moaning dolphin

Excellent looking Bucc, certainly a hoooge improvement on the older one, might have to just go out and get one! Great stuff, Bob

Good day to all! Here is my latest completion, Tamiyas venerable Swordfish in 1:48 dressed up as an aircraft from one of my former squadrons 810 NAS from 1938 (obviously before my time lol). I bought the kit last year from the HMCS Shearwater Hobby show for a decent price and it also came with the rigging etch as well. I invested in the Eduard cockpit set mainly for the harnesses but it also came with a nice instrument panel so used that as well. Im not a great fan of Tamiyas decals and wanted to do something nice and colourful, luckily I came across a set of decals representing a recent incarnation of an RN Historic Flight aircraft which itself was a version from 1938, the sheet also provided information and alternative decals for the original. The sheet was from Scale Model World, and the decals went down very well the only snag i felt was the blue/red strip had a tiny bit out of register, apart from that perfect really. The build itself was relatively painless as you would expect from Tamiya, but I did find a big snag (which may be down to my own hamfistedness or Tamiyas engineering.....you decide lol!) I followed the instructions to a T when assembling the wings. It says to do them separate (even if spread) and then insert the rigging wires, before fitting to the aircraft. I got this all perfect but then when I fitted the wings it forced the rigging out of shape! So in the end I just removed it and as it was badly distorted ditched the kit rigging and replaced it with wire AFTER I had fitted the wings. The only other touch I added were the control wires for the rudder and elevator. I also decided to tool her up to the max, whether she could take off in this configuration is debatable but I think it looks better fully laden! So here she is!...... Apologies for the crappy phots, taken with my crappy phone! Cheers now Bob

Thanks for the pointers above, I'm pondering on it but I am leaning more towards decals though, but that is quite a way off for now. Just a wee update today, been busy at work and at home so not much progress going on. I did however look at that air intake duct on the port side of the aircraft cabin. Looking at pictures it looks like a proper air scoop with the intake/forward part clear of the fuselage and joins the body further back, unlike the kit option which is all fixed. As you can just about see on the pic below, it is also the wrong shape. So first thing was to remove the whole lot. Now I know with hindsight this would have been a lot easier to do BEFORE I joined the fuselage together but hey ho, why make it easy! I carefully removed it with a fine saw to try and preserve the actual scoop so that I would have the option of remodeling it. As for the hole it would leave behind I lamented on my lack of hindsight but then thought I would just go rudimentary and simple. So with the scoop nicely removed I than gouged out the cutout as below Looks horribly messy but there is method in my madness, you can also see the scoop below mounted on some plastic, but more of that later. After making the hole into more of a shallow depression I cut out a blank from plastic card and slapped it in there with copious (and I do mean copious!) amounts of poly and forced the blank into the whole......then just left it! I have since rubbed it down so that there is no longer any lip, and it has left a depression but I can fill that with ppp and then hopefully no one will ever notice the difference! As for the scoop, as said before I mounted it onto some card but looking at the cross section it is still quite hideous. It should be symmetrical but this has been molded with a slight slant, so this needs to go and the hunt for a replacement is required, after much searching though my spares (followed by much disappointment!) I came up with a bomb from a Lancaster kit. I have already mounted it onto some card and let it dry. Next is to shape it and build it up into something better. Until then, Laters! Bob

Well back at it over the weekend, unfortunately I've only got a couple of pics uploaded today, the rest will follow over the next days or so, but in reality it'll be much the same! I splashed a shed load of PPP on the airframe and one of the wing areas and then gave it a mighty good rub down. This is after the first pass: There are still a few areas that will require filling but you can see how recessed the windows were as not one has broken the surface of the filler! I have also taken off as much 'detail' as possible, all the raised panel lines have been erased and I have recessed them for the wing. The fuselage wont really get much in the way of rescribing apart from doors and major panels. Not looking forward to rescribing the doors as I find rescribing into any filler tends to rip out small chunks leaving a rough line as opposed to removing a nice regular sliver. But I will work something out. The parts above are now nice and smooth but I had left off the nose undercarriage doors so they were fitted and another large dollop of PPP was applied. Here it is just before I applied the filler covering the nose! There are still a couple of areas to concentrate on over the next week or so, that is the other wing to finish and thin out the trailing edges, the rudder also needs to be thinned down as well because that trailing edge scales up thicker than your arm! and the air scoops on the fuselage. You can see one above, it a bit rudimentary and apparently there is another on the other side but Airfix don't show that so I will be digging into my spares box for that. Well that's about it for this week, back to filing and filling for me! Laters Bob

Good day again all, thanks for all the encouragement so far, its nice to see.....and going on I may be needing a lot more lol! First up was to remove the PPP filler which as you can see turned out not too badly. You can see the forward cargo door and how badly it actually fitted, it took several goes with filling and rework to get a nice smooth contour but no original plastic of the door is coming through. The rear door fitted proudly so that just needed plastic whittled away to blend that in, the raised panel lines around the doors have been obliterated...….. oh dear, how sad, never mind! Just have to remind myself...PPP is water soluble, do not wash the plastic now! Found that out from bitter past experience lol. Moving on, the thing holding up the fuselage going together was the cabin windows, I test fitted the kit windows and these are quite a dome shape but when inserted thy don't protrude from the fuselage so look horrible. I have opted to go for the fill and paint method. First off was to make a template of the windows and where they go. I went for this solution: Lay masking tape over the windows and with a sharp knife cut them out "carefully" using the fuselage as a template, do that both sides and et voila! My window template ready for paint, after that I just slapped the windows in with plenty of glue and without a care in the world, a bit like I would have done 35 years ago! Next was joining the fuselage, which, relative to the rest of the build was actually not too bad at all, sure I'll need filler and whittling but I was quite happy. I know the windows look ok from here but they aren't any good at all, they look weird! I then looked at the nacelles, these joined ok and then it was fit the undercarriage doors...…. well for this I reverted back to my 12 year old self again and using copious amounts of glue fitted them in as best I could, at least it gives me a base to work from... I need to make sure that the plastic is nice and solid so that I can work them hard. I don't know whether to go by the profile of the nacelle and build the doors up, or work the nacelle to match the door profile. I'm thinking the latter, but there will be plenty of plastic sheet squeezing into those gaps and shimming it all up rather than just using filler because I need it to be nice and strong. Finally I glued everything else together, wings, tail, etc, no major problems so its now onto whittling and shaping each part. That will create a lot of dust and crap and be very time consuming, I'm looking at it as like therapy when my other kits drive me up the wall! This is what I have now, a big box of bits! Well that's all for now folks! Until next time Laters! Bob

Greetings all!, I wanted to compete in this group build but was struggling to find a suitable kit in my stash (because we don’t want to be going out and buying more kits now do we? Eh?) Finally I dug out this old kit, the Airfix 1:72 Fokker Friendship F-27….. This is a 1973 release, which means its not eligible on that note but the Braathens S.A.F.E. was operating in 1972 in this scheme so then it does now fit in for this group build! So having had clearance it was time to crack on! Here is a look in the box after I have given it a good scrub down to remove 46 year old deposits, and it does look like a big pile of bits and pieces. When I bought the kit last year the contents were still bagged and the decals looked decent so I am hoping I wont have any problems there. So here is the pile of plastic: So first up was to assemble the basic cockpit and splash some paint around. Now I could find much in the way of research of cockpit colours so used my imagination. In the 1970s orangy brown was a big thing so went for that on the cockpit floor and seats for an authentic timeline colour. We also have absolutely no detail provided for the cabin whatsoever so that will be jet black to try and hide that. So before I stick it all together I need to work out a few things, wheels up/down? Crew? Yay or nay? Kit windows or no? Etc. I was pleased to see in the box that it came with one of those classic Airfix stands and as the landing gear looks very simplistic I will opt for a flying machine, so that means I will need aircrew. This kit comes with 2 (badly molded!) pilots and also a (using proper 1970s terminology) Air Hostess, I think she is meant to be used as part of a ground display as the kit comes with a boarding ladder as well, but I thought id squeeze her into the flight deck where she can make it look busier and also obscure the view into the cabin. Now I don’t know what type of uniforms the aircrew would wear so I just went for a typical blue suit and white shirt type set up. So before I show my flight deck set up, my disclaimer! Im not going for major detail on this build, especially inside, so its just to give the kit a wee bit of atmosphere, if you know what I mean! So here we have the flight deck and crew, with our Air Hostess leaning through taking lunch orders, Chicken or Fish?! The next thought before joining up the fuselage is to fit the cabin windows, and I must say they are absolutely awful! Well worse than awful, so I am now contemplating on the course of action. Fill and paint or just go with them? Still pondering that for now, but I am also looking at the fuselage….. I fitted the doors and they kind of fit where they touch, but bonus is they almost have the right contour of the airframe! It’s obvious that these doors were designed to be left open, so it is out with the filler! Now something tells me this won’t be that last I see of the white stuff! The kit is littered with sink marks and I reckon there will be gaps aplenty! The fuselage is also covered in LOTS of raised panel lines. I’ve decided I am just going to take everything off! I will go with the streamlined look which will make it much easier during the assembly process. I'm sure there will be a lot of glue, fill, rub down, paint, repeat process, but hey that’s what this hobby is all about isn’t it? So with a very busy next few days coming up I will come back with an update later in the week. Laters! Bob

Good day! Being a spritely 47, i see you dont have anything for 1972, so id like to run this one past you for the GB. Now this kit version was released in 1973 but my (poor and limited) research shows this as a current scheme, so would have been around in these colours in 1972. I know its quite tenuous but id like to jump in with this. Bob

Always late to the party! For some reason ive always found this kit attractive despite its inaccuracies. My current attempt I went through the pain of rescribing those raised panel lines, what a pain! Looking forward to seeing this progress, great stuff so far! Yep! Yes you do!

Excellent job! Love the reprofiled blades, very nice! Bob

Greetings one and all! Its been a bit of time since my last update in this *ahem* speed build, the reason being is that progress has been markedly slow. This Nova Scotian Summer is blistering along now, its nice and warm and inviting for doing other outdoor stuff and not sitting indoors! Also last week was my wife's 50th birthday week, so for once I wrapped up the kits and dedicated a week to her, its only a week every 50 years so I am quite happy with that sacrifice! Although in amongst all that I did manage to get some progress done... which leads me perfectly onto my first bit! @andyf117 you are correct there was none. I have now corrected this using plastic square section, I think it was 2X6mm, cut to size, shaped and rounded off. This was painted separately and then glued in position....nice and simples really.. Here you can see it in position under the tail cone, it was all done by eye and looks the job (don't worry about the rest of the photo, I will cover those shenanigans later!) Next on the list was the forward fairing under the nose, this would be a much more complicated shape as it is a teardrop shape that is radius and then has to fit the hull shape of the aircraft. I used the same square stock as the rear fairing, shaped it externally and then hollowed it out and shaped it to fit perfectly so I could paint it and just fit it without any extra rework, as you can see from this pick it fits nice and snug with no issues*** *** This statement is unfortunately an untruth! The underside contour is so much more complex. I got the shape close and then glued it in place. There were gaps that needed filling, a bit of trimming here and there and a bit of tweaking required. Enough work to wreck the paint finish underneath that I had to spray part of the underside again, no biggie, ill just mask it off and respray, which I did......now go back to the previous picture and take note of what is left of the 'Royal Canadian Navy' decal under the cockpit window! and yes it did it to both sides! Ooh I was slightly mad is a bit of an understatement. At the moment I don't have any suitable decals to cover them so I have had to carry on regardless. I repainted the metallic red on the tail rotors so it looks normal now and built up the sponsons and rotor head. The canopy is still loose so remove this and fitted the seats and painted the quarterlights above the pilots in clear green (which explains the masking tape on the windows below), unfortunately the paint pooled in these as it dried, not a major show stopper but more work is required. So masking has been removed and here she is And after a little bit more work she is nearing completion... So she isn't RFI just yet, I still want to sort those rotor blades as they are just far too rigid and there are a couple of little tweaks id like to add, but I am getting there, albeit very slowly lol. Cheers now Bob

Excellent stuff! and always good to see a large batch of Fleet Air Arm stuff going on. Very nice effort on the paint, looking rather dapper I reckon! Cheers now Bob

Lovely work, she is looking proper job now! Bob

Well another gloriously nice week and next to bugger all modelling done! but I have got round to doing some stickers! The main set of decals are from the cutting edge set but that doesn't come with any stencil decals. The kit ones are next to useless because I have the German version and where I could get away with AngloFranco (?) stensilling for Canada, I wont get away with AngloGermanic! So I went through some spare Airfix ones because I used a separate RN set for my Mk1. I got the yellow on black for under the pilots side window but the other windows need red lettering with no background. I will also go through and hopefully have lots of "No Step' and 'No Push' and further oddities. I had to use a RN jet intake decal so I could get the white background on the Danger so its going to be a right hodge podge of decals. So here she is on the port side: And for the left, unfortunately whilst I drowned the decals in Micro Sol my thumb smudged the front decal to read Canadia… so I need to find a suitably sized "N" from somewhere. Not a great problem in the grand scheme of things but still a PITA! Well that's all for now, Happy Modelling! Bob

Oh I know, them buggers, screwed up a lot of my stuff as well! Well here we are on another update, now day 26, so the quick build has really gone to pot, lol (but hey in reality I don't think there is such a thing as a quick build). Since the last up date the weather in Nova Scotia has been stupendously nice, which means a minimal of bench time. Also we had an incident involving my teenage son, vodka and univited guests which means he is now occupying my 'old' hobby room (his old bedroom upstairs) and I have had to relocate into my 'new' hobby room (his previous bedroom) in the basement, so I do more space but just had the nausea of having to move EVERYTHING! Still all good in the end.....apart from my son who is very sheepish, and grounded for what will seem like a lifetime to him! Hey we all did it when we were younger, didn't we? We just didn't get caught lol! But the Brightside is I have room for, not really a shelf of doom but a shelf of optimism! (lower shelf is the completed section), conveniently located next to my closet of unstarted kits, just to remind me. So where are we at on our Seaking? I went through and masked up for the final bits of EDSG, on the fuselage that meant masking off for the upper fairing for the sponson strut. This is molded onto the fuselage which makes it difficult for masking. Luckily Airfix don't do it this way and leave a nicely shaped recess for this fairing. So by sticking masking tape over the airfix model and carefully cutting, I ended up with a nice mask that just only needed a touch of adjustment. The fuselage was then masked up as well as the sponsons, tail rotor head and main rotor head. The rotor heads should be a different shade, probably a bit darker than EDSG but i'm just going with that as it looks ok. So then it was out with the airbrush and a quick spray without screwing anything up! So with an air of excitement and trepidation it was off with the masking, whilst trying not to snap any tail or main blades! Quite happy with those results, a little tidy up and I reckon we are good and ready for some gloss coat and then some decals! I may even get this done by the end of the month, but not counting my chickens just yet! I did notice my tail rotor is looking strange. I painted the red with Vallejo signal red, over white gloss, but it almost has a metallic finish to it, almost seems to sparkle! Not really clear in this picture but its quite strange, I may have to go over the red again. But that's all for now, hopefully another update really soon! Cheers now Bob

So just a little bit of tweaking and diddling since the last update, I went for the black areas and spent most of my spare time masking it off and trying to get it to look right. I was going for the anti glare strip and the exhaust areas so that resulted in major masking! Then after a nice application of MM black, I carefully peeled it all away and am quite happy with these results. And the other side The flash makes the upper markings stand out a lot more than reality, in fact they blend in quite sweetly! Now them there blades, @andyf117 I have taken what you said onboard. The grey blades did look a little dark when compared to the airframe so I went over it again with my lightest grey, Model Master Camouflage Grey, and it is a bit more reasonable. Going with the "unknown Grey" description I'm happier with it! Again the flash washes it out more but tonally its better. So that's where I am at so far, not much will get done tonight as my Halifax Wanderers play Ottowa Fury in the Canadian Cup tonight (Its soccer) so will be heading down for that, which will hopefully go down as an epic cup tie! So looking ahead I will be concentrating on those sponsons, the tail rotor and painting the main rotor head, I think I'm getting there! Cheers now Bob