Greif

Can't wait to see the progress...

Very nice result! That's true : it looks bigger in fact.

I Ivor, I could answer partially to your question: I have the Tamiya King Tiger initial Porsche turret at 1/16 scale. It could give you an idea... The problem is that I'm far from home for business for 2 weeks... So you need to be patient... Cheers

Waow!!! Stunning job! Congrats!

I love your 190! Very fine and detailed paint job, and I really like the painting scheme.

Unusual aircraft with a brilliant result; congratulations!

Wonderful 88 Martin. congrats!

Nice, I like it! I've also thought to do my 109E4 in flight, but I didn't manage to find a stand that pleased me.

Like Martin! The Dornier is very nice.

Quite a long time without posting on this thread... Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to dedicate to my models in this period. I've started in parallel an Heinkel 177 in 1/48...but I still need to complete this old Lady. Ok, not a big progress in the end... I've completed the instrument panel: mat varnish sprayed, levers installed and finally this assembly took his place in the cockpit. At this moment I realized that I had forgotten to put a drop of gloss varnish on the instruments ... ... ok I will add this directly inside the cockpit. In the meantime I have completed the paint of the aft area of the cockpit and washed it... but, once again, I 've left the wash dry over... Classical "too much euphoria" symptom... once again I will deal with issue later. A week before I have also started to add the rivets line on the fuselage; I was doubtful about it, but in the end I like the result. Before After I managed to find some decals for the engine S/N ; taken from an 1/144 japanese maritime patrol aircraft Hasegawa kit. The leters are not exactly identical to the german WW2 letters, but I'm happy with it. Installed the mounts, to check the engine position... the engine is far too forward: nearly 3 mm and the spinner is not in contact with the fuselage... I had already reduced the compressor diameter, but that's not enough. I need to trim it more. More to come later! Thanks for watching.

Very nice job! Your cockpit is looking very good. Doing scratchbuild based on pictures (sometimes not so clear though) is a tough job, but you are doing well. Carry on with the good job and have fun. cheers

Great Job Martin! congratulations! I'll try your painting method on my HE177.

Yes Bish, I remember that the FAMO was huge and used for tank recovering; in fact it was forbidden to recover a bogged down Tiger with another Tiger...and FAMO's were used coupled to do the job as shown on the picture with the Ferdinand/Elefant. Don't misunderstand my words, I was just surprised with each others sizes. Due to the fact that the 555 is a "what if", maybe Revell has a bit downsized it, for a bomber, but that's just my opinion... and your diorama is fantastic! Cheers.

Very nice diorama. I like the camo of the 555. The FAMO looks huge in comparison with the bomber .

Wonderfull job Nigel ! The last picture gives an idea of the real size of "Lady Gazelle", and doing so many improvements at this scale is the proof of high skillage. Erik

Gorgeous Gazelle Nigel, congratulations!!!!

Very nice, congratulations! A nice uncommon plane. Very nice camo.

I finally started last night to work on the Greif. As I 've heard so many (bad) things about gaps, filler, bulkheads off size... I decided to perform some checks on the fuselage. For first, after having removed and cleaned the sprues attachment signs, I tried to assemble the two halfs to see if they were matching; I don't want to have a bad surprise at the last moment with the finished cockpit already in. So I have joined the top halfs, maintaining them together with paper tape... and have a look to what happen at the bottom fuselage... The top two halfs are joined correctly together; there is a very light deformation forward of the front gunner, but it's so light that it will be rectified by the inner additional frames and beams I will add. In fact, the bottom is not aligned, especially in the bomb bay area. I'm thinking to correct this with some inner location plates that will force join the two halfs together. However I will add some inner frames to give more rigidity to the fuselage, especially in the wing area. After this, it was time to check the correct match of the canopy and the front bubble window. The front window is matching pretty good with the canopy and the fuselage; the canopy has a little issue with it's curve angle which doesn't match with the fuselage. That's not a big big issue, but I need to modify the curve before assembling. After that, I tried the front bulkhead: It was the separation wall between the cockpit and the front fuel tank; it support also the the front gunner aiming turret and all the radio /nav boxes. The frame indeed is too big and pushed up the top fuselage skin.... to be modified! Then I've tried the cockpit floor, with a good matching with the fuselage shape, but impossible to fit to the rear wall because of the wrong length of the floor, too long! At this point my question was : where this the truth, where is the wrong.... So I opened the Bunrin-Do book... ...... ....and I realized that the cockpit was nearly... all wrong: wrong floor, incorrect location of the pilot and bomber seats, missing bulkhead... And I'm not inventing, it's from Heinkel 177 Flugzeugbuch... In fact the first thing that has surprised me when I opened the kit was the very small space left to the gunners inside the lower gondola: if you have a look to the kit, the gondola was nearly completely closed by the cockpit floor with just a small access to it...you can imagine moving inside this space with the coverall, parachute, and more than that, fighting and firing the MG-151 which was a long weapon. The explanation is very simple, in fact, the floor is nearly completely opened with only the mounts for the pilot and bomber seats and the flight controls; all the rest is a direct access to the gondola and the front gunner could raise up the MG-151 in between the pilot and bomber to fire downward. Here are some photos: View looking forward, down to the gondola. It's easy to see the pilot seat stand (cylindrical bracket on the left) and the bomber seat (on the right); the floor is completely opened in between up to the control column! Another view: we can see the front lower frame opened to leave free movement to the gunner. In front, the gunner window. View from the access hatch: there is no floor at all except for the seats. An example with the MG-151 raised up between the seats, firing downward. The kit's floor... completely wrong. The black area should be cut out and the seats re positioned. Well this where I got yesterday night... maybe not so interesting, but I need to do this kind of job before starting to get a nice 177. Tonight I will buy some plasticard to create the missing frames and beams. This will be interesting to do... I have never done this kind of reconstruction... I was thinking about keeping a record of the frames I will build, like a template; maybe some of you could be interested for their Greif's . More to come. Cheers.

Excellent job Nigel, very realistic! I'm ready to do the daily check and go flying with this Gazelle ! Sponge out ??

After seeing your Mig-31 Mike, I'm surprised you could be scared by any model?!

Hello guys! I got this Heinkel 177 A3 Greif few months ago at a good price on internet; finally I have all the extra parts I need to start this beauty. It's the kit from MPM in 1/48, only He 177 available in this scale. This is meant to be an A3 version which was the evolution of the A1 version. This aircraft is well known for its development issues with two prototypes lost (V1 during landing and V2 ditched after a dive-bombing attempt over the Baltic Sea), engines reliability (vibrations and fire issues), landing gears (broken or jammed) and air stability with dutch roll issues.... The first A1 acceptance aircrafts were in fact refused but the RLM authorities. The A3 version with its longer fuselage and higher tail had partially solved the stability problems, but the engines were still the major issues and many missions had been aborted due to this. It has been necessary to wait until the A5 variant to really have an operational bomber; the new DB 610 engines were more powerful and less suffered of overheat... still the design has been hazardous for a 1940's plane; the Manchester, in fact has been retired from operational unit for engines reliability issues and the Douglas B19 has been used only for flight tests... the common point between this three aircrafts was their coupled engines. At the end of the war, more than 1000 He177 had been produced. Heinkel last variants were the A6 plus a very short number of A7 done by A5 retrofits. The offensive load was conventional bombs (in different sizes and quantity) and guided anti-ship missiles such as Hs 293 and Fritz-X. For its air self defense, the Greif had an MG 81 in the cockpit; bellow the cockpit, inside a gondola, we find an MGFF (A1), MG-151(A3/A5/A6) or MG-131(A7) pointing forward and an MG131 pointing aft. From the cockpit the radio operator could control a remotely operated Turret located on the top fuselage; this turret was equipped with a single MG-131 on A1 version and twined MG-131 on all other versions. In the central fuselage was operated a single MG-131 turret by a crew member. The tail defense was done by a tail gunner and an MG-151; however, due to the poor efficiency of the tail turret configuration, Heinkel had tried many different configurations with a single MG-131, twined MG-131 and finally at the end of the war, tested on the last A7 version an MG-131 vierling on a tilting turret, but there is no evidence that this turret has ever been operational. My intention is to convert this A3 into an A5 version and to add details in the cockpit, gondola, undercarriage, central turret and tail turret areas. The painting scheme will not be a night bomber like; but I'm still not sure about the final camo. Now lets have a look the kit; I will add: - Eduard full internal - Eduard external - Eduard belts - Cmk undercarriage resin kit - replace the guns To help me I also have two sets of Eduard masks and books for historical references. Fuselage and wings. The wingspan will be about 60 cm... my wife will kill me.... Stabs and ailerons; undercarriage bay that will be replaced by the CMK one. Rudder and engines parts. Two tail turret configurations options: early type A1/A3 and late type A3/A5/A7. Cockpit details, MG's, engine levers, tail wheel... CMK undercarriage resin kit; quite expensive but the molding quality is stunning! Weighted wheels, DB's engine aft sections, panels, details... A DB engine in close-up. Eduard full internal kit... AIRES MG-131 kit; a nice big surprise! It's a cheap upgrade and the quality is very high. Books Bunrin-Do book's quality is impressive: tons of Heinkel drawings and internal pictures... pity it's written in Japanese! Airdoc's quality is very nice also: it completes the Bunrin-Do with a lot of external pictures. I could not resist....... Compared to my 1/32 Me109... From the first look I can say: - Nice boxing, all components were in segregated plastic bags; clear parts are nice and crisp. - Instructions are clear; I prefer them to Dragon's. - IMHO the kit is not worth the money it costs normally (I got it for 1/3 of the price); Trumpeter 1/48 Wellington is offering much more details and quality for the same price for example. The kit has no locator pins, panel lines which start and disappears, a lot of flashes and, apart from the stock cockpit area which is not bad, a lack of details: MG's quality is very poor( a pity for a bomber), Resin MG-151 from the kit have their barrels already bent, no engine details (you need to buy the CMK upgrade kit) and engines are in view in the undercarriage area... Don't misunderstand me, I'm happy with this kit, but don't expect Tamiya's quality and I don't think this is going to be an easy assembly. Well I can't wait to start her ! I will do it in parallel with my Me109 which is a riveting process.. More to come !!!

Beautiful Nigel ! Excellent rescue of the fin. But the exhaust is not so black normally : here are two pics of a SA341F2 Gazelle, with, guess who, me 16 years ago during a 4 "hollydays" month trip in Djibouti. ​ Notice : - the exhaust color ( it should be a bit darker than what the pic is really showing) - hyd lines - detals of RH flank, close to the fuel tank cap - the blow pipes of the particule seperator - the P3 air ducts connected to lower area of the particule seperator shells (the shut-off valve was located on the left side, close to the the first slanted shaft; from this valve a Y-shaped rigid pipes was leading to the metallic flexible ducts) Cheers ! ​

Sorry for my ignorance, but what means WEM? So I can use my 02 without wondering, happy with that.

I confirm this! During the flight back to our regiment after an exercise, a 342M2 of the tank buster squadron got into a line (a very big one, the pylon was handling about 8 leads) and had been saved thanks to the top wire cutter. They managed to fly back without problem. After inspection we've replaced only a few boxes which had appreciated the Faradet cage effect, and a lateral fin which had been torn off by the wire during impact. The aircraft fuselage suffered from various "arc welding " point, especially on the front reinforcement harness around the battery door, it was still airworthy! As Nigel underlined, in case the wire goes to the bottom cutter, the pitot tube will be definitely torn off.....which is always better then getting the uncut wire into this skids during flight! I have a wondering to the strange drop shaped raise part on the left engine cowling.... There was nothing like this on it. A similar bracket was installed on the top of the right engine cowling, but it was the fairing of the red formation light used in NVG conditions. I'm not even sure the formations light were installed on the Irakee export Gazelle. Very nice job Nigel's! I like also the hyd line on the tail boom; it adds a lot to realism. Keep on going, I can't wait to see her finished. Cheers Erik

It's nice to see this Cat coming back to life! Congratulations! Being attentive to the last pics, I've realized that the aircraft seems to have all the rivet lines nicely done! Are they stock from Tamiya or this person had the patience and passion to reproduce them? Erik