Jump to content

KRK4m

Members
  • Posts

    1,997
  • Joined

  • Last visited

About KRK4m

  • Birthday 25/04/1957

Profile Information

  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Krakow PL
  • Interests
    1/72 aircraft+AFV,1/700 ships,1/32 cars,H0 trains

Recent Profile Visitors

5,343 profile views

KRK4m's Achievements

Very Obsessed Member

Very Obsessed Member (5/9)

2.3k

Reputation

  1. It's a pity you don't have the documentation that would allow you to release an equally comprehensive collection of Breguet 19s... 😢 Cheers Michael
  2. Indeed, the photo shows something strange, although the 5 designs you showed absolutely do not exhaust the variations of external P-47 tanks. There were a total of 11 of them and you can compare them (all drawings are in scale - it was supposed to be 1:48, but the printing house made it 1:52) on page 20 of my P-47 brochure (TBU #158). Under the fuselage there were American metal tanks with a capacity of 200 USgal (semi-drop, adjacent to the fuselage, for ferry flights or flat, box-shaped), 150 USgal (cylindrical), 110 USgal (drip), 75 USgal (drip) or British ones made of reinforced cardboard (all cylindrical) with capacities of 90, 125 or 165 ImpGal. Starting with the D-15 variant, almost all of them (the exception was this 200-USgal semi-flush ferry tank) could also be carried under the wings. It was also possible to install there (not limited by the low ground clearance of the fuselage) two other types of metal American teardrop tanks with a capacity of 150 or 165 USgal (from the P-38). The record holder was the P-47N - the only variant cleared with 310 USgal underwing tanks (from the P-61). Cheers Michael
  3. The FK.58 (which was essentially an evolution of the D.XXI made by Schatzki for the French) also had an identical telescopic sight protruding through the windscreen. Although the front exhaust ring indicates a Bristol engine, I still only see 7 cylinders in the row, and the Mercury would have 9. But there was no 7-cylinder Bristol... Interesting thought - I completely forgot about this prototype. But it was in the Netherlands in 1940. The spine shape and the canopy in the D.XXI and FK.58 are almost identical - the designer of both was Erich Schatzki. Great link, although I came up with the idea of scrolling down the table with individual stories only after reading the entire text letter by letter three times To sum up: you are right, both the 4 MGs in the wings and the lack of the upper tailplane strut indicate that it is not an FK.58. It seems that an elderly man well over 60 should sleep after midnight and not (cursorily) analyze photos. Sorry... Cheers Michael
  4. Everything's fine, except it's not a Fokker D.XXI. The French camouflage and markings are original, and the plane has a 14-cylinder French engine because it is a Koolhoven FK.58. Cheers Michael
  5. Contrary to the above opinion, I must say that the Italeri 1283 re-edition is much improved in detail, just like the Italeri 1322 FIAT CR.32 (ex Supermodel 10-009) Cheers Michael
  6. Don't feel too pressured to go with the long-tailed version (unless it's the P-40L), Brother. The French of the LaFayette Group used the P-40F with both short- and long fuselages. Cheers Michael
  7. I faced a similar problem a few years ago. In the same way, I have been building aircraft for 50 years and despite a few attempts in 1:48, a dozen in 1:100, one in 1:32 and one in 1:24, I stuck to 1:72 - today I have over a hundred of them in the display case and a similar number in stash. I've never built a tank in 1:35 or a ship in 1:350. Once upon a time, 50 years ago, I built two ships in 1:600 (Airfix) and four AFV in 1:76 (ditto). In this way, the natural choice for my warships was the 1:700 scale (I already have over 20 of them), and the 1:72 scale for the AFV (I'm already approaching 50, plus a dozen or so on the pile). In today's reality, exhibition space is becoming an increasingly luxurious good - I leave ships in 1:350 and AFV in 1:35 to the wealthier. Well, unless someone needs just 3 ships and 10 tanks - then you can stick to such scales. Cheers Michael
  8. Wrong section not only because the Spitfire is not an armoured vehicle, but also because "ready for inspection" is intended only to present the final result. There are "work in progress" sections to present the progress of work on the model. But the colours are really nice 👍 Cheers Michael
  9. As you well know, converting the Sunderland into an Empire C-class boat is a feasible operation https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235069104-short-empire-from-sunderland-using-adrians-vacu-fuselage/ Unfortunately, Maia has a shorter (and taller and wider at the bottom) fuselage and slightly longer wings with a much larger chord and surface area. The engines are further from the fuselage and the tail is mounted higher. All in all - although outwardly similar - S.21 is a flying boat much more distant from S.23 than Sunderland. Cheers Michael
  10. A rare example of a propeller-driven AFV. The Axis countries had amazing design ideas Cheers Michael.
  11. It's interesting what you write. As director of the Polish Aviation Museum, in 1989 I was ordered to take a MiG-21PFM from Goleniów. There were several dozen of them there, most of them had four-digit tactical numbers, as you well know, being the ending of the mfrs serial. Your 7903 is serialled 94N7903. You say that the Goleniów regiment had 12 such machines (7809-7815 and 7901-7905). I don't deny this - all 12 were "special weapons" carriers. But then, at the air base, my attention was caught by MiGs with a two-digit tactical number. There were eight of them: 01, 03-06 and 08-10. They had completely different factory serials than all the others, and the regiment CO "secretly" told me that they were "special weapons" carriers. So I swallowed this 01 like a young pelican swallows pincers and to this day I was convinced that the Krakow museum had a nuke-carrying Fishbed in its collection. It has the mfrs serial 940ML01 and is described in the museum's inventory as MiG-21PFMN. And now I have doubts: whether these two-digit tactical numbers (and completely different factory serials) were some kind of hoax (by whom?), or whether Goleniów had 20 and not 12 MiG-21 nuke carriers? And one more small note about the IAB-500. In addition to 300 litres of fuel, the bomb contained quite a large charge of phosphorus (it weighed a total of 470 kg), which ignited the entire mixture. One could say that it was the predecessor of later thermobaric bombs. And apart from that: a well-made model. I was sure it was 1:48 👏. Cheers Michael
  12. You're asking difficult questions, @Casey and I'm not a colour professional. I just like to have models painted with the appropriate color gradation - this one should be darker and that one lighter, or this green should be more blue and that one more yellow. Of the five questions you asked, I can only answer three: measurement angle was 45°/0°, observer angle: 10°, illuminant: D65, light source: 8 LEDs. The equipment I use is called Datacolor ColorReader Pro. The instrument is easy to use and (via BlueTooth) works with Android, which makes it just one step away from PhotoShop on my laptop. The price in Poland is about Ł300. Cheers Michael
  13. If these colours are to look like the samples provided by @PhantomBigStu, then the RGB for Light MB is 91-117-142 and for Dark MB 62-88-115. Please check this on your spectrometer and correct me if I'm wrong. The colours given by @MACALAIN are from a completely different story: Light MB as Hu157 is 65-121-157, which is a bit darker and much less purple, and Dark MB as Hu134 is 33-66-137, which is noticeably darker and again much less purple. I was surprised by @Mike Starmer proposals, which so far has always hit the mark. I don't have acrylics, but by mixing enamels in its proportions I obtained Dark MB almost identical to Phantom's (61-88-125) and obscenely bright Light MB. With a 4:1 ratio I got RGB 204-210-216, which is a light grey, closest to Hu147 (201-202-204), because Hu44 (181-208-237) - if similar in brightness - is much more bluish (saturated). Only a strong reversal of the proportions (2x Hu34 + 5x Hu104) gave RGB 89-121-143, which is close to Phantom's. But note that pure Hu96 from a can is not far from it either (97-121-147). As for Dark MB, in Mike's mixture I would only replace Hu25 with Hu134. Then with a 3:2 ratio we get RGB 61-85-123, a tad closer in hue to the sample provided by Phantom. Cheers Michael
  14. I started working on US Army AFV from the Vietnam War. First up are the M109 and M113, both in overall OD, of course. It is known that they should have white stars (four in the M109: front, rear and 2 sides, and in the M113 there is a fifth - on the roof), white double-row serial like US ARMY 123A456 on the sides (a question: should the M113 also have such a number on the rear wall?) and the unit markings on both mudguards at the front and rear. The latter in M109 is created by white letters and numbers directly on the OD background. And what should it be like in M113? In some drawings the background is OD, in others there are black quasi-plates? And one more thing: on some instruction sheets (Italeri, Tamiya) the M113 also has a yellow round shield on the front with black number 11 - probably a bridge limit. Was such a sign actually used in Vietnam, or did only vehicles used outside the combat zone have it, e.g. in Korea, Europe or the USA? Interestingly, a similar shield never appears on the M109 from Vietnam. Cheers Michael
  15. The new 3/4-colour camouflage for USN aircraft was announced on January 5, 1943 with an effective date of February 1. And stars with white bars were introduced in June. So formally, from February 1 to July 1 (5 months), the planes were to have new camouflage and old markings. For years, there have been speculations here and there about the "incomplete" repainting of aircraft in units in the spring of 1943. It mainly concerns fighters - in the case of the F6F, there is talk (apparently - I can't find it anywhere) of leaving the fuselage sides and fin in the old colour Blue Gray M485 (by the way, really barely darker and greener/less purple than ANA608 Intermediate Blue). Even more interesting insinuations appear with F4U - there (due to the lack of connection between the fuselage side areas and the fin+rudder) many artists (e.g. John Wood) willingly paint the fin in the old M485, and the sides in the new ANA608. There is even a famous photo of Boyington's F4U-1A, in which the underside of the outer (folding) part of the port wing is painted M685, and the starboard one - ANA608. https://www.asisbiz.com/il2/Corsair/VMF214/pages/Aircrew-US-National-Archives-80-G-54288-VMF-214-Turtle-Bay-Espiritu-Santo-New-Hebrides-Sep-1943-04.html With such a headache as they had on the Solomons, the planes could have many days of flying in such irregular patterns. Cheers Michael
×
×
  • Create New...