Torbjorn

I think I can find something that fits.

Guess their kits are selling so well now that such gimmicks aren’t needed. I’m happy I got an extra Yak and would jump on the opportunity again.

Yes, I’d recommend everyone to try - using wood carving techniques like carving and sanding now seems like wasting the qualities of styrene as a material. — Stubborn good weather has halted progress. I only managed to add some details to the engine, the rest (ignition wires, intake manifold, cooling pipes) will wait til after some painting.

Yes

Thanks for the likes and comments guys. The roasted spring idea is from Woodman’s book, he described making cooling gills for cylinders in that way. I’ve finished the floats. They are narrower on the front otherwise pretty straightforward. I made a mold to get them the same shape. I’ll let pictures describe: The fuselage is *finally* ready for paint. Added some last details and brackets for the wings and closed up the underside with a plunge-molded piece(mold on the lower left), seen in the image below together with two finished pieces that will make up the holder for the engine and radiator: My first plan was to just glue plastic pieces to the underside and shape with sticks but this molding business is quite easy afterall and the shape of the thing is a bit complicated underneath (starts convex and ends concave). I’m happy with the decision - it was certainly the easiest way. Below the finally finished hull. The line arching over the headrest behind the cockpit and coming up from below the hull are the aileron cables: they go through a hole in the bottom of the hull so that I can stretch them after glueing them to the upper wing.

I’ll let Christian pull out his source books, at least Kronmärkt I believe contains comparisons with Anglo-or-American standards.

I can only relay second-hand info as I have no book on this subject. From skimming through Swedish fora (modellbygge.ifokus.se) I found the following: The seaplanes were first painted in a standardised blackgreen color (W84) but the F2 unit was not pleased and mixed up their own paint in 1948, by mixing 6/10 black with the regular olivegreen. This was later standardised too, as W338, apparently a tad darker than FS24086. All this was taken from Kronmärkt, by Leif Hellström. W is for Wedevåg by the way, an old ironworks from the 1500s that started making paints around 1900 - I have not seen any colour charts. They were making paints for the aero industry since its beginnings. The insides were painted zink chromate (SAAB employed American advisors ) or left in metal (canopy frames among other things). The IP was black. The film I posted show the insides of the restored example.

The seaplane version was painted differently than the dive bomber: either black green or grey green. I’m unsure if this goes for all examples. Here’s some flight camera footage for the last flying B17(in the regular olive green though): yoitube

Slow? You’re running flank speed in my book

I am currently rummaging through old decal sheets, but that will be a last resort, unless too expensive. — Not much to say, started on the struts and engine. Struts will be made from hardwood and metal since they need to be thin and still carry some weight (tried plastic strip but it bent). The engine is a Isotta Fraschini V.4 - an inline engine with 6 cylinders, the confusing V stands for Flight which they apparently felt the need to specify (Isotta was and still is a carmaker). The crankcase from plunge molded plastic (lower half) and solid plastic (upper). I have to narrow the upper part a bit, it’s too wide. Other parts from various strips and rods. After a few hours we are about here: The three pieces represents the cylinder houses, which had one pair of cylinders in each. The springs on the valves are made from winding 0.05-0.1 mm wire around 0.5 mm plastic rod and toasting it: the plastic flows into the windings to produce a spring-shape appearance. Not that I see it with bare eyes, but wanted to test the method anyway. After un-winding:

The Duel? Was that was it sound like i.e. two models a la Airfix’s Dogfight doubles? I’d vote for that!

Never considered hidden votes? Maybe not as fun...

Drat, my armahobby Yak shipment arrived yesterday and I ordered myself not to order more kits this year, and today they come up with this

I will probably do something like that. The serial number is a bit of a problem to draw oneself though. — Nothing much to show this week. Added some surface details and permanently mounted the tail. The hole on the side in the front is for the port gun (there’s one in the other side too). The hole will take a brass tube flush with the surface. I also added the guns themselves, they are located on the inside of the fuselage. The second picture shows a glimpse of the friendly end of the starboard gun (handles can be seen on the pilot’s right side). The windshield frame is a PE piece stolen from a Nieuport kit. By the way, the Macchi fellows had plenty of experience from building Nieuports, and several features can be seen on the M5, e.g. horisontal tailplane and wing construction.

One question about those decals: how does it work, do you prepare a bitmap or other image file and that’s it? How are the decals, thin and easy to work with? They certainly look good. Ok, that was two questions

Go ahead! It is not particularly difficult, it just takes an awful lot of time — I have started looking for a paintjob. There are many colourful ones, but it has turned out to be really difficult to find decals. I’ve even started to search for other Italian WWI kits so I at least can get some roundels. In the worst case I’ll have to make masks, and avoid fancy nose art (or is it ”bow art” in this case?)

I printed the map without any fitting-to-page or scaling, measured the resulting wingspan and fuselage. The calculated the scaling factor I would have to use to get the correct dimensions and printed again, this time scaled. You’ll have to use A3 paper for 1/32 I believe, 1/72 barely fits on A4. I didn’t save the scale factor unfortunetely.

I found them here: https://aerofred.com/search.php?search_terms=all&search_keywords=macchi+m5&submit=Search

Their newest re-tooled kits fits both the knowledgable enthusiast and children I would say. I just got back to the hobby because I introduced my kids to it, and couldn’t help myself from joining in. I remember how I used to buy kits - by spending a happy hour in the hobby shop looking at box art and reading the parts count - and my kids do the same now, only online*. Now I read build logs (I stopped reading reviews after too many ”Excellent kit! - totally recommended!! - Thank you Kit Manufacturer X for the sample!!!”-reviews on total train wrecks of a kit) and look for accuracy, something that was quite unimportant for me 30 years, just as it is unimportant for my kids now. For the kids I let them choose and just check the ease of build before I buy them something, since nothing kills interest so much as failure. What I’m trying to say, is that 1) re-tooling popular aircraft to decent quality and ease of construction, coupled with fancy boxart and 2) trying not to compete with highly detailed specialised manufacturers (resulting in more expensive kits) who anyway does not posses the same distribution network and brand name is likely a good strategy. Kids and impulse buyers will not go to hannants or other specialised online shops so they don’t compete there anyway, while ”experts” (or rather nerds, but ok :p) will still buy Airfix if the quality is good enough - or even just for nostalgia. So far it has resulted in me buying their kits both for myself and for my kids. *) as a side note, the only local shop selling kits closed down recently. With their closure my kids unfortunately lost quite a bit of their interest in kits, since for them the touching and looking at boxes apparently did much to stir their curiosity! Out of site out of mind...

They’ve been retooling the most prolific one-prop fighters lately. Why not the P-47?

Hmm, I see the inconvenience. Hint that you need a dog, and if she agrees, come home with one of these:

Do you have anyone in the house with long hair? Cheap, strong, responds well to CA and PVA, good and uniform diameter. Why people bother with stretched sprue or EZ line I do not fathom. It also takes paint well, in case your source is not silver-haired: Oh, and I just bought a preowned Roden SE5 on a sale, so I’m all set.

Thanks, guy! Encouragement helps; this is certainly slowgoing. Scale is 1/72. I merely applied the method as described by Woodman, so can’t take any credit. Balsa will probably just splinter if I try to make it that thin. Will have to try either a harder wood or laminated plastic sheet.

Finally after weeks away I got some time in the play room. Yes, correct - I saw now that Mr Des in the link above shows a photo of it I simply drilled holes: if anyone asks, the windows are exceptionally thin and completely transparent! —— Started with the wings and tailplane. I’ve been thinking which method to copy for making ribs and similar. First plan was to use strips of plastic but after some thinking have now come to the conclusion that I will not be able to achive the result I want. Either the strips will be too thick or too uneven. And will take an awful lot of time. But not before ordering material - now I have a dozen bags of evergreen strip of various dimensions. Anyhow, I’ve come to use the method described by Mr Woodman: embossing the lines in 5 thou sheet and folding the sheet over. For the static part of the tailplane I just taped the drawing to the plastic, embossed along the drawing, removed said drawing and folded the sheet. Resulting lines, with minimum effort and absolutely no sanding whatever. The wings I have to draw myself: the aerofred drawing has the outlines, but not the proper rib construction. Being lazy this is done directly on the plastic: Resulting tailplane: Tailplane and lower wings are so thin that folding the sheet is enough to create a deceny thickness but the upper wing will have to be made with a core since it is 1.5-2 mm thick (will have to get a proper measurement). Haven’t started yet. The fin and rudder are shaped in a way that do not encourage the folding method, so I just cut and filed/sanded them out of thicker sheet. Here I used the plastic strips (10x10 thou), which being overscale even for 1/32 or 1/16 scale, were sanded down until they were barely seen. Below, the resulting fin and port lower wing. The little bump on the wing is some kind of mounting bracket for the strut and bracing wires. The camber were made in a simple as possible manner: during gluing, one large clamp the width of the entire wing was used to clamp the leading edge, another similar clamp on the trailing edge. The clamps could then be used to bend the wing into a desireable shape and then arranged to dry in that position. First I heated it over the radiator to avoid stresses (cold months are suitable for scratch building in many ways). I’ve also been applying putty and sanding sticks to the hull. With all these wings made I couldn’t keep myself from dry-mounting them to see how it will look like The tail assembly is stacked on a rod, for robustness and alignement. Would never have expected to feel that way*, but I can’t wait to start painting! * I prefer building, not painting...

Hehe, nice photos. Hopefully my little package is there too, even though I didn’t get any mail. edit: I did get a mail apparently.