Andy G

Is the tail correction relevant for this boxing? I’ve compared mine with the Arrows boxing and the fillet is different, it’s formed from completely different parts. Or am I barking up the wrong tree? For part of my build I’m going to try and make a casting from this boxing to apply later to the three reds I’ve got stashed (not for this gb).

Or it could be that the first one I looked at has got a bit of flash on it making it look even thicker. Quick update on last nights plastic bothering/massacre. I decided to have go at seeing what the Taurus vacuum canopy looked like, unfortunately I made a pig's ear of filing back the surrounds, so that's out of the equation. Then I offered up the new mould Arma Hobby open canopy and it appeared to not be too far off fitting over the dog kennel. Out with the file and attack the dog kennel. Unfortunately the very top of the seat armour had to succumb as well so there will be some judicious placing of the canopy at the end. The photos below also show the re-opened combing at the front of the cockpit. Clearly need a visit from a smoother file and a duster. You can also see that the front of the cockpit opening has been scraped away to let the Arma Hobby windscreen sit properly With a slight downward push the canopy now sits like this And this is how the windscreen will sit. I'm using the old closed section to prop the screen up in this shot You can see that there is quite a gap to fill at the bottom of the windscreen. Hopefully I'll get the screen PVA'd in place tonight and can have a go at filling that over the weekend. Cheers

There are many times at exhibitions where we've heard people say that they love our products but they don't have a workshop. Well, we're now working on a range of travel cases. It's early days but we thought you'd like to see what we're working on and feel free to chip in with thoughts and ideas. The initial thoughts are to produce cases based around A3 and A4 cutting mats, i.e. the removable front will be sized so that it can support a mat. The interiors of the cases will be customisable to cater for the different paint mixes people use and personal requirements. Drawers will be available to store the paints as per the existing range and also in plain format. Cases will have a carry handle. No decision has been made on the material yet, either MDF or plywood. Ply is lighter but more expensive and crucially not usually flat unless braced. MDF weighs a bit more, isn't as strong but is normally flat, or at least the wood we've been getting is. Here's an early build of an A3 sized case. Whilst the frontal area is just over A3 size, the depth is around 185mm.

Evening All, A bit of progress over the weekend. The filling, sanding, painting routine on the fuselage and wing joints has been on-going but looks to be about complete. The dip in front of the port wing root was filled with Miliput and smoothed off with a damp cotton bud. This was allowed to dry before being primered It still wasn't right so further work was undertaken. This was nearly there but still a little more Mr Surfacer was needed. I'll spare you another photo of partly worn away primer! I then turned attention to the horizontal stabilisers. The starboard fitted quite well with just a little needing filing off the front of the tab in order to align the wing with the front of the root on the fuselage. The port however was sloppy and rested too high. Careful scraping and filing did eventually get it to an acceptable position and everything was jigged up before being glued and left overnight. Apologies for the incorrectly focused photo - I'd switched to the point and shoot. The rudder was then prepared. I could remember there being some issue with the previous Airfix Hurricane and offering the rudder up to the tail showed the same again - the rudder is slightly taller than the vertical stabiliser. To address this a piece of 10 thou plasticard has been glued to the top of the fin and will be filed to shape once set. The air intake has been superglued to the underside. The Airfix mounting holes have been replicated in the resin wing. However, there was excess resin in the bottom of these holes. This was easily addressed by drilling them out after which the intake fitted well. The wheels have been prepared having been robbed from elsewhere. The hubs came from an Eduard Spitfire IX kit and the wheels from an Arma Hobby kit that will be built wheels up in a tit for tat move of pinching the appropriate parts from the Airfix kit. The Arma Hobby wheels had the incorrect four spoke hub for this aircraft hence the use of the five spoke hubs from Eduard. The four spoke hubs were removed from the wheels by initially drilling through the locating hole and then reaming out using progressively larger five sided tapered broaches until the Eduard parts just fitted. The Eduard hub comes in two parts and at the moment they are a touch too wide so will need a gentle sand before being glued in place after painting. Yesterday I matched up the new Arma Hobby canopy sprues with the kits in the stash. Whereas the kit that I'd got out to see if the canopy was a suitable donor for this project and to rob its wheels showed a significant apparent difference in the thickness of the canopy at least one of those in the stash didn't. So perhaps there is some variation in the moulding explaining why @Dave Swindell didn't find much difference but I had. Once the current round of priming has dried I'll remove the masking from over the canopy and try to reach a decision as to which way to go with the canopy. Thanks for looking.

Evening All, Thanks for the comments and contributions all very interesting. Hi John, I did indeed know about them and four arrived with the reinforcements from Poland yesterday. Not had chance to offer them up to Airfix fuselage yet but they do appear notably thinner than the original Arma Hobby mouldings, though I note that @Dave Swindell states there's only a 0.1mm difference, so doubtful that they will fit. I have spotted that Hannants have a Squadron replacement cockpit intended for the Airfix and Heller Hurricanes. Presumably this is for the old Airfix moulding. Anybody know if it will fit? I've managed to make a little bit of progress and get a quick coating of primer on to check the seams and joints. There's still work to do. This is an awkward joint to get at with files and sanding sticks What you probably can't see is that there is a dip at the front of the wing root that I've subsequently filled with Miliput. I've also had an attempt at cleaning up the messy parts of the joint. T'other side is messy too, but not quite as bad. I've tackled that as well. The joint for vertical stabiliser needs further work as well. This has had some more Mr Surfacer 1500 applied and is about to get sanded once I post this. Odd bits of the fuselage seams have been touched up with Mr Surfacer but they're pretty close to being done. Off to do some more sanding and primer wafting.

Hi Heather, I'm certainly glad you started putting it together, your's was the first of the second batch and I've missed the nuts and bolts from the whole lot. They were sent first class yesterday, so hopefully with you today or tomorrow. My apologies for the inconvenience. It certainly is Mike - Hopefully the parts won't get scattered and lost. Thanks Heather, we try and it really annoys me when stuff is unnecessarily wrapped in plastic. Thankfully with the increased awareness more packaging options have become available such as the paper bubble wrap and paper tape that actually sticks. Cheers Andy

Some of us quite appreciate having a pilot

There's a photo of Bob Stanford Tuck a short way down this page - http://spitfirespares.co.uk/gunsites.html. This shows the later gunsight but with a ring to its right. Perhaps this is the reason for the excessive ofset? Gap in front of the combing - thanks, damn! At least it's only in with Kristal Klear so should be easy to remove. The combing also appears to be much lighter than the outside - grey-green?

Update on yesterday's progress. The wing has been glued on with thick superglue with a 40 second cure time. Not my favourite method of joining stuff and even with the forty seconds it all felt a bit rushed and pressured as the wing had to be carefully clamped front and rear by hand. I always find that pegs and clamps slip off or move things so prefer to clamp by hand if possible. Careful scraping and filing of the wing and fuselage joint surfaces produced a pretty good joint. This process was pretty much as it had been when making the rag wing earlier in the year. Milliput black has been used to fill what little was needed around the wing and Mr Surfacer 1500 along the odd fuselage seam. PPP has been used to a small extent on the joint between the lower fuselage and the sides. There are a couple of small sink holes in the roots of the horizontal stabilisers which I'v also addressed with Mr Surfacer, but 500 this time. The gap below the vertical stabiliser has had a few applications of Mr Surfacer, perhaps it would have been better to use the Miliput. There is a tiny step at the rear of the wing but I think I'd make more of a mess addressing it than leaving it. I'm quite pleased with the seams and joints at this point. The wing has gone ever so slightly to one side at the rear, but I've managed to address that with a little round file action and some more Mr.Surfacer. Today I've sanded back some of the seams and touched up the cockpit paint - pouch inside and rear bulkhead grey-green and doghouse, front combing and top edges of the cockpit sides in dark green. Prior to the dark green I filled the hole at the front of the combing with Kristal Kleer to provide a surface to paint on. I'm waiting for the cockpit touching up to be completed and dry before masking it and applying a quick waft of primer to see how good the joints really are. I usually have several iterations ad-nauseam of this stage. Gun sight - I think I'm with Troy on this. The normal sight is a centrally placed 'stick'. However the photo of P3886 clearly shows on offset upright with an arm across to a central vertical. In the photo of Park's aircraft the offset upright can be seen and you can just make out a horizontal bar from the top of it. This does seem a very strange arrangement though given the simplicity of the normal sight. Wheels - I'm going to use the 5 spoke wheels from an Eduard Spitfire fitted into the drilled out tyres from an Arma Hobby Hurricane. I had considered using the whole of the Arma undercarriage but comparison with the Airfix equivalents didn't show a marked difference so I'll stick with the Airfix and hopefully avoid too much butchery. Right must be time for another coat of dark green on the cockpit. Edit - forgot to mention that the photo of Park's Hurricane shows a line of what are possibly rivets between the cockpit and the 'gunsight' that are not present on the Airfix or Arma Hobby mouldings.

Question - I know the dog house is dark green, but should the combing at the front be dark green or grey-green?

No worries Troy, all very useful and welcome info. I read through the threads you linked to about P3886. All very interesting and would certainly make a different model and another chance to have another go at realistically over doing the chipping. I had been going to replicate that gunsight with a bit of 0.3 nickel silver, but it looks like it might need a bit more work than that.

Hello, Mark, Chris, @alt-92 you're more than welcome to tag along, ask questions, point me in the right (or wrong :-)) direction. Troy, many thanks for the input, very much appreciated. I've got the DK Decals Hurricane Mk.1 Part 2 for the transfers. These have the serial number as N2520, however, I measured them at 2.57mm which scales up to 7.3 inches. I searched through the stash of decals and found some 6" 1:72 serial numbers from Avialogy. I've also calculated that 4" 1:48 are the correct size for 6" 1:72, so I'll have a choice when I get around to the serials. I'm just glad I'm not trying to make up the serial from the 1:72 4", they're tiny! I may have one or two (or 15!) stashed away. I thought I'd read that the Airfix tyres were actually too large, but I can't find where it was. Canopy - I've got replacement Arma Hobby canopies on their way so I had a play with the Arma canopies that I've currently got last night. Both the open and closed versions sat too high, not reaching down to the rails, probably due to the thickness of the plastic. I think I've got a spare of the new thin canopies coming so I'll see how that fits. I also tried the canopy from a Revell Sea Hurricane which is quite thin, but it wouldn't go over the rails. A crued comparison of the Rob Taurus vac moulding with the Arma Hobby showed it to be about 1mm taller. Unfortunately the Big H is out of alternatives at the moment, so I may end up using the Taurus version. I'll try and repaint the front pouch on the knockout panel when I touch up the rear bulkhead. Like the Airfix Hurricane I built earlier in the year there is a small gap at shoulder height between the bulkhead and the starboard fuselage. Having had the issue previously I watched for it this time and tried to find the cause but failed. I've filled it with PPP, so hopefully it should be ready for touching up later today. The fitting of the gunsight shows that the clip in the film with no guns is wrong, as expected. Thanks for watching and joining in, hopefully have some more photos up later.

Here's the Alley Cat conversion. This is one of the two, so far, unused kits and probably the worst of the three. There's a degree of warpage to the centre front of the main wing that will need to be dealt with if this one ever gets used-sort this or build an Arma Hobby kit.

With the Hudson all but complete it's time to move onto another project. For a while I've wanted to do a group of models associated with the Battle of Britain film. One of those is to be Keith Park's Hurricane, except rather than the IIc used in the film I'm going to do a representation of his actual aircraft from the Battle of Britain. I think there is only one known photo of this aircraft - I'm going to use the Airfix rag wing kit along with Alley Cat's tin wing conversion. I'd bought three of these when they came out and want to use them before moving on to the Arma Hobby models. I'm also going to build it wheels down and with the cockpit open. I've got a Rob Taurus vacuum moulded canopy replacement (yes, I know it's just a straight copy of the incorrect Airfix original) and Eduard gave away these harnesses a few years back at Telford. It'll be the first time I've used a harness. I do love the term 'RAF early'. Early - compared to what? Transfers are from DK Decals. The Alley Cat conversion consists of a large almost single piece moulding for the wings, a smaller part to go in front of the undercarriage bays and several clear resin parts for the landing and navigation lights and also a later canopy windscreen. I'm presuming that the latter is not correct for this aircraft. I'll take a photograph of the main parts before the next update. Assembly started with attaching the front part of the undercarriage bay to the resin wing. This took a little bit of filing to get a good fit and holding together whilst the superglue went off. I hate superglue! Some filling was required to get a good leading edge. I initially used superglue for this but finished off with Mr.Surfacer. The Airfix parts fitted pretty well once I'd get my head around the Airfix instructions being fitting the parts from above whereas I was now fitting from below. The cockpit parts were then addressed. The holes for the harness were opened up in the back of the seat and the armour plating. The whole lot was primed and then coated with MRP White Aluminium. The green parts were brush painted using Hataka paints. Fitting the harness was a right pain in the rear. Firstly trying to find out the correct layout of the harness in a Hurricane was just about impossible and then trying to bend the Eduard parts to fit and glue them together. I eventually ended up cutting the harness up, using bits the wrong way around and cursing a lot. With all of the bending, prodding and bodging some of the pre-paint has come off. After the photo was taken matt Galeria was brushed on and once that had dried Gunze Flesh was brushed onto the areas of bare metal. I'm confident that the harness isn't quite right, but it will have to do. The seat, etc. has been given a brown/grey oil wash to weather it a bit. It's propped up the the instrument panel and its attached framing if you're wondering what's in the background. The Airfix lower cockpit parts were glued to the wing piece as per the instructions and no issues with the resin wing replacement. They've been given a coat of MRP White Aluminium, a touch of matt black for details and AK Brass for the gun button. After that they received a wash of Payne's Grey oil and then a bit of grey/brown on the pedals. The cockpit sides have been brush painted with the Hataka Grey Green and then detailed before receiving the grey/brown wash. IP and seat glued to the port side before closing up. The joint between the two parts is pretty rubbish but they each locate well into the fuselage. The undercarriage bay also received the White Aluminium followed by the grey and grey/brown washes. The fuselage was then closed up being careful to get as good a joint as possible. Time to offer the fuselage to the wing..... Something's not quite right! The problem is that thick piece of resin behind the pedals stops the base of the seat frame from sitting down low enough. Mask on (plenty of those around now!) and out with the dental burrs Apologies for the blurred photo but hopefully you can see the area removed. It's just broken through to the locating hole for the filter. That's better. With a bit of careful filing of the wing and fuselage that gap has closed up further. Some things that I need to sort out are the propeller to fit and the guns. In the film there is a brief clip showing the front of the wing and no guns, but I assume that this was just a case of using a IIc with the cannons removed and plated over. I'm guessing that Park's aircraft would have been fully armed, but with the red patches usually intact. Also, the wheels - should I be raiding the Arma Hobby kits for the wheels. At least some of those will be built wheels up so cross kitting of parts isn't an issue.

Just ordered my Hawk, looking forward to this.

Thanks TJK. There were a few times where I wondered if it would get finished but I realised it was going to fight me all the way and made the decision that beating it would be good for skill development and the environment.

Apologies, this is likely to be a bit of a mammoth post, but the Hudson is just about finished now. With the paint on and the tail plane sorted out it was on with the gloss ready for the transfers Not many transfers for this and they went on very well After the transfers the top surfaces were given a 50:50 coat of Galeria satin and matt varnishes and the aluminium a coat of the satin. Both coats were a bit more matt than I really wanted. Onto the weathering. Photos of these aircraft on the IWM website show them to be fairly clean so the intention was not to go overboard but just take the edge off the model. Flory washes were used for the main part. Dark dirt on the upper surfaces and grey on the lower. In the past I've applied it with a brush but have always ended up with clumps of dirt where the liquid has clustered and these are quite difficult to remove and not at all realistic. So this time I used the airbrush. Hmm, not a complete resolution of the problem. The matt surface also made the wash quite stubborn to remove. Here the port wing has been partially cleaned up. The engines have been affixed. This was done with extra thick super glue as this had a 40second cure time that would allow adjustment. Needless to say both engines stuck instantly. Thankfully they are pretty much where they should be. The only other weathering was to the engines and mud thrown up the undercarriage. The exhausts were darkened with matt black and the exhaust staining was sprayed on tyre black initially and then a mix of light grey and a touch of brown. The tyre black didn't play ball which was unusual, it's getting to the bottom of the pot, so maybe it is time to start a new one. The dirt from the undercarriage was applied by brushing pigment on. The vents just behind the engine got a wash of thin black so they looked more like vents than the raised lumps of plastic they are. Into the final straight and I felt that the sticky out bits such as the aerial and pitot tubes didn't stand much chance of surviving long or the aerial even being able to withstand the wires pulling at it. As such they were pinned with 0.3mm wire. Receiving holes were drilled in the fuselage and the parts affixed with superglue. I looked at the tear drop aerial (?) and thought there was no chance of being able to drill and pin it so tried just super gluing it. It seemed to work but the following night it flopped over as soon as I looked at it. Thankfully I was actually able to drill and pin it. On with the aerial wires. Start with the short one at the front. Another 0.3mm hole was drilled just behind the canopy and the EazyLine fixed with superglue, this was going great for once, no multiple applications of superglue and having to re-drill the hole. Hang on a minute that didn't feel good Fighting to the end! I checked the prototype photos and the base of the aerial is correct so I couldn't get away with removing everything and putting a piece of rod in place. The remaining aerial was chopped off at the top of the base and the latter drilled to take a 0.6mm nickel silver rod. Drilling was easier said than done due to the size and hardness of the plastic. I forgot to mention that the base detached itself from the fuselage during the repair work and went back with a gap around it. This was addressed with PPP before dark green paint (MRP) was very carefully applied. The rest of the wiring work went without hitch though drilling 0.3mm holes in the leading edge of the fins without leaving scratch marks in the paintwork wasn't easy. In the above photos you can see that the masking has been removed. I was quite worried about the masking on the bottom windows as the paint seemed quite thick over them but they came out ok. I'm quite surprised by how much of the cockpit is visible and it would have been worth making more of an effort to detail it. However, it is just about possible to see the navigator and wireless operator but no more. I also need to make more effort in future to deal with dust. The rear gunner is another casting of the Beaufighter crew perched upon the seat provided in the kit. I was quite relieved to find that I'd positioned the seat so that he could sit on it and the turret and guns fit over him without any modification. The guns are the kit supplied barrels painted black and then dry brushed with Humbrol 53 Metallic acrylic in the fairly recent flip top bottles. I'd bought this only because I needed a sample for the business but was pleasantly surprised at how well the paint brushes. Some of the previous Humbrol acrylics have been awful/useless. So with the props glued on that's nearly it. It's not quite finished as it's resting on a temporary base whilst I await delivery of a sea-scape from Coastal Kits (https://www.coastalkits.co.uk/newstore/ship-display-base-for-waterline-models.html) which will be cut up and combined with a new stand. Once that's done I'll take some photos with a proper camera and post up an RFI. As expected it's been a troublesome kit and taken a lot longer than expected, but it's all but done and I think it looks ok even if there are plenty of areas for improvement. It'd be a dull hobby if there weren't always things that could be improved.

Getting there - on to paint, botches and the model fights back. The brown and green are Mr Paints Dark Earth and Dark Green, silver is Alclad aluminium. I broke convention and started with the upper surfaces on the expectation that the silver may be a little fragile. Milk chocolate Hudson - Worms (white-tac). I learnt a new trick to use a small piece of plasticard rather than just fingers to roll out the worms. They come out much more uniform. Green on and start making the brown a bit patchy. I started using Light Earth and then Dark Earth with a touch (too much!) of black added. With hindsight not only should I have used less black but I should also have done the light earth last. Patched the green - Light Green followed by Dark Green + Black - same mistakes and lessons. It was all toned down by re-applying the Light Earth and Green With the top painted it was masked with tape and more worms to get the wavy edge. Alclad goes over a glossy black surface doesn't? Right on with the Alclad gloss black primer. Ooh shiny! After applying the lovely black coat that I was really happy with I read the side of the Aluminium bottle and it said to apply over a grey primer. Blow that, on with the paint Not only did the aileron need attending to but after a few days of looking at it I wasn't happy with the way that the paint was sitting over detail. It had all gone soft or disappeared. Obviously too much paint at some point. So the port underside was stripped back with neat IPA and cotton buds. Slow process but did the job. Re-applied primer, this time grey Stynlrez and then more aluminium. Felt that was much better so repeated on the starboard wing. The de-icing boots were then painted which meant masking off the silver. Everything was going well until I unmasked the tail section Not only is some of the detail disappearing but the tape has reacted with the paint. Wasn't this fixed to the fuselage as well? Rats Re-affixed and Mr Surfacer applied over the joint. Next update should see it just about finished :-).

I am pleased to announce that today we have released the Wing Jig. It's available from our website.

Built one of these in my younger days and have been trying to find one for a while but those on eBay tend to go for silly money. Looking forward to watching you work your magic with it Adrian.

I’d be interested in joining in. Most of the suggestions so far float my boat, though I’d be hesitant on the 1:72 Moth as the last one fought me all the way and then had the lights fall on it before I managed to photo it.

The Wing Jig should be released next week. In the meantime here are some photos of it in use Horizontal Stabilisers and Elevators (Airfix Jaguar GR1 1:72) Main Plane (Revel Wiking BV222 1:72, but a very big plane) There are lots of different supports with this to cater for various size planes and we have therefore built a drawer into the jig to house all of the associated bits.

As the others have said - brilliant. Thanks for sharing, especially the tutorial.

Morning Mark, We don't have any units specifically designed for Mission Models paints, however, they fit the Alclad/MRP drawers pretty well - https://www.ebmahobby.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=62_64&product_id=58 As for the Arma Hobby Hurricanes I've been sucked into another five by the overtrees and replacement canopies. Cheers

You bought a second one? Mad! I wasn't happy with the bits of plastic supplied as a representation of the front guns so attempted to drill out the troughs to take a pair of Master 303s. I started with the starboard side but managed a much better job with the port side apart from catching the front with the drill chuck. Last round of seam work The vertical stabilisers have been fitted. One fitted better than the other but neither were positive and both required filling and sanding. After a bit of fiddling and fettling the cockpit glazing fitted reasonably well The turret surround has been sanded into submission and then masked off You can just see to the rear some white chipping at the joint with the tail plane. This was filled with some more Surfacer 500 Once that was dealt with primer was applied. Having another go with Stynlrez. Gave up with it before as it always required a full strip of the airbrush afterwards but I seem to have avoided this by flushing through with straight water and lots of it as soon as I'd finished. I'll have to process some more photos before another update, thanks for looking.