PeterB

I have received a parcel from Jaimie - not bad as it was ordered on Sunday, posted on Tuesday and arrived on Friday. I have had a play with it on my paint mule - an old Airfix Blenhein - the mottle is not as it will be on the kits but it gives me an idea on the shape and spacing I need. The section nearest the engine has a base of Giallo Mimetico 3 with blotches of Verde Mimetico 2 and Marrone Mimetico 3 which is a bit redder that I expected but being Jamie I expect it is accurate - after all it is called Marrone not Bruno! The outboard section is in Giallo Mimetico 4 which is more of a sand colour to my mind, and the green is Verde Mimetico 3 which is a lighter more yellow colour compared with VM2 though not obvious in the pic - all of these colours are from the Colourcoats paint range. As Jamie does not do Bruno Mimetico AFAIK, I have used Humbrol 118 US Tan for that as suggested by IPMS Stockholm. The two Fiats will be as on the inboard section whilst the MC 200 will probably be as on the outboard section, though if I go with the box art the Bruno Mim will be replaced by the Marrone Mim. It will actually have the green as base so will look quite a bit darker overall. As my Manchester is making decent progress I should be able to restart on the Fiats soon. Cheers Pete

Hi Tiny, The nice thing about the Airfix T-34 to my mind was that they gave you two complete turrets, so that it could be either a 76mm armed early one or an 85mm armed later one and the turrets could easily be interchanged - unlike the probably better Fujimi kits when you had to buy one of each! I have another pair of these in my stash, to add to the 6 or so I have already built. You just cannot have enough T-34's, particularly in the umpteen different variants depending on year and factory - the main extenal differences being the gun and the turret shape and style. My originals were painted in Testors US Olive Drab, but have since been repainted in what is claimed to be a more accurate Soviet shade of green. Cheers Pete

As ever a bit more touching up to do but it is standing on its own legs. No tail wheel yet of course but the wheel doors, landing light glazing and nose blister are on. As you may know the Manchester had a wingspan of 90ft 1 inch and the kit measures out at around 89 ft 10 inches so within a reasonable margin of error. The Lancaster had a span of 102 ft which is a scale difference of only 2 inches/5cm, and this is what it looks like! Now that's what I call a proper "Mistel"! Not a lot of difference in 1/72, certainly less than I had imagined, but then I have just built a Lincoln with a 120ft span - 3 inches/7.6 cm greater than the Lanc so maybe that is confusing me a little - does not take much these days! The tailplane is clearly shorter as it should be, but I suspect it may turn out to be a little wider than a scale 28 ft - we will see once the endplates are on, hopefully tomorrow. Cheers Pete

Hi Reini, Looking good. Vietnam era it would have been non specular (flat) Light Gull Gray over glossy white AFAIK. It would probably have dural leading edges as well. Pete

Hi Dave, AFAIK RAF night bombers were painted in a normal bllck paint from 1937 onwards, but in about September 1939 they switched to something called "Special Night" RMD 2 (or 2A which had a slightly different composition I gather). This was a matt "sooty" paint which it was thought would not show up well in searchlights, but it wore badly and also reduced the speed of the plane due to the high drag - I have seen quotes that it knocked up to 25mph off a Beaufighter NF painted in it all over! The final straw was when it was found that it actually stood out even more in a searchlight than normal black, so it was replaced with "Night Black". At some point the Type "S" paints began to be introduced. They had finer pigments so the "S" was for "Smooth", and I gather that they had a slight sheen. Meanwhile experiments had shown that counter-intuitively, a gloss finish was better not only in searchlights, but against the sky in general, which is why planes like the Sunderland were given gloss white unders, and the USN were still working on that principle up to and including the grey/white jets, with matt light gull gray on top and glossy white underneath. So IMHO your Lanc should have glossy undersurfaces which probably weathered to a satin finish. I dare say others might not agree!. Cheers Pete

Hi Steve, Your "Gobbi" (Hunchback) is looking great. If mine comes out anything like that I will be very happy. Cheers Pete

Hi Guys, To some extent I agree aboiut the Panzer IV, but it was upgunned to take the KwK40 L/48 version of the 75mm gun, which was somewhat better than the standard 75mm gun in the Sherman. I doubt the turret ring would be big enought for the more powerful Kwk 42 L/70 used in the Panther, and the chassis and suspension would be struggling with the weight and recoil force I guess. The only way they managed to fit that gun was to dispense with the turret and mount it with a limited traverse in the Jagdpanther IV. However, I agree they would perhaps have been better advised to copy the US philosophy of large numbers of easy to build if rather less effective Shermans, supported by a few more heavily armed tanks/tank destroyers. The Mk IV family was to my mind the best of the German tank range - gun tank, Stug, Jagdpanzer, Flakpanzer and the various SP guns on the Mk III/IV chassis - they certainly got full value out of the design. I bought my first Airfix tank - a Sherman - just after it was released, in Woolies in Alloa when visiting family in around 1961, and the Panther and Churchill followed not long after. The Panther was mouilded in a "sand" coloured plastic and I doubt I bothered to paint it for many a year. I probably still have it though a lot of the early tanks have suffered "track rot" as I call it, where the rubber goes rigid and brittle, and gets broken. I did start to replace the tracks with cast resin ones from the OKB Grigorov range, which are very good but not exactly cheap. I will watch this with interest Marklo as it brings back many happy memories. Pete

Quite a productive couple of days. Still some touching up to do before I add the wheel doors, but the main u/c is done and should be a lot stronger with the brass long lower struts (on top in the pic of course). With luck I should get the doors on and perhaps the cover for the landing lights and the bomb aimer's blister fitted on Sunday. Then I will turn it over and put the tail feathers on, at which point it is on the home stretch. Cheers Pete

Whilst I am working on the undercarriage I have assembled the props and started painting them together with the vertical endplates and the wheel bay doors. The black blob in the foreground is the ventral turret. Comet have moulded the frame lines for the front and side windows but not the rear ones. Painting the "glazing" is not going to be easy, but I will have a try! I don't suppose it would normally be in the lowered position when the plane is on the ground except presumably for maintenance, but as it is likely to be the only plane I build that has a ventral turret I will probably show it down. I have not as yet decided whether I will have the footwells and seat fairing extended or not. So - back to the undercarriage. Cheers Pete

Thanks Ray, Having already got 2 of these I was never going to build it - it came as an add on to the Jintsu and the chap selling it on e-bay insisted he would not split them. Looks good - better than mine because I did not know about the lino decking back in the 1970's! Cheers Pete

Hi Steve, I have heard the story about the drawings and seem to remember that the tail is wrong - needs twisting off the centreline by a few degrees I believe, but other than that I cannot recall what else is inaccurate? Can't remember if Airfix moulded the bomb aiming panel underneath which was covered by a shutter when not in use I think, and the undercarriage is no doubt simplified but it is still a nice looking kit. Cheers Pete

Hi Dave, Thanks for that. Nothing "stupid" about making a Manchester III aka Lancaster prototype to my mind - the more the merrier as the saying goes! As you say, this form of "public self flagellation" called a "GB" does show our individual flaws but so what - that's part of the fun. We Yorkshiremen have a reputation for being stubborn and I have no intention of letting this ruddy thing beat me. It may not be perfect but then none of my builds are, and it may not be finished by the deadline, but it will be finished one way or another! Cheers Pete

I have made a start on the undercarriage. There may be something wrong with what I will call the upper bracing struts - the silver ones. The instructions show them raked back quite a bit more but if that is correct then either the mounting point is too low on the leg or the whole thing is too short. Looking at pics of the real thing is ambiguous - the bottom mounting looks about right but the angle seems to vary, perhaps depending on the load. I have seen one or two pics where the instructions seem to be right so the strut probably is too short, but I have also seen ones which are quite close to how it has ended up so anyway, it will just have to do - the 2nd mould Airfix Lanc does not even have them! Incidentally the main legs are raked back a little after all, unlike in the instructions, but probably not as much as they should be. For the record I don't know how accurate the wheels are but they are about 2mm less diameter than those on my Airfix Lanc. The tail wheel may be right but unlike the one on the Lanc it is not a grooved "anti shimmy" one - perhaps that was a later variation? In fairness to Comet the u/c can stand the weight of the kit, but I will still go ahead with my brass rod as it looks pretty easy to break it off by accident, knowing how clumsy I am getting these days. Tomorrow I will see if I can get the rest of the struts on, but I must finish off 2 kits for the "In the Navy" GB as they still need a final coat of varnish. With 9 days to go, barring unforseen circumstances I think I should get it just about finished but that is probably tempting fate! One final point - I learned something interesting today. When I first started using an airbrush many years ago I was using enamel paints and Microscale varnish. I mentioned the problem with Humbrol Clearfix stripping acrylic paint and said I put some old fashioned varnish on the protect the paint. Having run out of my ancient Humbrol varnish I tried some equally ancient MS matt and guess what - it also dissolves acrylic paint! Anyway, in spite of that minor problem I have "Clearfixed" the round windows in the upper escape hatches, and if that works I will do the various square windows as well and I have made a start on the props. Maybe it is me getting lazy in my old age but I must admit I am not a great fan of props where you have to glue the individual blades on. Not too bad perhaps when a jig is provided, unlike here, but at least it is only 2 x 3 blades. Cheers Pete

Sorry to hear about your hand, but glad it is up and running again. You have my sympathy as I had a similar problem a few years back, though in my case the culprit was the broken bottom of a milk bottle which I landed on when I fell up my steps. having slipped on ice. Looked horrendous at the time and the stitching in A&E was not fun, but it healed pretty quickly. The build is coming along well - it should look very impressive. Pete

Hi, I built this when it first came out and I seem to remember an article in Airfix Mag saying you should add small wheels to the landing skids near the rear - I think it was to make it easier to push around on the ground. Now whether or not that was correct, or maybe only applied to certain versions I have no idea, but I found some suitable wheels and added them. Maybe they were getting confused with the naval version which had 4 castoring wheels as I recall. Speaking of the naval version I have had a Scout in my stash for years whilst I contemplated a conversion to one of HMS Endurance's Wasps that attacked the Argentinian Sub Santa Fe during the Falklands War, but have still not got round to it. Nice kit. Pete