Roger Holden

Best Wellington details reference is Czech 4+ book from a few years ago.

Very nice. Never saw that plane before.... Must dig out my book on Beriev flying boats.

Good job on that rough old kit....

Just found this thread. As well as the wrong prop and elevator balances, which you have corrected, the Spanish Vildebeest requires another change. They didn't have the 'bulge' on the fuselage sides running between the cockpits covering the strut attachments. This is clearly seen in at least one of your photos. But it'a a bit late now....sorry !

Ok,thanks; makes sense. In construction photos of Muchichko's PR-5, it looked like he was also making the masters for a kit. I was hoping it was for someone like A-Model, but it was obviously Airkits. I think some of these will appear as injection kits eventually. Mars Models is doing the R-6.

Thanks. Very interesting planes. I like the ARK-5 and PR-5. I remember seeing a beautiful model of the PR-5 by a modeller named Valentin Muchichko (?) a few years ago, probably scratchbuilt.

First one of those I've seen built. I have a Kask vacform kit of the same thing from the 1990s. I think the same man may now be the producer of Airkits,

.......and another thing (or 3) : Besides the 'starved greyhound' wing ribs, it has that goofy square-topped rudder and too-wide struts found on the 'Warpaint' plan, probably the most inaccurate one out there....... plus those bright red roundels the rest of the modelling world left behind in the 1960s. Looks like Trumpy's research department really went the extra mile on this one ! They should stick to Russian and Chinese subjects. They obviously won't pay the air fare to study a British aircraft in a British museum..... .

The longer fuselage is only on late aircraft (circa 1928-32), so shouldn't concern you too much (unless you plan to build one to go with the appropriate wing provided in the Revell kit). D-2313 seen here has the long fuselage : https://www.junkers.de/flugzeuge/specials/f13 The JL6 has a 48' 7'' wingspan (205.6 mm in 1/72), vs 58' (245.5 mm) in the Revell kit, so around 20 mm has to be removed from each wing tip. I think the inboard end of the aileron was in the same place, so the ailerons just got extended too.

90.3 from rudder post to rear of separate nose bowl piece ie length of the fuselage half mouldings provided by Dora......no rudder or nose bowl included. I know John is very fussy about aircraft dimensions and would trust him over practically anyone else in the model sphere. Where there is conflicting data, he always tries to get to the bottom of it. As I'm also an A-B member, I remember the previews for the Percival book and they mentioned that the types where they had found the Percival g.a.s to be in error were the Piston Provost and Q6 twin. No mention was made of any of the Gulls.

I'm afraid you should check the real aircraft dimensions carefully, rather than published drawings. I've known John Adams for many years and he has given me a set of his excellent and highly detailed 1/48 scale drawings on which the Dora kits are based and they are in a different league to the Air-Britain drawings (whatever their hype tells you...). According to both John's drawing and the Air-Britain book, the overall length of the Vega Gull with the standard Fairey prop is 25' 6", which scales out to 108 mm in 1/72 scale, yet the Air-Britain drawing measures 112 mm long. Scaling down John's 1/48 drawing to 1/72 scale, the fuselage halves as moulded by Dora should be 90.3 mm long, which is precisely what they are.... Before comparing kit parts with published drawings, we should first establish that the drawings have been reproduced to the correct scale and secondly that they also agree with the quoted wing span and length dimensions....... Regarding the seats, 2 types are provided in the kits; military-style bucket seats and the same things with cushions. Neither of these are correct for the civil Vega Gulls, which should have the typical, upholstered automotive-style fitted to most civil cabin aircraft of the era. So that is a legitimate criticism of the kit.

The JL-6s were equivalent to the very first German F-13s built and had the original short wing, with curved ailerons. Very soon, the span was increased to produce a longer wing (also with curved ailerons), which the vast majority of F-13s had. (This was retro-fitted to most, if not all German built F-13s, leaving the US JL-6s as the only planes to see much service with the short wing....) But this long wing also had early and late versions. Unfortunately, Revell copied a museum aircraft built from several wrecks, which has an early fuselage mated to a late wing (from a very late aircraft which also had a longer fuselage and 'square' fin.rudder,plus those near-parallel ailerons. This late wing also has much wider joint straps covering the centre-section to outer panel joints than the early aircraft had. So building an accurate early-ish F-13 from the kit needs a lot of work.) But the early JL-6 span change is quite easy as it just involves hacking off the wing tips and producing a new tip enclosure. Rest of the geometry is the same. Not sure about the aileron length. 20-odd JL-6s were produced. The most well-known were the 2 aircraft used by Imperial Oil for prospecting in Canada and the US Postal Service aircraft.

Excellent job; perhaps the best I've seen from that ancient kit. What did you do with the horrible wing rib representation ? It's by far the worst feature of the kit......

Great job ! I prefer the slightly less weathered look you have gone for on this version. Those Mikro-Mir kits look nice in the box. How do they go together ? I also have the 'Strana Sovietov' version.

It's not aircraft 509, which had the serial number S1252. So it could be 506 or 508, but we don't know the rest of the serial number Nxxxx. That's the only Flycatcher photo I have seen with a lower wing marking, which doesn't mean there weren't others, but unfortunately we hardly ever have photos of the same aircraft showing both the top and bottoms of the wings...... The red and white squares is a fair guess , but could equally be black and white (fin is black). Upper wing marking is probably the same. Those wing markings probably denote the unit commander's aircraft and were probably 'designed' by him. They were not standardised and are unrecorded. The other aircraft in the unit may, or may not have, more simplified markings. Probably not what you want to hear, but not all answers are known. There are, of course, many other less problematic Flycatcher colour schemes....

Agreed; I can't say what colour that is.....

It's in the 'usual' blue and orange colour scheme and it's taken using panchromatic film. No dispute about that.....the Tupolevs were in that colour scheme. A very nice photo.

Most of Aviaartikas planes were indeed orange/blue (Tupolevs, Putilov Stal), but the Wal in that photo isn't. The key fact is Tupolev in background of photo is orange and that matches wing leading edge colour on Wal. Wal wing leading edge is not same colour as fuselage. That photo is in complete agreement with A Model's illustrated colour scheme ( I study pre-WW2 civil aircraft colours and have thousands of photos taken with different film types, so I am well aware of the different characteristics of old films). Just because we want to believe a 'nice' colour scheme doesn't mean it was so.

A Model is correct in my strong opinion. The hull is mid-grey , so the white registration would be easily visible. Grey hull/silver wings colour scheme was standard for all Wals, including the Russian. The Aviaartika Wals were old military aircraft which were transferred after they were obsolete for military service. As this was WW2, I don't think they would have bothered giving them a fancy repaint. See also my comment above.

I have to disagree, I am afraid. I think A Model's colour scheme is quite correct. I have studied Wal a lot and that is standard Wal colour scheme (all countries) of grey hull and silver wings. It's an old military Wal that was transferred to Aviaartika and has had a minimal repaint of adding orange to leading edges of wings. Tupolev at far left is probably in Aviaartika orange scheme and appears dark. Photo is probably taken using orthochromatic film, which makes orange appear dark, so there is no possibility that Wal is in the colours you have chosen. Sorry !

You might want to check out the Inter War Wings Modelling Group on FB. Quite a few 'yellow wings' posted on there recently.

PETG is available in .020 (0.5mm), .030 (0.75mm) and .040 (1mm) thicknesses, which can be found easily by Googling or on eBay. Personally, I wish it was available in thicknesses thinner than .020 (say .015) as .020 is fine for closed canopies but too thick for open ones in my favoured 1/72 scale. "When vacuum forming the whole area of the hot styrene is used and is pulled down over the mould so the thickness remains constant instead of thinning out as it does with plunge moulding." No, there is still a degree of thinning when vacforming, but it's not as severe as with plunge moulding as the plastic is stretched more uniformly.

No ; Luca Tameo made the master pattern for the CAR Shadow DN9B kit, (when he was a teenager still at school). I think he carved the master from a type of wax. Following this, he also carved master models for Meri Kits and then started his own company in 1983, I think.

Ok; I assumed that because this is a forum for kit builders, not collectors of built models, that you were interested in the kits......🙂 I was never interested in the factory built models myself and I don't know the history of them. I bought my first Tameo kits in 1986.

Hello Aleksey. All Tameos old kits from the 1980s (TMK001 +) are still available and listed on their website: http://www.tameokits.com/en/prodotti-modelli-rezults.asp?x=1&ref=TMK&myPage=42 But of course, the later kits are much better quality, especially from 1996 onwards (around TMK180 +). The TB built models are quite recent (approximately last 10 years). Nearly all his recent kit releases are in the SLK range (including the Arrows FA1 you mention).