CraigH

Hi all I do have a new post coming on the Stuka I promise. There's been a few issues which you'll see when I can post. One of these is that my time has been taken up designing a new website. I've decided to give full time modelling a go so thought I'd need one LOL. http://www.custom-models-and-dioramas.com So I have a question for all those that know this site much more intimately than I do. Is there any section where I can "announce" myself without upsetting any rules etc.? Thanks in advance everyone

It's been a while. Redecorating the hall and a little trip to London got in the way and we're off to Portugal on Sunday so I thought I'd better get a little update up on the meagre work I've done in the last few weeks. Just to top it all off, my laptop (steam driven and I DON'T mean the games platform!) crashed on Saturday last week so I've just finished a re install and putting all my dodgy software back on, just joking Microsoft and Adobe. So first up, the floor was fastened to the port fuselage. This isn't strictly Airfix instruction manual but I'm figuring it'll pay off later....I think. Next up was to add some general dirt and grime then start to look at the gunner's area. I'm using the ammo racks from Airscale's kit, of course, and it differs from the kit parts in that there are two extra magazines which fit on the starboard wall which I'll sort later but also the two main racks are considerably larger than the kit parts. So large in fact, I had to take off the rear portion to get a reasonable fit. I may even need to take more. I'm thankful the crew aren't being fitted. The next major issue is the waste cartridge storage bag/box. I've seen so many conflicting images and even the contemporary manuals themselves concerning this damned bag. This diagram comes from the 1938 manual for the JU 87B It clearly shows a metal frame with a hessian type bag slung from it, as does this lithograph type picture from the 1939 B1 manual This also shows the magazines we'll come to later. But then, same manual, very next picture down the page is this, which approximates the Airfix kit part of more of a metal box affair If I had hair, I'd be tearin'. I've decided to go with a bag type arrangement as I can't really see how they'd empty the box unless it had a bag inside it. The Airfix kit has the whole fixture fastened, wrongly, to the stanchion holding the magazine racks in a very flimsy way. It does fasten to it but the holder for the bag is much more substantial and bolted to the rear of the fuselage as well. So I fashioned this as a rough approximation. NOTE: Below the bag, you can see a map holder and a gas mask cannister. I've added them to the fuselage as they aren't in the kit or moulded to the sidewall, and made a scale map from an actual bombing map from August 1940. It fits here You'll notice I've done some, hopefully, subtle dirt and grime and grease additions as well as some chipping in worn areas. The wiring's been replaced with real wire and the Morse key added. The red and white bar takes the cables from the rudder pedals aft. Also corrected is the trailing aerial winch. On the kit it's all one part as here: Whereas, in actuality, it was split as in the photo Before fitting the bag structure, I needed to make a little cover for the rear of the fuselage. The kit is very rough and on the real aircraft, it was a much neater arrangement with a few info plates on it. I'll marry everything up when the two sides come together. Next in came the magazines for the rear gun. They're a vast improvement on the kit part, if a bit of a tight squeeze They'll be levelled up later of course Onto the other side. The Airscale kit provides the oxygen bottles for pilot and gunner and the 1939 manual gives us the routing of the oxygen pipes which run to the oxygen filling port on the starboard side of the fuselage. Anything oxygen was blue on Luftwaffe aircraft. The regulators, I chucked together from a couple of bits from the spares box. The oxygen pipe to the masks is a wire core, wound with thinner wire then covered in shrink tubing and painted olive green. I've scratched up the circuit breaker panel as well. Lastly, I've decided to fit the inner wing sections before closing up the fuselage as it'll be easier to clamp them together to get a good fit than it will if I'm clamping a completed fuselage.....CRACK!!!!! Hopefully I'll get another update in before hols. Thanks for looking

Thanks Dave, much appreciated 🙏😀

As promised, here is the fully finished diorama with the Britain's crew set posed as the iconic picture of Gibson and crew boarding G "George" Thanks for looking through and sticking with me through this looooong build.

It's a bit long in the tooth now Andy. The P-1 was released first and I don't think there's many of them about now, followed by the H-6 which you can still pick up on eBay etc occasionally. Needs a re release in my opinion.,... I'd love to do the H-6

😁 Thanks

Thank you Alan🙏

Glad to be of help. Just wish the Border Dambusters had come along earlier. Would have saved me a lot of effort. Not half as much fun though LOL

Afternoon all, The gentleman who commissioned me to build him the Lancaster has sent me some photos of the diorama progress so far. The base is still the one I built for the aircraft and he's had a custom backdrop made to portray dusk on 16th May 1943. Also, he's started to populate the base with some figures and vehicles. He has the full set of crew from Britains to add but I think it looks fantastic at the moment just as it is. The sky is moody and accurate for a fine, late spring day in 1943. There are some pics he's sent here and I'll update with the finished diorama when the crew are in place.

Well Bloody thank you!🤣

Just realised I've failed to post my build from 2020 of the old Revell 1:32 He 111 P-1. There's no build doc unfortunately but thanks for looking. I've painted it in the kit given KG54 Totenkopf-Geschwader and imagined it having just landed from a bombing raid over England in 1940 and waiting for a reload and a refuel. Not much time for cleaning down so it's a tad mucky. I've used the Eduard interior and exterior PE kits and HGW seatbelts as well as the Profimodeller oxygen system (never again!) Many thanks for having a peek.

Hi all A desperate callout please. Does anyone have a copy of the later decal sheet for the JU 87 B2 that Airfix released in about 1991? It has extra decals then the original 1975 version which is the one that Airfix have supplied with the kit, no doubt for authenticity. Thanks in advance Craig

I decided to get the instrument panel finished now that my 0.5mm ball bearings have arrrived (finally) from China. That means I can make up the switches for the bomb selector panel on the lower right of the IP by taking short lengths of No. 6 guitar string and gluing a ball bearing to the tip. Then a dob of red paint and away we go! Shorten them to around 2mm and fit three and the last one flies away Aargh! Ho hum, make another one then all finished, just the gunsight to add when everything's in the cockpit Speaking of which, I've done a rough fit of some of the components of the left cockpit side. Some chipping done. Still lots to do like a dirtying up job with red/black mix, extra wiring to add but I'm pretty happy with this rough mock up. Hopefully get the seats fitted tomorrow. The closeup is going to be a nightmare I can tell. So many bits to align and seat properly. HELP!

I started the engine today but painted it before I could photograph it so the primed pic will have to wait. However, my theory about the plastic used in the new kit has been proven to be true. I clipped it well back from the joint and it still brke in the wrong place. Luckily I have the original parts in 1970s plastic, which is much nicer to work and less prone to snapping so I'll be repurposing wherever possible (plus the fact I hate removing flash and the other parts were cleaned by me eons ago. The new kit part is on the left BTW I've been working on the Airscale instrument panel. Some of the knobs I've nicked from the kit panel and some of the levers are PE strip with tiny 1mm ballpoint pen ball bearings stuck to the end and painted the relevant colour. I've got some 0.5mm balls on order to make switches for the bomb selection panel to the right. They'll stick onto thin wire, I hope!, to make switches instead of levers. I've put a pic of the kit panel in for comparison. Also done some work on the magazine racks (no, not the ones for keeping copies of International Scale Modeller and the like). They're beautifully detailed and are just an exercise o in masking and painting. Again, I've put the kit offering alongside for comparison. I'm hoping to get some pictures of at least a rough put together of the cockpit before we go to London for a few days. I've talked her into a visit to the IWM so looking forward to it. Thanks for looking

So, straight away, when I looked back on the rudder pedal assembly, I wasn't happy. Luckily, I've got 2 sets of most things on this kit so I used the new kit parts to redesign them and I'm much happier I've painted up the Airscale oxygen regulator assemblies which aren't in the kit and stuck a couple of tiny decals on for the regulator gauges. Still a bit of cleanup needed from the sand coloured paint I've poked into the holes to represent the canvas bag which sat inside the metal housing. Lastly, I looked at the Revi gunsight Peter added to the Pro Range kit and just painted and dry brushed it, added a decal or 2 and a bit of lead wire to represent the power lead. Finally, a sliver of clear plastic for the glass sight and it looks a bit better than the kit part already I hope. I'll be removing the hair I can see on the enlarged photo LOL! I've had an idea to repurpose the kit Revi sight to be the Stuvi bombsight which never seems to appear in kits but sits high up on the left of the cockpit glass. I'll have a play and see how it turns out. As ever, thanks for looking.

Aaargh!! First disaster today. I was dry brushing the throttle quadrant when it went ping out of my hand and onto the carpet. No worries, I could see it under the bench except, when I picked it up and looked, the handle for the throttle had broken off. Bloody resin is so brittle at times. I've fashioned a new handle with scrap PE with a metal large biro ball on the top and it looks ok but I'm still mighty annoyed. By the way, don't get it wrong, as I did initially, and think the kit throttle is correct with two levers (throttle and pitch),it isn't. Peter is right yet again in that there is only the throttle control on that quadrant. What I think is the pitch control, (it translates from the 1939 manual as fuel saving device?) sits above it on the fuselage wall. Strange. I looked at the rudder pedal assembly today. The kit parts are clunk personified. Now I'm not going into the detail shown in the 1939 manual as most of it can't be seen, but I've done a bit of drilling and cutting and added a bit of round road to come up with this to take the beautifully detailed rudder pedals form Peter. With this, I can decide when everything's in situe whether I want to run the rudder cables. I think they run down the side of the fuselage though in conduit so probably not.

Right, on with the Motley, as they say...but for the hell of me I don't know why they say it! I cut a piece of 0.5mm card to fit into the hole I created. I let it into the piece instead of gluing it to the back. More work but I don't know how tight a fit it's going to be when the two fuselage halves come together and an extra 1mm ( the same will happen on the other side to accommodate the switch panel) might be disastrous. Initial coat of paint and a quick fit of the pieces shows there's some clean up to do and a bit of card filling at the bottom but I'm happy with it at this stage. I popped the Airscale parts on to see what they looked like and, with a bit of filling at the base of the flap assembly, they're looking nice I also tried the two seats to see what needed to come out and, as you can see, the pilot's seat needs a little protrusion taking off and the gap card filling. This should be great once painted tomorrow. The rear seat, I think I dodged a bullet TBH. The kit part looks like this and the kit seat sits into the hole in the middle of the raised assembly Taking the raised section down to floor level would've left a huge hole to fill and sand and the rest so I measured up the dimensions if I just took the raised sloped top part of the assembly away. Exactly the same size as the base of the gunner's seat so it can sit on that nicely. Looking better than the kit parts already hopefully Also sprayed some of the protrusions a grey colour for contrast. Hard to say which shade they should be as pictures are scarse. I'm working from 1939 handbooks and manuals mostly. If anyone has any links to good pictures I'd be most grateful As ever, thanks for looking.

So it's time for the real work to begin. Cutting all the rubbish out, there's nothing new as we all suspected. It's made in India and the plastic is that hard stuff that can easily leave a dent it you get your cutters too close to the edge when removing from the sprue so beware. There are dents, missing mouldings and flash galore so fill your boots and, yes, I've already started taking the moulded wiring off For a 30 odd...Hell! who am I trying to kid FORTY odd year old kit the detail is still quite sharp. Raised rivets at points and some of the cockpit detail is moulded on URGHH! Before the real fun starts, I had an itch I had to scratch. While I was spending Christmas over or on the toilet courtesy of viral gastroenteritis, I had a thought about the rear MG17 gun. I'd finished it from the Airscale kit pre Christmas but never checked if it went through the small hole in the rear glass port as it has the sight already moulded to it. I knew Peter wouldn't have boo booed...didn't I? No he hadn't it fits fine. Tight but fine. I always start either engine or cockpit and I make no excuses for cockpit this time just so I can get cracking on Peter's upgrades. So first, I thought flap/trim assembly and throttle quadrant. They're already moulded onto the existing sidewall part "52" and here it is in all its clunky glory with the replacement parts above it. My first thought was to carefully razor saw and scalpel off the existing parts, so, to that end, I scored the inside of the part to give me a guide for cutting on the face side of it. It's very tight and I'd hate to nick something I later rely on in court. I prefer a scalpel as it's more precise so we soon had the parts removed but even the untrained eye can see they're much bigger than their replacements Hey ho, I thought, I'll take off the whole backing and reline it with some card to provide a base to put the new parts on, but on looking at the connection on the left side of the flap/trim assembly, it's clear it's never fitting the union beside it. Now reference material for the cockpit of the B1 is a bit scarse to say the least. The best I could find was for a D and it becomes obvious that the connection on the left side of the assembly is an electrical connection and, not only that, the whole load of gubbins to the left of it on the kit part is pure fantasy on Airfix's part (presumably down to them finding the same lack of photos 40 years ago as I'm doing now), with the exception of the Morse key, which I've saved. Ah well, that makes it easy LOL What have I done??? Stay tuned for the solution...when I find it!

Sorry LOL

Well, obviously, the kit's not here yet so, short of buying an old one at inflated prices from eBay (other sites to buy things to feed our addiction ARE available), I've had a play around with the seats from Peter at Airscale in his superb Pro range for the Ju87. I'm going to say no more but leave the kit v Airscale pictures to speak for themselves. The kit parts are from my 1970s original kit which I've added to over the following years explaining the seatbelts which weren't available back in 1975. I think you'll agree the degree of detail Peter's got into his printing is stunning.

1/24 has always been a pain to get aftermarket for. I'm constantly stumped for ground crew etc. for dioramas.

Another option is to get the barrels from Master. I use them on most things. They transform a gun

Don't think so. Peter at Airscale has done it as a kit. You could always ask though

Thanks Noel. Good luck with the Spit

No you're right. There was one for each of the superkits including the stuka https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/355120359029?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=70w_vdgoski&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=hE6KAfv0TgK&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY