[Dora Wings 1/144 Gee Bees (Accuracy, Fit)]

Yes fit is good and overall a lovely little kit. But fiddly as expected.

 

The pre cut vinyl masks are helpful for the pattern and the canopy has a decal for the frame which is a nice touch. Overall I don’t remember there being any issues. I did a build thread on KG144 a while back when I built mine. 

 

Here’s mine fwiw. Hope that’s helpful. 


 

 

[Fairey GOR339 Project 75, now available to order in 1/144 or 1/72]

So have I! Looking forward to this and I hope it’s the beginning of a successful line of kits for you. 

[Shiny, tiny Gladiator - 1/144 802 NAS Sea Gladiator]

Yes that does make sense. All too familiar!
 

On the fury I’m also building I’m facing a similar self-perpetuating issue in that black and white checks are incorrect  for 43 Squadron, with them having just black checks until quite late. Still, almost all manufacturers produce black and white checks. Fortunately black checks are easier to self print than yellow diamonds!

[NB-36H Roden]

Catching up on this forum after an absence and wow, what a build. Amazing work. Really spectacular and thank you for your build notes. Very helpful. 

[DC-8-33 African Safari Airways , X-scale 1:144]

Nothing short of spectacular. Amazing!

[Shiny, tiny Gladiator - 1/144 802 NAS Sea Gladiator]

Thank you all very much indeed for the kind comments, they are greatly appreciated. 😀
 

 

9 hours ago, iang said:

Lovely Gladiator. The modifications you made really made a difference and the rigging looks great.  It's a pity that decal manufacturer's continue to produced 802 NAS decals with blue diamonds, rather than than yellow (which is the correct colour for the wing markings of Glorious' aircraft).

Ian - thank you. Interesting! Yes I did see some references with yellow diamonds, but in the end turned a nelsonian eye, didn’t try too hard to find out which was correct and went with the kit decals instead! Looks like I need to acquire your (?) book in your signature for future builds. How did the blue confusion arise do you know?

[Shiny, tiny Gladiator - 1/144 802 NAS Sea Gladiator]

I decided to have a crack at one of these a few weeks ago.

 

Not sure why but I think the re-release of this kit from Mark1 in December triggered an impulse somewhere. This comes from the Malta boxing.

 

 

N5525 flew with 802 NAS when it was based at HMS Grebe (or what is now Alexandria Airport) when HMS Glorious was stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean in 1939. The black tail indicates it was a Squadron commander's aircraft.

 

 

The record is slightly hazy but I think it was then boxed up and dropped off at Malta with a bunch of others when HMS Glorious was recalled to the North Sea to take part in the Norwegian Campaign in early-1940 (where Glorious was sunk). It was never actually re-assembled but was used as a source of spare parts to keep the handful of other Gladiators flying in defence of Malta.

 

I built one of these Malta Gladiators at the start of Covid lockdown in 2020. This is the first Gladiator I've built since then. I decided not to do the full photoetch treatment I did with the previous build, but added a few external bits a pieces from the spares box, like the step (quite proud of this - made out of 1:700 ship railings).

 

There were a few bits about the last Gladiator I built that bugged me afterwards, which I have rectified, or tried to, here. First was shaving down the canopy rail fairing behind the cockpit - this is very pronounced as it comes in the box, giving the tapering rear fuselage a curiously boxy shape. So I sanded this right back to what reference photos suggested was about right. 

 

Second was replacing the kit-supplied cabane struts with plasticard. Less telegraphpoleish.

 

Otherwise I made all the the other changes I made then, including shortening the undercarriage and main wing struts, and closing the cowling opening a bit. 

 

Rigging was Uschi Van Der Rosten thread. Gladiator rigging is quite complex but it was satisfying to finish it.

 

Painting was fairly simple. I painted the areas not to be silver and then sprayed AK Dull Aluminium over the rest. There are some superb photos of this aircraft in flight, taken mine armament and before it was delivered to 802 NAS (see above) but which show all the stencils. 

 

I used Shelf Oddity's excellent set of Hurricane stencils. The rest of the kit decals worked nicely.

 

And with another Alex resident from three years later.

 

And there she is with another pre-war RAF biplane, the (by comparison) extremely dainty Hawker Fury.

 

Thanks very much for looking. I really enjoyed this build - a satisfying end to 2023. Happy new year to you all!

Angus

[Platz 1:144 Curtiss C-46D Commando, Pennsylvania ANG 1957]

This is stunning. Very inspiring. 

[Sea Furies x 2]

Sets an immensely high bar for these kits from now on. Wow. What a stunning pair. Beautiful work all round and open canopies is the cherry. 

[(Back From) Holiday Builds - Finished]

Looking great! Tuning in after a few weeks and these are really looking the stuff. Fantastic work. 

[(Back From) Holiday Builds - Finished]

Looks fantastic despite your challenges. I too found the decals troublesome (unusually, as Mark1 decals are usually the highlight of the build and behave beautifully and of v high quality). 

 

I have the Dremel Stylo which is the poxy little one they do for engravers. It is light and much more controllable. Glad you got the crankcase sorted in any event.

[(Back From) Holiday Builds - Finished]

Fantastic! Those are looking exceptionally good. Two is twice as good as one, it turns out. Interesting about the props, I didn’t even notice that. Oops!

 

In case you find yourself going cross eyed with the rockets, I bought these on shapeways for an Aden hunter I built some years ago. It’s a shame shapeways prices are still so high but at least you know the option is there if you need it! 

[Boeing XB-47D Stratojet in 1/144th]

I too have this conversion set and have built several of this very nice kit. Watching with interest - thank you for the fulsome and helpful notes. 

[(Back From) Holiday Builds - Finished]

Looking good! I finished one of these a few weeks ago and found the same issues as you so far. I did a WIP here in case you find it helpful though I quite appreciate half the fun is figuring out your own solutions! Looking forward to seeing yours come together. 

[1/144 Dassault Rafale-M by Revell]

Fantastic paintwork. Very impressive in any scale. 

[HC-97G Rescue Stratofreighter]

Thank you all very much for the kind comments - they are greatly appreciated, of course!

 

21 hours ago, rob Lyttle said:

Ooooo.... I like that 😍

I'm not competent with resin add ons but you're right, this is a good improvement on the original. 

Figures and vehicles in this scale are not easy! 👍

 

Thank you Rob! I think this was more or less my first attempt at resin add ons. My main issue was separating the parts from the resin pour blocks without damaging them or myself with the resin dust!

 

16 hours ago, CaracalModels said:

Looks beautiful - and I agree, the C-97 & B-50 were truly impressive airframes. Thanks for sharing your excellent build!

 

Thank you! The one principal sadness for me in Minicraft's demise is the long-planned B-50 will probably never see the light of day now. But I heard that Academy had bought back the moulds so who knows. Mind you I hope they junk most of the old Crown moulds like the B-29, Lancaster and B-24. The Marauder was nice though. Either way - thank you for continuing to produce such lovely decal sets for this scale! I am building a C-133 with your decals and look forward to building my Orions when that set is released.

12 hours ago, petetasker said:

Love it. I would have loved to have seen one of these in the air.

 

Thanks Pete - I think there is still at least one flying somewhere in the US incredibly. Or at least it's airworthy but seems to be undergoing some prolonged maintenance. I dread to think what it costs just to even think about starting the engines. 

[HC-97G Rescue Stratofreighter]

 

A build I recently finished as part of a Minicraft RIP Group Build over on KG144. 

 

 

This is the first boxing of this kit that Minicraft released, no less, from 1998. I reckon the second half of the 1990s was the golden age for Minicraft, being when they were producing their own new moulds with the DC-3, DC-4 and Catalina also dating from this period. The kit is quite basic in many respects, but Cobra company came along with a very good resin update set that included props, radar domes and jet engines. I've used one of the Blackbird Models re-issues of this set.

 

 

I also used the sublime Caracal Decals set for the C-97, which includes decals for this rather unusual HC-97G from the 305th Aerospace Rescue and Recovery Squadron based at Selfridge AFB in Michigan. The 305th operated the HC-97G for seven years from 1965 in first aluminium and latterly overall gray schemes with yellow bands. During this time it undertook Air Sea Rescue missions across the upper and mid-western US but also around the globe in support of both NASA and US military operations, including in Southeast Asia.

 

 

You may well wonder what use a lumbering great transport like this could possibly have in an air rescue mission, where at least some emergencies would not have taken place adjacent to a convenient 3000yrd runway. Well, the HC-97Gs were converted to both drop parachute rescue teams but also serve as airborne command posts for managing large-scale rescues (serving as a comms relay, directing in helicopters etc., classic pre-satellite era stuff). Only ever a temporary fix, they served to bridge the gap between the ageing HC-54s (Cargomasters) and the HC-130 (Hercules), which filled a similar role until the 1990s ushered in a new era and approach to air rescue. 

 

 

Source - Global Aviation Resource

 

The USAF contracted Fairchild-Stratos to convert 29 KC-97G tankers, then low-hours airframes being phased out of service for the KC-135. My research suggests that for my 1:144 scale purposes the conversion consisted of omitting the flying boom, adding some bonus aerials and ensuring that the rear cargo doors were scribed on. Most of the other changes being internal relating to plumbing the HC-97 for extra-long endurance flights.

 

 

 

I've built 5 of these kits before and they go together well. So there were no great surprises.  The canopy needed some fairing in to avoid a gap at the rear. This was my first time using the resin engines but they worked fine and are a big improvement on the blank engine faces and toylike props in the kit. 

 

 

Overall a nice kit - but the Cobra/Blackbird engines and props make a big difference I think. 

 

 

 

Here she is on some remote dusty station assisting in a rescue effort.

 

 

 

Not the most exciting scheme but unusual and interesting nonetheless I think.

 

 

I confined my weathering to the engines as that's all I could see in photos - otherwise these were kept really very clean.

 

 

 

There's something very impressive about the C-97 I think.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally with a fellow rescue aircraft that has spent far too long on the bench...longer than it spent in service actually.

 

 

 

Thanks very much for looking. 

 

Angus

[Sea Hawk - Miniwing 1/144]

Thank you all very much for the kind comments. 😀

[Sea Hawk - Miniwing 1/144]

Some pictures of a Hawker Sea Hawk I finished. It is a relatively new styrene kit from the small Czech company Miniwing and I haven’t seen one built up elsewhere yet. It’s a nice kit overall. Very gratifying to build. 
 

 

 

It does benefit from a bit of refining here and there. For instance I bored out the exhausts which were q thick.

 

I also rebuilt a tail hook from scratch. I think the hook bit is still a bit too large but then the kit one is elephantine. The resin Miniwing kit one was etch I recall. Apart from all the antenna which were obviously scratch built, I also added in the spent casing dispensers and the catapult hook under the nose from plasticard.

 

 

I think the intakes I substituted (wedges of .5mm plasticard glued in place then trimmed) worked better than the kit parts which don't fit at all and mess up the upper/lower fuselage fit. That's the only change I'd positively recommend anyone attempting this kit do.

 

 

I'm pleased with how transparent the cockpit is. Miniwing get good marks for that!

 

 

I also think this largely captures the look of the Sea Hawk, and the stance on the ground. 

 

 

I thinned the undercarriage doors and glued the wheels in their characteristic 'instep' - though one is looking a bit too cock-eyed in this picture.

 

 

I was pleased with my painting and weathering - I'm always amazed at how the matt coat knocks back the oils post-shading. I quite like the effect here.

 

 

Thanks very much for looking.

 

Angus

[P47 D Eduard(Platz)1/144]

Amazing finish. Masterful work. 

[RB-47H Stratojet - 1/144 Academy]

Brilliant model - and expertly finished. Loved the photography and commentary!

[1/144 Blackburn Buccaneer resin kit]

Beautifully done. Your paint job is superb and the little details in the wing fold and cockpit make a huge difference. I’m most of the way through this kit but have begun some major reshaping to the nose which to my eye is a bit too beaky. Really hope mine turns out half as good as yours though. 

[First attempt in 1/144: Roden B-36D Peacemaker]

I saw this on your website I think. Amazing work and well worth all the hard graft. The paint job is the stuff of dreams for me. 

[Vickers Valiant]

Good effort. Mine has fought me all the way too - and won. I’ve more or less given up on it - helped by the fact that my toddler discovered it in a drawer the other day and disassembled most of it. 🙀

 

But I know many if not all the pains you went through and the result is certainly worthwhile. Congratulations!

[Faichild C-123B. Roden. U.S. Coastguard (Definitely) Finished.]

 

On 1/25/2023 at 10:45 PM, stevehnz said:

Thanks for that nudge Pete, I did a google search with Britmodeller HC-123 1/144 in the search terms & came up with this.

It sure looks as though it can produce a nice result, whether or not I can do likewise remains to be seen, I've got the Amodel kit on the way anyway, thanks for the inspiration.

It seems to provide some challenges. here & here  

Steve.

Thanks Steve! It’s an ok kit, the Amodel one, a slow and steady approach to the first stages will save you wonders. As I said in my build notes, I had more success getting everything to fit by adding a 1mm styrene spacer at the front but I don’t doubt that the castings of this are very subtly different! Good luck and I look forward to seeing your progress!