opus999

Lots of masking and painting today. Still didn't quite get done with it all., but got the top and sides finished. It's a complex scheme! First I had to mask the wings: I painted the brown on the top of the fuselage and then masked it to paint green once that was done, I pulled the masking off the fuselage. I masked and painted the RLM 76 on the front of the fuselage Then I had to mask over that to paint the strange yellow-green on the sides Once that was done, I pulled all the masking off. So far so good! Then I stripped and cleaned the airbrush, lowered the PSI, made thin mistures of brown and green and painted the mottles on, following the Eduard profile as I went. Then I was just tired of working on it! So that's as far as I got, but I'm pretty happy with that!

It was a quiet week at the bench. I spent a couple nights masking -- but only about a half hour a night. Last night I got to painting. First, I attached the canopy and then used Mr. Surfacer Black 1500 as a primer. I was looking at Eduard's painting instructions and they call for the more brown-ish shade of RLM 81. Tamiya calls out the dark green shade of RLM 81. For some reason the brown shade seemed right to me. I don't know why. Some of the older Eduard profiles of this aircraft call out the greener shade of RLM 81, but the latest has the browner shade. I don't know if that's based on new research or what. I just went with it. Eduard calls out a mix of 80% Mr. Color RLM 81 and 20% Mr. color red-brown. I don't have red-brown, so I first found color swatches of Mr. Color's red-brown (which can vary by quite a bit) and then mixed Mr. Color Insignia red with propeller brown until it matched the most common color among all the results on my screen. Luckily it turned out to be 50:50. I added the RLM 81 to that until it was the 80:20 mix. I painted that on the wings and then printed a mask using the Eduard instructions. I taped that to the model as shown below: After that I painted the Mr. Color RLM 82 and it was time for bed! The light green seems more brilliant in this photo, but as I experienced before, it ends up looking much better when all the overcoats go on.

Sunday I applied dull coat to all the parts. I painted a couple of antennas -- there are a couple on PAV 1 that are red and a couple that are a light grey, like a light ghost gray. I also put some faint exhaust streaking on the bottom coming from the vents, since I observed that in some of the underside pictures. Somehow, I didn't get pictures of these, but I'll see what I can do. Quiet week at the bench. I only worked on this one night this week. It was one of those "mask for 45 minutes, paint for 5" sessions. It was masking and painting the area around the engine exhuasts. Here it is all masked up Here's the finished product: I used Mr. Color super stainless, with some Alclad Magnesium dusted over it to cut down the shine. I like that. My seat is scheduled to arrive tomorrow (we'll see how that turns out...), so I'll paint and install that. I also need to paint the vents and put the landing gears together.

The day is still young... 🤣

Since I have had some down time on the YF-23, I started pecking away at a new build. Part of my "big box, small airplane" stash reduction. This time it is the Tamiya Fw190-D: What's fun is one of the schemes is for the mount of Waldemar Wubke, whose Bf-109E I did a few years ago. So that's the one I'm going with. Over the last week I worked on the cockpit. I didn't put a ton of effort into dressing it up because the cockpit is so cramped it is almost impossible to see any detail in the finished product. So I am including pictures for posterity. There were decals for the IP and the seatbelts. I silver drybrushed the side panels. I was surprised that the cockpit was a tub. After that, on Wednesday night, I set to gluing the body together. Surface detail is pretty nice on this kit, but not quite the level of the A6M3 I just finished. But much better than the N1K1-Ja. Fit is really good except for a couple of places: The other issue I had was with the part with the MGs. They had the sprues attach on the sides, which resulted in blemishes as seen here: That was in spite of all the care I took not to damage it. There was actually some plastic missing, so I had to use some gel super glue to replace the missing plastic. It looks fine now. There were no steps at those seams though, so they were easily sorted out with some putty. Here's where I left it when the YF-23 decals arrived and I switched back to that build.

Chris, I'm really sorry that you've got a stomach bug that just won't quit. For me stomach bugs are the absolute worst things to have. I hope it goes away soon! Edit: somehow I skipped over the entry where you found out what you have. That's a relief! Maybe you'll get better more quickly.

I was just going to wish you luck, but I am late to the party. Still, nice work with the awards! I too am disappointed that the Bounder didn't do better. It's just so stunning in the photos -- I can't imagine how much more so it is in real life! My family is going to be in New London for a week starting March 30th visiting my in-laws. Sort of in your neck of the woods!

Nice work on the touch-ups. It's always a tedious task to fix little tiny things like that so kudos for knocking them all out in one go! Too bad about the wet paint though.

Hooray! These actually arrived Thursday evening, but I was busy Thursday night and all day Friday, so I couldn't get to them until today. The instructions said to use the lighter decals on the left for PAV-1. The decals looked the same on the right and the left, which worried me. Then, I was afraid they'd be too dark. When compared to the Testors decals they were a little darker than the Testors decals used for PAV-1 (Testors on the left in the photo). I needn't have worried... they know what they're doing! Getting things lined up correctly was difficult with all the curves and contours, but I think it looks right. The Caracal decals came with 50 stencils. They were teeny-tiny... probably half the size of the ones on the Testors sheet. So, I have a protective gloss coat to put on tonight, and then I can do some very very light weathering tomorrow. After that, everything is on hold while waiting for the bang seat.

I was able to fix the paint on the starboard wing so that it matches the port wing. Now it's just waiting for the seat and the decals. Through the wonders of modern technology I was able to nearly real-time track my decals the 190-ish miles from Austin Texas to Dallas Texas, whcih took 4 whole days, which is an average of 8 miles an hour. They should be here in 3 or 4 weeks 😜

Sorry about the Father in law. I'm sad to hear about it. The MiG looks great for what its worth!

Wow! Lucky you! I'm a big Yes fan, but sadly was never able to see them when he was part of the lineup. Never got to see him solo either.

Boy, the detail on these pieces is amazing. I love the idea of the iridescent film, too!

The hinomaru look really great! I have to say I really like that green -- it just looks very naturally worn. Terrific! Is that a Rick Wakeman photo you took? If so, what was the concert?

Wow, really? Well, I was just thinking about how I have a second one in the stash to do the "Spirit of Hobo" scheme and how I was going to have to use your build as a guide -- we've come full circle!

That's some terrific scratch building there. Too bad its hard to get the fine detail, but it may not be noticable in the finished product?

Beautiful painting. It is shaping up nicely. I'm sorry to hear about your father in law.

Wow Chris, that Beaufighter is really terrific looking! Nice save on the squadron codes too.

That bright blue is going to be very striking! Can't wait to see how this shapes up.

Wow, lots of little details. The end result is really striking though. I like the subtle weathering, it really suits this build.

That is really neat in FAA colors! Somehow I missed your WIP on this. It looks terrific.

Beautiful bare metal! I can't tell you had trouble with it. This is a fantastic job on this kit -- I'm particularly impressed with the intakes -- mine didn't turn out nearly as nice when I built this kit.

That's wonderful! I really love the look of the Ventura.

I didn't know enough about the Irish insignia to see they weren't right -- that's too bad. But, this is a beautiful model nonetheless and I think you did a fantastic job despite all the difficulty. If it makes you feel any better, I recently did a Czech build and got every insignia but one wrong. I was able to fix all but two

That is beautiful! It looks so realistic.