bjohns5

This is true of plastic extrusion printers like most Shapeway parts are made from. But Dekno uses light-hardening resin 3D printing which has a much finer resolution. I have Dekno's 3D printed 1/48 Hornet Moth kit they released several months ago and if you didn't know it was 3D printed you would think the parts were traditional resin castings.

Dora Wings kits so far have been injection molded. Are you confusing them with Dekno Models who announced a 3D printed 1/48 Mew Gull a couple weeks ago?

The blue is the only color that is difficult to match. Here is a suggested sample based on an actual 1940 French Air Ministry paint chip book. Most commonly folks interpret it as a true pale blue when it actually was a blue-grey. http://memorial.flight.free.fr/nuancieruk.html

The O-38 is another subject I wish a top resin maker like Chorosy Modelbud or Planet Models would address in 1/48 scale.

Something to consider in your Fury/Hart planning is the excellent AMG Hawker Hart kit already has in the sprues the wider upper wing center section and the cut down gun position coaming needed to make the kit into a Demon. It only lacks the 2nd gun trough in the nose. AMG will likely release other Hart family variants in the future. Several years back John Adam's posted on how to correct both the Airfix and Impact kits to make them much more accurate, and I also somewhere have an article on how to make an even more accurate Fury by kitbasking the two kits together which I recall involved slicing the nose off one kit and grafting it onto the other. You can also make an Osprey fairly simply by sacrificing a second Fury kit to get the necessary additional wing section to make the wider wings. You just need to fabricate the pilot's headrest.

If you bought one of these or are thinking of it, Mushroom Model Productions is just now releasing a possibly helpful reference on the RWD-14. http://mmpbooks.com/shop2/scale-plans-no-69-rwd-14-czapla.html

Remember that the Air Ministry Specification the Wapiti was designed to called for the aircraft to use as many existing components and spare parts from the RAFs vast fleet of surplus DH-9a aircraft as possible. Westland basically lifted the wings and tail directly from the DH-9a design.

What started my questioning, below the starboard wing on this Tiger Moth assigned to an anti-submarine "Scarecrow" flight is what certainly looks like a Holt flare mount. I don't see the elastic cord so I assume it is the newer split-bracket style.

That is really nice work. especially for 1/72. I'm amazed at how tiny the Tiger Moth is in 1/48 scale. But it's enormous compared to a typical 1/72 biplane.

Thanks guys, that helps a lot. Looks like there were at least two styles. One with a single support and an elastic strip, and one with double support and no elastic.

Can anybody tell me the official name of the landing flare holder that 1930s RAF planes had mounted under each wing? And does anybody have more detailed photos or drawings of one so I can scratchbuild a pair to put on my Tiger Moth since Airfix didn't include them?

I must confess to knowing little about the specifics of colors of 1930s British aircraft in general, and of the Fairey IIIf even less. I'm planning a model of one of the Greek Faireys using Wellsprop's very nice 3D printed kit. From research it appears that the Greek machines were finished in the standard at the time RAF/FAA colors. Some were sold to Greece directly from surplused British stocks. With that in mind, I assume the fabric areas would have been finished in aluminum dope. Would the metal areas have likely been bare polished aluminum, or would they have been painted/anodized the grey tone approximating silver I've seen on some restored aircraft from the period? And on the aluminum dope, "aluminum" in the minds of paint makers covers a range of tones. I have seen Humbrol 56 mentioned as a common model paint to use to represent the color of the dope used. Is that still a good choice? I probably won't use Humbrol but given that as a target I can mix something close enough.

Jason: Ben has a fairly basic 3D printed conversion to make a Wapiti from the 1/48 Roden DH-9 kit. He hangs out at the 3D Printing forum here on Britmodeller under the name "Wellsprop." He's also just released a 3D printed full kit for a 1/48 Fairey IIIF on either wheels or floats.

I have the 2-Vol set on the G-1 written by Gerdessen, Kalkman, Oostveen and Vredeling. Most of it is in Dutch which I am not much good at but they do say that each G1 had a unique camouflage pattern so they could tell the planes apart, but that each group of 4 off the production had similar patterns but with the colors in different order. They have some sample camo profiles which I will try and upload to a photo site so I can post them here.

If you're still willing to print one, I'd like one of the 1/48 Greek float IIIFs. Postage to same address in the USA. No particular rush.

I've got one of Ben Standen's 3D printed Wapiti conversion kits he sold here that I'm working on.

I read in a discussion of the Wapiti in India service that the Wapitis stationed there were fitted with a larger propeller than standard. Does anyone have any info about that, particularly the dimensions of the regular Wapiti prop versus the one used in India? I'd really love if anyone has photos or drawings they could share illustrating the difference. I want to model a Wapiti serving on the India frontier and I'm fully prepared to fabricate the correct prop if I just have a good idea of what it looked like.

The Fairey Seafox of Battle of the River Plate fame. Or a Gloster Gauntlet. Or just work through John Adam's old Aeroclub vacuform line in 1/48. I'd buy a Newport 52 from you as well.

I'm patiently awaiting the arrival of Ben's set of Wapiti conversion parts. Got a Roden Ambulance DH9 standing by to give up it's fuselage to a far more noble cause.

My self-imposed restriction on the subject matter I model is that the aircraft must have flown in a combat mission between the beginning of 1933 and the end of 1943. But within that period I am fascinated by the types you would never have expected to have flown in combat missions like the Avro Tutors the desperate Greek AF flew recon missions in to locate German columns in 1941, the wave of Audaxes, Gordons and Oxfords running continuous shuttles to bomb Iraqi troops in defense of Habbaniya, or in this case, imagining the lot of the unfortunate RAF Reserve pilot sent out over the ocean looking for enemy submarines in a Tiger Moth armed with nothing but a Very pistol , a pair of carrier pigeons. and I suspect, quite a bit of prayer.

I have the new Airfix 1/48 Tiger Moth and I want to built a different aircraft than the two choices in the box so I need to find a set of letter and number decals for the underwing codes. I'm perplexed about the underwing serials the Tigers carried. The two schemes the kit provides have the underwing black serials in two different fonts and two different letter sizes as shown below. What would have been the font and size used on a Tiger Moth leaving the factory in March/April 1939, or would either of the examples Airfix provided be appropriate so I can match them to a decal set?

There was also this:

I read somewhere that the Tiger Moths allocated to the Scarecrow Patrol units were taken from reserve stocks. I assume that means they were unissued since delivery? In 1938 would they have been delivered in overall yellow? And if so would the storage depot have repainted them each time specifications changed? Or would they have left them as-delivered until they needed to be issued to units?

Thanks. I suppose the mission of those patrols was different than most since the goal was to BE SEEN by submarines instead of trying to approach them undetected. Yellow undersurfaces would have aided that.