X Wing Flyboy

Really looking forward to the Falcon in 1:72, that is a must buy. A few X Wings wouldnt be turned down either LOL. Looking out for these i will be!!

She is gorgeous work. Revell have, so I hear, have aquired the rites to the finemolds 1:72 so hopes to pick it up for half the price it goes for now. Just opened up the Revell easy kit, very nice to be honest, paint apps and detail are better than I was expecting.

The Revell issue being cheaper and more readily available than the original Moebius issue has gladly let more people pick up this fine kit and in the recent years there has been a fair few different takes on what is a very nice kit to see built up. I have one in the ever present stash to build and hope to take yours as an example of how I will tackle mine. She is lovely and as a first build I think it's a job well done. Don't be nervouse about posting as there will be more constructive comments than negative.

Thanks for the comments guys, makes me feel it was worth the time and the effort. On the subject of the turrets being moved. I meant to answer this a while back but forgot to. I built this without the turrets in place simply to make it easier to paint and varnish so I removed the lower rings from the bases and when the kit was finished I simply glued the turrets in the openings. This is the reason why I can't swap them around, I can't remove them as any force applied would surely split the very fragile seams and filler in the fuselage. I used pva on the clear parts so it may be possible to swap the clear parts and mod the gunner with the base and back in place but it's not worth messing even if it is wrong. I'm happy with how she turned out.

Thanks for the comments guys, very much appreciated. Rob the undercarriage was a test in itself. After the sanding, filing, scraping and general foolery it is insanely hard to get all four parts of the frame work together in a level fashion. I placed the front frame and the two side arms into the locating holes in the wing, applied glue and added the mud guard part and let it dry over a few days. The method helped keep everything stable but also meant that when time came to add the gear, it slotted straight into locating holes with no problem.

Was a bugger to build but shear bloodymindednes got me through. Wonder if i got the wrong sets of guns on the wrong gunners? Anyway it's accademic now as its all glued up.

Ahh fudge!

Hi guys, been a while since I posted any work here, so it thought I would post up a recently finished kit. Here we have the old and very vintage Airfix Short Stirling bomber in 1:72. If any of you have built this kit (judging by its age there may well be a fair few of you out there) it is in the kindest possible term, a DOG. If it were a car, it would be a Mini Metro with bead mat seat covers and beige interior. I could list all the problems and jobs done to just get the kit to fit properly never mind gain more accuracy but it would be a three page epic so if anybody really wants to know, PM me and I can eventually email a full write up on what I did. Kit was painted with Vallejo Air Dark Earth, Dark Green, Mat Black and Humbrol Interior Green, three coats of Pledge gloss and the mat coat was Winsor and Newton. Weathering used Humbrol 11, oil pastels and some small amount of charcoal in places.

Never got into civil stuff like this but mate that is a gorgeous build, wonderful work on the decals too, those must have been complex.

Stunningly nice Spit there mate, one can never have too many Spitfires in a stash.

Thanks guys :-)

Hi, here is a recent fun build. I had a job lot of second hand kit and in it was a part built Revell snap fit 1:100 F-14. The fins had been put on incorrectly so i decided to have a little fun with it and do it in a Spitfire scheme using AZH decals from an old Airfix kit. No messing, no filling, just got on with it. Colours used were Vallejo Air Dark Earth, Dark Green and Duck Egg Blue. Three coats of pledge, decals set with Mr Mark nad two coats of winsor and newton matt. Oil pastel weathering was used.

Really nice looking bird mate, well done.

This here kit is the older vintage era Spitfire MKIa with new BTK decals. It's re-release is a result of the James May TV show "Toy Stories" where James built a 1:1 scale Spitfire kit, taking the original inaccurate BTK version as the template. I decided to do a quick, no messing fun build on a caravaning holiday a few months ago just to keep me occupied if it happened to start raining, which it did, so I completed the whole thing. There was also a few new techniques I wanted to try, one being the use of Mr Mark Decal setter. Onto what was used then! Humbrol enamel Dark Earth 29, matt black 33, Dark Green 30, Beige Green 90, matt yellow 24 and the wheel well / undercarriage was a mixture of metallic numbers 11 and 56. Simply brush painted straight onto the plastic, silver markings, four coats of Pledge "future" floor wax, decals set with Mr Mark setter, one coat of Winsor and Newton matt, pastel weathering and finally two more coats of Winsor. The antenna is elasticated sowing thread. No filler was used on seams and the raised panel lines were lift in place. Mr Mark decal setter comes out big tops after testing Revell Decal Soft, Micro Soft / Set, Humbrol decal soft and the use of setting with varnishes. Mr Mark is well recommended. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this fun build, I loved every minute of it.

Thanks guys. I did consider removing the rivet detail as I have on the P-47 but like I say this was really a test on the Humbrol decal setting fluid I was using and also, having used the "White TAC" camo spraying method, I decided to dry brush the camo on to see if I could replicate the soft edge of the green. Should have gone a little more gentle on the green as I would have liked a little transparency on the green but at least the technique is a good second for the excellent results obtained by the "White TAC" method.

Thanks for the kind words guys, really nice to know my work is appreciated, many more to come!

Hi people, my take on the vintage 1:72 Hurricane MK I. I'm new to AC building so at the moment I'm building the older cheaply picked up kits for practice on just about ever aspect. Mainly I want to get decaling right as I have had some nightmares on the past two kits I had to bin due to mistakes. I am not happy with the antenna pole on the fin, far too big after It was completed. Secondly I used the kit decals that were god knows how old, they went on well but after they were on I spotted the central roundel was out of register. But hell, second AC build in many years so at least they went on OK and didn't silver.

Hello all. After a large gap from Aircraft model building I returned late last year after a very good friend rekindled my interest. This is I guess a learning curve in a way so I decided to build the cheapest kit I could get in the form of the older Airfix 1:72 kit. I wanted to try many things like scribe panel lines, the white tak cammo paint application technique (saw on here, thanks guys!), practice on decal application methods and masking, most things I never really used on single colour AFV kits I did in the past. I did intend on boxing in the wheel wells but got carried away with other things like opening up the ejection ports for the .303's and making the antenna. Anyway, here is my first AC since around the late 80's. Be kind guys

Special fave of mine the Spitfire, in any of it's incarnations. Gorgeous work there, soooo nice, and I would be pleased if any of mine would turn out that good.

Oh wow that is totally, well, the definition of excellent.

Oh my...that is GORGEOUS, well done sir!

Did a small test with the Klear coated Spitfire parts today. Added some WN matt to the surface and added a decal there with a fair amount of see through film on it, pressed it into pkace with hot water on a kitchen towel and left to dry. Seemed to take very well with no silvering to be seen. Afterwards i placed another coat of WN ontop and let to dry. See the results in the morning.

I have used the matt varnish on a test spitfire 1:72 and its great stuff, a great a revelation as Klear was for gloss finish. Brushes on from the bottom fine but will need a few coats to cover. Leaves decals matt and sealed in nicely. I have used Klear to set decals on this experiment spit, but the clear parts of the decals retain there gloss look after 3 coats of matt WN varnish. Now, would it be possible to set a decal with this WN matt varnish to avoid the gloss effect of Klear?