elger

what has been seen cannot be unseen

Okay let's have a look at the undercarriage. Essentially HK scaled down their 1/32 Lancaster to 1/48 but left out a few details from the undercarriage bays. These are the instructions in 1/32. Parts K29 and K30 are not there in 1/48 - although the equivalent of part K9 does provide space for them (and Tamiya does provide these): Parts E26 and E27 making up the oil tank aren't there in 1/48, let alone R13: Parts K20 (which I've called 'the plank') are not there in 1/48: Now in the real thing whatever K20 in 1/32 represents features a lot of details. Also HK provide a set of crossbars there, part R18 in 1/32, but in the photos I've seen of preserved Lancasters depending on the side of the aircraft there's only one of these bars - so I removed one of each of these in the 1/48 part. In the 1/32 as well as the 1/48 scale kit HK adds an additional support bar that shouldn't be there - so at the risk of reducing structural strength I removed it. Apart from representing the parts K29 and K30, there is one thing that the old Tamiya kit does slightly better than HK, which is reproducing a detail on the retraction mechanism of the landing gear: Long story short - some of these issues are addressed by the Eduard PE exterior set, but even then a lot of details are still not there so I scratchbuilt those: I scratchbuilt the oil tank: I added the eduard photoetch to the kit parts and added a lot of wiring, approximating what I could see in the photos of the preserved examples. I added the detail of the retraction mechanism by first removing most of the molded detail and then adding bits of stretched sprue. Including the rear wall: One final detail I added/changed was to drill out and flip the 'tow ring' horizontally at the bottom of the legs (these are molded vertically by HK). Christmas break is over now - but hopefully I will be able to get some paint on these parts soon. I've always painted the landing gear wells of Lancasters entirely black, but based on the photos of these preserved examples, it seems like the front section is actually interior green. Thoughts?

The Belcher Bits engines fix three issues with the Tamiya engines: 1) the parts from the original box fit notoriously poorly. This was addressed in more recent boxings (2009) by Tamiya - they have new parts for the sides which should fit a bit better. This box also gives you options for needle blade propellers. See here: https://www.hyperscale.com/2012/reviews/kits/tamiya61111reviewbg_1.htm 2) the radiator front of the Belcher Bits is a little deeper, and 3) most importantly, the Tamiya parts are missing the rear opening of the radiator entirely. Here's an image posted by another modeler who addressed this problem by scratch building this over on Aeroscale a long time ago; they've indicated it with pencil: About the HK kit - the radiator fronts, the inner and outer radiator intakes should be the same, but the parts for the outer ones (50 and 53) are smaller than the inner ones (51 and 52): But honestly, this difference in width is very difficult to see on completed kits and as I said from certain angles I think the HK radiator intakes look better than the Belcher bits ones. A similar thing happens with the exhaust covers - the ones on the outer nacelles are every so slightly shorter than the ones on the inner nacelles while they should be the same. Still, while it still baffles me why the HK canopy looks so odd when it's not too low overall (and the Tamiya one is too high) - when it comes to the question which is the better kit - the HK kit wins easily, and they sell for about the same price. Oh there is one detail of the landing gear Tamiya got a little bit better than HK but I'll try to show that later today.

it's one of the best night/black finishes I've ever seen. really fantastic work!

Up next: HK Models' 1/48 Lancaster as DV267 SR-K which was lost near my home town of Groningen during the night of 19/20th of February, 1944. For a good look in the box I recommend Scalespot Models' review: https://scalespot.com/reviews/kits/lanc48-hkm/review.php The model will be considerably larger than what I've been building recently - not big compared to the 1/32 options currently available, but relative to the space I have it's massive. But as I've said before, I get to be sensible in my day job. While I was working on the 1/72 Blenheim that I finished recently I was thinking two things: one, I wished it was something a little bigger, and after having worked on two Airfix kits recently I was craving something that has excellent surface detail - and that is the biggest selling point of this kit: it is exquisite. The kit has been criticized as well. It's essentially a shrunken down version of HK's 1/32 kit - but they've left out some details in this process, especially in the undercarriage section. Various parts - such as the oil tank, and details in the actual gear bay, are simply left out in the 1/48 option. The canopy has been criticized and it does look a little bit funny. I've compared it to an old Tamiya Lancaster canopy and I've come to some conclusions. Notably, the canopy was 'addressed' on the YouTube channel Nigel's Modeling Bench. He concluded that the Tamiya canopy is vastly superior to HK's. He ended up using the lower half of a Tamiya canopy and the top half of HK's. Not only does the thought of cutting clear parts like this intimidate me, I also think it's a bit of a lateral move. Because no matter what's wrong with the HK canopy, the Tamiya canopy is worse. While HK's canopy might be a little too low, the Tamiya canopy is much too high - at least as far as I can tell. I placed the old Tamiya canopy on top of a drawing and I found that if I scaled it to the width of the side window, the Tamiya canopy is clearly too tall: The HK canopy side window lines up rather well to the drawing: Drawings are not always reliable of course, so I did the same with a photograph. First Tamiya, clearly slightly taller when the sides line up: ... and the HK part lines up rather well: I think it's interesting that the Tamiya part looks more right than the HK canopy when it isn't - they're both wrong but Tamiya is worse. I don't know what causes the HK part to look off - but I'm thinking it might have to do with the angle of the horizontal frames in the front section: But I doubt that I'll try to address this issue if there even is one: the HK canopy is objectively better than the Tamiya one even if the latter looks better. One thing that I am going to address are the nacelles. As I also learned from Nigel's Modeling Bench YouTube channel, the inner and outer radiator intakes of the kit are needlessly sided - they should be identical. I looked at a lot of photos and in the end decided that I'm going to have a go at replacing the nacelles with the Belcher Bits engines designed for the Tamiya kit. They should fit with a little bit of work. In all honesty I do doubt if this is worth the effort - there are certain angles that make the HK radiator intakes look better than the Belcher Bits ones, but then there's still the issue of the inner intakes being different from the outer ones and using the Belcher Bits parts fixes that. As I said, the aircraft I'll be building is DV267 SR-K (for King). There's a website dedicated to one of the crew members who wasn't on its final flight, Robert Christie, which provides some good background information: https://www.robertchristie.co.uk/dv267.html From that website the summary of the incident: The crash was also covered in a source I often use, Ab Jansen's Gevleugeld Verleden: The website Beeldbank WOII has a photo of the burned out wreck of the aircraft: I downloaded the squadron's ORB and found the details of the bomb load of its mission to Leipzig: This led to an interesting puzzle figuring out how the bomb load might have been configured, here: I think that at this point I know all that can be known about the configuration of the aircraft. According to the narrative it was fitted with a Monica device as well as the ABC antenna. I am still wondering if it had needle blade or paddle blade propellers. There's a photo of Lancaster DV302 of 101 Squadron that shows paddle blades, but I don't know when that photo was taken (could have been as late as 1945), and there's a photo of ME590 (which was a mk.1) crash landed at Ludford Magna that seems to have needle blades in February 1944... I've started with the undercarriage bays - adding some detail there and I'm planning to take some pictures of that tomorrow. Thanks for looking and comments and feedback is obviously welcome!

what a magnificent beast

I see, you're right, but I still think the font looks off 🤔

The Peddinghaus sheet also looks like a post-war font (Bundeswehr).

Also keep in mind that these fonts are "RAF-ish". When I made the GB-H codes for my little Blenheim I noticed that the G was off (certainly for 105 Squadron); the horizontal bar of the G should be in the middle of the letter (like the H next to it in the alphabet shown), not two-thirds of the way down, so I manually modified that letter with the right proportions. Not to mention that slightly different fonts were used by different units. Your roundels look the business by the way!

just to add to G. R. Morrison's excellent post: based on his comments it seems that the profile features on this Exito Decals decal sheet is rather close, except the number: https://exito.site/en_GB/p/EXITO-DECALS-ED48002-148-Wulf-Pack-vol.1-Focke-Wulf-Fw-190A/46877

thanks all!

let me know if you want me to cut some of the masks out of Oramask for you - I think your chances of success will be much higher.

it should have blisters actually, but I chose not to address this issue

Overall I like their colours better, but what's the selling point for me at this point is that it's ever so slightly more scratch resistant, but especially it's more resistant to enamels and oils and their thinners

I'm ignoring those - even though I know the aircraft almost certainly had them And it's done! RFI thread here:

I just finished the 1/72 Airfix Bristol Blenheim IVF as a IV bomber. I replaced the upper nacelles with the nacelles from an MPM Blenheim kit that I started in 2002 but had languished in the box of doom. It also has the new SBS 3d printed engines (highly recommended!) and the older SBS cowls and propellers (also great). The machine guns in the upper turret are from Miniworld. I painted this model with AK Third Gen Acrylics, which I am really starting to prefer over Mig Ammo. Build thread and aircraft history here: On to the pictures! Thanks for looking! Comments & feedback are always welcome.

Getting there. I accented the panel lines with oil paint, and I also used oil paint to add some tonal variation in the camouflage colours here and there. Then a little bit of chipping. Everything has been sealed in with a coat of clear flat: I had a terrible time getting the Eduard flaps to fit. I don't know why I never bothered to dry fit these until now - I don't know why I expected them to fit without problems. Note to self: they never do. The finish line is in sight for this one.

I've painted the cockpit section (engineer, pilot) interior green on my Halifax builds. The rear fuselage (behind the engineer's station) was painted or unpainted aluminium. The nose section was most likely black (although may have been green on earlier aircraft, similar to Lancasters). I did paint the steps and front floor, and navigator / wo table green as well (but the sidewalls of the front black). I don't know if the cockpit section of the Halifax was ever black, like late Lancasters were.

yeah perhaps a mist of gloss mixed with an aggressive thinner like mr Surface Leveler, or sometimes a coat of Future does wonders

ditto on getting a quiet compressor. I've got a Sil Air 20a that's as quiet as a fridge. it's large and heavy though, but I do my modeling in the living room with the compressor on top of the book shelf where (remarkably) it's hardly noticeable.

I was thinking about this thing you mentioned about removing the armour plate. I've been looking at building a Lancaster next and in searching for a local subject I noticed that out of a list of seven or so Lancasters that were lost within about an hour and a half drive from where I live there are three from 101 Squadron so based on that sample their loss rate must have been awful. Anyway - I have one more question before I'll leave you all alone: based on this photo that supposedly of the ABC equipment in the fuselage, I think that this station was behind the rest bed and roughly where the reconnaissance flares are stored in the diagram below:

Decals are on. I first tried to use the ones that came with the MPM kit, but they didn't respond well to microsol, so I ended up removing them and using the Airfix ones instead which went on great: Some weathering next, and we'll be looking at final assembly.

they replied and say they never heard of their existence so it's interesting for them to know about, but there wouldn't be enough demand to make these. Fair enough I guess.

I'm asking Roy Sutherland and designer Mike Swinburne if the deeper SBC type are also in the works over at the Barracuda Studios Ready Room on Facebook.

hm there I was thinking I'd figured things out based on @Finn's suggestion that the distribution is mostly related to the sequence bombs would be dropped. If we pursue that idea for a minute, that the weight distribution might not matter so much in flight but matters mostly when bombs are dropped, and following the example of the Leipzig raid (which, incidentally, is when the aircraft I'm interested in was lost), the distribution might be this: 1x 4000lbs (13) 7x 150x 4 lbs (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) 4x 12x 30 lbs [1] & [2] 1x 12x 30 lbs (10) 1x 90x 4 lbs (11) (the Leipzig example is this, I'm just adding to it: 1x 4000lbs (13) 7x 150x 4 lbs (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) 4x 12x 30 lbs [1] & [2]) The order in which these would be dropped might then be 1) 12x 30lbs + 12x 30lbs 2) 12x 30lbs + 12x 30lbs 3): 150x 4lbs 4): 150x 4lbs 5): 150x 4lbs 6): 150x 4lbs 7): 150x 4lbs 8): 150x 4lbs 9): 150x 4lbs 10): 12x 30lbs 11): 90x 4lbs 13): 4000lbs Obviously I'm not sure if the sequence/match of 10 and 11 makes sense. It seems a little odd to go back to the 30lbs after all those 4lbs (between 3 and 9), and then a few more 4lbs after that from 11 - but if you want to have the change in weight be equally distributed when bombs are dropped this seems a logical order. And as I said it goes against Dave's point that in flight it looks like this way there's more weight aft, rather than in front. Edit: Here's Dave's suggestion visualized: