Test Valley Models

One house we lived in was literally 500yds from the Army Air Corps at Middle Wallop, no neighbours and high hedges, so the ex was inclined to sunbathe in the nude, shortly after they had been handed their brand-new Apaches I came home from work one afternoon, it had been a hot day, and the sunlounger was in the garden, I casually asked the former Mrs TVM if she had had a good day, she then gave me chapter & verse on how her day off had been ruined by them flying their "new toys" backwards and forwards and around the house, about a mile distant, and now she was cheesed off because having come in, they had stopped. I casually asked if she had been sunbathing naked, her answer was of course that she had. As I walked out into the garden to enjoy the late afternoon sun, I casually remarked "You know they can see a fly on a cows' bottom from a mile in those things"? Her face was a picture !

Imports from the USA should not be affected, if the company sending it to you does it legally, you will get a customs charge, at least that's how it worked in my 10yrs at Royal Mail

The wings would only have been folded for storage on Ark Royal, once on the flight deck they would have been extended. I can see no reason why when they all transferred to the RAF they would ever have been folded again. One thing not mentioned in the review is that because of the size of the bomb bay, the Buccaneer was often used to fetch and carry the mail !

Very true, especially with Phantoms, they have three on the market, all of them basically the same aircraft, when the variations could have been in one box, and the decals for the Ark Royal version were laughable !

Especially true of airbrushes, buy cheap buy twice. First thing, if you have used any of those cleaning tools, then the nozzles are probably ruined, you should not use wire wound brushes and reamers in your airbrush because the body and nozzle are probably brass, a very soft metal, those will have ruined them. The tool in the yellow holder, should go straight in the bin ! The only thing you should use are the interdental brushes from Boots, they are very soft, but will still clean the airbrush. The spattering is caused by the compressor, what you have is a diaphragm compressor which works much like the fuel pump on old cars, this causes pulsing in the air, which in turn causes the spattering. What you need is a piston type compressor with a tank, that way you get a constant supply of air at a controllable pressure. There are basically two types of seals in airbrushes, neoprene and PTFE, cheap airbrushes are normally fitted with neoprene seals, do not use lacquer based paints in these, acrylics only, do not use standard paint thinners when thinning acrylics either, use IPA based thinners, and others will rot the neoprene seals. If you are going to use Tamiya paints, or any lacquer based paints, you need an airbrush with PTFE seals, prices for these start around £180 RRP. As a footnote, whenever a customer asks me about airbrushing, the first question I ask is "What's your budget" RRP on a decent compressor with warranty is about £129, decent airbrush is about £180, that's before I discount. I also show the customer how to strip the airbrush and clean it. TVM also clean and service airbrushes by putting them through an ultrasonic cleaner for 20mins ! If you want a free service then send the airbrush to me, I'll check it over, inspect the seals, and service it. But my suspicions are it is the compressor causing the spattering

One of the biggest complaints I get about paintbrushes is that over a short period of time they fork at the tip and no matter how much you clean it, you cannot stop it forking. First we have to know why a tip forks ? A paintbrush tip forks because pigment has gone down into the ferrule (that's the metal bit holding the bristles), this is normally caused by the person using the brush, dipping it too far into the paint, overloading the brush not cleaning it properly Incorrect storage How do we stop it ? Don't dip the brush so far into the paint, it's that simple, just the tip is enough. Don't use the brush to take paint from the pot to palette, I use a small mustard spoon when using Citadel paint You should rinse your brush each time you reload it, and when you finish with it. Use two pots of water for rinsing, one I call the first (dirty rinse) the second is a clean final rinse. Use a brush cleaner/conditioner like The Masters Brush cleaner, alternatively if you use natural bristle brushes add a tiny drop of hair conditioner to the final rinse when cleaning them. Store your brushes flat, or bristles down, no matter how much you clean them, there will be some pigment residue in the bristles, storing them bristles up in a pot encourages this pigment to flow down the bristles and into the ferrule. Don't throw the protective tubes away, these protect the bristles in storage, and stop the brush drying out so fast. Don't buy cheap paint, no matter how tempting it is, cheap paint has pigments that are not as finally ground, Humbrol Acrylic earth colours are notorious for this. Never use paint straight from the pot, always use a palette, and dilute a little. Apologies if I am preaching to the converted, but I find a lot of my customers ask these questions.

I use a steel rule, a pair of tweezers and a scalpel blade, you can't get much cheaper. Even as a retailer, for what they are I think Photo-Etch benders are a rip off !

You may or may not have heard of Joey Ricard from Tracksidescenery.com If you haven't take a look at his video's, he very rarely uses commercial products and takes a totally different approach to weathering and diorama building, if it were not for the inanimate figures, I swear you could mistake this model railway layout as real .

I buy them into my shop from Expo Tools (They are out of stock at the moment, the smallest they will do is about 10mm diameter

My way of painting armour wheels (not tried it on aircraft) is to use Tamiya masking sheet and one of these It cuts a perfect circle every time, apply the mask and spray the wheel

As I said the principle is the same, only the cost is different. In your eyes at what price point does something wrong become unacceptable ? It isn't just the fact that it is wrong that makes it unaccpetable, it's the fact that it got past several people, a prototype stage, a 3d model stage and initial production prototype and it was still released wrong. If people stopped accepting second best, quality in goods would increase.

The argument is totally valid ! If they paid attention to detail you wouldn't need to buy aftermarket kits to make it right. If you bought a car that was supposed to have 5 wheel nuts instead of 4 would you say to the salesman "never mind I'll fork out £400 on the right set of wheels ?" Of course you wouldn't, the principle is the same, it's only the cost that is different.

On the subject of being able to buy aftermarket wheels. You buy aftermarket bits to make a kit better, not to make it right

For what it's worth Tamiya got the desertised Chally 2 wrong. but I don't see pages about that one. Airfix I admit are well known for getting things wrong, the Ark Royal Phantom was wrong, it's down to whoever gives the CAD men the drawings to copy.

20 secs of M4 Variants, Blink and you miss it, roughly one per second !

I started on this kit yesterday and it was going together like a jigsaw, a really easy build. Then I realised that the packet containing the tracklinks was missing ! As a retailer I am a bit miffed, and worse of all I cannot remember which supplier I got it from ! Does anyone know if there are any aftermarket links available for this kit, Google is proving useless !

Bachmann are saying today that they will start shipping these to retailers from March 15th in a bid to get them to stores for the planned opening of non-essential stores on April 12th. I'm expecting the demand to be high for a couple of models in particular ( Mole and TB2) The launchbay diorama's look really awesome.

Airfix seem to be good at making mistakes on their flagship kits. It also begs the question, which tank did they scan to get the number of wheel blots wrong, or was it a simple miscount ? I still have several of the reboxed Academy kits gathering dust on the shelf, they stopped selling when my customers realised they were old Academy kits. I've not ordered any of these in because of lockdown, I'm even more reluctant to now, my lot are a right bunch of rivet counters ! (joke lads !)

Do people still use Humbrol paint ? I stopped stocking their acrylics because they were going off in the pots, sales compared to Tamiya and Vallejo were dismal

Lacquer based paints are less reliable on a primer for a good coat. Acrylics tend to need one to adhere properly.

The pellets would normally be supplied as "virgin pastic" that is with no colour, and for most companies in bulk, rather than bagged. The pigment is added during the mixing stage where other additives, (Like Zinc Stearate) are added to the mix. As an addition to this, zinc stearate is added to lubricate the plastic on it's way through the extruder, because most injection moulding is automatic now, release agents are sprayed onto the tools at regular intervals to aid separation. if you ever get problem painting your kits, it's probably because of these release agents, which are basically a silicon based spray. That is why I always wash my sprues !

As someone who worked in the injection moulding industry I can supply the right and simple answer to this one ! Pigments are added to give a uniform colour. In its raw state the plastic is quite opaque, but after going through the heating and injection process it tends to discolour slightly. Then you have the added problem of miss shots being reground and added to the mix, you can only add a certain amount of regrind to virgin plastic Colour pigments are also added to hide these variations and the stress and cooling patterns that appear when the plastic is moulded. Hope this helps Graham

Sorry to dig up an old thread, but this is the first video I've found that shows in detail how to assemble the track links and road wheels on this kit. I also have to add that everything he says about this kit is true, fantastic detail but very over engineered !

I've certainly not heard of using beeswax for lubricating an airbrush for any reason, with beeswax there is always a risk of residue being left on the trigger and jamming up the works. As someone who services airbrushes for customers my first question would be, do you have a water separator between the compressor and the airbrush ? If not, then this could be your issue, the air going to the brush should be relatively dry as it hits the paint. Fit one if you don't have one, and see if the problem persists. The working parts of the valve are mainly brass, and therefore should need little or no lubrication in itself, if you do add any oil this will be removed by the passage of air over a very short time anyway. Have you replaced the trigger the right way round after cleaning? another common mistake, try rotating it 180 deg and see if that helps. If all that fails then take the brush to a local model shop that offers a service and repair for airbrushes, we put them through an ultrasonic cleaner for 40mins in isopropyl, this removes all but the most stubborn residue from all of the airbrush. Hope this help, Graham