Pappy

G'day people, This is New Ware's 1/48 "Vostok 1" . On April 12th 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. The kit is mostly comprised of two largish resin components, the 'golf' ball and the lower base section. There are numerous resin additions for the wiring looms, rocket motors and antenna and electrical bits, all the external gadgetry that lives on the outside basically. There is also a large PE fret for the heat shields and several brackets onto which the aforementioned electrical goodies are mounted.\ The instructions are in English and provide logical and very well thought out construction sequence with colour notes along the way. I really enjoyed this kit and although a simple kit in theory, the numerous folding sequences for the heat shields and brackets and the resin parts mean that this is not a kit for the beginner. I apologise for the greenish hue, I really need to invest in some proper 'daylight' lamps! cheers, Pappy

G'day Rab, Have you thought about buying the Hasegawa 1/48 HAF(Greek) F-16D Block 50/52 kit? It includes a resin spine and the CFT's. It is a limited edition boxing so you will need to be quick, and it is more expen$ive than the usual boxing, but it does include all the bits. If you add up the cost of the aftermarket parabrake tail, CFT's and resin spine it actually works out a little cheaper to buy the Has kit. Oh, and if you do buy it and don't want the decals, I could always use them!! cheers, Pappy

G'day Andrew and Gary, Thanks very much, between the two of you that has pretty much answered all my questions! cheers, Pappy

G'day gang, I need some information concerning the CBLS, the practice bomb carrier used by the RAF. The information that I am after specifically concerns the attachment mechanism for the bomblets themselves. What I want to know is: What does the swaybrace/crutching mechanism look like? Are there any arming switches present? Where and how many safety pins are fitted ie one for the CBLS and individual bomblet flags? Does anyone have any good, clear shots of the underside of the CBLS? Finally, what is the firing sequence, for example if two of the four bomblets are dropped, what positions will be remaining ie front right,rear left for example? cheers, Pappy

G'day all, Sorry for the lack of progress pics, work is a little chaotic at the mo. I have finally finished off the jugs and given them a coat of primer. I bought some of Andy Brooks' turned metal IFR probe tips. These are miniature works of art and thoroughly recommended. I replaced the kit supplied tip with one of Andy's tips. The process was very easy, simply cut off the kit tip, drill a 1mm hole and insert the supplied tip, easy peasy! I also sprayed the gear bays a light grey colour. The collected wisdom seems to be that the gear bays are painted a silver/aluminium colour, however I dispute this as it seems that most of the pictures that I have found indicate that the gear bays are actually painted a light grey, whilst the gear bay doors and undercarriage units are painted a silver colour. Perhaps there are variations of both colours? I have nearly completed the fins. I have scribed some missing panels and added some rivet lines. I will be replacing the fin antennas with new items and I still need to add the RWT antennas for the M2000D. Unfortunately, the camera seems to be playing up so pictures will have to wait, cheers, Pappy

G'day Graham, You have really captured the look of the thing, I really like the nice soft edge that you have applied as well. What colours did you use?, they look spot on. Lastly, are these the kit decals, mine are out of register, cheers, Pappy

G'day Gary, The pilot was from the spares box, all the ordnance came from the kit. As I said earler, I built the IVM from the Heller boxing. I had a look in my Airfix IVP kit and it provides a belly tank and a recce pod for the centreline but no ordnance. I also have an Airfix SuE (Super Etendard) and annoyingly, it only provides a single wing drop tank, which is fine if you want to load an Excocet, but for everyone else no so good. If anyone has a spare drop tank they don't want I would gladly take it off their hands! cheers, Pappy

G'day Graham, The tailplane is a nuisance, most people don't bother. The buddy pod and matra's are included in the IVM kit. My IVM was a Heller boxing, and I have the airfix IVP in the stash, thougn it has been a while since I peeked in the box. I think I squirrelled away an Extra Tech PE set in there as well. cheers, Pappy Go on, you know you want to..... Pappy Thanks Tony Sounds a little like me! Thanks very much Mish, cheers, pappy

G'day all, Here is my Heller 1/48 Etendard IVM that I built a few years back. The kit went together easily enough but there a re a few pitfalls for the unwary. The first area is the tailplane. The Etendard features an all moving type with separate elevator portions. To eliminate the dreaded trailing edge seam and depict a the trailing edge section, Heller moulded the elevtor portion integral with one half. The fit of the two tailplane halves is atrocious however abd will require some filler and possibly a re-scribing. Additionally, this tailplane droops when hydraulics are removed. The tailplane has "scuff plates" that move with the tailplane. If the modeller chooses to depict any other position, these will need to be sanded off the fin and new items scratch built. This is what I did. The cockpit is quite bland and the only details provided are the decals. Mine were slightly out of register. The ejection seat would provide a base for the detailers, or better yet replaced with a resin item (there are plenty to choose from), but instead I opted to install a pilot. I also cut open the auxiliary inlet doors (above the main air inlets) and added new doors in the slightly open position to add interest. I hindsight, I probably could have left the tail plane alone since the engine is running, but I will say that the pilot is doing that! The second pitfall concerns the wing tips. heller have thoughtfully moulded the wingtips separately to depict the folded wings typically seen on a carrier. If the builder wants to show the wind tips unfolded, there is a noticeable difference in thickness between the main wing and win tip sections, which will result in a step. It is not huge, but enough to be noticeable. I chickened out (you could say I 'folded', sorry couldn't resist!) and depicted the wings in the stowed state. The kit provides some basic stores, and I couldn't resist The buddy re-fueling pod. I painted the kit with Gunze Sanyo paints. I decided to use Carpena decals since the kit decals were out of register. The Carpena decals performed flawlessy and didn't even require decal setting solutions to settle into panels lines and conform to the curves - result! I hope you like it, cheers, Pappy

Thanks Peri, What would you like pictures of specifically? I apologise for the crappy pics, I am definitely no photographer! cheers, Pappy

G'day Greg, The pics are on the French air wings site, I don't want to post them here so as not to infringe copyright etc, cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I apologise for the lack of updates, work has been a little busy of late. I have managed a little progress in the meantime, Hopefully normal programming will resume shortly. In the meantime, here is what I have been able to do. I have re-visited the ASMP (nuclear missile) that will be fitted to the M2000N. During my research I came across some more pictures that showed some additional details. One of the most important of these details is that the ASMP requires and additional fin mounted on top of the rear upper section, between the two existing fins. I made a new fin using some plastic card and added it to the missile after I had painted it. I also discovered that the rear of the missile is open and that some additional details are evident. This was trickier to correct as I had already painted the missile and added the delicate fins. I carefully made a pilot hole with a pin vise and slowly enlarged this with progressively larger drill bits. A circular end cap was fashioned and the details added using scrap plastic and a punch set. I next turned my attention to the inerte Matra Magic 550 round. The dummy round was painted up. I used some Gunze 308 (FS36375) for the body and a silver shade for the seeker head. The glass nose was simulated with white paint as the item is opaque in real life. A strip of blue decal was added to complete the missile and the missile was then sealed. It is a pity that the kit decals do not include stencils for the missiles, they would really finish off the missiles nicely. Well, that is all for now, cheers, Pappy

G'day DD, I may have built a kit or two before.... cheers, Pappy

G'day people, I am looking for a scan of the Flightpath instruction sheets for their 1/48 Lancaster detail set. I am not sure if i want to buy the Eduard "Big Ed" set or the Flightpath set for the 1/48 Tamiya Lancaster, and there are no pics on the Flightpath site, cheers, Pappy

Tres, tre bon! Very pretty, cheers, Pappy

In my opinion this sort of "quality" thread really demonstrates the advantages of web forums over the print magazines and modelling guides- The builder can take his time explaining his technique and using lots of photographs illustrate particular points during a build and share any tips or tricks, all of this over a reasonable timescale with no print deadlines to meet. The interactive nature of the forum by its very nature allows for the reader to pose questions or add their own snippets of information/ reference material and experience from previous builds and this means that the thread grows as a resource for all. G'day Troffa!, I totally agree. There will always be a place for printed media, but my purchases of modelling mags has gone down dramatically with the advent of the 'net and modelling sites such as this one. As you rightly point out, the immediate nature of the medium means that information can be passed quickly and in large amounts without the need to justify print space and the requirement balance articles with ads. In Oz for example, most of the overseas mags fetch about $15Aus (about 8 GBP) which I find hard to justify, especially when 1/3 of the mag is ads and two months out of date to boot! The money I save on mags I can now spend on stuff I read about on the net, win-win (for me anyway) The various on-line 'what's new' pages serve to inform me of the latest products in a more timely fashion anyway. I am not attacking the periodicals, as I will buy them if they have enough content that appeals, it just usually isn't the case. Another advantage is the opportunity to actually talk to a builder and get more information about a particular technique involved or aspect of their build. The encouragement also helps to motivate through boring bits as well, cheers, Pappy

G'day all, I have spent most of today working on the external fuel tanks. I have filled in the engraved panels lines. During my research, it turns out that these engraved panel lines are actually very fine weld beads. Ironically, this is one time I would have welcomed raised detail. I then went about adding sections of stretched sprue to simulate the weld beads. The kit jugs have a recess on the left nose section that is missing a round object. I don't think it is a filler cap, perhaps a fuel vent? In any case this item was replicated using discs of lead foil. I also added the missing fuel filler caps on the upper nose and the one that is about mid length on the upper left. The final bit of detail added were the fin attachment brackets . I used some lead foil strips. I didn't realise just how much effort that would be and I only managed to finish the one tank. I am not sure if I want to do this three more times and I am thinking of casting the modified item. Meanwhile I returned the fuselage. I have added the large nose gear door. It didn't match the fuselage cross section perfectly so I had to blend the edges in with filler and re-scribe the door outline. Lastly, one final tweak. The vertical end piece of the "Chamelion" jammer (immediately above the engine exhaust) is depicted as a vertical rectangular item. The real item slopes foward, being narrower at its top. This was easy to correct, simply a couple of passes with a file. cheers, Pappy

G'day Gary, Thanks for the encouragement. I really enjoyed your Jag build. I think the decision to build the D/N simultaneously was the right one. I don't think I could back up and do another one for a long time after finishing one. There is nothing seriously wrong with the kit, it just has lots of little issues that take time to correct. I have also made more work for myself by dropping the slats. I have got the first part out of the way, now I just need to figure out how to make the slats. I may be able to salvage the kit items yet. I just wish I had removed them before gluing the wings together. I have also trial fitted the canopies and the middle section is too wide by about 1mm. I may have to remove the blast screen portion at the front so that the middle section can 'flex' a little. cheers, Pappy

G'day people, Today's update. First up, the Mirage 2000N. I have decided that the M2000N will be loaded out with a practice Magic 550 round. These rounds look different to the live rounds in that the forward fins are not fitted (it is not like they are going to fly) and the rear fins are smaller. I scribed new bands on the fuselage and seeker head and added the joining bands using bare metal foil. The fins were added from plastic card. Next I made a little more progress on the M2000D. I had glued layers of plastic card into the wing leading edge recess ( a result of the slat removal) and built these up until they were level with the wing upper surface. I decided to use the plastic card because I thought it would be less messy than say Milliput. Once the plastic laminations had dried overnight, I sanded in the leading edge profile, beginning with a very coarse file and progressing to finer files and eventually finishing off with some sanding sticks. To finish up today, I have started the tails. The M2000D requires the addition of two ECM antennas. The M2000N does not have these (well the one I want to didn't in the pics I have), but both will need to have the forward RWR antenna beefed up as it is too narrow at the front. There appears to be some additional layer scabbed on in the pics I have seen. I have also removed the fin antenna base as the one on the right side interferes with filling the seam below it. I will be making new fin antennas using the kit parts as a template. cheers and thanks for looking, Pappy

G'day Bpb! Thanks for that. I hit a snag with the Lynx. I wasn't happy with my engine exhausts. Initially I just glues in the thinned down kit exhausts. When I was looking at the reference pics, I noticed that the engine cowls are more complex in this area than the way Airfix have depicted them. The cowls actually have a concave curve that matches the aperture very closely, tahter than just an oversize opening with the cowls curving away from the exhausts. Once the ARC group build ended, I sort of lost motivataion, but I will re-visit the kit one day. Once that little issue is sorted, progress should be quite rapid, cheers, Pappy

No problems Phil, I am glad to help. Anything that helps people build more Mirage 2000's is a good thing, cheers, Pappy

G'day Mish & M/Madness, thanks again for the kind words, Pappy