Early Bird Fan

So here's the Roden Bristol F.2b, this kit has some of the softest plastic i've come across yet so it's been a fragile build. Decals are from the Print Scale F.2b aces of WW1 selection and this particular version was flown by Sydney Dalrymple with his observer G Beagle over Italy in 1918. Despite being mainly reconnaissance the pairing was responsible for 4 confirmed victories in the F.2b.

thanks for the comments on this build, i'm glad to say it is now finished, i'll post some pics in the ready for inspection section

Rigging on the Bristol is underway, this was done over a few sessions to allow glue to dry and to give my eyes a break 😀 Control cables for both the rudder and elevator are doubles so double the trouble

Thanks for the comment, it’s taken a bit of practice but i think i’m finally getting the hang of brush painting :)

This is a bit of catch up post as i started this Roden Bristol F.2b. a while ago, so here's where i'm up to at the moment... The kit comes with the same detailed engine as the felixstowe but in this kit there's 2 build options which is nice. You can either build normally with engine enclosed or cut the front off, fit some framework and display with engine on show. for this one i opted to build with the fuselage complete which means you don't fit the rocker assemblies or cooling pipes to the top of the engine otherwise it won't fit inside the fuselage. That all sounds great and this is how roden say to build the engine to fit inside the fuselage, i didn't go mad with the paint as it won't really be seen. This, in reality is what you end up with and this means the fuselage doesn't meet properly in places. So the ancillaries were cut off along with the barrels, the barrels are now glued directly to the sides of the fuselage and the crankcase is glued to the radiator and bottom of fuselage. It's the only way i could get the exhaust ports somewhere near where they need to be, get the fuselage closed and have the crankcase and thus the prop shaft sitting square. The interior has some nice details but everything was too wide to fit inside the fuselage, the paint looked a lot better before i had to get serious with a file. Seatbelts are 1mm masking tape painted in radome tan Managed to get the fuselage closed up this morning but some areas just didn't want to talk to each other so once the glue had pretty much set i cracked out the sprue goo and pasted it on. I'll leave that for a good 24hrs to go off and then start the cleaning up process made a bit of progress on the bristol the other day, after a fair bit of sanding back it's not looking too bad and i haven't destroyed any of the details. I need to go back over the seems behind the cockpit with a skim of filler to smooth out some of the pin holes prior to painting that area. The underside was trickier to sand as this area is not flat so only trying to sand the centre line was a bit tricky, definately another go is needed in this area The nose section wasn't looking too bad after a bit more sanding with a finer grit so i've given it 4 rather heavily thinned coats of gull grey, i'll buff it back once the filling is done and give it one more coat as the coverage is still a bit patchy in places. I decided to give the revell nato olive a go for the green, partly because it's close to what the colour should be and partly because i really liked the way the other revell enamels i've used went on. I really wish i hadn't bothered, no matter how much or little i thinned it, or whatever brush i used, or how much i put on the surface layer evaporated almost immediately locking in any brush marks. Luckily i'd only applied it to the wings so they spent a few days in a dettol bath and i switched to using oil paint. I used a different shade of black for the mix which has produced a different shade of green compared to the camel i did, i also put the parts in the airing cupboard for around 4 days between coats, this has cured the paint nicely (don't know why i didn't think of doing that before ) I need to do one more coat of grey for the nose then i can start to think about assembly. I've also got the prop painted, i just need to paint the retaining plate and then give it a couple of coats of varnish Unusually for roden they neglected to include the control horns for the elevators so i made some simple ones from evergreen strip. The rear stabs have been fitted, the 'linen' is mainly white with a few drops of revell beige silk and a dash of grey, the wings have been painted with the same mix. This is my second attempt at fitting the rather fragile undercarriage legs, the first attempt involved fitting them to the wings first as they need to fix on both the upper and lower surfaces of the wings plus the fuselage, so a fiddly job at best. The first method didn't really work, i thought i had it glued in place but the slightest touch and they broke free so for this attempt i thought i'd try fixing them to the fuselage first. It means i now need to slide the lower wing between the fixing points on the struts without breaking them, but for now they are on and square My second attempt seems to have worked and i managed to snuggle the wing between the legs and fuselage, i then fitted the remaining struts and although i think the fuselage is sitting at slightly the wrong angle (it should be level with the wing from front to back) it's as close as it's going to get and if i try and move it now things will break and then i'll be buggered. Once the upper wing and struts are on it shouldn't notice too much, i think the main thing is the undercarriage seems square and the wing is square to the fuselage. So a few touch ups to do then move on to attaching the upper wing It's finally starting to come together. On my last day off last week i did the touch-ups and stuck it in the airing cupboard for 5 days. It's now had the top deck fitted so it's officially a bi-plane I've also pre-rigged and fitted the elevator controls to the fuselage and the scarff ring is now in place Thought i'd get the decals on the tail end sorted so i can then rig the rudder etc. I splashed out my pocket money on the print scale Bristol aces of WW1 decal set in which you get 10 different schemes to choose from, i've opted for the scheme as flown by Sydney Dalrymple and his observer G Beagle. The decals went on quite nicely although the stripes were a bit of a pain to get lined up, also there should be an S under the scarff ring but the first one i tried looked awful as the backing film seemed too thick and the edges wouldn't sit flush so i made the decision to leave them off for now. I might get a general number and letters decal set and use an S from that later on.

as a secondary hello from me here's a few pics of my 2021 completed builds so far, all builds are in 1/72. First up is an Academy Tempest Mk.V, a really nice kit to build and i'd definatley build another one of these at some point. Brush painted with Humbrol enamels Next is the Airfix Be2.c, another really nice kit to build, again brush painted with Humbrol enamels Then there's a Roden Camel TF.1 trenchfighter, brush painted with oil paint Lastly is a JN-4H from Olimp models, not a great fitting kit but the end result isn't too bad.

that's simply stunning, as said above could easily be fooled into thinking it's larger scale.

Hey all, been meaning to join for a while but but never quite got round to it. I've been modelling for just over 18 months and my main interest is early aviation so most of my models are WW1 through to WW2 aircraft, i tend to have 2 or 3 kits on the go at once and my recent projects are a Bristol F2, S.E.5a and a Bleriot X1 with a possible soon to be started Nieuport 27. I mainly model in 1/72 and am a brush painter who prefers enamels over acrylics but have recently been dabbling with using oil paints. I look forward to seeing what you are all getting up to and will post a few pics of my recently completed models shortly.