Peter Lloyd

It's funny how these kits don't impress when you open the box (and for the price we don't expect much), but it is a great kit to build. There's a bit of controversy about the 'blues': I made this exact model about a year ago and it ended up very blue because I got carried away. I can't wait to see your interpretation.

Me too mate, pushing on and optimistic! I seem to have NOT taken photos of the wheel wells: these were boxed in with Evergreen styrene, but not much detail was put in. The bulkheads went on the wing lower halves. This photo shows the wing top halves, wuth turbocharger trunking made from pieces of sprue ground with a Dremel. I couldn't see much point in putting more work into this, but the scope is there to add more for those who want more detail. The wings joined up, I followed internet advice and added shims to flatten out the dihedral. . . the rough texture is where they were ground down to taper. In this photo you can see the little window nearest the camera- sorry for the poor photo- is not flush with the fuselage surface. I am debating whether to knock it in and try to refit it, but there is stuff in the way. FAIL! I tore the wings back off and removed the shims. I then glued the wings back on, pressing the lower joints tight and letting the upper joints form a slight gap. This gap was filled with superglue, Tamiya putty, and smoothed with Mr Levelling Thinner. This gives dihedral that looks pretty good to me. The fuselage joins were brushed with Mr Surfacer 1000, but Academy's model fits almost perfectly, like most Academy kits. The horizontal stabilisers are on, the seams have been re-scribed and re-riveted. I am hoping to soon get the transparencies on, then it's masking and primer.

He did and he's one of my favourite airmen. I intend to build the Copper State Nieuport which has his machine as a decal option (kit acquired!). If you did his SE5a it would be perfect (IIRC he was the first CO of 74 Squardon, which went on to have an illustrious history in the RAF).

Count me very very much in.

Weary and sad that my preferred SE5a STGB will never, ever happen... I will add my name to this one. Hasegawa 24J arrived a few months ago.

Will I meet the deadline? Probably not, but we will do our best. I roughed out an interior based on photos on Jeff's site linked above. The -C interior was quite different from subsequent B-17s. Beware of photos of the prototype which are also different. Despite all this, I am not surew whether the four seats in the flight cabin are correct. Overall, I'm just giving something to be seen through the windows that is a bit better than pure fantasy. There are 'in progress' photos taken before final weathering and detail painting. That lets me close the fuselage up. It is remarkable that with the Academy kit, apart from the big pieces there is so little to it. Once the fuselage halves and wing halves are together, it's almost done. The Academy instructions are useless for placing the transparencies, I just went by trial and error. The fuselage goes together well. I cemented it in stages over two days. Note the grey clamps: they are medical nose clamps. I bought them directly from the clinic while having respiratory tests done. Expensive but so so worth it, best clamps ever.

Airfix kits can be very prone to parts breaking when cutting from the sprue, I think a combination of thick gates and the strange plastic they use. May I ask how you got the wing decal to settle over the upper wing? Always a challenging part of a Skyhawk build.

Superb. Great inspiration and a high benchmark indeed. The Fort looks the part in that scheme.

Just a little progress, I decided to rivet the beast. I have the Trumpeter rivet tool, it's not ideal as the wheel is very 'draggy', and it is a large diameter making it hard to get into corners (such as around the nacelle here). This can of course be filled in with a pointed tool but I have ordered a different tool, also one with a finer wheel (more rivets per cm) which I think will be more accurate and I hope easier to keep on a straight line. This is the limit of what my eyeballs can do. I was driven a bit batty trying to work out the nacelles: they are very different on this kit compared to the various F/G models, more cylindrical and less tapered. Quickboost make a set to 'correct' the kit but these seem to be castings of the same nacelles with a bigger opening, but come with the problem of no undercut behind the lip, or leading edge of the cowl. This is far from the first time I have found a Quickboost product to be superfluous, even if some of their stuff is very helpful. It took me a surprisingly long time to work out Fotresses had different cowls depending on the propeller type, with Academy being more or less correct in shape for the early versions (even giving you the choice of cowl flaps absent or present, as some very early Cs did not have them fitted ex-factory). For my model, all the post December 7th C/D models had cowl flaps fitted, and they came pre-fitted to spare engines so as these were replaced all B-17s would have had flaps added but not necessarily had the cowls themselves changed. Some of the HAD scheme B-17s had long and tough service lives, flying long missions in the Pacific and being kept in pretty basic facilities. I will have to decided how old and beaten up I want my model to be: I'd love to keep the tail stripes but they did not last long... so should I paint the rudder in a plain dark colour and have a grand time discolouring the weathering the model, or keep it clean(er) and proudly display those tail feathers?

Why do the Norwegians paint bar codes on the side of their battleships? So when they return to port, they can Scandanavian.

Enzo, is there any way to change the way the fuselage is built up so you don't discover the alignment problems after it is too late?

Mate, I'm in. I'm in just because I'm so much against the prospect of a(nother) Mustang STGB. Is that the best we can do? (Sorry to speak ill of others' proposals- and as a mnor-of-a-plane-guy, there is a reasonable chance I'd participate in it!). I have built the AFV Club M3A3, beautiful model, great little sports car of a tank, still has the aeroplane engine. I probably won't have the time and patience to build another 1/35 Stuart, hmmm, but a turretless recce is interesting: most seem to have had their turrets removed after Normandy for improved sneaking and crew visibility. Also, I have the S-model 1/72 M3A3 kit, it's pretty cool and if you can get past solid tracks the detail is actually amazing. I'd love to build the Matchbox 1/76 Honey for nostalgia, but they're pretty unobtainable now.

I have the Dragon Firefly in half-built state. The tracks are do-able, I built sections to make, in effect, link-and-length sections. They are time consuming, of course, but careful cutting allows you to avoid most clean-up unless you are really picky. From memory there were faint knockout pin marks on the inside of the pads. The problem is the sprocket wheel rides too high, leaving limited clearance between the mudguard and top of the sprocket. Cutting and lowering the sprocket shaft will get you the clearance, but it distorts the look of the suspension. The AFV Club tracks are NOT long enough to do an M4A4/Sherman V, despite the labelling. Whatever tracks you use you will have to face this. Please note I last looked at this model in 2016, this is my best recollection. The kit is not junk but I would probably go with another manufacturer knowing what I do: did Tasca do one?

If I might gatecrash yet another GB party. . . . . . normally I'm a bit underwhelmed by STGBs covering well trodden ground (do we really need another P-51 GB next year?). But I need a bit of extra motivation to see through a big bomber, and the B-17 offers many options and larger aircraft are just rarer to see, no?. So with enough time left to finish, I will use the format to keep me motivated to complete a project I've had in mind for a long time. I acquired this kit in a bag (along with a B-29) from Hobby HQ in Melbourne, and I've probably had them in the stash around eight years. I never know if Hobby HQ still exists until I visit it: it's a warehouse out in the industrial area and in recent years is only open Saturday mornings. William runs/ran the business by mail order but it's a one-man show and his website is not the best. But every trip to the 'north island' I would come home with arm-fulls of kits. His offering is large and always heavy with hard-to-get items, at very sharp prices. Well trodden ground, maybe not necessary for me to post these shots. I see a lot of negativity about Academy's B-17s and certainly there are issues, but it seems to me they are all pretty easy to correct. I will be ordering some aftermarket. . . I'm starting this project on a whim so I will have to get those on the way. I am keen to do a B-17 in the Hawaiian Air Depot scheme. This was an expedient scheme applied to some bombers after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Looking through by decals, I realised I have three different aftermarket sets offing these markings. The B-17E in HAD is offered by both Starfighter and Blackbird as decal sets, and by Kora who will sell you a Bendix ventral turret correct for the earlt Forts, but I will be using another Starfighter sheet which offers a range of early Pacific war 'shark fin' B-17s, one in the HAD camouflage. The sheet gives me the extra roundels and in general allows me to avoid the biggest concern with any Academy kits: temperamental decals. My approach will be my usual: not seeking a show-stopper (a level probably well beyond me anyway), but just improve the more obvious issues without letting the project get out of hand (200+ other kits in the stash and I'm 52). There are many articles on the HAD scheme online, I will be taking heavy inspiration from Jeff Groves who has well and truly blazed the trail, paved it, put up road signs and established motels and restaurants along the path.

Having wrestled the original Valom kit into a sort of submission, I concur with all your advice. I suppose those AZ bits are pretty unobtainable now, though.

My father flew in bombers in WW2 and had a long career postwar as an air traffic controller. He left the service when I was a small child. I remember as a young teenager I arrived home just as a visitor was leaving. He was an ex-Spitfire pilot, just a neighbour with that common ex-RAAF background, dropped in for a chat with my dad. I asked my father why I'd never seen him before, why they didn't spend time together. He came close and said to me quietly: "Peter, you've got to realise something about these fighter pilots: they're usually not very smart".

Back in my day, it was 30 minutes watching the instructor, a few circuits in the Henri Farman Longhorn, then straight out to France to take on the Red Baron in a Be2c !

I buy quite a few second hand kits, and in general I try to buy the earliest boxing as the moulds are often sharper, albeit the decals could well be useless and it is more likely parts will be broken. But it occurs to me that Hasegawa and others still sell copies of their most ancient models, and these have seemingly been in near-continuous production since the 60s or 70s... and the kits are still very sharp and clean. On the other hand, some others seem to really show their age (Revell P-47 and Corsair, and they're not that old... Airfix classics, Fujimi...). Is this because the moulds were made of better steel in the first place? They are re-cut and maintained? What's going on here?

I did not add for brevity but, yes, I also threw away my Triplane for the same reasons. I don't think I'm terrible at models, even biplanes, but I never got anywhere near success with the Triplane. Even if I could get the struts attached and parallel and the correct length (after various cuts and improvisations), the wings themselves were not parallel, the top wing angling down. Just for balance I have had some really nice experiences with these kits, and that is my normal expectation of AZ. And yes, given what a pleasure it is to use the decals of AZ/KP's arch enemy Eduard, it is a shame. And where can one buy aftermarket decals for many of their subjects, anyway? While I am complaining, so many aftermarket decal sets now are 10 versions on one aeroplane. I much prefer sets that cover various aircraft on a theme, but these sets are becoming a minority. Perhaps we need to get active trading our unneeded extra decal subjects?

I don't have that particular kit but I have recently built two other KP kits (Sopwith Triplane and Spitfire Ib) and the decals are still pretty bad. Similar to Roden. Mine were in register (I think this can vary between kits) but the colours are poor and the material itself does not soften and it ignores setting solutions. They will work okay over a very high gloss surface, but almost any alternative is better. I wish to add that I otherwise love KP/AZ kits, it would be nice if they sources their decals elsewhere. It's 2023, no need for rubbish decals to exist any more.

What a great choice, such an important tank but not that often seen in model form. Someone must like them, I have been trying to find a 1/35 Mark IX that was kitted a few years ago by Bronco, but none around (some kit runs are very short these days). Have you decided on a scheme? Gazala was such an awful battle for British arms: lost a strong position, Tobruk captured in embarrassing circumstances, it soon cost General Aukinlek his job (though ironically not really Ritchie who was primarily responsible), it really sealed Rommel's legendary reputation. On the other hand, it convinced the Germans not to invade Malta which was certainly a blessing. As for the Valentine, it was one of the few Lend-Lease tanks the Red Army liked.

Cheers for your chocie Ian. Old kits like this can be delightful or a waste of time, a build log like this helps greatly in working out where they stand. Of course, many of us built these in the distant past, but memories of model quality impressed on a ten year old's brain cannot be relied on forty+ years later!

Peter's 1/72 scale Esci Panther Ausf A.

I had a project I had to complete, but I'm back on the Cat. Back in the early 70s, every kid smoked. Only in this photo do I notice Esci suggest a Marlboro. I lacked patience and snapped the second cable. Obviously, using wire or nylon twine would have been better. But frankly, I was looking to the end. I decided to make a little diorama thing, using what was lying around in the shed. A timber offcut, some cork floor tile, general purpose putty, and gravel and dirt from the garden. I didn't really complete the diorama, it needs some grass and what not, it just got painted and a bit of tree root stuck in. The final result in in the Gallery. The best Panther at the moment is the Vespid Models offering. Ironically, these old kits cost so much second hand from shops (I don't have model shows or swap meets in my part of the world), one might as well buy the latest kit. Although I'm happy with the result, I think paying a premium for nostaligia is a bit wrong, especially as I'm sure many vendors are mostly re-selling deceased estate stashes bought for nothing. Well, nobody MADE me buy it, did they!? A big thanks to the mods and to all who looked. Thanks you all so much for looking, and to the mods.

Great information there Richard. I have not done it myself but two methods I have seen used are: 1. To thin out the plastic from behind with a Dremel grinder attachment, being careful and holding the part up to the light to not break through, then punch holes with a knife or sharpish tool. 2. To paint on decal masking fluid, and pick up the edges with a hobby knife to get a peeling effect. From memory, Shep Paine used the first technique on his legendary 'Lady Be Good' diorama (sorry by copy of his book is in storage).