Andy G

Another update, we're slowly getting there. This is the only photo I took of fitting the wings and this was more for testing the wing jig than recording the build of the model. The wing spar forces the wings to have no dihedral so they had to be filed on their lower edge. The inner faces of the wings were tidied up and once the spar had been modified the wings sat with a reasonably correct dihedral and not too bad a gap. There was a little bit of a step so this was arranged to be on the underside where it wouldn't be as noticeable. With the wings on and filled, sanded etc. it was time to fit the front end. The bomb aimer/navigator has been cast from the Beaufighter crew. Trying to fit him in was awkward to say the least. Firstly the bomb aiming gubbins by his feet were fitted, knocked off, fitted repeat a few times. The seat was modified by removing the front lip so he could actually sit on it properly. It was found that the only way to get the navigator in and the nose on was to have him sat to one side of the seat and tilted over. It was a case of apply glue to nav's posterior put him on the seat and shove the nose into as good a place as possible and wait for the glue to go off. The fit of the front glazing to the fuselage leaves a lot to be desired. I managed to get a reasonable fit at the top but this left a fair step to one side of the bottom Interior green was sprayed over the glazing so that this would show on the inside rather than filler There then followed several rounds of fill, sand, paint until a reasonable finish was achieved all around the nose Here the very front of the nose has been fitted and masked. I'd read a magazine article on the build of this model where the author had moved the engines forward with 3/16 inch of plasticard, so I attempted this, but it made no difference and double checking the engines seemed to be in the correct location anyway. Back with some more bodging later - got to take the mutts for a walk.

The official answer is that this hasn't been tested and therefore can't be recommended. However, as Mike has shown on the first page people have mounted them this way. The reason we haven't recommended this method is that paint is heavy and fixing to the wall relies upon the PVA joints in the construction of the units and the make up of the MDF. An alternative method would be to fix a baton underneath the racks and let that take the weight. Reference to the instructions may be of help - 36mm Rack Instructions Hope this of use. If you need more help, please fire away?

The material stand is now available, renamed to Rod, Tube and Wire Store - https://www.ebmahobby.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=69&product_id=111 In the next few weeks we hope to have available thin plastic tubes and caps that will fit the stand and protect your eyes from the ends of thin strips of material and to protect the material from getting bent by errant hands and arms.

Thanks John, I've had those issues with this one too. I think if it ever landed on the shelf of doom it would never get off it. It does seem to have made multiple attempts to get itself into the bin, but so far I've defeated it. As for the Astrodome, looking at the photos on IWM it can be alternated with the closed option which is what I've gone for. I'm not entirely sure whether that is correct or not but I'm not attempting to drill the hole now as knowing this model it would split the fuselage! Thanks for the pointer though. Andy

Thanks Adrian. It's definitely not the best of kits and I'll be glad to see the back of it and move onto something a bit simpler for a while. Cheers Andy

Blimey, well over a month since I updated this. This post won't bring things up-to-date but I'll try and add some more posts over the next couple of days. The project is still on-going and still delivering 'fun' and learning experiences. Having sorted out the pilot and wireless operator it was time to look at joining up the fuselage. Firstly was a bit of work to accept the in-flight stand. I use telescopic brass rod for this varying the diameter dependent upon the size of the model. For this model I used 1/8" tubing. Unfortunately I didn't get a decent photo of it before closing up. This is the best that there is You can just make out the tube approximately under the rear beam. To fit it I taped the two fuselage halves together and then drilled and reamed out the required hole until it is a tight fit for the tubing. I then cut the tube almost to length and on this occasion epoxied it to the cabin floor whilst this was dry fitted to one of the sides, thus ensuring that the tubing was in the correct location. In previous models I've glued the tube to the top and bottom of the fuselage, but on the last model (hurricane) I only glued a small bit of tubing to the bottom of the fuselage. This didn't work as the support rod was able to twist the tube sufficiently to break the joint and the whole lot had to be carefully superglued in place with the aircraft no longer removable from the stand. Dry fitting of the fuselage with the piece for the turret and also the front glazing showed the need to pad out the fuselage joints with plasticard. To be fair Revell do point out the need to fill a gap at the front. Mr Dissolved Putty was used to fill the gap along the top seam, several applications being made to gradually built it up The bottom was similarly treated. Note the support tube has been filed to length. The window masks have also been applied, those without masks are specified in the instructions as being overpainted. The turret surround has also been fitted with yet more dissolved putty. Also a piece of sprue has been used as a spreader to try and align the rear fuselage with the rear of the surround - it was a case of make the best fit and then bodge with filler. Whilst that all dried the flap actuators (?) were fitted to the wings Unsurprisingly some of these have been fitted more than once 😞 The horizontal stabilisers have been fitted with a sizeable gap to be filled You can just make out from this photo that I've done the main sanding if the previously applied filler. Up next - navigator, wings and the front glazing, yep, more bodging and filling.

I use pipettes to transfer paint from the bottle to the airbrush or mixing cup. I've been getting a bit fed up with the number of them that have been littering the spraybooth. Yesterday I finally got around to drawing up and cutting a stand to hold them tidily and out of the way. I'm not sure if others have this issue or not, but if anybody would be interested in this stand please let me know and we can get it added to the product range. Cheers

I must comment on the appalling timing of your glue pot knocking over incident. You got it completely wrong, you're supposed to do it when the model is nearly completed. Seriously though, I think we've all done it. I can remember as a kid knocking over a bottle of I think Liquid Poly and it lifting the varnish where it hit the desk surface. I was banned from using it for a while after that. Gratuitous plug time - we make these to prevent this sort of incident https://www.ebmahobby.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&path=67&product_id=74 Hope you manage to polish it clean, I'm looking forward to watching this build progress.

I think the engine is askew on the walrus.

The Revell Acrylic paint racks are now available - PR006 - Paint Rack Revell Acrylic

I used PPP on mine. It took two or three goes to build it up sufficiently, but it looks ok now.

Chris, Kev, TJK, thanks for looking in and the responses. Yep, but they were out of stock when I started this. Plus it would eventually work out quite expensive and I've fancied giving this process a try for a while. I'm only using Vaseline to keep the second pour of the mould from sticking to the first. I thought release agent was for the casting stage, have a I misunderstood this? Cheers Andy

Been a bit longer than I'd hoped getting around to writing this up - my apologies. I like to build my aircraft 'wheels up' and as I don't build drones that requires pilots and crew. The number of kits coming with crew seems to be dwindling, even Airfix can't be relied upon. I pulled the current releases of the Lancaster, Whitley and Wellington from the stash and found the grand total of one pilot and no other crew. I know Revell did a box of RAF pilots at some point but they seem to be cast in unobtainium as I've never seen a box in the five years I've been back modelling aircraft. So the only way forward seemed to be to cast my own from the figures I could find in the stash. I know PJ Productions make various crew but the RAF figures were out of stock when I started this process and purchasing crew for all of the stash would be prohibitively expensive. I've done some resin casting in the past but that was using a mould that somebody else had produced. I'd also decided that the figures would need to be cast in two part moulds in order to stand some chance of getting resin to all of the parts without requiring the use of a pressure pot which I don't have. So, lots of new adventures. I bought some condensation cured silicon rubber, polyurethane casting resin and filleting wax from Easy Composites. First job was to produce the 'master'. Airfix have done the hard work as I lifted these two candidates from the Dakota (I think). Plasticard was used to produce what I thought was going to be the resin reservoir where I would pour the resin in and it would make it's way down into the figures and then out the bottom and up the exhaust (scrap sprue). Note the positioning of the sprue on the pilots' feet, there may be trouble ahead.. As I've got laser cutter but no Lego I cut a small box with two sides removable to contain the mould. Lego is possibly a better option, but plasticard could also be used. The 'master' was then placed on a small bed of the filleting wax (the yellow stuff) and this bed then tediously and carefully built up around them to occupy what would later become the second half of the mould. The three ball bearings are to produce location keys so that the two parts of the mould will locate together correctly when used. The silicon mould rubber was then mixed and slowly poured in before being left for twenty-four hours to set. After the time was up the box was taken apart and the mould removed. Well, not quite that easily as it turns out that whilst silicon rubber doesn't stick to anything else other than itself very well, it does actually stick quite well to MDF. It was persuaded to part company by applying the sharp edge of a new scalpel. Also purchased was a small jar of vaseline to be smeared on the first half of the mould to stop the second half sticking to it. Well, if it was supposed to be good for preventing the mould sticking together, perhaps it might work on the MDF as well. So, after cleaning up the box the Vaseline was duly applied and the first part of the mould re-instated. Vaseline was then applied to the surface of the mould and the master re-inserted. Sorry, chaps, yes, your backsides do look big. Care had to be taken not to apply too much Vaseline as I suspect it would affect the mould, and also to ensure that the master fitted well back into the first part of the mould. The box was then re-assembled and the second part of the mould poured. Another twenty-four hours passed and the mould was then removed, thankfully much more easily this time. A lid was then cut for the box so that it could be used to keep the mould together during the casting process, with one of the sides left off to enable access to pour the resin in. Thankfully the resin sets much faster than the rubber, about twenty minutes. A couple of frantic minutes were spent mixing the two parts of the resin before pouring it into the reservoir and let it run through to the exhausts - it seemed to work. Twenty-minutes were then spent twiddling thumbs before the first cast was successfully removed to produce the first half of the crew for the Hudson Thought - we mostly use injected plastic kits. Now I'd been using a syringe to transfer one part of the silicon rubber mix, what if I used that to inject the resin. I actually injected the resin into the exhausts in the hope that any air would be pushed up through the figures in front of the rising resin. It was also cleaner as the excess collected in the reservoir. Success! Well it certainly looked that way. The snowflake like flash actually breaks off very easily. It's not just in the photograph that the quality of the figures is unclear, they aren't very clear in the flesh either. Maybe adding a colour additive may make them a bit clearer. Under a magnifier they seemed to be ok, so some more were cast. Using the syringe I seem to be getting about a 90% success rate. After a number had been cast and cleaned up they had holes drilled up their backsides and were impaled on cocktail sticks before being blasted with a coat of primer. Meet the frostbite squadron. They're all missing their toes as a result of the positioning of the sprue and the lack of a pressure pot. One victim was selected to become the pilot and subjected to surgery to fit into the cockpit before being painted. Well he's still got both legs! Not sure they'd be any use though. He's a bit ropey but hopefully good enough. I've also painted up the wireless operator. I picked one of the not so good candidates as really only the back of his head is likely to be visible. Yes, the bomb aiming thing has fallen off - again! It can stay off now until I'm ready to put the glazing on the front. Up next, closing up. Andy

This is what I really like about a Ced build (and the banter). Thanks Ced. I managed to get the tank in the right place but it was only after a lot of dithering and searching to see what other people had done.

Thanks for the comments, Steve. Regarding the fuselage capacity, the current design will take upto a 46mm width. For info I've just calculated that a Hercules should have a width of just under 61mm. I'll have a look to see if the design will accommodate an increase to 65mm. Calibration lines on the uprights - took me a while to work it out but I can see where you are coming from and can see the use, so I'll apply them. However, I need to get the main design finished and the required uprights rationalised as I seem to have generated enough to cause confusion and a storage issue! Here's the latest work showing the main planes being fitted on 1:72 Hudson. Front uprights get the dihedral matching, rear uprights (on the main plane) stop the wings rotating around the single spar. The port wing was a tightish fit on the spar so stayed where it was put not really needing the rear upright. The starboard was loose and revealed the need for the neoprene to provide grip on the rear upright. The basics of the design appear to work, once the Hudson wings have set I'll try it with a Lancaster and then a Wiking. The latter will throw up issues as it's a big plane with a high wing. Cheers Andy EBMA Hobby & Craft

Thought it might be, just need to be careful of the rivets around it. I wonder if it’s a mold issue or production problem.

I’m liking the look of this. I bought a copy of this from the current ‘classic’ release yesterday, is yours from the same release? Reason for asking is that one of the ejector pins has pushed right through the port fuselage on mine and one of your early photos appears to show a repair in the same location.

Contact Mel at S&M. I’ve spoken to him at exhibitions in the last couple of years about some of the decals and I think he may be producing them to order.

Currently in development we have a unit designed to hold material stock such as plastic strip, rods, tubes and wire. The unit is intended to sit either alongside or on top of our existing units. As always we're open to suggestions, particularly at this, the development stage.

Latest developments on the wing jig include altering the slots for the tail plane and vertical clamps to give increased variety of positioning and also a U shaped prop to help hold the fuselage in place and stop it bobbing up and down. Uprights have been drawn and cut for the main plane part of the jig and seem satisfactory after a quick play. Hopefully more thorough testing will also be successful and we will be able to get this into production before the end of August (2020!).

Ced, be careful with the Airfix canopy, the sliding part tends to be a bit fragile along the apex of the roof - don't squeeze it Nice suggestion from Troy regarding swapping Arma and Airfix parts - I'll try that when I build the Airfix/AlleyCat one as unusually for me that will be wheels down. Andy

I’m guilty of neglecting the Hurricane as well which is strange as I like them. I’ve got a Legato IIc and an Airfix I with AlleyCat metal wing to build this summer as it’s BoB’s 80th. There are three Arma Is in the stash, but I’m saving those as the others probably wouldn’t get built after trying those. looking forward to the build, be finished by Wednesday won’t they?

I really hope those are the same size bottles that Vallejo use, but that states 14ml against Vallejo's 17ml. I need to track one down.

That cockpit looks very nice. I'm intrigued by the use of a saddle for the third seat and it's harness arrangement.

I've been doing some development and test cutting of racks over the last few days as time permits and I think development of the Revell rack is complete though it will be a few weeks until production begins due to needing proper photographs of the unit. The unit will hold twenty-seven bottles.