TheBaron

But did it or the cream go on the scone first? Myriad we can do Pete. (it's uniformity that gives me the real problem...) Expect nothing else on my threads AW. I know this audience. Sounds delightfully Goth, or at least a bit Souixsie tbh... I'm anticipating a lot of fun pretending that lucky accidents were the product of thoughtful deliberation! Bit premature chaps; I'd ask you to wait until seeing an actual completed engine rather than a quick test snort on unprepped materials a la: No Sherlock or update today - have to drive youngest youngest to a job interview at short notice. Wings have moved closer together on the bench in a coquettish manner... Tony

The Case of the Solitary Cyclist was this afternoon's accompaniament: The episode that contains that splendid bout of public bar fisticuffs between S.H. and a frightful blackguard. Rewind first to last night and time was spent with the Naval Treaty episode, giving the newly-wed nose and fuselage a final polish in strongly oblique light in order to show any remaining flaws. Upper: and lower Vixen: I've previously discussed the surface qualities that I'm going for here - smooth, but not uniformly so, in order to mimic the (very) slight irregularities revealed on the actual aircraft by the way light falls across the curvatures when viewed from such angles. Just before hitting the scratcher last evening I also put a waft of primer along the seam where the two sections were glued together, just to be sure three were no blemishes. Job done I think: I nearly set about fixing the wings on earlier this afternoon but thankfully recollected in time that some metal treatment was needed to each end of the engines and their associated intake tunnels prior to doing this, as I wouldn't have sufficient access for painting once these parts were fitted together. A qucik scan of the maintenance manual I have for the Avons revealed that it gives little away in terms of the metals from which the various parts of the engines are built, save to mention that the turbine blades are manufactured from 'Nimonic' alloy. Not having any nickel/chrome paint mixtures to hand, for '481 all I rally need is something bright and shiny peeking out from the tunnels, so I resorted to a snort of Vallejo aluminium in order to give the required gleam: As to the tunnels themselves, to mimic the kind of dull metaI seen in images like this Vallejo steel was used to give a kind of irregular patterning: That'll all be mostly in shade and invisible later but you have to make the effort.... Same drill for the rear turbine blades and exhaust tunnels: That should be fine for the concealed appearance of engine details visible on this particular aircraft but for '708, where the exposed Avons will be a significant aspect of the build, I see Vallejo do some nice looking chrome as well as one or two other bling pigments that I'll add to the inventory for that job later on. Whilst I had paint in the airbrush however, I couldn't resist a little bit of indulgence on an old Avon test print 'just to see' how the Vallejo stuff performs: Oooh! Think it's going to be great fun playing around with painting those when the time comes. Sprayed here at about 15psi (same as for the primer, Aluminium with a misting of steel around the exhaust.. These Vallejo water-based metallics have really been quite a revelation for me; that said though, you'll still have to prise Alclad's black primer/microfiller from my cold dead hand... Producing adequate colour references for both the Avons and their associated engine bays has meant spending a bit of time recently making some educated guesses using colour balancing procedures in Photoshop. The problem in terms of colour images is this - with no period colour photography showing such features of operational (i.e. maintained/serviced) aircraft to speak of, it would be easy to be misled into producing overly weathered and dirty looking representations based on how unmaintained static display aircraft look today. To this end therefore I've been collecting a range of imagery put out there by the ever-excellent Navy Wings guys when servicing their SV, in order to get a feel for an aircraft being maintained for flight (as was... ) in terms of how her engines and bays should roughly look. The problem with this is that although they are excellent in getting a feel for how a well-looked after should look in terms of cleanliness, the bulk of images available from this source are either shot in mixed colour temperature environments (ie. hangar lighting with daylight bleeding in) or with smartphones that are not colour balanced with sufficient accuracy. Here's a selction of images from the mood board where I've removed as much colour pollution as I could. Notice how much cleaner the Avons look than many of those you see floating about the web taken of static aircraft. You can see from the skin tones of the chap in the middle photograph that with multiple colour temerpatures in a shot you're never going to get a totally accurate balance. As far as I can make out, there's a mixture of bare metal and what looks like zinc chromate around areas Foxy Lady's bays, but I can also see what appears to be Lt. Admiralty Grey in some other shots of her. Unless anyone has compelling evidence to the contrary, I think for my FAW.1s here I'm going to use LAG overall and bare metal for specific details on the engine bay areas. Either way, there's enough visible here to help with getting the actual visible condition of a flying aircraft to look reasonably accurate. Thanks for looking in as always, I hope to have wings on '481 next time you see her. Tony

Cooler here today which, permitting as it did a few more neurons to start firing, I spent the latter part of the afternoon at the bench fitting and fettling the nose section to the fuselage of 481- aided by the urban cool of this gentleman playing away on the 2nd monitor in the background. Let's see what Mrs Hudson brought in on the tray to begin with then: Cheers for the confirmation Pete - is it true it was raspberry flavoured? Interesting. I had a car like that once as well. Thanks Bill: I've a mule set up to test a number of options, including these; rather weirdly I have those two X's in the paint box but no recollection of ever buying them. Paint's like that ain't it? Only a small number of pots I can actually remember deliberately buying for a specific task, the rest sort of absent-mindedly acquired under the 'I might need that one day' rubric... Decal paper duly ordered. Mutual appreciation is a wonderful thing Chris! Look what I found at the back of the paint box Ian! Knocked up who knows how many years ago for the Sea Venom build and remarkably seems in good condition still (once I'd manged to persuade the lid to leave the encrusted pot). I must look back at that thread to see if I ever wrote down what I mixed it from.... I'm absolutely fine. Nothing to see here.... So anyhoo. Absolute scenes yesterday when I err... ...stuck two pieces of the aircraft together: I've bored you senseless before about how much I like using the same material that the aircraft is made from as an adhesive-slash-filler as well. Some light carving back afterward with the scalpel/no.11 blade combination, followed by 600/1200/2400 W&D + water, and the join lines merge into the surrounding bodywork most satisfactorily: Same story for the pelvic region: becomes: I've still some smoothing work to do on the wings roots and rear fuselage as you can see but am happy with how the nose/fuselage interface has come together. You'd expect some warping to happen over time with the thinness of some of the resin parts at this scale and sure enough I noticed the tailplane the other day had a twist in two dimensions: Into hot water with it and clamped in a bench vice bought it back to the required rectilinear rectitude: I was able to check the other prints that I have of this part to see if this was a wider issue. The others were done several months ago now and are still mounted to their printing support structures; they remain nicely squared up still so this only appears to be an issue if like me you've taken a part off the supports straight away before it's had a chance to fully cure over time and left it laying around. I feel daft analogies with making cheese or wine coming on.... Also knocking around in the spare prints box was the initial mockup that I'd done for the wingfold of '708 about this time last year. The print is quite rough ( I was still learning lots then about printing tolerances) but I'd kept it knocking about the bench thinking it might be useful at some point as a test piece, so had shot some Vallejo Aluminium onto it previously with the intention of using it as a test mule for experimenting with the various lubricant hues that you can see in reference imagery of the period: I think oil washes over metallics might give some interesting material effects in response to light, perhaps with a little linseed oil added in for 'greasiness'. We'll see. Been growing sunflowers this year for the first time in ages - these guys are at about 11ft high and climbing: Against the dusk their silhouettes look like a Wayang performance is in progress, but I'm still trying vainly to work out the story... Good evening to you all as always. Tony

Ah Crisp, thou art really having a rough time of it of late. I'll send Dr. Maturin round with the embrocation.

Have yourselves a truly excellent time Giorgio.

Unfair of me to comment based on a single photo I know Alan but given the quality you've put in to the surrounding areas I think that kit windshield risks visually contradicting the quality of your work and that vacforming would help maintain your (high) standards. Sounds right. Over-exposure and over-anti-aliasing can both have similar effects on a print, albeit for different reasons. Those window rubbers look very nice indeed as a solution. Smashing update.

Brushed to perfection. Quality quality result Chris. Kudos.

As with many of you, it's still too hot to consider the application of paint here today, but research has been continuing in the colour department in anticipation of cooler days beginning next week. I also noticed something odd about XJ481 earlier - more on that in a bit; messages first: It's a place up near the border called Lough Oughter Giorgio, a landscape that flooded to form lakes after the glaciers retreated: https://goo.gl/maps/sXCBwWWQAorm9KY57 It's a region of Ireland I've come to really appreciate over time as that drumlin landscape has such seemingly intimate views of land and sky when traveling through it. Manson or Munster though Pete? For one brief surreal moment I thought you'd been buying glitter Bill and that we were going to get the forum's first ever Disco Sikorsky! Hope the stuff works out for you ok. I'm pathetic at small talk Ced and can't fold clothes to save my life, to name just a few existential deficits.... I've a lot to live up to Chris after seeing your current painting output - truly inspirational. The heat hasn't bothered me that much as once I'd started reading up on colour research I ended up as usual going down all sorts of interesting rabbit holes, starting from some of the knowledgeable individuals on here that in turn branch you out in all sorts of directions like heraldic tinctures (not a million miles away from aircraft markings if you think about it...), along with fruitless attempts to purchase a 1964 edition of 'BS 381C: Colours for specific purposes'. (Anyone know of a reasonably priced copy please, let me know as the publishers BSI have withdrawn it from sale). Aside from the B/W trials scheme of 481, these are the additional colours I've worked out that I need to mix up from Tamiya acrylics: The lower photos are references specific to wingfold and undercarriage colours for the XN708 build that will display these areas - James rather helpfully published his observations on wingfold colours back here on the thread in September, so there are a range of hues that can be thought about. Although the red (I think you mentioned it might be PX-7 lubricant Pete) is quite striking and the greeny-gold is rich but subdued, I kind of like the halfway house in the lower right photo where on the full size version of the photograph you can see a red tinge along the outer wingfold but fading into green-gold on the lower - at 1/72 I think that this subtler mix of hues will add visual interest without appearing to dominate the overall colour scheme. I've also seen zinc chromate mentioned as a candidate colour on early Vixen as well - indeed I've a photo clearly showing just that colouration on both a FAW.1 wingfold and undercarriage. It would clash 'orribly with the living room curtains though so soundly rejected.... Also visible in the top left above is a quick transposition of roundel to danger triangle red (apologies for taking liberties with your imagery James but as both markings are identically lit it in the same photograph it shows up the different hues concerned very well) - I'm assuming the panel markings around the engine bay panels on the upperworks are also the latter colour. Masking those off shouldn't be a piece of cake.... As both XJ481 and XN708 have/had the earlier variant pilot's canopy type fitted (i.e a divider along the roof and a vertical one midway along the side), this colour scheme will be applied to the canopy of both aircraft (shown here for '481, hence the black windshield framing): Ah yes, the anomaly regarding '481 I mentioned earlier. Is it just me or is she flying without a starboard outer undercarriage door fitted in both these photos? Another oddity is Alleycat paint instructions stating that Martels were only ever carried on the port outer pylon - maybe this was true for trials of the radar version but clearly not the case with the TV version shown here on the right, especially as the data relay linking the Martel to the chase Vixen runs from that port inner pylon back along the boom to the transceiver on the tail unit. Right. I'm off to rummage through the paint stand to see what I've forgotten I had... Tony

That's an astounding habit you have Giampiero - manual dexterity of the highest order and a beautiful result.

Take care of yourself out working in this heat Pete.

Says all that needs to be said here Bill. Wonderful to behold.

Purposeful and highly pleasing work G - lovely progress.

Thirded on the jig solution Terry.

Kind regards to yourself and family on the recent wedding Ced, and glad to hear that the hound is on the mend. Your software/AI talk sounded most interesting; did you discuss the possible effects that AI might have on modelling forums? Modelbot 05731: Here is my latest 1/1552nd scale Spitfire build. Modelbot 91167: 0010011001110 Modelbot 82291: 01001001110 Modelbot 05731: Thanks for all the kind comments chaps.

Your work is really taking things to the next level Chris - superb craftsmanship on display in all respects here. Chapeau doffed.