Airfix 1/72 J8a Gladiator

[Christer A]

Correct! The more you look the muddier the water becomes. There are fine pictures on the net showing olive green / light blue with aluminium Winter camouflage as well....

Right now I don't know exactly when the switch from all over aluminium paint to cammo happened, but all F19 Gladiators were drawn from active squadrons and they should've been in cammo by 1939. 

I think...

😀

[AaCee26]

7 hours ago, Christer A said:

Ok, this Link (in Swedish)

http://www.svfplhist.com/index.htm?s=j8/j8f19.htm

States that all J8 were painted aluminium and olive green, so that means that Airfix is correct.

 

4 hours ago, Jinxman said:

hi,

 

Just came across this build, and I'll tag along if you don't mind - I have one of these started, and stalled - must get myself in gear.

 

I was going to paint my undersides blue RLM 65 plus a bit of white & grey, not too sure how close this is but I agree the XF66 seems miles off.

 

Looking at Christer's link above, I am not so sure about the all-blue anymore.

 

I have Forslund's book on the Harts & J-8s of F 19 wing, the pics are in b&w and so are open to interpretation, but I can't find a single pic where the undersides are as shiny as the silver on the sides. Other manufacturers decal sheets, (e.g. SBS), also have the wings all blue..... I think there are arguments both ways.

 

cheers,

Hi all,

Recent book "Swedish Fighter Colours" by Forslund shows them with blue belly. At least they are clearly different from upper surface silver areas and don't look silverish for my eyes.

Kippis,

AaCee

[Christer A]

By pure luck, the Hyperscale review of the book above has a picture of Gladiator "Yellow F" from F19

http://www.hyperscale.com/2013/reviews/books/mmpswedishfightercoloursreviewbf_1.htm

See Picture #6.

So, to summarize:

Gladiators were painted Olive green and light blue, and winterized with aluminium stripes on top of the green and all down the side of the fuselage, but not the underside of the wings.

That's my guess...

 

[Jinxman]

2 hours ago, Christer A said:

By pure luck, the Hyperscale review of the book above has a picture of Gladiator "Yellow F" from F19

http://www.hyperscale.com/2013/reviews/books/mmpswedishfightercoloursreviewbf_1.htm

See Picture #6.

So, to summarize:

Gladiators were painted Olive green and light blue, and winterized with aluminium stripes on top of the green and all down the side of the fuselage, but not the underside of the wings.

That's my guess...

 

 

That's what I would go with - silver would not be a good camo colour compared with a light blue/grey when seen from the ground I think...

[Beggsy]

Based on everything I've seen and read, here's what I reckon.  It sounds like the undersides were at various points all Aluminium or all Light blue, but a combination of both as suggested by Airfix (blue fuselage, aluminium wings) seems unlikely.  Although the underside colours on the wings aren't clear in any photos I've seen, there also hasn't been a clear demarcation between two colours around with wing root.  I feel like when it was decided to change from silver to blue, they would have painted the whole aircraft at once, not just the fuselage.

 

Since the silver sprayed over the base camouflage is distinct from the underside colour in many photos of those aircraft, I therefore reckon that the entire underside was the light blue colour at the time that these aircraft were in Finland, and that's what I'm going to go with (I'm itching to start painting!).

 

Thanks for your input everyone!

[qn30jEkPz7]

Looking forward to seeing the results of the paintwork deliberations 

[Beggsy]

A bit of progress, perhaps with slightly less photos than intended (I got a bit carried away).

 

The base camouflage before the silver over spray ended up looking like this:

 

 

And on the underside, here's the much-debated light blue-grey:

 

 

While waiting for both colours to be thoroughly dry, I put together the engine and carefully hand painted it.

 

 

My first attempt at the silver spray used paper masks held down with blue tack.  These were quite easy to make since the Airfix paint guide is printed at actual size.  I've often found that metallic paint is prone to get everywhere that isn't masked, and in this case it did just that, with some paint ending up everywhere except where the blue tack was.

 

 

I'll have to re-do that.  The fuselage was fully masked using blue tack and masking tape

 

 

That worked!  Just got to do the tailplanes, rudder and upper wing.  They should all be easier to maks, being flat surfaces (roughly, at least).

 

 

[Jinxman]

Looks v.good to me - I think you have captured the freehand style of the silver very well.

[Christer A]

That turned out great!

[Beggsy]

It's starting to look like a real airplane!

 

Landing gear legs attached

 

 

Re-painted wings and tailplanes

 

 

The engine cowling/exhaust ring was painted with a mixture of flat aluminium and brown paints

 

 

It looks pretty good with all the bits attached!

 

 

I'm not very impressed with the open canopy part.  The kit comes with two closed canopies, so I've got two shots at cleanly separating the aft section from one.  My main complaint with the open piece was that the rear section didn't look flush with the fairing behind it, possibly due to refraction through the thick sliding section.  I'll make my own sliding hood from thin clear sheet, since it's a relatively simple shape.

 

 

The navigation lights received some attention

 

 

This is the first wooden propeller that I've done since getting an airbrush.  I'm very happy with the effect from masking the stripes, though I may tone down the colour differences when I weather it.

 

 

One more shot of the current state of the airplane

 

 

The skis were also assembled

 

\

 

What to do about the ski colour.  Colour profiles of the airplane show it with plain aluminium skis, but black and white photos suggest they may have painted stripes on the front, in a light colour (possibly yellow, since F.19 would have had that on hand for painting the tail letters).  Have a close look at the leftmost visible portions of the skis in this image:

 

 

It's more obvious on aircraft H behind aircraft F, and also in this image:

 

 

And on aircraft K:

 

 

Thoughts?

 

Also, for completeness, here are the other two photos of aircraft F that I could find

 

 

 

Looks like I need to add a light coloured band to the cowling.  This image also makes the fronts of the skis look darker than plain aluminium.

[Jinxman]

From the photos in Forslund's book I would say with regard to F (no.284);

 

There are two coloured bands on the skis, with a dark dividing strip between the colour and the aluminium,

The two coloured bands are a close/closeish match to the spinner front colour in tonality on the b&w photos,

The tonality of the F tail-marking and spinner/skis doesn't match, (p31, p139, p177).

 

Also, in pictures with more than one aircraft shown together, the tonality on spinners between aircraft differs. Looking around the net red, yellow, metal and white spinners are portrayed.

 

Sorry, no conclusion, possibly more questions?

[Beggsy]

27 minutes ago, Jinxman said:

Sorry, no conclusion, possibly more questions?

 

No worries, any information is good information!  Are the pictures in the book you mention different to the ones I've found?

[Jinxman]

hi, yes apart from the one on p.177 which is a slightly clearer version of the photo above with the text on it.

 

Your bottom pic is on p. 122 of the book, and is the only one where the tonality of the F and spinner are close, but the ski colour looks different!

 

cheers

 

[Mitch K]

Your paintwork is superb!

[AaCee26]

6 hours ago, Jinxman said:

From the photos in Forslund's book I would say with regard to F (no.284);

 

There are two coloured bands on the skis, with a dark dividing strip between the colour and the aluminium,

The two coloured bands are a close/closeish match to the spinner front colour in tonality on the b&w photos,

The tonality of the F tail-marking and spinner/skis doesn't match, (p31, p139, p177).

 

Also, in pictures with more than one aircraft shown together, the tonality on spinners between aircraft differs. Looking around the net red, yellow, metal and white spinners are portrayed.

 

Sorry, no conclusion, possibly more questions?

Hi there,

 

F19 aircraft seems to be collected from different flights which explains different colours of the spinners. I would say yellow, blue and red as the usual Swedish id colours. But maybe våra Svenska vänner may correct this if needed.

 

Dark stripes on the skies: Leather strips maybe?

 

Cheers,

 

AaCee

 

[Beggsy]

Small bits and pieces coming together.

 

I painted on the metal strips on the leading edges of the propeller blades

 

 

Making separate canopy sections was quite successful!

 

 

And then one of my favourite steps, decals!  I decided to leave off any stencils on the silver sections, as I doubt they would have been replaced after the silver was added,

 

 

Stretched Sprue was used to add these details on the landing gear legs.  They may not be entirely accurate, but pictures indicate there's something loopy in roughly that area.

 

 

Canopy pieces went on nicely, attached with micro-gloss

 

 

I did some weathering with a panel line wash and some powders.  It's much more visible in real life than these photos.

 

 

Close to time to start rigging it!

 

 

[Beggsy]

No progress to report (I was away on the weekend and early this week), but I did find some more food for thought on the ski colours (which are still bugging me).  In this photo, it looks like there is a darker colour on the upper surfaces of the skis:

 

 

At first glance it's frustratingly not overly clear in this or any other photos of "F".  However, look at the visible ski of "H", behind it.  Looks awfully similar to me, enough that I think there's a very good chance they're the same colour.  There's a much better photo of "H" showing the skis without them being in shadow:

 

 

Looks like the ski top is darker (but not by as much as the top image suggests) with a sharp demarcation, and to me it sill looks like two bands of a different colour, bordered by dark stripes.

 

More thinking required before I hit it with paint!

[Beggsy]

 

 

I found these two.  No other information with them except a reference to "Aviamaster 2002, No.5" but it's better than nothing.  I certainly prefer this to plain silver skis.

 

The relative shades of the green and silver on the skis seem to match the photo of all the aircraft lined up, the best one I could find of "F".

 

This is all I could find out without seeing the other pictures in Forslund's book mentioned before by Jinxman.  It seems to be out of print and hard to find, so I'm not going to keep this model on hold to look for a copy (though by all accounts it's a very good book).  Maybe I'll have to build an F.19 Hawker Hart to go with this one day...

 

On 4/16/2017 at 10:38 PM, Jinxman said:

From the photos in Forslund's book I would say with regard to F (no.284)......

 

Unless I stumble across anymore information, progress will resume shortly!

[Beggsy]

SSSSSLLLOOOOOWWWWW progress.  I've finally finished the rigging wires on the wings.  Still got the tail bracing wires (4) rudder control cables (2) and radio aerials (3), but the most difficult parts are over, everything else is much easier to reach.

 

 

 

 

[Jinxman]

That looks great - will you do much weathering on it?

 

cheers

[Killingholme]

I'm always wary of explanations that give modellers licence to paint things in funny colours. So I thought of some boring and utterly unconvincing explanations...

 

Initially I thought- maybe the skis themselves were blue which is why they appear dark in the photos? But photos in Swedish service clearly show they retained a silver finish even when the aircraft received camouflage- which makes sense considering they would sit in a shed for half the year and probably didn't get repainted along with the airframes.

 

So, just an idea- could those skis appear darker because (as would be sensible) they have been polished to within an inch of their lives to make sure they shed snow effectively? I know snowploughs are often coated with diesel for this same reason! Both could affect how 'deep' and reflective they appear in photos.

 

As to the black bands? Strips of tape sealing the joints? I know this is a museum example- but this one certainly has taped joints

 

 

It's also worth mentioning that the upper part of the rear of the ski was dark

 

see here:

 

Edited May 10, 2017 by Killingholme

[dogsbody]

Some more Swedish/Finnish Gladiators.

 

http://www.raf-in-combat.com/downloads/june-2014-scandinavian-gladiators-18-photos/

 

 

Chris

[Beggsy]

20 hours ago, Jinxman said:

That looks great - will you do much weathering on it?

 

I've done most of it already, it doesn't show up well in the pictures.  I dirtied it up and added exhaust stains with powders, and a panel line wash.  I'll try and get some photos showing that better when it's done.  It's not overly dirty, since it would mostly be in contact with snow, not mud/dust.

 

12 hours ago, Killingholme said:

So I thought of some boring and utterly unconvincing explanations...

 

Quite the contrary!  Of the theories I've head so far, polished metal seems the most consistent with the greatest number of photos, plus I think it would look pretty cool.

 

8 hours ago, dogsbody said:

Some more Swedish/Finnish Gladiators.

 

Great collection of photos, thanks for sharing!

 

 

[Beggsy]

And that's a wrap, she's all done!

 

 

Ready for Inspection thread:

 

 

Edited May 13, 2017 by Beggsy