mahavelona

And finally... Some progress! After gluing the roof and front plate to the main body of the tank, I realised that I had an empty line on the top and front of the tank's sides where I had no zimmerit. This is inaccurate according to my photos so I have added that zimmerit fresh now. I have also begun on the tracks... Revell unfortunately left me some ejector pins on EVERY tracklink which needed sanding off. A painful job. Simply clipping all the individual links off their three sprues took over an hour! I have begun to glue together the flat, bottom section of the tracks. They have all been coated in an initial coat of rusty coloured paint, but much more is to come...

This footage is amazing and is tempting me to fork out for a certain new Airfix boxing...

What a superb build of a very attractive aircraft

Thanks for your interest! My life is split between two workbenches; one up north and one down south. Over Christmas I've been down south and haven't left yet! I've been wrestling an Airfix Catalina down here but next week I will be up north again and those track links can come out to play...

Oh wow! That is superb. Cheers for mentioning that. I must admit I rarely, if ever, venture beyond eBay and my LMS for buying models so I was not aware you could get this kit at that price. I am very tempted... And much less excited about Airfix's offering! Do you happen to know if the current 'sale' price of £13 is a permanent thing or has it only happened recently?

Amazing work!

They seem to go for £23 cheapest on eBay. Do you view that as cheap or expensive? For me, that is fairly expensive for a single engine 1/72 plane although I know others may disagree and that the price of kits has been rising. I'll grant you that I would not expect an Airfix offering of the same plane might end up costing about the same though!

The Italeri kit, to my knowledge, is rarely available for less than £25-30 in the UK. I've not seen one in a model shop for some time. A lot of the eBay listings for it are coming from the continent and have about £15 postage on top of the price. Certainly the Italeri kit is far, far superior to the Airfix offering, which requires a lot of work. But in the UK at least, the new Airfix offering is likely to be available for around half the price that a British modeller might find the Italeri SM.79 where it is available. Personally I think £17 is a little steep to pay for the Airfix offering due to its lacklustre quality but I'm sure it will be available for a few pounds less very soon after release; that seems to be the pattern. Of course, I am the modeller who opted to spend £10 on the Airfix Catalina and wrestle with it all summer rather than plump for the more expensive Academy or Revell offering - whilst I know many other modellers would rather purchase the more expensive and vastly superior kit.

Well, I wasn't expecting that! As an armour fan I was initially overjoyed to see the range of 1/35 armour kits, somehow imagining they were newly tooled! Slowly I came to realise this would not be the case... But I am pleased nonetheless. The specific nature of these kits' naming schemes leaves me hoping for some well-researched schemes from the box. I feel like every Airfix range announcement will always be accompanied by a chorus of disappointment; in this hobby, there are so many diverse and obscure tastes that surely not everybody can be pleased. Personally I would love to see a new tool 1/72 Westland Wapiti, Wyvern, Lysander or other obscurities, but how many would that please? We also have to remember what a good year 2018 was for new aircraft releases in 1/72 and 1/48. We are still waiting to receive some versions of the Mustang and Sea Fury announced back then. New 1/48 Tiger Moth and 1/72 Buccaneer are sure to please most. Classic British planes which lack any decent, widely available competition in their scales. A re-released SM.79 is an exciting prospect. The kit is beastly but the aircraft is extremely interesting to my knowledge it has been long enough since anybody issued one widely that the plane is hard to come by. This boxing will certainly be cheaper than the much better tooled Italeri offering which can sometimes be found. I'm excited to see what schemes Airfix chooses as this plane has so many exciting options. Echoing others above, it would surely be wise for Airfix to re-work some of their new tool 1/48 kits (e.g. Walrus, Sea Fury) down to 1/72. Either way, I am too poor and too saturated by stashed kits to justify much Airfix spending this year. Much as I'd love their new armour kits they might pass me by for a few years at least...

It looks superb!

Good luck on your Jagdpanzer! Let me know if you'd appreciate a few digital copies of Jagdpanzer books... Weren't too many of these in ambush schemes but they look so attractive!

I hugely admire your bravely and commitment to scratching track links. You are a modeller after all - after a certain amount of aftermarket had been bought you can begin to feel more like a model shopper! I would like to make some comment on the zimmerit. I might be wrong, and I can't remember which book I've read this in, but I've read that the zimmerit was actually a very durable material owing to its hardness. Large missing areas across the tank would be unlikely to occur due to field damage, as i understand, because it would require a lot of hard impacts. Maybe something to bear in mind as you do it. You've got a cool dramatic effect going so model it as you please! Another way you can convey zimmerit being done in a hurry - miss done surfaces. We often see the lower hull behind the wheels missing zimm, but also small 'tricky' areas like around the exhausts.

That's an exciting dry fit! I really like your progress so far

Cheers! I think my white putty technique is easy, you literally just dab it on in a messy fashion. Thanks for the tip! My pattern isn't super even but I'm resigned to that. I have given the zimm a good sanding to thin and smoothen it which I feel improves the realism. It is a good material because it's easy to break a small section of dry milliput zimmerit off and apply it again, as I have done on the glacis plate. Thanks! Glad you like the mud. I've had a lot of free time to work on it lately but unfortunately progress has now halted until after the new year. I'm off down south to see family and another workbench, which has an unfinished Catalina sitting on it. Here is all the progress I've made since the last photos. Bit of sanding on the zimm. Glued detail parts together. I've noticed that the right hand flap at the front of the tracks is not missing in the photos - it's just lifted up on its hinges. I've used some plasticky card to make another flap and fit it in place on the 'hinge'.

You are inspiring me to hunt one of these out in the model shop myself - this is a great build!