Marklo

Oh never heard of this I’m intrigued…

Not a huge fan of the hunter ( or this era either) but I keep seeing that nice Airfix 1/48 kit and could be persuaded 😀

Nice idea. I think I have the entire first quarter of the list in the stash 😀 so count me in.

First of all welcome to Britmodeller and welcome back to modelling. First rule of modelling there’s no right or wrong way as long as you’re enjoying yourself. As for the state of modelling, I reckon we’re in something of a golden age with regards to Kit, product tools and information for model making. To me it looks like you’re doing pretty well so far. So my few cents mostly on finishing. First off type of paint. I prefer acrylics because they’re easy to live with and generally non toxic. I generally use Tamiya but I also use Humbrol, AK, Hataka and Mr Colour all good. Note the Hataka come in two ranges one for brush painting and one premixed for airbrushing. You don’t need to airbrush for a good finish (heresy I know) use a fan shaped synthetic bristle brush for large areas and I actually like the Revel starter set double paintbrush’s for detail paints by as well as a set of nail painting fine brushes for very fine work like canopy frames. That said I do prefer to airbrush. I have an Iwata Neo, a KkMoon and a cheap Chinese Knockoff the latter two bought for very small money off Aliexpress and tbh they’re all good, I find the KkMoon is actually quite the workhorse. This was my first airbrush and compressor €40 off the web. Still going strong. My favourite primer is Ultimate primer also sold as stynylrez. I prefer grey but TBH I don’t think the colour matters too much, except for natural metal finishes (use black) and yellow (oddly enough pink works best here) for these I’ll use the grey then give th er m s coat of the second colour before preshade and final finish. Airbrush cleaner. Little known trick Windolene works really well with acrylics and is a fraction of the price. I also find it’s a pretty good thinner for art shop acrylic which can be thinned down and sprayed quite well. I tend to use these for black white and grey mixes but they’re a fraction of the cost of model paints. The biggest thing I find with airbrushing is the mix I mostly use water to thin my pants, but I keep a bottle of IPA handy as well as some Windsor and Newton flow enhancer and the windolene for the odd tricky mix ( like humbrol 99😵‍💫) Finally airbrushing can seem like a black art at first so I strongly recommend a bit of study first. I found both of the above books very helpful. You can get ebooks of both reasonably cheaply. Then there’s masking which is a whole subject in itself….

1/72 Me109k in Yougoslavian markings. In its day a ground breaking kit. 1/72 Mig21F converted to a North Vietnamese PF this one took me thirty years to complete. 1/100 Mirage III in Pakistan colours 1/144 A10 Warthog not entirely sure if this one counts as a Classic

We did have a Bristol GB a few years ago and the community was quite restrained, now I must admit that I did get the most comedic effect ever from my Little Willie Scratchbuild as part of the prototypes GB… The family thing is what we did for the Tiger tank STGB and I think that worked. Certainly the discussion around the Lancaster/manchester/lincoln/shacelton situation tc GB/STGB plays into this area too.

The Mig 31 gets some decals and a black nose and cantilever panel. The Khazakstan decals are Russian stars with a tiny punched disc of yellow added. last minute change of plan the Mig 25 is now Ukrainian, decals again being punched out of dev as l box bits. The black stripe is the start of the edge of the angle panel.

Looking good. Solidworks has decided not to come out to play so I’m stuck in installation hell 😡at the moment

Not my original plan, although I may have skinned the tail plans as they are a bit too thin as printed. But thanks to the relatively simple wing shape it worked out well.

Got to love the Trabant. In 1990 I was in Germany at a company called SHW (very cool site btw they act had their own foundry and a railway line that ran through the site to move the raw materials and machine tool assemblies around) in Aalen ( a bit south of Munich) on a CNC milling centre training course. On the Monday morning when we arrived in to class there was a group there from the former East Germany and we got chatting. They were explaining that they had left home on Sunday afternoon and taken turns driving through the night to get to Aalen, to which we replied that we hadn’t realised that Germany was quite so big and they must have come a long way until they explained that they had driven to Aalen in a Trabant with a maximum speed of 40km/h. 🤪 The other thing we realised was that there were four of them and to this day I still don’t know how they managed to squeeze themselves and their luggage in…

Based on the photos I’m guessing doped aluminium but tbh other than it’s a light colour I have no idea.

The F35 is now posted in the gallery. Now going through the decal box to find markings for the migs. The 25 and 31 will be in Indian and Khazakstan markings respectively so only need decals and wheels to finish. The two 29s will be in Bangladesh and Romanian colours the former needs camo and just numbers and the latter is a two tone grey so just dark gray and then Romanian roundels. Finally the 23 will be in Syrian camo so it needs paint and decals.

Finally got motoring on my Vervile Packard. i have to say there seems to be a massive response to the GB definitely tapping into an otherwise unserved modelling arena.

Fuselage bits glued together. I decided I’d skin the tailplanes and wings with .25mm sheet rather than full and sand them. TBH I probably drew them a little thin so they probably needed the extra thickness anyway. Cutting the blanks for the wings. Upper wing, double sided sticky tape and then a bead of CA at the trailing edge. Lower wing. I’ll skin the control surfaces separately after I’ve cleaned up the main section. All glued and taped up. After a rough trim. The marks on the lower wings are where the struts go. And yes the control surfaces are on the lower wings.

Academy 1/72 F35 in What if Irish Air Corp markings ( it is vaguely possible 😀) the dramatic lighting is because the sun was shining through the kitchen window this morning, can’t make up my mind if it’s great or terrible 😀