cduckworth

Mike thanks for the additional clarification on the early colors used on the Valentine tanks. I have both your book (and articles) on the Caunter schemes and the illustration in Dick Taylor's Valentine book showing the Caunter scheme applied to the top and side views. I have the Tamiya Valentine ready to paint and currently building the AFV kit. The Tamiya will get the three colors and the AFV will be named Rosemary in the Light Stone color. Charlie

Jack Thanks for the references - I might steer clear of 'Black Knight' and go with a photo with clearer information on the camouflage scheme. Reading the thread you posted from Network54 there's quite an opinion on the two color vs three Caulder scheme. Charlie

Jack Your two photos certainly look to be in North Africa due to the lack of hills and trees. I think their months are in error. Thanks for posting both. Charlie

Jack Thanks for the information this helps quite a lot in sorting out the different schemes. Charlie

Am wanting to finish a Tamiya Valentine as in the photo below named 'Black Knight' in North Africa. Photo was taken in late 1941 or early 1942. Believe Light Stone would be correct for this time period but the dark sand shields are throwing me off as to how this tank was painted. I can see the white/red/white markings on the front of the hull and turret used during Operation Crusader. Any thoughts/comments/educated guesses on the camouflage? Thanks, Charlie

btw I did manage to toss the pilot's and gunner's seats into the kitchen trash when I was cleaning up the decals scraps. Not a big loss as the pilot seat really didn't resemble to Gotha seat anyway.

Five color loz going on; the white areas are where the engines sit and photos show this area to be a non-fabric surface so will decal these two areas a gray. Still have the bottom to decal, the the numerous rib tapes but its getting there.

Beautiful Build. I agree what's next?

Wings sprayed with Tamiya Fine Primer, tomorrow will get a coat of Future and once it's dry will start on the 5 color loz decals.

Adrian The build is 1/48 scale; the Roden kits are 1/72...which I don't think my 65 year old eyes could handle.

Some updates tonight: - engines are in the cowlings; I added a strip of Evergreen HO 4" x 6" to the bottom of each engine. Raising them up looked more like the prototype photos and I was able to run a piece of brass rod from the cowlings straight into the front of the engine. Before doing this the rod completely missed hit where the propeller shaft would have been. Also added the pipe that ran to the back of the engine. Exhaust and the two lower large pipes were drilled out. An advantage to raising the height of the engines is the top struts should now clear from the cowlings to the bottom of the top wings. The two builds of this model I've seen on the web have the struts fitted behind the exhaust because the engine sits too low if you don't make this change. Tail feathers are now on; the locations point on the rear fuselage for the horizontal stabliizers were too low so I drilled new holes making the stabilizers flush with the top of the sides. You have to wonder if anyone built the preproduction kit at AZ Models as these errors should have been caught. The PE rigging parts was first glued with canopy glue so I could move them in place and once dry acc'd in the front for additional strength. I did use a little Tamiya putty on each one to try and better blend the PE part into the fuselage sides. I think AZ Models would have had a better design if they'd made these with two pins you could insert into holes vs the design they went with... Am looking at photos of the G.V in the Datafile and I see on one shot a shiny surface below the engine. I have to think this was sheet metal to protect the wings during maintenance and oil, etc dripping from the engine. So decided to paint this area the same color as the cowlings. The other areas where the metal strips are will get daylight loz. I'm finally getting close to where I can paint the fuselage light blue.

Ran into another issue where the location holes are in the wrong spot. Was attaching the horizontal stabilizers this evening and they were not flush with the top of the fuselage. Looked over the few photos in the Datafile of the tail section and the model was wrong. I ended up re drilling the holes slightly higher and they are now both even with the top edge. To quote Charlie Brown. "Good Grief"....

I'm using the Wingnuts Gotha builds on the web and instructions to help add some missing details to the AZ Models interior. Here's three oxygen bottles I made today; while not exact (I used cut off cylinders from a plastic rotary engine for the base) its at least fills a void. Still need to paint the tube and bags. #58 I believe but you might go smaller.

I honestly don't know how one would built this kit without the Datafile GA drawings near your work bench. All of the strut placement holes in the upper wing had to be redrilled (setting the rear one back) so they were in the same distance as the holes in the lower wing. I matched the spacing in the DF and the lower wing's matched the GA. The location holes for the cabane struts from the fuselage were missing and again the GA drawing helped with their locations. Wings are puttied and glue set up so waiting for the daylight loz to land in my mailbox. Back to researching and detailing the cockpits and other crew positions. The rear hole is the correct location.

The span of the wings was too large for the Datafile GA drawings so to ensure to bottom wings were inlign with the top wing I ran a pencil along the leading edge and used this as a point of reference in gluing the bottom wings. Not surprising the bottom wings, if butted up against the smaller wing supports, would have had the wrong angles. Once I felt the bottom wings matched I used gap filling acc to hold them in place. I just got the plywood bi-plane jig this week and will have a little learning curve on getting it right to hold the wings in place for gluing the struts. No hurry as there's lots of details to add in the gunners and pilots areas.