Ngantek

Looks great Chris. As you say, you're 'over the hump' once you have the fuselage buttoned up. Careful with sprue goo and resin though, the interaction will be different and won't 'amalgamate' in the same way as styrene. Probably worth a try on a bit of spare print stand just in case or you may find CA or CA-talc works better. Cheers, Andy

Looks great. Loved your first one as well. What scheme will this one be in? Had an MSR arrive the other day... Andy

Cockpit is looking tight. Really impressive. Always difficult with the black Post war ones too. Andy

haha good one 😆 Looking very nice and Atlanticy. Good luck with the parts cleanup! Andy

Thanks, I was wondering what that series was chronicling, since destroyers bombarding coastal positions has a rather conspicuous lack of Pedestal-ish-ness! Thanks for identifying, I figured from the funnel band that the on-board images were of a different ship to the alongside ones (I don't know my L class but as you and @robgizlu point out here and in the Loyal thread, I guess the aft superstructure extends rather more forward of y turret identifying it as Laforey or Milne?). Andy

Just since it's topical, I ran into some footage aboard and alongside an L or M class the other day, while sifting through some Operation Pedestal videos. Not looked into identifying the ship(s), but couldn't see any pennant numbers. The odd detail might be helpful. I'm always struck by how oversized the larger gun mountings look.

🧐 Monsieur, wiz zese destroyers you are reeelly spoiling us Brave of you to go with another of those confounded 'camouflage with an outline' schemes Jon, but I suppose understandable given how well the last one turned out. Andy

All the suggestions above are good. I'd echo that a nice little 1/700 destroyer is an excellent way of getting a feel for ships with minimal investment of cost or time. Tamiya are a great place to start, there are a plethora of Japanese subjects. As far as Royal Navy, the Vampire and E class are both relatively new and very nice. The O class a cheaper, simpler ex-skywave kit that builds nicely and comes in a pair to boot. These are easy to build, have nice detail without the use of photo etch, and will give you a feel for ship kits. Larger subjects will to certain degree be a case of more of the same. Andy

Wooly one isn't it? I don't know the details but I suppose one could argue that the two forces have been somewhat amalgamated with the F-35 squadrons, back with joint force harrier and even I suppose back as far as the Falklands war. I suppose you could model it as a future 809 squadron F-35 (which I imagine looks like every other F-35B in existence!). But of course up to our glorious leader.

I've not used Hatakas so this is somewhat guesswork. You posted the blue set, right? Being water based acrylics, yes you can thin with water, it's never a terrible idea using brand thinners with their paint though. I'd certainly favour using a similar thinner such as vallejo over water if you don't want to buy or can't find the brand thinner. Avoid tamiya and other solvent based thinners, they will as you've seen, turn the paint into a thick gloop that will be a huge pain to clean out of the airbrush. The blues are also designed for brush painting. Hopefully they're just thicker versions of the 'airbrush' red line, but certainly will require a decent amount of thinning to work in an airbrush, I think out-of-the bottle even for the vallejo thinner 'air' range is generally a bit too thick. Start at 50:50 and see how you go. Water acrylics can be fussy out of the airbrush, and many favour the addition of a few drops of retarder and/or flow improver. I guess have a mess around, but don't be discouraged if it doesn't work first time; a new paint combination is always going to take a little bit to get used to. Andy

Lovely build again Stuart. Just the right ratio of neat to busy. York looks very elegant with the long bow, and really interesting to see the comparison between the three. How did you find building two ships (and very similar ships) at once? I tend to think I can make all the processes more efficient doing them in series, but in reality, it ends up feeling like there's always something holding you back from taking the next step. What's coming up next? Concentrating on the Rodney or adding something else? Andy

Mike McCabe at Starling models does a set of these, but as you say, one Jervis or Penn can really throw a spanner in the works! I agree though that I'd happily buy an A3 sheet of the things, since I always seem to be missing a particular digit.

Flyhawk carrier! What a treat. Interested to see how this one builds. The exposed interior on the lower decks does pose an interesting problem. Like Jamie, the option to paint it after the exterior does seem like a good idea. Perhaps if you can get the flight deck to the point where it can fit and bond nicely with everything painted, then you could leave that until final assembly. The other option, of masking the holes from the inside I agree doesn't particularly recommend itself given the poor access you have to get the masks out again, particularly at the bow and stern. Good luck with it! Andy

Cheers Chris. You've got plenty on the go, I dunno how you manage to be so productive! I never even thought to drill out the portholes, but got lucky with a Tamiya tool I suppose. Frog tool you say though, I thought you went IBG? Is this the old 1/500 H and Is that mistercraft most recently sell? You can see from this build that 'getting it right' with ships can be a never ending process, so it's not the worst idea to just enjoy it as much as possible and not sweat the exact colour of corticene too much! Andy

Nice to see you back onto these one Chris. It's a proper frankenspitfire isn't it!? Looking really good, the cockpit in particular. Nice to see the Nimrod's still around too! Just a quick thing, I might be wrong, but my dodgy memory suggests mk IIIs has the full horn elevators (2), which would make sense given all the FAA gubbins bolted on aft of the COG. Not that it would stop me from ignoring it if would save me some effort! Andy

My mind is always boggled at the amount of work that goes into your builds Jeff, not to mention the care and attention into details like the turret mods. Lots of great progress though. One (third of a) deck at a time I guess! Andy

Really enjoying following the build Jamie, cheers for taking what little time you have to document it so thoroughly. The instrument panel looks particularly good, and surrenders nothing to 3d decals, layered PE or any other approach IMO. Nice idea to stay within the box. It'll be very useful for the rest of us and it certainly seems at first glance to not require much if any extra. Andy

Woo missed this apparently! Glad to hear it's on the go! Are you enjoying ships as a change? Bit of progress. Had a typical 'needlessly extend build with silly experiments that don't work' moment. This time, remembering that the railings on my first build just stood out a bit too much (a necessity of the scale I know), I experimented trying to hide the wires in dark grey and just painting the stanchions. Of course, this was a massive faff that seemed doable with the lazy indifference of the initial idea, and then too much wasted work to bail out once I realised what a steaming pile of jinkies the job actually was. 😫 The quality of the job predictably suffered for its tedium, and between the undermask and damage to the grey paint, needed a lot of touching up with the brush anyway. Really if I wanted to do this, I should've just sprayed grey and done the stanchions with a brush. Whoops. The added bonus is all the handing and masking has had the entirely predictably effect upon the straightness of the railings. Nevermind. Those went on wonkily, added various ladders, depth charge gubbins and cowls, tidied up made a mess of the railing touchups, stuffed random cowls and bits of styrene into the massive unused davit holes that I should've done way back at step 3, knocked off all the barrels a few times, and finally the battered the thing with some VMS matte. We're here: Bit of rigging, some wee people, a sea base and we're done. Oh and some missing depth charge davits. And maybe I've had second thoughts about whether I'm seeing corticene or not. About 17 years then. 😭 Andy

Congratulations! Richly deserved. Yes no matter how careful I am, I'm yet to bring a ship anywhere with needing to replace the odd barrel, mast or railing. I like the idea of the hood, however crude, since once on the shelves, my models are essential write-offs. Very much looking forward to your next project! Andy

Don't worry about it Alistair, I'm still on the PRU spit 😄

A well deserved head start! Looking forward to it, and thanks for the thorough overview of the frames and summary of possible future options. Despite not really having much interest or knowledge of twirly thingies, the initial 1970 scheme really did catch my eye, so glad to see you choosing it. Cheers, Andy

Looks great Mark, and very much true to your distinctive style of flawless sheen with the lightest of weathering touches to really breathe life into it. It's turned out better than not bad and glad to hear it's help reclaim some mojo. Looking forward to the next one. Also that photo of the engine cowl is great both as you say from the panel lines but also makes the shading created by the ripples and slight indentations in the metal really clear. Andy

Really nice work Stuart. That PE has definitely elevated it a lot. Really impressed you got out of the sea base; that's just a bit of paint and gloss onto raw watercolour paper? Always find that aspect intimidating for some reason. Easier said than done I know! But the finish is far beyond 'just got it done' level. Really nice work. Looking forward to seeing the York. Andy

Looks fantastic! Can't imagine how you're able to keep all those railings and netting so sharp and neat Andy

That's a lovely thing. Totally missed this one, did you do a build thread Chris? The weathering looks just right. How was the Kit? I have an Avi foxmoth which I imagine will be rather similar. Andy