thommo

I'm going to go with the manufactured dome from Sydney, they can do a 20cm diameter one for me. I'm not sure where I'd find a decent clear dome locally?

It is molded into the canopy so I just painted it. Are they? That'll teach me for not looking at the instructions properly....though I notice plenty of others have them upside down as well!

Started on the base. Cut 2 circles of plywood about 20cm diam. using a little jig I built to house my jigsaw (Youtube how to video to the rescue again). Top circle 1-2mm smaller than the other, glued them together so there is a small lip between them. Then cut a circle of 8mm foam and glued that on. It will be paper-macheted so give some slight height variation, then sealed with acrylic sealer, then snow added. I'm thinking of getting a 20cm acrylic dome made (from a plastics mob in Sydney) to put over it (hence the lip to take the dome). Only costs about $27 to have one made, but postage to out here in the bush is $42!. Might see if it's cheaper to post to our daughter in Sydney....who has decreed it is too far for her to go and pick it up by train.....even though I said she could have coffee at Silverwater Jail, my shout! No sense of adventure kids these days 😝

I knew someone would ask that. I was trying to remember when I was snapping the pics. I'm pretty sure it is Alclad, probably aluminium. And an oil wash in the panel lines. Can't even remember what I added to the cockpit. Bang seat handles obviously, but not sure what else. The thing went so well (unusual for me), I just can't recall.

This is the other kit our eldest daughter got me a few Xmas's ago. An absolute joy to make, it just fell together. I added a few details to the cockpit.

1/72 scale Pennzoil oil drum & funnel painted, decaled and weathered with oil paints.

Yes, I pondered doing something like that, but I think I can get away with gluing it all down & covering any small gaps on the sides with snow. I shortened one rear strut on the SB side (because I snapped it!) which brought the front of that ski down a bit. The port ski is still a bit higher.

Cheers Jeff. Yes, I'll use the snow to hide things a bit, but generally they made pretty smooth runways in the snow to land/takeoff, so I'll try to flatten the skis into the snow a little.

A scratch built Pennzoil oil can & funnel to go with the stack of boxes in front of the plane. Will need painting + some printed decals

The Vega is almost done now. Just need to add top sliding canopy section & the pilot popping out the top.....and remove some of the fibres which only show up on camera 🙄 Ski alignment turned out to be a bit problematic, they do not touch the ground toward the front. Thought about tearing them apart & re-aligning, but in the end decided that would be too traumatic, so I'll glue them down flatter on the diorama base, which will necessitate the tail skid also being solidly glued down. I added the framing for the little sliding side windows on the canopy. These were cut from thin black vinyl using my Cricut Maker machine. That thing is a revelation for model making. They are only 7mm long x 1.6mm high and the borders would be less than 1mm, but the Cricut cut them just fine. The Cricut software (Design Space) is a bit rubbish compared to what comes with a Silhouette apparently, but with some work arounds it can do what I want.

Scratch built tail skid Decals & paint & weathering finally done after numerous touch-ups. I dulled it all down with SMS Flat Clear (which works much better than their Gloss Clear). That metal can under the nose is what they used to catch oil in when servicing the engine.

I just had to re-do the decals, couldn't live with the dark carrier film, it worked out much better this time. Have also built the crates/boxes of oils, gasoline etc. to place on the ground in front of the aircraft as per my reference pics. These were made from small blocks of balsa wood, Pepsi can metal for the edging, then printed some tiny decals of the oil & gasoline logos etc. Small boxes on top made from paper card. Now waiting for a recently applied oil wash to dry, then will hit the plane with flat clear to dull down the gloss a bit.

I think what happened is I printed the decals on a sheet I'd used for other models, and it may have got a few drops of water on it here & there on those past builds which over time slightly darkened the whole sheet. I'll probably try ripping off one of the darkened decals on the side of the diorama not seen & see how that goes. If it goes well, I'll re-do them all, if not, sleeping dogs will have to lay. BTW gloss orange is a bugger of a colour to get nice & smooth. Iv'e also noticed all my gloss orange paint of various brands are quite fragile & easily life or mark with handling.

Well, something always goes pear shaped in the world of model making. I printed the decals & stuck them on & gloss coated them, but noticed how dark the carrier film was underneath. I thought maybe it had something to do with the orange paint, but then I got out a fresh sheet of the laser printer decal paper & noticed the stark difference in carrier film colour. For some reason, one sheet darkened? By now I'd gloss coated over the decals, but managed to rip the largest ones down the fuselage off with Tamiya masking tape & a little help of thinner on a cotton bud....which of course meant paint touch ups - which never turn out as good as the first coat. So I printed the largest decals again & reapplied, and now the carrier film is much clearer. Now have to decide if I remove the other ones toward the rear & reapply, of if I can live with it.

Base colour on. The orange paint is SMS Orange, a new Aussie paint which is an acrylic lacquer (like Tamiya acrylics) that does not need thinning. It sprays very very nicely, is durable if you are smarter than me and let it dry overnight, but I find their glosses are hardly gloss at all, and if you mix colours like I often do with Tamiya, they do not mix as well. The lack of gloss I like though as I get a more uniform & smoother finish, and can then gloss it with Tamiya Gloss Clear. One problem using vinyl for masking is that it leaves a sticky residue that takes a bit of careful work to get off, even though I stick it to my Trackie Dacks first to remove some of the 'stick'. The best way to remove residue seems to be to carefully dab it off with the piece of vinyl masking you just took off. You can use fresh vinyl, but if you are not careful that will be a touch too strong & can lift the paint esp. if you have not let the paint dry overnight (ask me how I know this 🤪). This removes 95% of the residue, but is time consuming. Then I remove the rest of the residue with a piece of old t-shirt, then roll blue-tac over it and finally a gentle wash with warm soapy water.

In the end I decided to negative mask first to locate the letters, then overspray those to make them a bit bigger to take a positive mask. This way, I could limit the areas I sprayed blue. The tail markings were just positively masked. The colour of these letters is up for debate. The book suggests dark blue, but photos look a lighter blue to me and other models have them black. I went for a grey-blue colour.

Aircraft now undercoated (Tamiya spraycan primer) and pre-shaded (SMS Camo Black) so it will be subtly mottled through the bright orange topcoat. The cheapie airbrush which came with my new compressor was spitting a bit, but it does not matter as this will all be covered with topcoats. Also shown are some masks I cut in thin white vinyl using my Cricut Maker machine. You can see some worked fine (the bigger ones) and some were a disaster (text too small, font too narrow = mess. These ones I'll have to do as custom decals on a laser printer). Sometimes you can get a good result down as small as about 3mm but it depends on the font, letter thickness & spacing. I always just give it a bash & if it fails, go to Plan B which is home-made decals. Strangely, you can see the small 'X3909' worked OK but the 'Detroit News - Wilkins Arctic Expedition' got all chewed up, despite them almost being the same size. Font and a tiny size difference can be make or break. I do have some Artists Frisket which I also tried for the smaller text, but it turned out a worse mess than the vinyl. Ditto trying to cut it into Tamiya masking tape. I have the choice of positive or negative masking with these. I'll probably positive mask (i.e. paint some blue first, put the letter masks over, then paint the orange) because I'm a sucker for overspray if I do it the other way around.

Skis completed.

Yup, never a dull moment in this blokes life...though there probably was waiting on the ice till it was safe to move. There is a great movie on Netflix we watched last night about 2 other ice explorers in about 1910 called Against the Ice. A true story.

Good to know. I did notice some slack in the rigging in pics, but would have thought they'd not yet tightened it. Still, I may do it all tight....as slack rigging just does work for me 😬

Looks great. Built the 1/72 Airfix Chipy with our daughter when she was about 7 and it was far more basic than that 1/48 version.

Skis painted using Tamiya Wood Deck Tan as the base, then an oil wash of burnt umber & indian red over the top. Let them dry a few days, then gloss coat seal & put the small metal strip on the front with Alclad. You can also see the tiny wire loops added for the rigging. I'll use the black Mig stretch rigging which is very thin. I'm up to the part in the book where he's attempting to go under the Antarctic in a submarine, and everyone is expecting it to end in tears....cos the free sub the govt gave him was pretty rough.

Here are the scratch built skis. More research revealed the pic I'm basing this on (partly) is when they'd had a rough landing and wrecked their metal skis, but found some wooden ones locally which they modified to fit. So I'll do these a wood grain pattern. There is some very thin rigging to go on these skis to anchor them to the landing gear struts & exactly how it attaches is unclear from photos, so I'll fashion some tiny wire loops for the attachment points.

Thanks folks. I'll take some pics of the Vampire at some stage & post. That kit went together like a dream.

I'm going to cut masks on my Cricut machine and spray on whatever I can cut small enough. Less than 3mm high, detailed shapes start to go pear shaped on the Cricut, so for those I'll try and print my own decals. I'm about 75% through the book, where he's on his 2nd trip in the Vega. He loves that plane & it has served him very well.....so far I just built the ski's today (pics later). Yup, these blokes were dead set legends. They took huge risks. I'm up to his 2nd flight over uncharted territory in the Vega. They sure did break a few planes, but the Vega was the most bullet-proof so far.