BlueNosers352nd

It's a wrap.......well, before I mess anything else up I'm calling it a wrap. Teaser.....rest is in the gallery or on my Flicker.

Calling this one done! What a sweet kit, minus the wiring harness on the engine (it's omitted on my build, lost patience with it). Eduard 1/48 F6F-3 Profipack w/ kit decals. Only extras are the gun barrels as since I tend to model with the "Bull in a China Shop" mentality...........they got broken off. Still need to figure out stars/bars or stencils. They still plague me. Blues are Mr Color, most everything else is Tamiya. Had the wings all done up nicely then had to touch up and lost the work. Didn't feel like fixing it. Full series of pics here on Flickr

Back to this issue I have with masks. It's amazing the problems you solve (sometimes) while taking a shower. Even though I haven't tested the theory, I think I have figured out how to paint stars/bars before the rest of the plane is painted. Paint insiginia blue covering the whole area of the insignia, and then some adjacent area. Put the mask down, pull the white areas and paint the white. Then you can use Tamiya tape to cover up the white area before painting the rest of the aircraft. And boom.....Bob's your uncle! The issue I have, at least with Maketar Masks, is picking up and putting pieces back down. If you were to do Stars/Bars after the whole plane is painted, you'd have to put the whole mask down, including the outside square perimeter, pick up the blue border and white areas. How do you do that and get all the proper pieces to come back up? The masks always seem so sticky and getting the inner portion up seems to fight me and usually ends up ruining the mask. Then you have to lay the center portion down and only pick up the white portion. What's the secret? Alignment is still an issue, but I think with horizontal and vertical tick marks at the corners of the bars and some practice will help with that. Basically, I'm finding, once any portion of the mask is down it's down without major effort and mask damaging results to get it off.

The weathering on this Hellcat (Navy GB) is eluding me. Didn't help that I wasn't really thinking when I sprayed Gunze Mr Color over my chipping layer. Harder to chip that stuff back to the chipping layer. Doogs did a great video yesterday on using oils on wing roots and what not. I have now wiped my attempts off 4 times. Everytime I try it and try to blend it, I end up with no texture or variations in tones (guess blotchy for a lack of a better term). I know it takes multiple colors over multiple layers. I'm wondering if it's too glossy? The Mr Color went down so smooth and then with a gloss coat it's smooter than a baby's you know what. Wondering if it isn't enough texture and that's why it ends up being so uniform rather than varied. I don't have the ABT oils he is using, so I am using Winsor Newton Oils, which should get me there in the end. Any thoughts?

That's a good idea. This is one kit that it will definitely work with. Other than the painting and decal issues, this build has been a easy and blast. Just falls together.

Looks good! See you got some of your stencils on. Building the -3 ProfiPack for my entry and the white stencils were awful, so ended up only doing two stencils before I decided to can them.

Jumping into this group build with the 26 yr old 1/48 Hasegawa Spitfire Vb Trop. Built the predecessor of this, the Vb with clipped wings many years ago, but don't remember anything about how it went. So let's see what happens. Going to try and build BR562 of 249 Sqn in Malta, flown by Hesselyn. Haven't found any pics and only limited details on Hesselyn.

Well I've had some success (for the most part) on the main decals. There are a couple stencils on there, but I think for the most part I am going to leave them off. The stencil sheet they give you (from 2012), the whites stencils are awful. I need to work on my Tamiya spraying, especially the over spray. The over spray from the underside white is causing a texture issue above and leaving some silvering in the clear areas of the 117's. I've poked and sliced a bunch and gotten quite a bit gone but their is still some there. SUGGESTIONS? Also in hind sight, I should of treated the propeller decals as seperate pieces. The give you both parts in one strip and got a few spots under the clear there as well. On the upper port wing, the Star and Bar was almost perfect over the silky smooth Mr Color paint. Might have to use Mr Paint more often.

Yes, I found that one as well. Not up on British aircraft, but the colorization might be off. Guessing the fuselage codes and spinner were not white. Probably ??Sky?? normally seen on British aircraft.

Yes, I am guilty of such shenanigans............yet again. But I can actually see them bleeding through the outside of the model. Slight color change and were actually ever so slightly raised. Thanks Bob, I will check out those instructions. You know, I've looked at Scalemates before, many ah times. But never scrolled past the Timeline. So much more stuff below.

In between things drying on the Hellcat for GB, I've been working on the Typhoon. Finally decided what aircraft I will be doing. MN518, R-D flown by W/C Davidson of the 143 Wing. Always looking for unique schemes. While their is nothing unique about the scheme, his scoreboard is interesting. 2 Italian kills while in Greece, 2 Japanese kills while in Ceylon (modern day Sri Lanka) and 2 German Kills. His story is a little interesting too. While flying another Typhoon, he had engine trouble and was forced to land in Béthune (France, south of Dunkirk). Where he was picked up by the French Resistance and fought with them for a while until making it back into British hands. That is not Davidson in the picture though...

Working on the Hasegawa Hawker Typhoon Mk IB w/ Tear Drop canopy. The instructions say you will not use the bomb rack so they never get addressed in the instructions. What's the location for them? Looking at some pics and drawings it looks like it's about where the inner rocket rail would be. Any thoughts? Thanks as always! Instructions: Aircraft to be represented:

Decals started, but then we come to what seems to be my Kryptonite in the modeling world.............stars n bars. As of late they seem to fight me. The upper wing one actually is doing well, but where did that brown smudge come from? What the? The fuselage one, cross your fingers! Despite pushing air out with the brush and rolling with a cotton bud, those panels lines just love air. Light slice and some more Micro sol, let's see what happens. I'm doubtful! Rather use masks, but apparently I am to stupid to use them. And the stencils are just horrendous, well the white ones any how. The black are red are good. Some of the white ones are half printed, missing, or kinda smudgey. Not to mention they are all labeled wrong.

Found the decals! Put them in a safe spot that wasn't part of my normal routine. What a gomer!

Here's how she sits at the moment. If anyone has suggestions (for the future) on masking edges like on the fuselage where it meets the wing. Had a hard time doing that, to the point I see I got a little touch up to do right where the wing meets the fuselage. No problem, thanks for the thought though. Sent a message to Eduards support link, we'll see what happens. I honestly don't remember ever seeing them. Oh well, we'll see how it goes and go from there. Fortunately not rushed for time.

I'VE LOST MY DECAL SHEET!!!! Well that is just grand, just realized I have lost my decal sheet. Not sure where it went. Maybe got mixed in with the recent mix of boxes and what not from the Mustang STGB builds and those have been long burned. Unless my kit didn't come with it. Now what to do? Eduard does show a Wet Transfer set on their site, but $27 US.......which seems crazy. Montex makes a Mask/Decal set for this airplane. Trying their support link on their page for Lost or Damaged items. See what happens there first. On a nice note... I did get the painting finished, just gotta mess with some pictures. Problem with a tri-colored plane is you lose parts of it shooting on a Black or White background. Gonna tried the baby blue background I have. Worse comes to worse I'll use this craft paper roll I have for a back ground.

Wonder, if because it was so thin that it built up in the cap and the got to point and spattered? Hmmm I have the other style cap too (kinda like 4 blunt spikes). Could also try without the cap since I am doing such fine lines. I think it all started with old Mr Color that I tried to make work.

I think it's a paint issue. Super thin, accentuating the panel lines. Light coats over and over to build it up. This was an all of a sudden big blast of liquid, with the uhu tack still on so then it left marks where it ran and pooled. Had to sand those down and touch up. Which, for me, where you sand you never get a good edge to blend smoothly. Always a ridge left. I don't know if the tip was drying and then something released letting paint go or if I was moving around to much and it spilled over the top? I've had it where I got to spazzy with my hand movements and it sloshes over the top, runs down and spatters. I don't think it was that though. I don't know if I can pin point what happened, it was flowing so nice and then bam!

Ahhh, I love when things spiral outta control. Airbrush started doing some weird random splatter thing while doing some weathering and now every step I take just takes me farther down in the dumps. 1 step forward, 6 steps back. So flipping close! Knew it was to good to be true..........this kit was coming together like butter. Why do I even bother?

Nicely done! Trying to get my -3 outta the paint shop, but having some hiccups with my airbrush and I am not sure why. It's always something. But again, yours looks nice! Hope to be following soon with mine. PS: You front cowl piece looks like it fits way better than mine.

Got a question for all you Spitfire Junkies. Basically since hours have be cut in half with this whole Covid ordeal, I am going to skip getting a new kit and build something I have here already. So I have this kit...... Since it was the standard Vb prior to adding parts, it looks like I can do a Vb if I wanted, which I have a few decals for. Can I get to a Vc from this kit without to much hassle? I have this sheet I'd like to #3 on, but it's a Vc. Thanks in advance! Happy Modeling!

Progress as of yesterday. Got the underside painted with Tamiya White. Was going to use Mr Color white, but I don't know if it has gone bad or what..........but I couldn't get a good spray out of it. Either it was too thick or I got it to thin. Had a hard time finding the sweet spot for spraying. Mr Color was separated when I opened it, but I mixed it thoroughly only to have issues. After that Tamiya White, I went back with highly thinned Tamiya Neutral gray and lightly sprayed the panel lines, etc. Then wen back and touched up some white after that. Need to work on the thinning ratio for the panel line color. EDIT: Yup, just noticed the underside of the elevators needed painting. In my head I was thinking the same as the top side. Being fixed!

Wow, that was a crazy landing gear assembly......but I am sure there are way worse ones out there. I think I am permanently cross-eyed now.

That's my same assessment too. I eliminated the alignment pins as well. I then sanded the inner lip of the the front cowl piece to eliminate any chance of it bottoming out. Not gone, just not as deep. If the front piece was a little proud in places I tried to sand it down to avoid a lip. The back cowl portion I just left as I don't have a good easy way to reproduce the rivets/screw heads (whatever they are). I don't have a separate color on the front of the cowl, so maybe that will help too. Yours is lookin awesome so far! Just getting ready to tackle the paint on mine.

Working on a F6F-3 myself. How did that front cowl piece fit? I think it was less than stellar. But with all the different cowl options, it's not surprising. The edges don't all line up. If you sand, then you lose rivet details.