goggsy

What about glueing some fine grade sandpaper to the plastic with PVA?

Superb work, real art.

Great work - having just done a couple of similar builds I can see how much effort has gone into this. Well done for your attention to the interior as well; that was just a step too far for me I’m afraid.

Trust me, if you have a display space problem now then building one of these won’t make life any easier!

Thanks for that Martin, those are great photos - wish I’d seen this in the flesh! I’ll have a look at the stash and see if I can find the original sheet - looking back at the Airdecal sheet online it seems that they were included so for some unknown reason I’ve just not put them on. *slaps back of head*

Am I right in thinking they stopped doing that around about the time that the hi vis rounders were toned down and we had pretty much withdrawn from east of Suez? I get the impression that they lumbered on in the desert scheme for a few years after but I assume that was for reasons of economy rather that tactics?

People may have seen this model parked on top of my recent A400M but I realised that I hadn’t given it a proper outing here before. The kit the is Italeri 1/72, decent enough in shape in my uneducated opinion but with all the flaws of an old tooling in regard to fit, raised panel lines etc. In my view it’s hard to fathom why no manufacturer has come up with an up to date tooling of what is arguably the most important transport aircraft of the twentieth century, or the second half of it at least. I’m mean, I can understand why we don’t have a brand new Spartan Cruiser every few years but the Herc?! Come on! Anyway, rant aside there was a fair bit of work went into this and I’m reasonably pleased with the result. The panel lines were all rescribed and the ghastly transparencies at the front were replaced by bits of cd case. It got the full works on the NMF, ie multiple layers of black primer cut back to mirror finish and then a patchwork of different AK Interactive Metal and Alclad. For reasons I can’t fully explain I ended up riveting the whole damn thing, which probably isn’t all that realistic although I have seen photos of NMF Hercs in heavy use that appeared most weathered at the rivets so it sort of works for me. Decals were aftermarket, can’t remember the brand but they came from Hannants and behaved themselves well. I kept weathering to the moving parts mostly like flaps etc but I wasn’t too sparing as I imagine an aircraft in the Canadian Arctic probably had quite a hard life. On the shoulders of giants:

Fair point about the code, looking back at references of C130s in that scheme I can see what you mean. Not sure how I missed that as obviously I was using the original tan & brown Herc as a template for this scheme but there we are, live and learn. The C17 is a nice idea, might be one to consider in the future - after, of course, I work out where I can put it! I think this A400 is going to end up dangling from some fine wire off my ceiling as I just don’t have the apron space to put it on land.

Phenomenal work.

I did contemplate doing a Canadian silver/white/red zig zag scheme to match the Herc but the amount of silver I’d have to do was the deal breaker on that.

Thanks, I think it stands out more with the Herc than the Dakota in some ways. Proportionally speaking the wing area isn’t all that different between the C130 and the A400 but the fuselage is much bigger, which makes me think that it must have quite high wing loading for such a big plane. In terms of length and wingspan the A400 isn’t that much smaller that the B52 but the fuselage is probably 4 x the diameter.

I haven’t posted a build for a while and have resolved to do more in 2019 so here goes.... This is my take on Revell’s huge A400m in 1/72 scale. I don’t find grey aircraft all that interesting so I thought I’d exercise my imagination and use a scheme that it might look good in. The kit is 100% out of the box apart from decals, few of which were appropriate for this scheme. I did have half a mind to present it as an RAF100 throwback scheme with the red tail flash but it never quite happened, so it’s more a retro throwback to one of the most interesting RAF airlifter schemes. Oddly enough I managed to bamboozle a friend of mine into thinking it was a C130 just because of the scheme - although usually quite observant about aircraft he couldn’t see past the colours. The model was finished with Tamiya acrylics and weathered with a bit of Flory wash and oil paint dots. Some weathering was applied but I tried to keep it workaday rather than grotty. The decals are from various xtradecal sheets plus some others I had in the stash. It’s a cobble together really but passes brief inspection in my view. Bonus marks if you can spot where the nude woman on the nose came from. I used a bit of Bare Metal Foil on the air intakes and also the flue for the wood burning stove (or whatever that thing on top of the fuselage is). It won’t have escaped anyone’s notice that the A400 is a big plane; to give a sense of this I plopped a couple of transports from earlier generations on the back of it. Cheers Liam

Very interesting thanks. They’ve got a funny idea of what “complete” means, but at least this one won’t end up looking like it needs a banger shoved into it and thrown out of some kid’s bedroom window.

Indeed. Beautiful work.

That’s superb, the weathering is spot on in my opinion.