Properjob56

I’m just starting this from the stash. 2 queries. 1. The overall colour will be Gunship Gray. It’s as close a match as I can see from various photos on the net and seems oft recommended on here for modern French a/c tho not, so far as I can see, the Alpha Jet. (I had assumed Mirage blue was correct until I saw the photos). Does anyone have any strong evidence against Gunship Gray? 2. I assume the -E was unarmed for most of its service life. It’s even hard to find pictures of it with fuel tanks. Further,the gun pod in the kit seems to be the Mauser rather than the DEFRA . Again, have I got this wrong or were they often carrying ordnance? TIA

Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for. Can I ask how the tank was made? and how you knew the colours were (the much more likely and usual) 74/75/76 combination?

I saw that. It’s not hugely helpful on the colours save it doesn’t look a lot like the box art!

Many thanks for this. It appears, if I understand it, that the configuration was an experimental one. It seems, if that’s right, I’ll not need to worry about a recon fit out. Huzzah! As I don’t have the books mentioned is anyone able to view the photos to confirm whether they show the suggested colour scheme or is it the usual thankless, and probably pointless, exercise of interpreting the colours from a black and white photo? I do appreciate the excellent responses. 😀

Hi everyone. I’ve raided the stash and found and started on the Finemolds ‘Hornisse’. I wonder if anyone can help on 2 issues. The aircraft depicted is yellow 7 from ZG26. The colour scheme is given as 70/71/76, a unique combination in my experience. The instructions also say the towel rail antenna, the canopy mast and fuselage guns were removed. Does anyone have any info to confirm any of this, particularly the source FM was presumably using. Further, the reason I assume the equipment was taken out was to save weight suggesting the a/c was used for recon. missions. If that’s so has anyone got any plans showing what other mods would have been made particularly the details of the camera installation? many thanks in advance for any help anyone can give 👍

Top class. Well done

Thank you. I bought the wrong paint 😡

Am doing a triplet of 1/72 109’s. The old Airfix -E, the Heller -B/C and the Fujimi -F nearly finished the Heller. Assembled, painted and decalled. Last step, assemble undercarriage. Did it. Heller had engineered the kit to ensure foolproof fixing of leg with correct rake. Stepped back to admire…….. The legs had a forward rake of….0 degrees and were modelled with oleos extended.😱 giving the impression of a clumsy flamingo. Thank goodness I used Superglue and not cement. So my intention is to dislodge the legs, drill a locating hole with the correct rake, refix and hope I get the leg length as well as rake and splay angles correct. I’ll live with the cut off and therefore misshapen undercarriage doors but is there a better way? Just finished painting the Fujimi ready for decals. Used Humbrol enamel 248 for RLM76. It’s dried a dark blue grey and seems interchangeable with RAF PRU Blue 😱Who knew? Even I, as a botch loving amateur, could not live with that. So it’s out with the Humbrol paint stripper ready for a repaint with Pollyscale acrylic RLM76. Have I misread that 248 is RLM76? or is the paint matcher at Humbrol colourblind? Is there a better way? So the venerable Airfix with the worse reputation has given me the least trouble, well aside from the really badly fitting canopy but that’s another story.

Looks good. Always nice to see Classic kits done well. I would just say according to my notes its 1/75 not 1/72

Stunning. As good as it gets.

Nothing to do with fast food outlets but as a sort of postscript to my stash clearance articles last week featuring the Wellington II and III from Airfix, I thought it might be interesting to show how the two differ both as to detail and the finished look. This is particularly so as the aircraft is made by the same manufacturer albeit 60 years apart and put together by the same modeller and as such with the same tools and the same level of skill. I mentioned in the ‘stash’ articles how the more modern kit has much more detail. I’ve photographed the internals of the kits to show just how much. The black plastic is from 1959 and the grey from 2018 ( + the pictures of the latter don’t include the bomb bay added later in the build) I also placed the two finished models side by side. Even tho they are the same plane I hope you can see the seemingly different nose profiles and the fact the earlier kit seems to have a more ‘hunched’ sit than the later. 🤷🏻‍♂️ That’s it from me for a few months. Now, I am eyeing up my He.111P-2 and the H-20……

I have acquired for the first time ever a man cave in which I can at last indulge my hobby w/o interference. No more mucking about on dining tables which all has to be cleared away periodically. No more kits and books and magazines secreted around the house and in the loft. So first task was to stack all the kits in one place. Found I had acquired over the decades more than 400. A start to reduce the stash had to be made so here we are…..

Perhaps but I rarely see completely Matt aircraft in contemporary photographs except in the harshest environments such as the Western Desert. Most have a sheen. The trick is to get the right level of reflectiveness. For most models I do nowadays I varnish with Xtracrylix Matt Varnish which, counter intuitively, gives the sort of satin sheen I look for. YMMV 🤷🏻‍♂️

My last stash clearer for the moment is the much liked Airfix Banshee F2H-2/2P. The last kit from an independent Airfix it was first released in 1980. The kit has not been reissued since 1987 which I find surprising. Perhaps the moulds have been lost or destroyed ? It has raised line detail, fits well ( I only had to use filler on the wing/fuselage joint) and is accurate. As per kits of the era it had limited internal detail so I busied up the cockpit with wire and plastic bits and pieces. I found no aftermarket goodies currently available so it was built OOB save for the various cockpit additions. Gloss Sea Blue was Hu.15/21 in a 4:1 ratio. Its main failing are the decals. I used the original ones and they were fine which after 40 odd years is remarkable. Good density, robust and settled well with setting solutions. So what’s the problem? Well, for the version I modelled, a -2 from VF-172 -The fin top colour is given as red. Contemporary photos show it to be blue. I worried the shade chosen (Hu.14) is too dark but the photos show it to be close. -Said photos show the stencilling to be prominent. None are provided. -VF-172 were known as the ‘Blue Bolts’. A lightning bolt decal is provided ….but it’s yellow. Fortunately some aircraft didn’t have the blue bolt graphic so I didn’t try to replicate it. (There was a Microscale sheet produced for the kit at the time it was released but I should imagine it’s as rare as hens teeth nowadays). The only other criticism is that the wing tip tanks’ attachment point is too central whereas the point was nearer the rear of the tank and slightly above the tanks’ horizontal datum line. Not an easy thing to replicate. So I didn’t as it’s hardly noticeable. Problems 1. I attached the undercarriage leg struts after the main units had been applied and the glue had dried. As I found out, they serve to ensure correct alignment so unfortunately the undercarriage is splayed. 2. I was too impatient to measure out the black/white stripes on the arrestor hook accurately so their widths vary and the number of stripes is wrong. I was quite pleased with my first attempt to show canopy sealing strips. I used 0.2mm white decal stripes. Fiddly but not as much as I thought. I didn’t attempt the windscreen as the frame was curved…unlike decal stripes and I had neither the skill nor the equipment to draw/paint a reliable line that thin. I enjoyed it.

350 ish but Ill be done with this batch in a day or two