catch you all soon...regards....Simon.

Hello all, This is my Cyber-hobby/ Dragon Bf-109E-3. I riveted and stressed the skin on this project. I used HGW seatbelts, Yaha instrument panel along with some minor scratch building in the cockpit. As per my usual I used Model Master paints. Thanks for looking. Rod

Continuing the Luftwaffe fighters theme I've been building recently. Firstly the Revell boxing of the Fw-190D-11 which I believe is the old Dragon kit. Reasonable kit with only a few problems. Finished in Vallejo arcrylics as a JV44 example from 1945. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Next is the Dragon Ta-152H. Similar to the Fw190D kit this goes together fairly easily with only the landing gear posing any problems. Again finished in Vallejo paint with Model Alliance decals. 1. 2. 3. 4.

My entry for this GB will be Dragons Ju 88C-6 in 1:48 scale which came in a large Revell box. A while ago i have purchased the very nice AIMS decal set 4804 with six marking options for three C-6 dayfighters and Fitting for this group build three nightfighters. Also helpful for this project are two Eduard sets. One photo etched set intended for the A-4 bomber but most will fit in a C-6 cockpit as well. The second one is a masking sheet designed for the early C-6 cabin with two bulged B Mounts and the early windscreen. fits the black NJG 2 aircraft. Boxart. The two marking options are interesting as well. 2./NJG 2 with RLM 79 sandy Brown on the two tone standart scheme of RLM 70/71 and FuG 202 Lichtenstein BC radar 4./NJG 2 with a non standart scheme and the same radar. The AIMS set. D5+AV was the mount of Staffelkapitän Oblt. Günther Koberich with the FuG 202 Lichtenstein BC Radar and a slight mottling with RLM 75 over 76 and low vis markings. R4+BH of 1./NJG 2 in North Afrika. Black with a White fuselage band 4R+AS flown ( and wrecked ) by the Staffelkapitän of 8./NJG 2 Hptm. Friedrich Tober with a more intense mottling, FuG 220 Radar and two upward firing 20mm guns known as "Schräge Musik" Also on the decal sheet is a Ju 88G-1 3C+MP of 6./NJG 4 with a scheme for die hard airbrush guys. Enough for a start. Cheers Bernd

Taking part in the recent PzIV STGB, I was persuaded to build a scenic base for my model. Comments and questions welcome