silver11

Hi Pat, I think you misinterpreted my pictures; the bottom is not the assembly of the gun; it is the process of making a master model. The gun itself composes only of a few parts.

Hello fellow modelers, especially those who are interested in WWII Japanese aviation. As you probably already know, ICM has released the new kit of Ki-21 in the 1/72 scale. And another Ukranian producer who specialized in machine guns in 1/72 announced that they are working on the machine gun upgrade for this kit. The work is in its final stages, and the kit should be available soon. And here are a few pictures from developing the master model

Hi Barry, Thank you for your response, I have this book, but I need more information to create 3D print for the parts that I need so I am looking for more information.

Hey guys! I need help; I am building Leopard A6 CAN, the one used in Afghanistan. As far as I know, these tanks had some modifications, such as add on armor on the front of the hull and on top of their turrets (AC units, antenna mounts). So if anyone has any references (photos, blueprints) of these modifications, I would greatly appreciate it.

Let's try again with another hosting:

Here is the finished model:

Well, this is a good news anyway, but it is a bit too late for me since both of my Italians (Ansaldo and Hanriot) already painted. Hope it will not contradict information in this book

Here are some updates after the break that was caused by moving to a new apartment. Just finished tail and start working on assembling bi-plane wings.

Personally, I would like to see Nieuport 28 in 1/72 in quality adequate for 21st century.

Well, I utilize the same technique that I developed for Ansaldo, but unlike Ansaldo where I needed irregular shape holes and used for that soldering Iron, here for Hanriot I needed more or less regular rounded holes but of different diameters though. So in order to do that, I ordered via eBay biopsy punchers of different sizes and randomly used them on scotch plastic tape in order to create the mask. In order to achieve desired density of the camouflage, I made few passes with airbrush every time shifting or repositioning mask so the holes got overlapped. As for how the actual plane was painted, I'm too young to witness that However I have few pictures of this plane and most likely it was painted by short strokes of paint brush over painted canvas. Here is one of the pictures and profile created based on this photo:

Thank you for kind words. No, this is not a resin kit, this is plastic, short-run, so details are not so crisp, and require additional work in fitting, but doable overall.

As I finished with Ansaldo, I'm concentrating my focus on finishing another long-standing project, another Italian bird Hanriot HD.1. I'm building a plane that was flown by Mario Fuchi, the plane has two machine guns and here are my questions: What type of synchronization mechanism might it have? I mean did it have "horn" on top of the muzzle or not? Also what about scoop underneath of the muzzle (I think it was a protection from shock wave from the gun)? I also have seen pictures where they present and absent as well. And final question did his plane had a sight, if yes what type? Thank you for any help. Alex

Well, it is a short run kit, so don't expect it to be something like Tamygawa Nevertheless, the dimensions and size are pretty accurate, so it is a fairly good representation of the model of the actual aircraft. Plastic is a bit too soft for my taste. The fit, in general, is not so bad, except for the mounting of the wings. The kit suffers two major problems which I realized a bit too late. First one is the place of exhausting pipes is wrong, they moved too forward. In reality, the first pipe should be in the place of the second one on the kit. The second problem is tear-like mounts of the struts on the fuselage. They have a wrong shape (which is not a big problem since it was a number of different variations of them and it can be easily adjusted with sanding). The problem is that the points where struts should go are out of alignment with other strut's point on the nose of the fuselage and on the wings, moreover the distance between them is wrong too. Also, the upper wing is given as one-piece detail, that in actuality is two sperate wings joined by longerons and metal tube. All that fixing made all provided in the kit struts completely useless except V-shaped fuselage ones, all others I had to scratch build for this kit. So the same goes for the cockpit windshield, bomb racks, few items in the cockpit, tail skid, exhaust pipes, flame suppressors, horizontal tail support all these were the scratch build. Also, I used extensively foil for all appropriate places. As for the photoetched parts I used Tom's Modelworks Set #304 French Interior for some gauges in the cockpit, Ace 7253 - Vickers Machine Gun Mk.I, Eduard 72438 - Wire Stretchers & controlhorns and GoNza 72201. Now, the plywood is not a paint job, for that, I downloaded a bunch of pictures of actual plywood from the internet, played with them in photoshop and printed my own decals (it took me more than a dozen attempts before I was satisfied with results). Also, keep in mind if you will decide to build the same aircraft as me, it had numbers in its tail as well as on horizontal tail, however, there is only one pair of numbers provided in the decal, so you will have to recreate another one.

Here is the progress of my build of Ansaldo SVA 5 by Fly 1/72