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Mike

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Mike last won the day on August 22 2023

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About Mike

  • Birthday 09/05/1967

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    Male
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    Chester, UK
  • Interests
    Aircraft, AFVs & Sci-Fi

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  1. I took my life in my hands last night, and spent an hour or two scribbling on my model. It took some doing, and after I'd finished I felt like it was a bit.... poo. I think I'd been staring at it for too long, as today I'm not massively unhappy with the results. I do however think that I need to do a bit of touching-up, as there are a few fuzzy areas. I suspect my needle and nozzle are finally wearing out. I've had them both chucked in now for at least 3 years, without so much as an issue, so it's about time. The amount of metal in these tiny parts is infinitesimal, so I guess they wear out eventually. Here's a quick pic: The pic really shows up the imperfections, doesn't it?
  2. Lovely model - especially the engine bell colouring
  3. What a load of pratts! More loverly work. Don't know how you do it.
  4. ’Battle of the Bulge’ Ardennes 1944 (35373) 1:35 Miniart via Creative Models Ltd The Battle of the Bulge was the nickname given to the last-ditch attempt by Hitler, sometimes referred to as the Allies’ best General, to stop the Allied advance toward Germany by driving a wedge through the front and separating the four armies, removing Antwerp from Allied hands, and forcing them to sue for peace. This was clearly what is now known as a ‘hail Mary’ play, and relied heavily on capturing Allied fuel supplies, because the Germans were woefully short of their own stores, and would soon run out if they didn’t capture substantial new supplies. It also relied on bad weather keeping the Allied air elements grounded for the crucial period of the operation, as the Luftwaffe was a spent force by this time of the war, and any daylight activity quickly attracted US and British fighters equipped with cannons and bombs, largely unopposed by the Luftwaffe. The operation began on the 16th December 1944 when the weather was bitterly cold, heavy snow and overcast conditions, and Nazi progress was initially good, capturing many Allied units off-guard, resulting in substantial casualties and a large quantity prisoners. Apart from one hideous incident at Malmedy where Kampfgruppe Peiper massacred dozens of US prisoners, the majority captured were thankfully treated humanely by their captors. After the initial advances, the German’s progress stagnated, and they began to run out of fuel, which in concert with the improvement in the weather, permitted the Allied aircraft to take on the vulnerable German armoured columns and support lines, with the Allies back to their original positions by February of 1945, and the Germans in disarray. The Figures This set contains five figures, two German soldiers walking alongside three US prisoners, who are unsurprisingly not looking happy about their plight. The kit arrives in a figure-sized box, and inside are five sprues of grey styrene, plus a small glossy piece of paper with a sprue diagram for the figure sprues. All the figures are in a walking pose, one German nursing a set of binoculars against his chest, while the other holds his rifle across his smocked chest, relaxed but alert. The three Americans are wearing various battle-dress combinations, two wearing blouson jackets with their hands up, while the man in the greatcoat has his hands mid-chest, probably too cold to wave his hands in the air. The American with his hands clasped behind his head isn’t wearing a helmet, and his hair is clearly non-regulation, so he had probably been on the front for a while. The parts for each figure are found in separate areas of the sprues that are separated by country for ease of identification, and parts breakdown is sensibly placed along clothing seams or natural breaks to minimise clean-up of the figures once they are built up. The sculpting is typically excellent, as we’ve come to expect from MiniArt’s artists and tool-makers, with natural poses, drape of clothing and textures appropriate to the parts of the model. The three accessory sprues include helmets, some of the US M1s either covered with netting or cloth cover, and two of the German helmets also have cloth covers. The rest of the equipment includes the usual personal pouches, bags and small arms, although the Americans won’t be using any of those and their webbing will have been confiscated at time of capture, however the Germans will have a full complement appropriate to their unit and task. The rear of the box has the artwork separated with blue colour arrows, while the kit parts are in black text, with the officer having a choice of cap or helmet. A small photo insert shows the equipment on the back of the smock wearing soldier, as those items can’t be seen in the painting. A small swatch of the smock’s camouflage is given on the back of the box, with the colour chart in the bottom right corner, giving paint codes for Vallejo, Mr.Color, AK Real Color, Mission Models, AMMO, Tamiya, as well as small colour swatches and names to assist you with choosing your paints. Conclusion A great figure set that would look good in a diorama, their chaperones pushing the prisoners back through the front lines while the panzers and other forces are heading forward to press the attack. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of
  5. One of the issues I don't like about the forum is that if you view just ONE of your notifications, it sets the others as read too. Could that be the scenario? I often use my iPad and iPhone to view the forum, but I use Firefox, so it's not a like-for-like comparison. If what I described doesn't explain it, it might be worth keeping an eye on it to see if you can spot a pattern. You're the first person to mention it, and we have a lot of Mac users on here, so it could be just you Anyway - that's enough let's get back to the modelling
  6. That's a very unusual one. I don't suppose you have any weird add-ins on your browser do you? If you do, try disabling them and see if your notifications are more reliable. Some add-ins can get in the way of the forum's operation, especially security add-ins. One of our members once had two add-ins running together, and it was causing him all sorts of problems with viewing the forum. It was several years ago though, but I'm sure this sort of thing can still happen.
  7. Those kit decals are abysmal compared to yours Good work BTW - if you're still not getting notifications, your email provider might be blocking us, so have a word with 'em. It happens more regularly than I'd like
  8. Sadly, I'm midway through covering my P.1101 in little mangled stars and other weird shapes. Might have a job to fit that in with the rest of the site business, and sleeping a lot
  9. Got chance to squirt a coat of Aqua Gloss on the airframe this avo, which will help separate the base layer of paint from the camo, just in case I stuff it up All things are possible, and I'm not sure I've ever done this type of camo before, or if I have, I've totally forgotten doing it The joys of a memory. A quick snap: I've got the RLM76 in my PS770 already, so just have to muster up the courage to start applying it See you in a few years
  10. Hi all, I've just split the Sci-Fi & RealSpace review section into Kits & Aftermarket, so it's easier to find everything you might want to have a read of. The Aftermarket section also includes decals, reference material and all the rest of it, so you know where to go You can find the Sci-Fi review section by following the link below, if you fancy a mooch about: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/forum/323-sci-fi-real-space-reviews/
  11. I managed to get a bit of time at the bench today, and did some modulation, which I deliberately made quite visible, as the top-sides are going to be covered with light grey squiggles/spiders, so anything still visible will need to be pretty obvious. The underside isn't quite as pronounced, but I may knock that back with a mist coat of the tyre black later. I'll see how I feel. The pic is a little exaggerated by the camera, so imagine it with a little less contrast, and more variation in tone. Here's how she looks: The ancillaries have also been given a coat of this effect, as most of the airframe and its appendages are black for night-fighting. The riveting is still showing through, but not too strongly, which is nice
  12. Fairey Rotodyne (A04002V) 1:72 Airfix Vintage Classics The Fairey Rotodyne was an ambitious project in the post WWII heyday of British aviation, when the aviation world could re-concentrate their efforts on more radical designs, which included the development of rotary-winged flight types that had been of interest during the 30s, but was put on the back-burner during WWII to concentrate on more pressing matters. Fairey were interested in creating a combined rotorcraft that merged autogyro with helicopter, using both type’s strengths to provide a cheaper, faster method of transport that could take-off and land vertically without the high expense associated with helicopter flight then and now. Fairey envisaged blade-tip engines powering the rotors, thereby obviating the need for a stabilising tail rotor, while the rotor would transition to autogyro mode once horizontal flight was achieved, powering down the engines and utilising the passive lift generated from the blades along with the short wings carrying a pair of turbo-prop engines that would supply forward momentum, but could also be used to counter any torque encountered during flight. The engines also supplied high-pressure air to the blade-tip engines, mixing it with fuel and burning it to provide energy to the blades to rotate. Fairey already had experience with this type of flight with their Gyrodyne, which had been demonstrated to be effective, although its size and fuel capacity limited its range substantially. It acted as a development precursor that gave Fairey confidence in its design, although the form factor and layout changed from several times during development before they settled for the twin-engined design. Which brand and type of engine became a problem however, as Fairey had their preferences, and many leading engine manufacturers considered themselves already over-stretched with various projects. Politics reared its ugly and divisive head, as the British Government had been bankrolling the project on the basis that it could be useful for military applications, and in the hope that airline BEA would make an order for at least 20 airframes to act as financial backstop for the project, which they blew hot and cold on as time went by. During the greater periods of interest, there were plans to build an enlarged variant of the Rotodyne that could carry up to 70 passengers, which would have resulted in an even more cost-effective return than the already reduced cost of the original design. The choice and power output of the engines was an ongoing issue that helped to kill the project, along with concerns over the noise caused by the rapidly spinning blade-tip engines, which were said to be painful and potentially damaging to hearing close-up, and still a nuisance even at greater distances, making conversations within range a difficult prospect. There were attempts to reduce this to a more acceptable level, and progress was beginning to be made as funding was withdrawn in the early 60s, leading to the project’s cancellation when Fairey’s new owners, Westland were likely to have to foot the bill for the completion of development. There was a good chance that the noise could have been brought down to similar or lower levels than other vehicles that were in use at the time, but it was never to happen, as the curtain was brought down on a promising project. The Kit This is a reboxing of Airfix’s vintage tooling, which was first released in 1959 while the Rotodyne was still in development, so as you’d imagine it’s a product of its time, and expectations should be measured accordingly. It is however eminently possible to create a realistic and well-detailed model from the kit, as our membership have proved in the past if you’d care to search the forum’s sub-sections. The kit arrives in a modestly sized top-opening box, and inside are eight borderless sprues in a dark grey styrene, a clear sprue, a sheet of decals, and the instruction booklet that is printed in colour on matt paper, with profiles for painting and decaling on the rear inner cover. As already mentioned, this is an old kit and should be viewed through rose-tinted glasses, as it’s even older than most of us on the forum. Considering its age, time has been kind to the moulds, with surprisingly little flash, and virtually no mould damage other than some scratches evident on the upper rotor-head and one of the tail parts at first glance. It was tooled during Airfix’s heavy riveting period, covering the skin of the kit in thousands of fine raised rivets that can be obliterated during seam filling. Construction begins with the cockpit, which is a simple floor with a moulded-in centre console with decal, and two turrets that the seats plug into, with a crew member for each seat, although they have their hands by their sides so won’t be doing much controlling of their charge unless you plan on undertaking some surgery. The cockpit is enhanced with a pair of thick control columns, and in front of the crew is an instrument panel for which a new decal has been provided, with realistic-looking dials on a grey background that look rather nice. The bulkhead behind the crew has a door moulded-in, and the nose gear leg with twin wheels is fixed to the bottom of this, putting the assembly aside while you prepare the two fuselage halves with ten oval portholes on each side, even though there is no interior present in the passenger cabin. This was the norm back in the day though, so you can either paint the interior a black shade, or build yourself a simple floor and add some seats. To close the fuselage, you will need to create the rotor-head, which consists of top and bottom halves, with a dome added to the top, and a shaft/pin inserted into the hole underneath. This and the cockpit are trapped between the two fuselage halves, taking care not to allow the glue to seep into the socket for the rotor if you wish it to remain mobile later. Seam-filling will doubtless remove some of the raised rivets on the surface, so you may wish to toy with the idea of either removing them all, converting the model to recessed rivets, or picking up some suitably pitched printed 3D rivet decals to replace those lost in the seam-filling process. The same will be true for the other external surfaces, so take it as read that this will occur for those parts of the model. The Rotodyne’s wings are simple top and bottom halves, painting a small portion of the underside interior silver because it will show through a hole in the upper wing. These are put to one side while the tail is made, creating the horizontal section from two parts plus a single flying surface that can be left mobile by not gluing them in, then adding the upper portion of the fin in two halves, and the lower portion that has a separate rudder panel, building one for each side of the model, and plugging them into the sides of the fuselage along with the wings and the surprisingly clear canopy part at the front. The two engine nacelles are split vertically in half, and are equipped with a nose with intake, through which the prop’s axle slots, securing the four-bladed propeller in position. Intakes and exhausts are added to the sides, and the main gear legs are trapped between the two nacelle halves during closure, fixing a pair of wheels to the ends of the axles. Once complete, they are pinned to the underside of the wings, and the main gear bays are given three doors each, plus another three for the nose gear leg that is now projecting from the bay under the nose. One useful feature of the Rotodyne was the clamshell rear doors that made loading cargo an easy task. These are supplied as two curved sections with four-part hinges that let them open and close if you are careful with the glue. They are locked into position by a pair of C-shaped clamps that glue to the interior of the fuselage in the tail. The penultimate task is to build the rotors themselves, adding half of the tip motors to the ends, and plugging each blade root into the rotor-head, ensuring they are installed at the same angle of attack for accuracy’s sake. The forward access door in the port side of the nose is depicted in the open position, hinging up and down in two halves, with a stairway glued to the lower portion for easy access. Markings There was only one flying Rotodyne, and it wore a fetching white, blue and silver scheme, with Fairey Rotodyne written in large text over the lower silver areas on the sides. From the box you can build the following: Decals are by Cartograf, which is a guarantee of good registration, sharpness and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut close to the printed areas. Conclusion There is only one kit in this scale, and this is it. It’s an old kit, but it gets the basic shape, and despite some of the details being a little toy-like, a creditable replica can be made with a little effort. The inclusion of new decals will certainly help with that, as they are very crisply designed and printed, especially the instrument panels. Highly recommended for a vintage kit. Review sample courtesy of
  13. Supermarine Spitfire Mk.I/II Photo Archive Number 26 ISBN: 9781908757401 Wingleader Publications The Spitfire was the champion of the Battle of Britain along with the Hurricane and a few other less well-known players, and it’s an aircraft with an amazing reputation that started from the disappointing Supermarine Type 224. The gull-winged oddity was the grandfather of the Spitfire, and despite losing out to the biplane Gloster Gladiator, designer R J Mitchell was spurred on to go back to the drawing board and create a more modern, technologically advanced, and therefore risky design. This was the Type 300, and it was an all-metal construction with an incredibly thin elliptical wing that became legendary, although it didn’t leave much space for fuel, a situation that was further worsened by the Air Ministry’s insistence that four .303 machine guns were to be installed in each wing, rather than the three originally envisaged. It was a very well-sorted aircraft from the outset, so quickly entered service with the RAF in 1938 in small but growing numbers. With the clouds of war accumulating, the Ministry issued more orders, and it became a battle to build sufficient airframes to fulfil demand in time for the outbreak and early days of war from September 1939 onwards into the Battle of Britain. By the time war broke out, the restrictive straight sided canopy had been replaced by a “blown” hood to give the pilot more visibility, although a few with the old canopy still lingered. The title Mk.Ia was given retrospectively to differentiate between the cannon-winged Mk.Ib that was instigated after the .303s were found somewhat lacking compared to the 20mm cannon armament of their main opposition at the time, the Bf.109. As is usual in wartime, the designers could never rest on their laurels with an airframe like the Spitfire, as it had significant potential for development, a process that lasted throughout the whole of WWII, and included many changes to the Merlin engine, then the installation of the more powerful Griffon engine, as well as the removal of the spine of the fuselage and creation of a bubble canopy to improve the pilot’s situational awareness. Its immediate successor was the Mk.II with a new Mk.XII Merlin, followed by the Mk.V that had yet another more powerful Merlin fitted, which returned the fright of the earlier marks’ first encounters with Fw.190s by a similar increase in performance of an outwardly almost identical Spitfire. This twenty-sixth volume in the series returns to the early Spitfire, revisiting the Mk.I and then covering later Mk.IIs that the author didn’t have enough content to justify a full book to itself, whilst trying not to rehash old photos and information on the original Photo Archive that detailed the Mk.I from prototype to the Battle of Britain. As such, this has been designated a Special Edition that is a companion to the initial Photo Archive #1, which is still available and can be purchased here if you’ve not already got one. You may recognise the name of the author of this edition, as Richard Alexander is one of the people behind Kotare models, who have uncoincidentally recently released a spitfire kit in 1:32. The profiles have been penned by his colleague Ronny Bar, who is well-known in the hobby. Some of the photos are staged and are of official origins of course, but there are also a large number of candid shots, very few of which are in colour due to the era, and a small number are of battle-damaged aircraft with holes in their rear end for the most part, one upended on the airfield after a difficult landing and possibly over-zealous application of the brakes. There are also several photos of the pilots in and around their cockpits, some of whom didn’t make it through the war. This edition is also unusual because of its Reference Guide that fills the rear pages of the overall 72 leaves, helping the modeller navigate the minefield of subtle differences between the early Spitfire Mk.I and Mk.IIs, many of which are enlarged portions of photos that are accompanied by informative captions specific to the elements under discussion. A visually impressive book with plenty of reading material into the bargain that will have you coming back to it again and again. It will be of use whether you have #1 or not, although it will probably result in more sales of the earlier volume. There are a growing number of Spitfire volumes of various marks in the Photo Archive series, which will build into an invaluable reference for Spitfire modellers. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of
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