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

This is last years Xmas present from my son. It’s the 2021 boxing of the 2018 issue of the Wellington, this time in its Mk.II form. Built OOB aside from Uschi wire. As with many new Airfix kits it’s very well detailed inside and out, has decent decals and good fit. It also has the typical downside namely that it is unforgiving of any errors. It’s also frustrating that so much of the internal detail, including the bomb bay, will never be seen. Paint was Humbrol 29 and 116 for the topsides together with a mix of Humbrol 14 and 33 for the undersides. Problems. -I didn’t quite assemble the rear turret correctly and, new Airfix being unforgiving, it resulted in the whole thing being skew whiff causing problems with fitting the transparency. Lots of swear words and hacking bits off the plastic ensued. -The turret guns were asymmetric in length. I think they were short shot and by the time I’d twigged it was too late. Hey ho -The decals for the version I modelled were too large for the fuselage ( or the placement instructions were wrong). You can see the result in the photos with the tail plane encroaching over the lettering -Like other reviewers I had difficulty with the nacelles that even serious clamping struggled with. Again, like others, I did away with the (invisible) engine bulkheads to help reduce the (very visible) gaps -The angle of the open cockpit windows is different to that of the recesses into which they are supposed to fit. So, excellent kit, just be careful to assemble it precisely, check carefully for short shot and decal the other version to mine..

Watch this space. In particular tomorrow. No prizes for guessing what Clear the Stash #15 will be! 😉

This is the 1975 reboxing of the original Airfix Wellington kit issued in 1959, 61 years ago. It must have been one of the first kits Airfix made. It’s OOB save for new decals, home made seat belts and Uschi wire. As expected for a kit of that era internal detail was basic to the point of non existence. Fit was so so save for the wing to fuselage which is a push fit, no glue used. An attempt to replicate the surface rib detail was limited to a diamond pattern of raised lines. Ailerons and rudder ‘work’ but leave huge gaps. Guns are just overscale plastic rod. They are held in place by plastic figures- which was annoying as I don’t do pilot figures. The very thick transparencies didn’t fit and the frame lines were quite pronounced (which, tbf, helped a lot with hand painting them). Paint was Humbrol 29, 116 and a bespoke mixture of Hu.33 black and Hu.14 blue for ‘Night’. Camouflage pattern was as per the original Instructions but not one I recognise (!) Problems The turrets for the reasons given The exhausts. I put them on the inside of the nacelles as per instructions and I think they should be on the outside. 🤷🏻‍♂️ The undercarriage is very fragile primarily because I cut off a locating lug on the main strut thinking it to be ‘flash’. Accordingly, the assembly is glued to the wing where it touches rather than where it should be. Despite all the above I quite enjoyed making it despite, or because of, its simplicity

This is the 1980 issue from Airfix. Built OOB save for a homemade harness and with new decals as the kits’ were beyond help after 30+ years in the box. Paints were Humbrol 116/78 for the greens, Humbrol Italian sand (Hu.118) for the light brown and Compucolour versions of AMT-7 and A11 for the underside blue and dark brown respectively. Hu.156 was used for the nose cone and di-electric panels. Soviet missiles seemed to be mainly white but to provide interest the large AA-7’s were given the box illustration of red stripes using decals. The smaller AA-2s were provided with a hand painted black stripe which scheme I’d seen in a photo. It’s a kit with a reputation for inaccuracy in its fuselage dimensions. Back at the height of the Cold War it wasn’t easy to get close to Soviet aircraft for measurements so I suspect some educated guesswork was used in preparing the moulds. Russian, or in this case, Polish colours are also a nightmare to identify so, in keeping with the lack of accuracy vibe, the colours I used are ‘representative’. Problems. The wing sweep mechanism jammed after the fuselage was closed (hence the partially swept configuration when the undercarriage is deployed) The decals from Hi Decal were far below the quality you expect from aftermarket sets. Thin, fragile with poor colour density and a propensity to silver but they were the only set available at the time. The undercarriage snapped. I managed to get it back together but a strut went missing in the process and one of the main wheel covers is on at a strange angle. I rapidly fell out of love with this kit the longer I worked on it. Inaccurate with clumsy detailing and poor decals are not a recipe for enjoyment. I’m glad to be able to move on.

This is the Italeri kit from 2002 according to Scalemates. It’s OOB save for Print Scale smoke ring decals and Uschi aerial wire. Straightforward, simple. No filling needed. Seatbelts are moulded onto the seat (They’re inaccurate and not at all convincing). Some may want to rescribe the wings. I didn’t. Paint was Humbrol. Italian Sand, I4, equivalent to Hu.118 apparently. My tin is now 50 years old and still going strong. I’d mislaid my Italian grey so improvised. I saw recommended Hu.140 but it looked too dark to me after I’d put on the first coat so used Hu.127 instead. Decals, aside from the smoke rings, are from the kit and they went on fine save some silvering on the upper wing which I couldn’t get rid of. When touching up I found that the Green that was closest to the smoke ring green was Hu.91. Finally, I put on a Promodeller Wash of sand on the underneath only and tried to pencil the aileron, rudder and flap lines Problems. The spinner spiral. No decal provided. No generic decal sheet for spirals that I could find. Masking didn’t go well on such a small area (even with cutting the tape into small pieces) so went with pencil and Sharpie pen. An undercarriage strut pinged off and disappeared. A simple plastic rod was its replacement. The tail wheel snapped off. I inserted a pin beside it and glued accordingly. (I am in awe of those who can apparently insert a pin through an undercarriage leg lengthways in this scale. I certainly can’t and I’ve tried many, many times)

One of the few kits that I gave up on and threw away so I am very impressed with what you've done with it.

It would be really helpful for those of us eyeing up the kit to at least have a comprehensive list of the errors and fixes so we are well prepared when, not if, we buy it. Pretty please 🙏

Excellent. Just 1 question. How on earth do you model the aerial wires to that configuration?

Well, many thanks to everyone who helped and a special mention for those detail photos from @Finn. As ever, the simplest explanations are usually the best and thanks to @CT7567 for pointing out the difference between the AS.30 and R.530. In my defence of overthinking it, I am even less of an expert in French armaments than anything else. Now to put those yellow stripes under the fins(!). (BTW The offer of coffee and cake stands.)

Excellent. Considering what you had to work with, OOB thats as good as its ever going to get. Meanwhile, mine lingers in the stash staring at me accusingly. I have, until now, found it easy to resist its 'charms'....