jackroadkill

Superb, Giampiero. A really amazing example of an interesting airframe.

There's plenty of room in my workshop for myself and my better half. What are you all so scared of?!

That man's got a great way with words, and that quote's one of his best.

After a very busy and very wet day at work (which left the centre of the village looking like this: Yes, houses are still flooded......), I finally dried out and fixed the boo-boos on the Spit. I also added the first of the fading filters, which looks to have done its job well: I won't apply any more until I've done sprayed the walkway stencils and applied the decals, but there'll be plenty of fading to be done yet; I can't imagine these poor Spits got much protection from the sun! Cheers, JRK

I've been thinking about that, too. Maybe on the next build I'll do that and report back.

How does the old adage go? More haste, less speed.... Well, yes, I think I've just proved it. I decided to mask up the model so that it would be ready to spray tomorrow, which I did without too much hassle. I knew I'd need to do a bit of tidying up as the Dark Earth wasn't quite as extensive as it should have been, but no worries. I'd have plenty of time to do it tomorrow night, right? Somehow, this happened: You can see where I've not quite overlapped the paint colours, with un-sprayed areas showing. I'm not too bothered, because it's easily fixed, but then as I took the masking off I noticed two areas where the Dark Earth (and the black-base) had been pulled off with the masking. This isn't a problem I've had before and I suspect some grease or mold-release under the paint that I missed when de-mucking the sprues. This is what they look like: Still, as I say, no big problem, I'll just have to do a bit of tidying up. The masking also pulled off most of the wing walk stencils that I'd carefully applied last night, so I guess I'll be spraying those on now. Onwards and upwards, JRK

To echo what others have said, she's a beauty.

You rang, sir?! She's looking great, and I'm looking forward to seeing her at Telford.

Thanks chaps, that's good enough for me. EDSG it shall be.

Cheers @Wez, thanks for running the GB. It turned out to be one of only two that I was able to participate in this year, so I'm really thankful for the opportunity to join in.

Thanks, that's what I suspected might be the case. Now that you mention it, I've got the Eduard Malta Spitfire Story boxing - I could have looked in the instructions myself, had I only thought to. Getting older sucks.

Wow, this is a superb build! Your attention to detail is brilliant, and I love the metalwork that you've made for it. What a privilege to read through this thread!

@Tail-Dragon, if you don't mind me asking, what shade did you use for your grey? Airfix reckon that Humbrol 27, Sea Grey is right, but I'm not so sure.

Thanks chaps, it's a simple but effective method, and I particularly like being able to demount the prop at a moment's notice. The important thing is to properly de-burr the brass tube after each cut, and chamfer the ends that are going to be pressed into the plastic parts. You can do this on a small lathe if you have one or the chuck of a battery drill if not. Other than that it's pretty simple.

I had a couple of hours in my (now freezing cold) workshop this morning and was able to make a bit of progress. I've been trying to decide the best way of spraying the camo, as the masks I have cover the Dark Earth parts of the airframe, and ideally I wanted to spray that colour first and put the grey somewhat untidily over the top whilst not losing the effect given by the black-basing. In the end I did what I do best, which is to delay the decision about what to do and work on something else, giving the old grey matter time to ponder the problem. With that in mind I had a crack at making the airscrew turn halfway tidily, as opposed to Airfix's tried and untrusted plastic peg in a hole method. Good old Albion Alloys came to the rescue here: I drilled out the fuselage plug-thing to accept a 3mm brass tube and Zap A Gapped it into position. I then did the same to the spinner's back-plate, making a grommet out of 3mm tube and ZAG'ing it in place, and stuck some 1mm tube into the grommet. My home-made brass bushing seems to work pretty well - everything lines up and friction is minimal, and in addition the airscrew can be easily removed to minimise the chances of a ham fisted idiot (me) breaking blades off it before the model is complete. The end result looks like this: As you can see, it all sits nicely. Below is the whole caboodle installed: Tidy enough, I reckon. As you'll see, I got the cannon fairing in at this point, and was feeling pretty pleased with myself. I still hadn't made a decision about what to do with the paint, though, had I? No, I bloody well hadn't. A few minutes' pondering gave me the answer: JFDI, so I JFDid, and chucked an initial coat of Dark Earth around the places where it'll need to go: I (obviously) over-thinned the paint so will leave it to dry before dusing another light coat over the top. As much as this can be a pain in the neck I find it often gives a good result, so no harm done. I hope I've left some overlap, so that when the masks go down I can get the grey on over the top without needing to do too much in the way of tidying up the Dark Earth areas. Whilst the airbrush was revved up I got the airscrew and spinner painted and also used the same paint as a primer for the exhausts, which will receive a dusting of metallic lacquer. So then, nothing outrageous but a bit of progress. I even made it all the way through this post without drawing your attention to the fact that I broke off both undercarriage legs. Oh.... Cheers, JRK

Currently I'm prevaricating; should I get the undercarriage and stores on, then apply a matt coat, or should I matt coat everything separately and then stick all the bits on? Alternatively I could get the stencils on the recon pod and fade the IFR probe and antenna panels. Choices, choices.

What do you call a ginger bloke in a adult movie? "Cameraman".

To be fair, Steve, your boys earned their win, no doubt about it.

I'm gutted at the wales result because we were just bad. Knock-ons abounded, we gave turnovers away like they were going out of fashion etc etc. Of course, I wasn't playing and so am really not qualified to give advice or criticism... I was even more gutted for Ireland - what a superb game they played, and to come so close must be galling in the extreme. They showed so much heart.

Hey Dan, welcome to BM. I'm across the Irish Sea in Wales.

Hmm, I thought I'd updated this thread fairly recently, but I obviously didn't do that... sigh! To recap, then, I'd finished most of the actual build as wax painting the exterior in rather vivid colours. This was all very well, but wouldn't suit an ancient airframe that had been exposed to the Caribbean sun for twenty-odd years, so next on my list was to fade those colours down a bit. or was it? No, of course not; I'd forgotten that I needed to paint and carbon-score the outer parts of the jet exhaust (if you know what the proper word for this is, please let me know. The actual exhaust is deeper inside the fuselage, of course). This was done using a combination of various HR Hobbies lacquers, which have fast become my go-to in terms of sprayable metallics: I then mixed up some very highly thinned Humbrol 166 and used that to simulate bleaching of the pain on the upper sides of the airframe. This took a bit of time as I had to apply several very light coats in order to keep it form looking too much like overspray, but I think I got there in the end. The colours are certainly less lurid than they were originally, and I began to think that this might actually end up looking like a military aircraft: I didn't want to go too mad as I still had the dark green laminated wood (?) and fibreglass antenna panels and shock-cone to paint and the decals (of which there were few) to add. The decals would also need toning down as I thought bright, primary coloured insignia on a faded and worn airframe would look incongruous. I got the green sprayed and the decals added last night and the faded the decals with Hu166 this morning, which got us to this stage: I'll need to fade the antennae panels a little, but progress is at last being made. If you've bothered to stick with the build thus far, thanks very much! Cheers, JRK

Thanks very much for posting your picture - the build looks fantastic and gives me a really good idea of what mine could look like.

I think I'll take that route, too. It would seem to make sense.

Thanks chaps, it looks as if the way forward is with the airframe, then!

I didn't come here looking for trouble....