Dstream

Hi all, slowly progressing on this build that I thought to be an easy OOB, but instead is requiring a lot of work because of the very poor fit of some of its parts. This is the ammunition compartment where I replaced the plastic barrels of the two 23 mm guns with aluminium tubes primed with the Tamiya white primer. The kit advertises the possibility to leave this compartment exposed, but I am not interested in that and I wanted to mount it closed to better reveal the lines of the fuselage. This was the beginning of some fit problems because the lid and the guns seem not to designed for that. Once I tried to put the parts together, unexpected awfully wide gaps appeared everywhere around the lid. In addition, filing was required to persuade the gun barrels to fit into their slots. Perhaps it was my fault, but I am really surprised by such bad a fit in a modern kit. To fill the gaps, I started to contour the parts with strips of styrene card and to create a rabbet for the lid edges. Before gluing the lid into place, I stuffed the weapon compartment with pieces of lead wire: After gluing the lid, the tip of the 32 mm gun barrel was removed to be later replaced by an Eduard part. I completed filling the gaps with pieces of styrene cards and stretched sprue. I also dry test fitted the Eduard muzzle into its fairing: Meanwhile, I started working also on the Klimov-vk1, the Russian version of the RR Nene jet engine. These are its various components just painted. I searched on the web for pictures of this engine to find which colors were more likely to be used for it. I painted the matt parts of the jet pipe with a mix of Tamiya matt aluminium and matt white (2/1), while for the shiner parts I used various shades of Vallejo metallic colors. The black parts are painted with Tamiya flat black mixed with few drops of Tamiya clear. I replaced the small plastic pins used to suspend the engine with brass tubes for added strength. I dry brushed the black parts with Humbrol gun metal to highlight some details and finally I used the Tamiya black and brown accent panel liners on the metallic parts to hint at some weathering. Next, I will spray some light shades of brown to reproduce those parts of the engine that are discolored by the heat. That's all for now, any comment is appreciated, best regards, Dan

Hi all, I have finished the cockpit parts and sprayed them with a coat of Tamiya matt clear which removed the shine and improved the overall look. However, I encountered a problem with fitting the parts that I modified. The cockpit is quite cramped and indeed the added lateral handles of the seat could not fit in the small space between the walls and the seat. I hate when this happens, but I decided that life is too short for wasting time with that, so I cut out away the handles and I will proceed without adding them. Well, I said that this will be a closed-canopy model and nobody will peer into the cockpit to check whether all the handles are in there or not. Then, the nice Eduard instrument panel went into place: As I sad earlier, I do not know much about Soviet planes, but, at the end, I am satisfied with the look of the cockpit which appears to have in my view a certain 'Russian' character. Seen the fit problem I had before, I tried to dry fit check all the parts to be sure that all components will fit inside the fusalage halves: I think I have understood now the reason for the narrow cockpit: the air passages the bring the air from the intake to the engine are located along the sides of the cockpit and the latter gets 'squeezed' in size to avoid a resulting too wide a fuselage. Anyway, some efforts seem to be required to fit everything inside. I did not make up my mind about exposing or not the jet engine provided in the kit. Usually, I am a bit critical about these items, especially when they come with movable parts as in this case. The poseable parts have generally a toy-ish design which I am not a fan of. This case is not an exception being the details used to join the tail to the rest of the fuselage very obvious. For the moment, I will give it a try and I will defer the final decision to a later stage. Hence, I pulled the engine bulkhead out of the box and found not a very nice part, afflicted by extractor marks. These marks are located on a web that shouldn't be there. I presume that these triangular holes are the air ducts and they should be opened up. This is what I did, adding also two curved wall that should represent the internal walls of the air ducts: The remaing horizontal sect should represent the wing spar that crosses the fuselage (and the ducts) in the middle. In the front air intake, on the vertical sect that splits the airflow, the headlight is faired in the sect. The transparent part of the headlight had an annoying extractor mark in the middle of its concave surface which deserves some cares because it will be a focal point of any frontal view of the aircraft. Therefore, I first sanded off the circular extractor mark and finally polished it with a Tamija fine compound. A coat of floor polish restored the shine and protects the part from the fumes of the glue. Here, the finished trasparent part with its edges painted black and ready to be glued on the duct sect which is on the right. The three tiny holes on the part holder should help to make the headlight cavity not gas-tight. The headlight finally inside the air intake: Ok, not perfect, but surely less obvious than before. That is all for the moment, best regards, Dan.

Awesome Javelin. Stunning paintwork and finish. Best regards, Dan.

Awesome, especially the mottling. I like the extended slats. Regards, Dan.

Awesome work on the camouflage. Sorry to hear about the transparent windscreen, from the pictures it looks absolutely fine. Waiting to see the end. Best regards, Dan.

Dear all, being currently interested about cold war aircraft, I am starting a new kit which represents one of the protagonists of the post WWII period, the MiG 15 bis. For this iconic plane, I chosed the 1:48 Trumpeter kit, a brand that I never tried before. The Trumpeter kit is supposed to be a quite good representation of this jet, supposedly better than the Tamiya one. It is not my intention to spend too much efforts in detailing the cockpit because this is going to be a 'closed canopy' model. Unfortunately, once I saw the ejection seat supplied in the box, I was quite disappointed by how inaccurately the seat and its headrest was reproduced. Being the seat and headrest the most prominent details that can be seen through a closed canopy, I decided to detail them it a bit. Trumpeter moulded a 'boxed' headrest, probably roughly copying the look of a seat which equips one of the several restaured MiG flying in US, but the real one had actually quite different a look. Above, you can see the difference and the few improvements that I made with some Evergreen strips compared to the original one (the kit comes with two seats). To give a little 'busier' look to the cockpit, I also added few wiring along with the engine throttle which cannot be absent in a pilot's office. Before a coat of paint, I embellished a bit more the seat by adding also two side handles which can be well spotted from outside. To give a little 'busier' look to the cockpit, I also added few wiring along with the engine throttle which cannot be absent in a pilot's office. I am using the colors seen on various pictures on internet, but various shades can be found depicted. Eventually, I opted for a basic color obtained from the Tamiya Dark Sea Grey mixed with white (3 d.s.g. + 3 white) according to proportions that I decided by eye. I colored the ejection seat, added black paddings and seat belts from the Eduard set. I have the impression that the seatbelts are a bit oversized, but they look the part. I would like to give the cockpit a 'used' look, therefore I am liberally applying various washes on its parts which will appear less obvious through the canopy. Few old instrument decals were also used, while the instrument panel and the pedals are from the Eduard set, which is specifically made for the new recent Bronco kit, but the parts of which I can reasonably fit also on this kit. Now I have just to add a couple of red handles and a coat of matt varnish to reduce the shine. This is my first Soviet aircraft and I know little about russian aircraft, hence I am curious to see how will this one turn out. I hope you will be also interested in it. Best regards, Dan.

Another classic from you. Very nice work, Jean. Greetings, Daniele

The precision of your work, even looking at the most close up pictures, is simply stunning. Congrats, best regards, dan.

Thank you for all your nice comments, they are appreciated. Kind regards, Dan.

Sharp, awesome model! The pictures taken at low level look super. Beside the good job you did on this, I always find intriguing and in a sense also beautiful the curvy lines of this jet. I also need one on my shelf. Best regards, Dan.

Thanks for the likes and tanks to those that posted their messages, they are much appreciated. Best regards, Dan.

This is my build of this powerful and handsome aircraft which I built from the nice Airfix 1:48 kit, Export versions. For this aeroplane, I chose the livery of the Koninklijke Marine (Royal Netherlands Navy) which in 1953 was part of an aerobatic team called AeroBats. I enjoyed very much this kit which reproduces quite well the compact and streamlined lines of this aircraft. The fit of the parts is very good and well engineered. For the Sky paint, I made of a mix of Tamiya XF-21 (4/5) with white XF-2 (1/5) while for the EDSG I chosed the Gunze 333 which reproduces this color without the need of concocting any mixture. This is the first time I use these Gunze acrylic paints and I was positively impressed by their quality. I hope you like it, best regards, Dan.

Hi all, I went on with the work on the fuselage and I re-installed the rudder which I removed earlier to modify it. Only the trim tab is now missing. Here a close-up of the tail area with the rudder and the new scratch build ventral fin which includes the tail wheel fairing. On the forward area, I put on the 'cheecks' with the gun muzzle grooves and the muzzles that were replaced by 0.8 mm aluminium tubing. The frontal characteristic air intake had to be faired inside and reshaped to get a properly thin lip thickness. Slowly going on, that is all for now, Best regards, Dan.

Very nice result on your G.91! Dan

Hi, after a long iatus, where I was engaged in other modelling activities, I am coming back with this build. Seen that Kinetic is about to release a new 1:48 G.91, I thougth that I better try to finish mine before it becames obselete. I completed the internals of the fuselage with some additions in the in the rear to support the taipipe. These are the parts before closing: Having added several new parts and having modified the parts extensively, the fuselage halves needed some persiasive means to be mated correctly: Finally, the fuselage is buttoned up: This is how the new beefed up profile of the tail area and the tailpipe zone look now (compare with the pictures posted above by @Ol' Scrapiron I used Milliput extensively to reconstruct the modified areas and it worked very well. This is the area of the main gear bay with the slots for the airbrakes. Here, I had to implant sections of plastic channel profile to redefine the slots: Finally, an overall view of the modified underside. Now the tail bottom fin needs to be built and added. Still plenty of work to do. That is all for now, I hope you like it. Any suggestion is appreciated, best regards, Dan