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Roger Holden

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Everything posted by Roger Holden

  1. Roger Holden
    Make that 1995. One of their very first kits. They have improved out of sight. Recent kits are mainstream quality from metal moulds, but more mass-market subjects than their earlier efforts. But you can get good results from that L10 kit. See here (would be happy with that one myself) : http://s15.zetaboards.com/72nd_Aircraft/topic/812071/1/
  2. Roger Holden
    Not that I'm aware of. But a Google search for 'TVAL Fokker DVIII' will bring up a lot of very useful photos of their highly-accurate reproductions (er......apart from the wing which they painted the olive green colour in defiance of the latest research). Also, Google 'Fokker EV Wing streaking' which will bring up lots of stuff like this: https://forum.ww1aircraftmodels.com/index.php?topic=2389.0;topicseen
  3. Roger Holden
    The Windsock Datafile on that particular aircraft is distinctly dated. IIRC, it says the wing was painted olive green, which was the conventional wisdom 20 years ago. Unfortunately Mr. Rimell never got around to updating it, as he did with many other of the German types. The plan in the book is also less accurate than Arma's kit in several respects.
  4. Roger Holden
    The wing lower surface was thinly covered with blue and purple stains applied using brushes or brooms. So the effect is that of streaky colours thinly applied over the plywood. Not the dense and obviously sprayed look you have. The best way to replicate this on a model is to paint the wing a plywood colour and then overpaint streakily with oil paints applied by brush (or acrylics if you are that way inclined). "Fokker used an olive-coloured dope for struts, cowls, and metal panels," Dope is a coating for fabric surfaces because of its shrinking properties. The metal parts were painted with enamel. " the Windsock book suggests that the internal tubing was "usually" left in natural metal." Definitely no natural metal.....was steel tube, so thoroughly primed and top coated. The latter was usually either green or medium grey.
  5. Roger Holden
    There were many suppliers of paints to the wartime US aircraft industry. DuPont was merely one. Based in Delaware, their use seems to have been confined to Eastern manufacturers like Curtiss and Grumman. California manufacturers like Douglas and Vultee (and possibly Lockheed) seem to have used the locally-based WP Fuller paints, whose shades were probably slightly different again....
  6. Roger Holden
    Westburg's plans are the best ever done of the Fury. Most of his drawings were based on the original manufacturers' drawings and extensive research. Not all of them are perfect, but they were a labour of love and are way better than most drawings one finds in modelling books and magazines. There is no one doing work like that today.
  7. Roger Holden
    Those drawings were done by one of my heroes, Peter Westburg, an engineer with the Douglas Aircraft Co. He did a number of drawings in the 1970s, 3/4 were US aircraft, but he did a few foreign fighters (Fury, Fiat CR32, Avia B534, Fokker D.XVII). The other Furies he did were the standard British Fury I and the experimental High Speed Fury. Unfortunately he only did the Persian Fury as built with the P&W Hornet engine, as these soon got replaced by British engines in service. His drawings appeared originally in the US flying model mag Model Builder (later in a few others like Air Classics and Airpower) and after his death, they passed to the NASM in Washington, which I believe still sells large paper copies. I certainly bought some from there about 20 years ago. https://airandspace.si.edu/sites/default/files/media-assets/Dwg_Westburg_20111116.pdf
  8. Roger Holden
    I am very well-practised at that from years of reading your Blog 😆. But sometimes a lack of self-discipline lets me down....
  9. Roger Holden
    I am glad we could agree that your Fox Moth letters were wrongly aligned.
  10. Roger Holden
    Nice. I asked them and a 1/72 version is planned also.....
  11. Roger Holden
    But you are here comparing apples with pears. Your examples are metal-winged aircraft, which would not be dis-assembled to paint the letters, as the wing skins could support a man standing on them. So they had complete freedom to align the letters with leading edge, trailing edge, root rib (perp to fuselage) or any feature they chose. Fabric covered biplanes had the wings removed and placed on trestles to be painted (the fabric covering couldn't support a man standing on them), so they had to be guided by the ribs as those were the most logical features they had to align with. Thus the orientation of the letters was dictated by practical considerations of how they could be painted, which were more restrictive for a fabric-covered aircraft.....
  12. Roger Holden
    You lucky, lucky boy !
  13. Roger Holden
    Those letters were always applied in a standard way, so a photo of any aircraft clearly showing the upper surface would have sufficed. I refer you to your rule......always check with multiple sources (where possible). Saves lots of pain later.....as I know only too well.
  14. Roger Holden
    You are probably going to hate me for this........BUT the wing registrations should be aligned with the ribs and at 90 degrees to the leading and trailing edges and NOT parallel to the fuselage centre line. Those letters were usually painted with the wings removed from the aircraft and applying them the way you have done would be extremely difficult as there is no datum feature to align them with..... Check with the internet photos of restored aircraft where it is quite obvious how they were orientated.
  15. Roger Holden
    I think the pre-War KLM markings were a very dark blue, not black.......apart from the upper wing registrations which were orange. At least, those were the colours used on the DC-2s and the DC-3s look similar.
  16. Roger Holden
    Not sure where Valom got the idea of the red spinner fronts from. There are no 'in service' photos showing that, when they had polished spinners. There are 1 or 2 photos showing what appears to be paint flaking off the fronts of spinners, but it's a stretch to say they were painted red....
  17. Roger Holden
    Revell is more accurate than Airfix, but 2008 MPM kit is much, much better than either. Not a shake and bake kit, but currently by far the best produced in 1/72. A-20A has a series of slots in the engine cowls not represented by any of the kits.
  18. Roger Holden
    That's why I removed my comment about the cans. On reflection, it sounded a little pedantic. I sometimes forget most people build models for fun and are not OCD rivet counters like me... (but I'm glad you changed the cans).
  19. Roger Holden
  20. Roger Holden
    If you are talking model car paints, then Leytonhouse Turquoise might be a starting point. But it's too vivid and would need a lot of white and maybe some yellow adding. Whatever, you will be stuck with mixing as there's no model paint which is anywhere close.
  21. Roger Holden
    Yep, the styrene cement causes sink marks to appear, which can sometimes occur several weeks after the gluing. These have to be filled after everything has 'stabilised'. Which is fine for my build schedule......but probably not for yours.
  22. Roger Holden
    By this time, there had been numerous flights from England to Australia, usually in lightplanes, often flown solo....as were some of the race participants. So a radio wasn't considered mandatory.
  23. Roger Holden
    I dug my copy out and although it doesn't contain photos of use, it does contain some pertinent info. It says that although the third crew member has been described as a radio operator, according to Cyril Kay,he was actually a professional photographer taken along to film the race. It is not thought any radio was fitted. There were 3 fuel tanks suspended from the top of the fuselage. The article also refers to another one in Vol 18 no 2 of the same mag, specifically on the plane, which may contain more info.
  24. Roger Holden
    Original colour was mid-grey. Unrestored 'Jason' in Science Museum is that colour. An internet search throws up several examples of restored aircraft cockpits which should give you some idea of the rest.
  25. Roger Holden
    Zinc Chromate Green aka Tinted Zinc Chromate was renamed and standardised as Interior Green circa 1943 and given an ANA number. Before then, it was mixed by adding black (and sometimes silver) to the standard yellow zinc chromate primer, which could give a variety of light green shades, depending on the quantities used. But I've seen a colour photo of the interior of one of the surviving O-47 aircraft somewhere and I'm pretty sure it was Bronze Green, which is a dark green colour. The yellow form is the original shade, introduced around 1935. The green (ie yellow with black added) was conceived originally to distinguish where a second coat had been applied over the yellow base coat.
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