Andy G

Hi Martian, I’ve used MRP paint a few times and really like them. I used them straight from the bottle and with a low pressure, 10-15psi. I also used Mr.Hobby thinners for initial cleaning the airbrush out. They’re lacquer based so use in a well ventilated space. Also there have been odd reports of bottles breaking when people have shaken them so probably best to not be too vigorous with them. Anyway, give them a try and you’ll probably enjoy them. I’ll be using a few bottles later to hopefully touch up the black basing underside on the Wellington which is very, very slowly crawling towards transfer time. Andy

Looking forward to this, especially how you deal with the rear canopy, as I have plans to do the Grace spitfire albeit in 1:72.

Some of mine are nostalgia, certainly this one is and it may not have got this far if it wasn't, it's really not worth the effort with more recent kits available. It does depend upon your motive though, if you enjoy and are prepared to put the effort in then you probably get more bang for your buck with the older kits than with the latest hi-fidelity easy fit super kit. For example this cost me about £7 I think whereas the new Airfix was about £28 and the older one includes a crew, albeit some of them look like they may be relatives of Martian. I'm just waiting for the re-issue of the 88mm and half-track. I do wonder how many kits I must have built as a kid, I keep seeing people building older ones and thinking, "I had one of those, I'd forgotten all about it." I'd love to know what happened to them as well, I know one spitfire got flown into the wall - can't remember why, but have no recollection of binning any others. Very slow progress on the Wellington - the engine cowls have had the exhaust rings masked off (previously painted) and the tape sealed with klear ready for painting. I'll look forward to it. Andy

Thanks Martian. "quick stress busting build", think I've been building this about as long as you've been at that Albatross, which looks very nice by the way. Soon, soon but it will probably be a couple of weeks or so as I need to get some different blacks from the LHS to do the black! If only I could manage it at work! Thanks John. I've built two in the past, but have no idea where they went, nor any of the other models from my youth/childhood. Only a small amount done tonight but the brown has been extended downwards in the couple of places that were a bit short and a few other places touched up. Andy

Well it's been far too long since I updated this thread. My apologies but life caught up and it became difficult to get much modelling done never mind photograph it. The Wimpey has plodded on, only taking a backseat whilst I got a Mosquito and Do17 across the line and also did some test weathering on a paint mule - more practice required! Much of the work has unsurprisingly been fill, prime, sand, repeat, It's now reasonable and the time has come to put the top coats on. I'm having a go at black basing. I had a test of pre-shading but wasn't convinced by it, plus there's not exactly a lot of panels on the Wellington. Yesterday I marked out the camo outlines and applied the dark earth. Then before going out (Bohemmian Rhapsody is well recommended) I put the Mr.Hyde putty on - and applied some more black primer to cover the brown overspray. This morning I went for the dark green and the great unveiling I knew the putty would move overtime but didn't expect it to be overnight - rats! I've spent the rest of the day trying to rectify the black. Here she is with two coats of Klear It's been a lot more work than I was expecting. I think I'm happy with the black basing, but I'm probably going back to white tak worms rather than use the putty again. I'm too slow at masking to be able to rely on getting the masking and painting both done in a single evening. There's a bit of touching up to do on the sides of fuselage where I've not brought the colour down far enough and I need to apply the colour to the engines as well. I've gone back to using the kit engines rather than the Lancaster's mainly due to not being able to work out what to do with the exhausts. The Lancaster's were clearly different to the Wellington's but photos of a Mk.III's exhausts are hard to come by due to them being 'twixt engine and fuselage. I'll try and not take so long before putting up another update. Andy

Thanks guys. Not had chance to work on her this week and I’m off on a big bike ride tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll get some modelling done on Friday and catch up with you then. Andy

Thanks for linking my build Benedict. It will be interesting to see what features the old girl throws at you Eric. Mine seems worse than the samples I built in the 70s, but that could be rose tinted glasses. Andy

Firstly apologies for the radio silence over the last couple of weeks, I had a show to get ready for last weekend and this week I've had a very pleasant upturn in business which turned what was planned as a relaxing week into a busy one - can't complain though. There has been some steady progress this week. Firstly the crew are all painted. Basically followed Stew Dapple's process but haven't reached his standard yet The bomb aimer's window has had some dissolved putty applied to blend the rear corners into the body. The wings and the tail are on Putty has been applied to the engine nacelles and to the wing fuselage joints. The wing joints were quite wide even after inserting strips of microstrip into the top of the joint in an effort to fill some of it up. I think I've found a better way of using the Mr.Dissolved Putty. Previously I had been leaving it to go off for a bit before cleaning it up with a cotton bud and IPA (more wasted drink!). For the wings it was cleaned up almost as soon as it was applied and this seems a much cleaner way of working with it. Trying to line anything up on this plane is very tricky as everything is wonky I don't think it's a problem with wear as the two halves of the fuselage met reasonably well apart from the very front but if I get the top and bottom seams lined up vertically the bottom of the fuselage is far from flat. Hoh hum, not a lot I can do about it, nor want to with the new mould on its way. Further work this morning, not yet photo'd has seen the canopy and turrets kleared, the stabilisers fitted along with the pilots. I've tried to clean up the sprue damage on the cockpit but it hasn't been particularly successful which is annoying with it being smack in the front middle. The pilots each had booster cushions of 30 thou plasticard fitted and painted before being inserted into their office. The cockpit was then pva'd into place and is currently drying. The stabilisers were unsurprisingly odd. The starboard stab took 30 thou of plasticard glued under the tab before it touched the sides of the slot in the fuselage. The stabiliser was glued into place before attention turned to the port side which fitted well right from the start. Whilst the port side seemed to fit well it was subsequently found that whilst the starboard side elevator joint was roughly at 90 degrees to the fuselage the port side pointed backwards quite noticeably if viewed from above. Straightening the joint out produced a gap of about 4-5mm at the rear edge. I took the pragmatic view that I didn't really know what the underlying cause of the issue was and it wasn't that apparent unless looking directly down on the tail plane. It was therefore glued up sharpish. Next up will be blending the stabilisers and cockpit glass into the fuselage and then masking for an investigatory coat of primer, I can't see me getting away without some remedial work after the primer.

I'd like to follow along on this one, if that's ok? Thanks for the link to Flypast. If I remember correctly there's an account of the events in Hunter Boys.

Chopping the aerials off like that - you learn something new everyday, thanks. Mind if I tag along. I’ve got one of these in the stash having watched ‘Southern Comfort’ being thrown around the sky like a fighter at Caernarfon Airport a few years back.

A mammoth session last night and today has seen quite a bit of progress though it seemed quite slow at the time. Firstly things got quite ugly last night with a gradual build up of Mr.Surfacer to give something to file at in front of the bomb aimer's window. The window had been masked off and PPP applied and cleaned up around the other three sides. The PPP will need more work as it is quite rough and is tending to dissolve as I try and clean the window up tonight, a job for Mr.Dissolved Putty I think. Whilst the different applications of Mr.Surfacer were drying I took to rubbing back the geodesic representation on the main wings and stabilisers. Once this had been done I then scribed the panel lines - leading edge panel on wings and stabilisers and wing tips, trailing edge and flaps on the main wings. This morning I set to with the files Quite pleased with how that is going. I don't think it will ever be perfect because everything is so misshapen, but it's certainly an improvement on the starting point. The extra splodge of Mr.Surfacer has been applied after the turret was tried to see what work was required to get the very front looking better. It took quite a lot of work to get the turret to fit and actually split the fuselage in that little sticky out bit at the top. The parts that Airfix intended to trap the turret by were sawn off, then the base was filed and then some more and then more etc. etc. Then the top of the fuselage and then the bottom until eventually something like this was obtained I thought it was nearly done, but clearly the camera thinks otherwise. A bit of filing to the starboard fuselage to level things out and also sort out that extra bit of Mr.Surfacer. Tail end has been dealt with as well, though not quite as extensively The main wings have had plenty of work done on them. The ailerons have had all of their work completed and have been glued in place. Realising that it would then be time for the engine nacelles I had to to make a decision about the surface detail as rescribing the leading edge panel was going to be easiest without the nacelles in place. I decided to stick to plan A and partially (I hope) sanded back the detail and then scribed the panels. The nacelles have then been glued on and the port side has had Mr Dissolved Putty applied and 'cleaned' up. A bit of work was done on the locating pins between the two halves of each nacelle and the resulting joins are not too bad. So everything was going swimmingly. Let's see what the engines look like Oh! Hmmm, probably best described as 'vague' and definitely 'orrid! Time to go completely away from the original plan. I have in the stash two Lancaster BIIs that are destined to become a Manchester and a Lincoln at some point (it's Woody's fault!). More importantly, they won't be needing this Airfix have even nicely moulded the propeller hubs even though the Lanc has them buried in spinners. Cruel comparisons 2018-03-03-21-39-17-031 by Andy Goodman, on Flickr To be fair there's about fifty years between the moulds and the Lancaster cylinders could still be better - no, I'm not going there! The exhausts will clearly need to be addressed as they are different between the two planes. If I've got this wrong somebody please let me know, though it will be a while before the engines get fixed on. Fixing the wings on won't be far off but lining them up is going to be tricky as the fuselage is misshapen and wonky, trying to work out what to take as vertical is going to be a challenge. If there are no head on photos at the end you know it didn't go well. So plenty of fun has been had with filler and files and there's plenty of cleaning up to be done before the primer is broken out.

The main overtrees, i.e. not the conversion set, are showing as discontinued :-(

Hi Martin, I'm not sure how much of the surface detail is going to be left. The original plan was to just rub it back a bit to tone it down, but it's gradually disappearing in places. I may wait until the first coat of primer is on to make a decision. Looking at photos of the real thing the fuselage ribs are noticeable but the wings not so much so I may rub the wings back and just scribe some of the panels - leading edge, wing tips, flaps. If it wasn't for the nostalgia trip with the upcoming new edition this may well have been side tracked almost straight away - but I'm not being beaten now. The pilots are definitely the peer over the dashboard variety. Hindsight shows that I should have put the office on top of its locating block rather than in it and also moved the seats forward, I think they are too far back in reality. What I'll probably end up doing is packing their backsides with hunks of plasticard - sounds painful! Glad you are enjoying it, I'm certainly enjoying the challenge even if the end result is not going to be 100% accurate. Andy

A bit more progress in the sanding, filling, bodging into shape process over the last couple of days. The sink mark in front of the office looks to have been dealt with I'm reserving judgement on the office floor sink mark until I've got a coat of primer on it. The bomb aimer's glass has been Futured and glued into place as best I can, this is going to take some work with various fillers. I've also done most of the work needed on the port aileron - removed the pips from either end and extended it with plasticard that has then been filed back to shape. The wing itself has had strips of microstrip glued to the edge and then filed and sanded smooth, all with the aim of lessening the gap. The port wing is the lower. The aileron isn't fixed yet and appears to have moved - the left hand end doesn't actually have a gap! The aileron may yet be sanded down as it is proud of the wing. The horizontal stabilisers have been dealt with along with the elevators - ejector marks are thankfully on the lower side. The port stabiliser is a force fit into the fuselage but the starboard has a good millimetre of slop. It looks as though the front of each elevator are going to need a bit of dressing. Finally, the stuff of nightmares The bomb aimer's window and the front of the fuselage are going to take a fair amount of work to rectify / blend in - I may be sometime ....