Nomore Shelfspace

I know what a pain it can be to get a good finish on car bodies - and none of mine were this size! I agree with you, this is the most demanding part of a car build. And it looks great from what i can see.

That's brilliant, it's just 100% real. All those textures and colours make it look like art!

Extraordinary finish - needs a diorama! (or is that "suborama"?)

Yup, just this last minute found the bloomin' article after a Gooogle search no less! That is great. Altho racing cars are not my thing, I quite like these oldies. I imagine Tamiya deleted the sponsor decals (ALL of them) because of copyright issues - Ford or Firestone were asking for lots of money so they just left them off and retouched the box art, so modellers could build it like they wanted to. I'm going to read your thread now...

Just found this excellent build - note my Tamiya Lotus 49 musings in vehicle discussion! Look no further, eh.

So what I glean so far is, this one needs some work to accurise it. Must be easier than a Pocher though! I couldn't find any Gold Leaf decals on eBay though... only some nice 1/32 scale stuff for slot cars. It does seem this kit is current however. I do recall the motorising now - the batteries went under the seat!! Why oh why did Japanese manufacturers spoil their kits at one time with such baka (foolish) features!? I do enjoy "Kit Nostalgia" though, particularly as it seems many of the kits I remember are still available in one form or another...

A great fleet! They need captioning for us non-airliner fans though.

That's pretty good information! I notice from the manufacturer's photos on the Wonderland Models site they also upgraded the driver so he looks like Graham Hill... maybe once I have some modelling time again I might even get one!

This might be a bit random, but I was trawling the internets the other night looking for some evidence of the old Tamiya 1/12 car kits (I ruined, sorry, built the Datsun 240 about that many years ago) - particularly this great old Lotus that my uncle built in the early part of the Flared Age (1970's). He did a nice enough job of it and I remember being fascinated by it. I pestered him to give me the surplus instruction book! Anyway I found on Wonderland Models site https://www.wonderlandmodels.com/products/tamiya-112-team-lotus-type-49b-1968-pe/ this; A recent reissue, with etch parts, seatbelts etc. but with one difference - it no longer advertises Gold Leaf ciggies... has anyone here any experience with these rare kits? I think there were a number of different subjects and they get reissued from time to time.

Great model of not so great aeroplane!

Always wanted a decent Mercury/Atlas, but wasn't keen on the resin kits so far available - have to keep an eye on this!

Great! There was and is still nothing like these craft, kit form or real. As some have said here, you almost never see one built. The surviving examples are in the Hovercraft Museum at Lee on the Solent. Maybe I should post some of the photos I took some years ago...

I've had problems with new Humbrol as well. I started buying Revell again and found they were far better, that matts anyway. There's a big Guagemaster store near here that stocks both. I was told a lot of their recent production was outsourced to Thailand...

Thanks for the kind remarks on this wasp plane, chaps - whether I'll ever try to bash another antique into shape like this I don't know, there are plenty of nicely tooled modern kits in the box here, but you never know... I like a challenge! One thing that is striking about the old Battle is the size - in 1/72 it's amost as big as a 1/48 Hurricane! Men went into battle in these cumbersome crates in their bomber guise, and most of them did not return, a sobering thought.

Here it is finished at long blinking last, my Battle TT from the I might say, rudimentary Airfix 1/72 jobbie with Xtradecal extra decals, as already described in my Work in Progress entry... final finish is Xtracrylix matt varnish (black stripes were hand painted!) Wings, rudder and nose all modified to make it just look like a Battle, let alone the one that tugged targets in Canada (least popular job in the RCAF). Interestingly this one lacks the usual TT appendages of "windmill" and banner housing - possibly it was a demonstration aircraft or used in exercises that didn't involve towing anything. Now for a model far less of a pain in the housings... (apologies for the yellowy colour balance in the photos, it's an old camera and its memory isn't what it used to be...)

Calling all Battle blokes and Fairey fans, this aeroplane shaped lump of plastic is now finished and on the Ready for Inspection pages!! Over and out.

That kit looks excellent. Almost persuaded to go over to the Resin Side but put off by cost... reminds me of the old Manchester conversion from the Airfix Lancaster in a 60's Airfix Magazine, with Alan W Hall carving new wings and engines out of balsa and plastering it with the famous dope and talcum powder mix... technology has come on a bit since then.

After many months I return with some actual progress! 1. Airbrush Revell (NOT Humbug-Rol) trainer yellow. Some "sandy" texture so sand this down with fine wet or dry. Not sure why the WB went greeny on this one but still... 2. A coat of Klear and figuring out where the stripes go. I though because I could alter my paintwork, but not the decals, I'd use them as a benchmark... The underside is left "blank" because I could find no clear reference for it. I used the Hasegawa scribing template - intended for Gundams I think - as a flexible "rule". 3. I found I could paint the stripes by hand using Tamiya tape as a mask - this took MUCH longer than masking-it-all-out-then-airbrush but the Revell (Not Humbug-Rol) "Email Color" ([email protected]?) brushed very nicely, thank you Mr Humbrol. 4. Painted the canopy framing by hand (helped by the very nice REVELL paint, Mr Humbrol!), then another Klear coat and on with the Xtradecals. The underside numbers didn't line up perfectly but it's not the end of my career... 5. Here it is basically together. I couldn't find a single decal big enough for that huge fin flash, so here you see a coat of matt white (admittedly Humbrol) - I will piece together a fin flash from the Xtradecal sheet with the early-war roundels on it (can't recall the number). The canopy is the kit one and looks it, but I wasn't going to spend more than the cost of the kit to get the Falcon vac-form set then only use one canopy out of it! This project has not been that easy... it's probably more akin to bashing together a very rough short-run. The stripes were a major headache as they have to go in exactly the right places, furthermore some of them were on the real plane different widths/distances apart! But I'm not trying to win contests with it, I just wanted to build a Battle target tug...!

Really, really good! Inspirational build!

Great build, these things always had a "makeshift" look suiting their nickname. Anything bigger than something very small with two engines in 1/72 is too big for my shelf of course...

Nice build, someone might have pointed this out but the Royal Navy did use the Skyraider, albeit in an AEW role.

Sounds good. I know some people can make nice models out of aeroplane-shaped lumps of plastic like the old Frog Gannet!

Isopon, sold in Halfords. Evil blackish brown stuff but once it's set carves and sands nicely. A bit porous though, will need primer.