opus999

I got right up to the point of painting tonight. There was a lot of work to be done on the HobbyBoss today, but I've finally gotten it there. First off, I sanded down the filler I put in the cockpit sidewalls It looks pretty rough, but mainly because it filled in all the scratches caused by filing the turtle deck away. Next, dryfitting revealed that the seat and bulkhead were way too high in the cockpit, so I had to file this area down until they were at the correct height. I finally was able to add some detail! It all looks pretty bad, as my scratchbuilding does on a zoomed photo, but I'm confident it will look a lot better when it is painted. I made some radio boxes for the Eduard kit by sanding down a resin pour stub for the big one and a piece of plastic found in the spares for the little one. I made similar radios for the HB using resin pour stubs. I may have to pull that little one off to sand it a little more. I think the HobbyBoss cockpit will look OK when finished: The next HobbyBoss part modification was to fix the landing gear doors. Using the Eduard part as a guide, I cut a new lower part I think I was able to bend it correctly, although the full contour is impossible for my skills Then, I had to fill in the holes for the original landing gear door parts. I did that with Apoxie sculpt. These will be sanded flush tomorrow. Finally I had to make the air intakes in the leading edge of the wings. Here's the wing before modification, with the intakes marked Here's the finished product. The starboard one looks to dip down toward the wing root. I'll decide if I can fix that or not tomorrow. That's all for tonight.

Before I got sick things went a little crazy at the work bench. Before I get into the craziness, I need to set the stage a little. What I've neglected to mention so far is the source of my Ivan Kozhdub decals. I looked high and low for some aftermarket decals and couldn't find any, which amazed me. However, I knew the HobbyBoss kit had them, and at about $10 the kit would be cheaper than any aftermarket decals. So I bought another kit and figured I'd just added to the "Cast offs" pile. Tuesday night I thought I'd dig the HB kit out to compare to the Eduard and, as I mentioned above to @2996 Victor, they compare extremely well. In fact I almost wonder if HB used Eduard as their basis. But, there's the issue of that cockpit and how the seat is misplaced too far back -- seems like a lot of work to correct. Still, I thought, the HB could be made as a 3-cannon version since it has the parts for that. Hmm.... Y'know, I bet I could pull off the cockpit modifications... I just can't leave well enough alone, so guess what? This has become a double-build. The day I was ill, I'd been thinking about the cannon version and wondered who besides the USSR flew it. It turns out that Czechoslovakia had 3-cannon versions and a quick duck into ebay found reasonably priced decals for 2 or 3 (I couldn't quite tell) 3-cannon'd Czech La-7, which were soon dispatched to their new home. I realized quite quickly that these two will need to be done in tandem (at least initially) so I have the Eduard parts to use as templates (well, starting points since the interior of the HB is smaller due to their really thick fuselage sidewalls). Therefore, this post is all about getting the HB up to where I'm at with the Eduard. First off, I used a file to get rid of this turtledeck. Since I forgot to take a "before" picture, I used a paintbrush handle to show where the turtledeck originally started and how much was filed away. Then, when compared to the Eduard, I found that the shroud over the IP was all wrong. Using the Eduard as a template, I traced out how much had to be cut away. You might notice a thick post just visible under that shroud -- that needed to disappear as well. I used my Dremel to cut that out, but it was a trick since the cutting wheel was too big for the opening. I found I could get it from underneath, so that's how I did it and then finished it off with X-acto knives and files. After that I turned to the placement of the seat. The floor has a peg that fits into a hole in the wing assembly, so that it looks like this when assembled: I carefully cut that peg and dry fit, until the seat was in the proper position, shown here: Here's how much was cut off the bottom: The canopy would need some forward and rear-ward bulk heads so I fabricated those: Yeah, the IP is a bit rough, but I wasn't really driven to make it really nice since dry-fitting revealed you can hardly see it anyway. Besides, I don't think I have any more IP decals left in the spares. In the above picture Eduard is on the left. I realize now I could've trimmed the HB seat to better match the Eduard. I don't know if I still can; it might really mess up the assembly since it is all glued with model cement. Hmm. 😕 Next, thanks to @Learstang's photos, I built a radio shelf for both kits: Last night I added seatbelts and a control stick: I finished off the evening with slathering Tamiya putty into these horrible indentations in the sidewalls: So today, with any luck, I will smooth out the HB sidewalls and add detail and them maybe I can start painting!

Great build so far Adrian! I love P-47s so this really caught my eye. I'm particularly keen to see how the Tamiya stands up to your scrutiny since I have that exact kit in the stash.

What a great trio! Very nice work.

I love a desert Spitfire... this one looks terrific!

Nice work... I really like this Malta scheme.

And yet I got it! 🙂

Hi Mark! You're right, does look good. I've compared it to the Eduard and, except for the minor details HobbyBoss missed (and are easily fabricated) it matches really well. I'd go do far as to say it's one of HobbyBoss's most accurate -- except for that cockpit! But more on the cockpit later.... I am feeling better... Not perfect but a lot better. I had my flu shot and I wonder if this was the flu and I fought it off quickly because of my "enhanced immunity"? Hey... Truth in advertising! 😁 Thanks for the info.

That is a beaut Dennis! I really like that.

@Learstangmay I ask the name of the book that is about all Soviet fighters? Growing up in the cold war I was fascinated by "the other side" and so I have several books about Soviet jets. My knowledge of Soviet WWII aircraft is lacking though, since my only exposure to it was the Airfix Yak-9 in my dad's collection!

@Corsairfoxfouruncle thanks for the assist! @Learstang thanks for taking the time to scan and post those! It looks like the shelf in the La-5 goes all the way across so I'll have to make a new one, but that's easy enough. Sorry it took a couple of days for me to respond. I've been sick so not much time had been spent in the forum ity at the bench...

Hmm... no problems yet with the plastic. Let's hope it stays that way! Mostly cockpit work this week. The details in the cockpit are there, but very subtle. I think they really intended you to use PE to enhance it. I couldn't find any PE cockpit sets, so I just set out to cobble something up with stuff I had in the spares box and some extra PE I have from other builds. Usually, through closed canopies, details are not easily seen so I'm just trying to get parts that look about right and in the right places. I have lots of pictures to guide me, some of real aircraft, some of model cockpits. Colors are all over the place in the real aircraft pictures (when they're not B/W), so I will make my best guess. First up was the decal on the IP. I glued the cockpit floor parts together: Then I set out to do some detailing. Keep in mind the PE will be attached after painting since it is pre-painted. Notice I put a shelf in back for the radio. That has been a troublesome affair. I haven't been able to find any pictures of the radio in a real La-7 after 3 days of looking (now watch, someone will link one here tomorrow! ). Looking at how models portray that area I've found that many have the shelf running all the way across the back and the radios right up against the seat -- except on my build (I forgot to take a picture), there is an oxygen bottle or something attached to the seat in that location. Hmm. The best I could do was to copy a modeller on the "Modelling the VVS" website, who said he based his work on some pictures in a book he has. Well, that's about the same as hearsay, but I've decided not to go crazy trying to perfect something that won't be easily seen anyway. Next up... fabricate the radios and then paint the interior.

I recently completed a HobbyBoss La-7 that was knocking around the stash for quite a while now. I was dismayed at how many little details were left out and was happy I was able to scratch build replacements for them. Still, when all was said and done I wasn't really satisfied with it. Oh, it came out looking nice, but not quite how I envisioned it, plus I found I'd grabbed the wrong light gray (which was too light) and didn't discover it until I was finished. What's more, I was looking at the pictures of the finished model a week or two later and noticed that the seat was too far back! Like, maybe 2 scale feet too far back! I was really upset with myself at this point because I found and fixed the little minor details, but missed the big glaring one. So I decided to do something I haven't done before.... Bought a new one for a do over. The price of this was really good so it didn't hurt too much. And I plan to make Ivan Kozhdub's La-7 again because he was the top allied ace and because he was a Ukrainian pilot, which I think is appropriate. Here's the obligatory sprue shot. Only one parts tree (plus a little one with transparencies) If you're interested, the HobbyBoss fail is here: Here's what it looked like: Hopefully I can re-do this one a little better this time...

Late as usual. I love that paint work -- wow! That's going to be a great looking aircraft. The interiors were nice too -- I wasn't aware of the interior color! I've got an Airfix Wimpy, but I keep passing it over because I have a diorama planned for it and never quite get the gumption up to start it.

They were, but I hand painted them and the paint made it just thick enough to make it a tight squeeze when I put them back in! I forgot I had downloaded a lot of pictures of Marseille's Bf-109F from the Azizbiz website, which had a lot of pretty good quality photos of it. I noticed that the backs of the propeller blades were nearly bare metal down to about 2/3 of the way from the tip to the spinner. The front didn't look too worn, so I tried to replicate both: Maybe the backs could've been more silver, but I didn't want to over do it and it wasn'r completely obvious in the pictures how worn it really was. I also noticed that the wing root was dirty -- likely from exhaust -- almost all the way across the area marked for walking. I tried to replicate this, but again went a little light because I know the contrast in B/W photos can be a little funny. You might notice the paint chipping in the above photo at the wing root -- again, it was based on the photos. I also did a little chipping on the leading edges. It wasn't backed up by any photos, but seemed logical. So, with the shrouds and propeller re-attached, I am calling this one done (well... I still have to get clear red to do the port nav light so it's not really done...).