Will Vale

Thanks, I may end up demonstrating "what not to do" though - we'll see I must confess this was almost a build of the G but it sold out while I was making my mind up... I assume that there was some inventory clearance going on given that Trumpeter are supposed to be releasing a new 1/32 Stuka very soon? Will

That's not just large, it's colossal! It looks very attractive in the all-together shot, I had no idea that resin could be used to make something this big. Will

Hi all, I just started this last week or the week before, and joined up this week. I haven't done much yet so it should be safely under the 25% mark. My first big plane, I really hope I finish it and don't panic at the scary painting bit. Please excuse all the pics, this is a bit of a catch-up with where things are. If you should want to see all the glue stains and scratches and mess you can click on the pictures to see the large originals on Flickr It's the Hasegawa kit, I think I was probably drawn in by the box art but it's a plane I've always rather liked, and it was on sale recently so... The box is pretty full of sprues, but the sprues aren't excessively full of tiny parts, so it looks approachable. I did cut the major airframe bits away from the sprues and tape them together, establishing that yes, it's quite big: I looked at a very nice build (by an armour modeller) on another site and was inspired to use the Eduard etches as well. I wanted the masks, interior and seatbelts, at which point the Big Ed set works out cheaper and you get the exterior etches included as well. It'll be my first etch on a plane although I've done a bit on a tank and a ship before. I also have a metal pitot tube and some hollow resin exhausts to add which I forgot to photograph. For reference I'm using the Aero Detail book, which is great. Take that with a pinch of salt though - I'm not going to be re-shaping the airframe or doing anything complicated - it looks Stuka-ey enough to me. It is good for details though, and filling in places where the Eduard instructions are a bit vague. So that's what there is, and this is what I've done so far - scrape file various bits of moulded detail off the cockpit sidewalls and floor, and fold up brass etch and stick it on. The folding has generally gone better than expected - some bits were fiddly but I bought a pair of duck-bill pliers and some Tamiya etch scissors which make things approachable. I think the Eduard fold lines are very good - even when there's only space to partially fold the part in the pliers, it's not been too hard to complete the fold with my fingers and have it stay straight. The Tamiya gel superglue is also really helpful since it generally stays where it's put. Doing the bomb sight window/tunnel was the hardest bit so far. I've generally built the boxes up around styrene strip to provide a gluing surface and a bit of stability at the corners. To date the only bit that has been eaten by the carpet is the tiny carrying strap for the battery, I'm sure that will change though! I also did a little of scratch detailing by adding some wire runs and an oxygen hose since they are prominent in the real thing. The wires are a massive oversimplification but they go in vaguely the right directions and hopefully help make the cockpit look busier. Eduard supply a very thin etched pilot's seat, but I thought it was too square and decided to scrape down the kit seat instead to take the rolled edges from something like 1mm to a bit under 0.5mm. I'm currently trying to decide if it's worth using the etched legs - they would be very fragile and I think they may be entirely invisible when the cockpit comes together. The last thing I've done is make a new seat cushion out of putty and prime the cockpit, I'm waiting for my local shop to re-stock TS-4 paint and then I can paint it and start applying the printed etch parts. Thanks for following thus far - a bit of an epic post but it was catching up on previous doings. I'm sure progress will slow right down now... Will

Looks terrific, particularly the drilled out flooding holes which must've been a labour of love. How did you make the insulators? Will

Looks great, especially with those eye-catching red and white markings to lift the tan and grey.

Hi all, Just joined up so I thought I should post something that I've been working on over the last month or so. This was supposed to be a quick cheap excursion from what I'm supposed to be working on (Trumpeter's Admiral Chabanenko) but it seems to have acquired a life of its own. I bought the kit after seeing a very nice build of the Tamiya Dragon Wagon in Military Modelcraft International - my daughter is really keen on dragons and somehow it sparked her imagination, and thus mine. Despite total lack of dragons! The Academy kit is obviously not as fancy or as detailed as its big brother but it's been fun to build and seems to capture the real thing quite well. I have some doubts about the track of the drive wheels (too wide?) but I don't have plans to compare to so I'm not letting that worry me unduly. It's built from the box with a tiny bit of added detail, and painted with Tamiya Nato Green from a spraycan over a black undercoat. Mainly because I bought the wrong can back from the shop... I spent a lot of time working Olive Drab and other warm colours into the green to try and correct the colour and add interest, and all the washes and things have been at the brown end of the scale. I'm currently attempting to weather it - it's the first time I've tried this with something that isn't railway-related and I'm finding it a bit hard since I can't just go and look at high-res colour prototype photos! Still fun though... I also made a wee fire extinguisher for the cab, and some glass for the front windows. Excuse the crazy cables, they're going to be important in the diorama but at the moment they're just getting in the way. I wanted something to put with it so I bought a Dragon (dragons again) Sherman cheaply from Hong Kong. That was a bit of an eye-opener as to how far 1/72 modelling has come since I last stuck a tiny tank together in my youth. Lovely surface detail, seriously tiny parts, and even etched brass for the track guards and stowage rack at the back. This has the same basic paint as the DW and is awaiting some detail painting and richer colours. The idea for the diorama is to show a recovery in progress, with cables being run out to the stranded tank. I'm thinking of setting it in the Ardennes with the Sherman in whitewash but I'm nervous of capturing the snowy look well. I'm also a bit unsure how the dark green and bright white would look together - it might be too harsh? It's a bit hard to make out from the picture, but I thought about having a tree-line diagonally across the rear corner with a ditch in front of it, and the DW having reversed off the road into a field to get close enough for recovery. Any comments and suggestions very welcome! I'm hoping to make some progress with the groundwork next, so that I can do the track and wheel imprints while it's still possible to remove and/or clean them up afterwards. Cheers and thanks if you made it this far... Will

New bug here. I'm keen to join, and I have a Hasegawa Stuka in 1/32 for which I made about half the cockpit last week - is that safely under the 25%? (If so, it's a Stuka D (Hasegawa St26) with the Big Ed set and resin exhausts/prop blades from MasterCasters - nothing like jumping in at the deep end.) Cheers, Will