AnonymousAA74

It is an odd marketing concept to produce your own 'AM' sets, I agree. They have had this same arrangement with previous kits too, but I suppose that not including them keeps the price down for those not interested in them. I would have quite liked to have seen them for this build, but then again, I wouldn't have had the time to lavish on installing them. Maybe for the next one though!

Two IP's are included. The one you see in silver has instruments moulded in, and the other is the transparent IP with no instrument detail. You can use your own decals in there if you wish. Having built the cockpit, I can tell you it looks far from a 1/72 kit. Perhaps if this was a Tamiya kit, you'd say otherwise

......more.. ...and more... ...and the last.. NOW...please remember this is a final TEST SHOT, and I know there to be refinements even after this. I have spent 6 days painting and assembling, and have so far found this an absolute joy to build. I can't post any assembly photos as of yet without clearance from ZM. Enjoy folks!! Jim

Hi guys, It the 21st, so as I'm trying to get the Skyraider built to deadline, I'll post the sprue shots for you here on Britmodeller. More! More....

I have Kitbase. It's worth every penny, and invaluable for modellers with, er, stash!

Looks grand Iain. How will you fair that corrugated roof into the cockpit area?

The trick with XDFF is never to really 'wet' the model when you spray. Cover in small areas and then blow air for a pass or two. I've done many, many models with this stuff, and never been let down once.

I thought Mig Pigment fixer was just white spirit, albeit a good quality one?

Loving this work Nick. You do the neatest pre-shade I ever saw

Hi Paul. I mentioned this earlier in the topic. It's Xtracolor XDFF Matt Varnish. It's enamel based, and you thin with white spirit. PRODUCT LINKY THING

XDFF matey. Flatter than Norfolk after a nuke I spray it at fairly close quarters and you can see the matting immediately.

There are no restrictions on scalpel blades, except for age restrictions. I'm pretty sure any retailer saying there is, is either misinformed, or using it as an excuse to see cheaper (and lower quality) blades etc, possibly

Preferably before if I'm to really decide whether to build an 'E' or 'F' variant My 188 is already started.

Hi Siggi, I use Xtracolor Matt XDFF, mixed 50:50 with white spirit. This stuff is so matt, it's arid. No sheen to be seen here:

Pastor John has managed to get a discount with the injection resin casters, and is now offering this full Ju 188E/F conversion for £120 Oh, and here's another picture

Hi Nick, If the postie is on the ball, I should have my set tomorrow, then I can get the review done, and start my own build. If anyone's interested, I'll post up here as well as LSP. I need to get this build done before I complete the Mistel 2. Time permitting, I'll continue with the composite after this one, and hopefully in time for Telford. Please remember, these photos are from Pastor John at AIMS. It's not my build.

Here's a few more pics showing the cockpit attached to the fuselage, amongst other detail

Great start Garth. Looking forward to seeing this progress

Hi all, The wonderful Pastor John of AIMS has released the long awaited Junkers Ju 188 conversion set for the Revell Ju 88 kit. The price is £135.50 and it contains a whole new cockpit, engines, extended wings and new vertical fin/rudder, plus multitude of new parts. I thought I'd post this here as I'm not a vendor, and wanted to let you know this was now available. Here are some photos: Head over to AIMS Models for more info. Jim

I hate you Mike. That looks great!

Looks a great kit. Known about this since last October

Hi Paul, It will be a fully masted and rigged model. The only 'scratch' will be some hand painted silk pennants as were seen on some Tudor propaganda paintings. Everything else will be out of box, but the kit is pretty comprehensive. @Mike: I did tell you to brush up on your nautical and shipwrighting terms

Thankfully JoTika got my missing timber to me within 24 hours, and work could continue. The timber itself was a little roughly cut, and also not of uniform thickness or width, so some careful matching had to be done when fitting out the decks. These problems weren't too bad, and everything cleaned up pretty well, and the deck was laid using white glue (Evo-Stik PVA) For and aft decks are laid with plank edges inked with a 'Sharpie' pen to simulate caulk. You need to be swift when marking this or it will bleed....well it did with my timber! Full length planks were at 60mm, and installed with a shift system. I don't know if it was right for the period, but hey ho! When the decks were sanded back, they were varnished with matt acrylic varnish to prevent the yellowing that you get with a lot of polyurethanes. Deck camber beams where then placed over these decks to support the upper decks, and now the really fun job of sanding the bulkhead profiles begins, before I can start to plank the hull.

Cheers guys. I was a little wary of posting something timber here, so that's encouraging.

Hey, I got wood!!! When I came back into modelling about 10 or 11 years ago, I did so with timber ships, and in the meanwhile have built ships such as clippers, Spanish galleons, fishing boats etc. I like to keep my hand in from time to time, so in this 500th anniversary year of the launching of Henry VIII's pride and joy, the Mary Rose, I thought I'd crack open this great kit that I bought back in 2005 while visiting the Mary Rose at Portsmouth. Timber ships aren't cheap to buy, but the work that goes into them does mean that they yield excellent value for money. As you can imagine, I'll not be rushing this, but I will keep this updated with progress. The model will be finished with walnut, tanganijka, lime, with Madagascan ebony for some detail work. I intend to add some colour as per the Tudor propaganda paintings, along with hand painted silk pennants etc. First of all, the heavy duty plywood CNC milled bulkhead former and bulkheads are removed from the sheets, along with various other main constructional parts such as the dummy cannon blocks and deck camber beams. This shows the model with a partial dry fit. There are some failings on this kit, such as the 2 layers of planking, both 1mm thick, which when installed will swallow up the depth of the beautiful walnut keel, so to that end, I've installed a rabbet strip along the main bulkhead former, and introduced a bearding line both fore and aft. This will allow the first lime planking to install into the rabbet and be hidden in the chiseled area next to the bearding line. Here's some pics to show what I mean: With the walnut keel now installed and dry, the 13 hull bulkheads are now installed, and the main gun deck glued and nailed into position. This keeps everything straight and square. The dummy gun mount blocks are now added and the deck camber beams fitted. The thin main deck simply can't fit into place in one single piece, so I have split this down the middle so it can be installed once this deck is planked below the upper and forecastle decks. The exposed area of this main deck is planked at a later stage, so this is good. I have hit one problem though. I bought this kit in 2005 from the Mary Rose museum, and only just noticed that the tanganijka deck planking is MISSING :shithappens: I now need to try out JoTikas customer service and see how quick they are at getting me some out so I can continue. More on this when I start deck planking, so give me a few days to get my timber and make a start. Here's some of my previous work to make up for this cack first post.... If you ever fancied handling wood, then.... ....you need to start with something a little less complicated than this, such as an Artesania Latina kit, like the San Francisco II or something in a similar vein. This would be a good starter kit, a Spanish fishing boat. This was a BIG project, for when you have confidence This was a commission build: And this was the last project I worked on before ditching wood to build again in plastic. This model is built from copies of real shipyard drawings. Seriously complicated: