corporate

Really? That's nice Billy, thanks. I know where there's a 2CV Fourgonette in ex-French Post Office yellow sitting disused in a barn in Lot et Garonne, lovely condition just waiting to be restored. Alternatively this Ebbro one might do me for now... rgds Tony

This is lovely, only just found the thread and greatly enjoyed following your build. Excellent work! Inspiring too: must finish my Tamiya VW Beetle 1966... I hadn't heard of Ebbro: I wonder if they have any similar vintage types coming out? I've sometimes been tempted by the Tamiya or Heller 2CV, but I never owned one of those. However, I did have two Citroen Dyane 6s, one after the other, great car I think about far more fondly than any other previous car I had. I cannot find even a metal 1/24 kit, let alone a plastic construction kit: on the shelf above me there's a Corgi Dyane in a smaller scale, grossly over-scale tyres that I must change some day! But I'd really like a plastic kit in 1/24 of a Dyane 6, so I can reproduce one of the two I had - maybe the first, that I drove twice to Portugal, happy days... rgds Tony

Yes indeed - fluo's work best on that. I could have used Tamiya fine primer but in fact I just sprayed on some Vallejo white. The basecoat is fine, it's just a problem in getting the fluo stuff through the airbrush... I might give it up as too much hassle, and get an acrylic aerosol, which will probably give better results anyway and will be far easier to use for the comparatively large area I need to cover. rgds Tony

Nigel, is that enamel paint, i.e. cellulose thinned, perhaps with some xylene too? I should have emphasised I use Vallejo because I decided a while back that I prefer using acrylics, though I know Humbrol enamel airbrushes very nicely when thinned with cellulose; and that I need currently to airbrush onto expanded polystyrene - which reacts very adversely to cellulose, xylene, other powerful solvents... So is the Halfords stuff acrylic? I believe the Airfix aerosols are.. rgds Tony

Some time ago I settled on Vallejo and find I'm fairly competent at airbrushing both Air and Model colour through my Iwatas; I prefer Air, but if I thin the Model Color with plain water and a drop or two of artists flow enhancer, it goes on OK. For the first time, I just tried some Vallejo fluorescent stuff, and couldn't make it work. Even adding more water and half a dozen drops of flow enhancer failed to prevent it from clogging up very quickly. And what gets onto the model is very thin, watery, feeble stuff. Is there a special technique? I wanted to use an Airfix aerosol fluo colour but blasted Antics in Bristol were out of stock yesterday... Thanks, Tony

No, just Jane Fonda and the Orgasmotron...

Sure, it's just that there's very little comparison to be made between the original '60s TV series and subsequent movies. The original has wonderful kitsch appeal, almost tongue in cheek - though I bet they were perfectly serious about it... There's a possibly apocryphal story about a manufacturer approaching the production team of ST to ask about a licence to market the amazing automated sliding doors onto the flight deck of Enterprise: he was disheartened to be told they just had a couple of guys out of shot, pulling and pushing the doors... Re "Plan Nine From Outer Space" I have an idea this also had an alternative title but I can't recall... Certainly a great totem of cheesy SF movies. Actually I think I might have seen (decades ago) a Three Stooges film that was sort of SF, featuring fearsome (!) Amazon/vampire female aliens. The Three Stooges were just about as cheesy as movie comedy ever got, not excluding Jerry Lewis & Dean Martin, or Norman Wisdom...

Can't remember the spaceships in Blake's 7, was too distracted by the gorgeous women in it... Wonder if it's available on DVD...? As for really bad spaceships, no-one has mentioned the admittedly antique Flash Gordon serial movies from the 1930s, really very amusing.

Hello Stuck - glad to hear you've made progress. I have no experience at all with H&S airbrushes, but what you say in general sounds very familiar, much the same process that I underwent. I started in the same way, using cheap and/or obscure airbrushes that were either difficult to use, unreliable, or difficult to clean and maintain: eventually I went for Iwata and have three currently, really well made and work extremely well. At the same time, I went through a process of experimentation with different paints, abandoning acrylics because i found them utterly impossible, finding a good technique using enamels, then finally getting to grips with acrylics because I tried Vallejo and that brand worked for me. From all I hear, H&S are indeed perfectly sound - and those who complain about them probably have just not found the right technique or the best paints. Thanks for the tip about that Lidl W5 stuff - it's probably cheaper than Fairy Power Spray, which acts as a very effective remover of enamel paint and a cleaning agent too. Regards, Tony

Mike, you need to specify which A-4 you're doing: a FAA A-4B or A-4C, or an Armada A-4B, and even then there was some variation. The naval A-4Bs were pretty well standardised on US Mk82 bombs in a triple or quadruple load AFAIK, while the air force 'planes used some British bombs (I think) and certainly the Spanish EXPAL... I have a bit of information, but say what you're building - and there are some guys on the board who are in Argentina, and they tend to have the greatest expertise. Tony

I'm not a "rivet counter" and hardly consider myself even a modeller, compared with the hugely skilled people on this forum and others. I just think Daniel deserves a vote of thanks for taking the time & trouble to post all those super, fascinating photos here - and for demonstrating his awareness of copyright (I'm a professional photographer) by pointing out that the pics are either his, or copyright-expired. Really interesting topic. Tony

I don't think the photos are "defaced" at all. I understand completely someone's desire to make his photographs identifiable as his own and to discourage their being ripped off by others. Copyright theft is rampant, and the worst thing about it is that too many people either don't know about the value of copyright - or don't care. Tony

If that was my first model I'd be delighted! Looks great, lovely cockpit detailing, paintwork, decals... Tony

Russ, I'm impressed by your production rate! Seems to be about 20 times my own rate... You consistently build the sort of kits/planes that appeal to me, too - including this Vietnam-era Voodoo. Lovely paintwork, very realistic. I had an idea that there was at least one off the shelf kit of the recce version - ? Been sort of casually looking for one for a while. But now I've heard about this Koster conversion I might check that out as a possibility. Congratulations, excellent effort. Tony

Warm water with a drop of detergent does a good job of loosening everything so it can be brushed off. I've tried adding white vinegar (then rinsing thoroughly afterwards) but haven't found it makes a huge difference.