Pielstick

Bloody hell that must be tiny! I grew up with 1/72 kits, but when I look at one now they seem miniscule! Well today I touched up the paintwork and then got a few coats of Klear... Right now the model is sitting on the workbench with the first few decals applied. I'll get the rest on tomorrow.

I know there's a few guys here who like me, are flight simmers who travel a lot. One of the problems for me has always been finding a suitable joystick (i.e. one which has a throttle and rudder control) which can be packed away for travelling. After years of faffing around with various joysticks I think I may have found the ideal one for a travelling flight simmer: The Saitek Cyborg FLY5: http://cyborggaming.com/prod/v5stick.htm Video overview here showing the features: What makes this ideal for a travelling flight simmer? The handle can be detached and the base can be folded away. Bloody brilliant for getting it crammed into a bag with all the other stuff I have to cart around from ship to ship. It's a Saitek, which people seem to love or hate. I think they're good, over the years having owned the X-45, X-52, X-52 Pro as well as their flight yoke and rudder pedals. They're not Thrustmaster quality, but then again they're not Thrustmaster price either The stick itself is pretty good to use, the spring centering is very positive. Stick forces are just about right too. The twist action - although not as good as seperate rudder pedals - is among the best I've ever seen on a joystick. Very smooth, centres perfectly and again the force is just about right. There are two throttle controls which can be worked independantly or locked together. Once again the throttle movement is very smooth and just the right amount of resistance. Like a lot of the other Saitek stuff the stick can be adjusted to suit your hand. Only one directional switch, 8-way. Well worth a look if you're a flight simmer who has to travel a lot. It can be had for £30 online...

"You were in a 4G inverted dive with a MiG-28?" I've got the DVD Special Edition with "3 hours of extra features!" which I must admit I haven't watched. There's a little booklet inside with some interesting anecdotes from the filming: "However, there were limitations to the Navy's support. When director Tony Scott wanted to catch one key shot aboard one of the aircraft carriers, the captain was unwilling to alter course so that the sun was in the right position because of the cost. When the producers were unable to instantly authorise the $10,000 cost of the manoeuvre, Scott actually write out a personal cheque to cover it." It also says that they wanted to use as much real aerial footage as possible, and originally the in-cockpit shots were all real, but they were of poor quality so they re-did them in cockpit mock-ups. It also says the first aerial scenes were filmed with anamorphic widescreen lenses but they all cracked under the G-loads during the manouevres. They then modified one F-14 with six Super-35mm cameras that were a bit tougher, but when they removed the cameras after filming it damaged the aircraft's electrical systems and the studio had to pay the repair bill.

Well this morning I went for my seafarer's medical and have been declared fit for unlimited duties... so I'm definitely off on the 2nd... so I've got to get this Spit finished by then. I got the Lifecolor Dark Earth on last night, lightened it with a drop or two of Lifecolor Dust Type 2 and sprayed a random pattern over the Dark Earth to break it up a bit. I probably overdid it, but it will tone down when the varnish goes on the model. Here's the Dark Earth applied and a combination of paper and white tack masking used for the B-Type camo scheme: And now the Dark Green applied - again a couple of drops of Dust Type 2 added to lighten it and a random pattern sprayed again to break it up. Once again I realise my camera has rubbish colour reproduction.... The lightened fading does look overdone, but it'll tone right down after the varnish is applied - trust me You can also see the marks left where the white tac sausages were used and blobs where it was used to fix the paper masks. I always thought white tac wasn't supposed to leave marks? Oh well, I had exactly the same thing happen on my last model and the marks disappeared when the Klear coat was applied before decalling, so it's no bother. I've got to touch up a few areas where the masking wasn't too great, but that should be straightforward enough.

About 14psi - the same pressure I spray just about everything with. Perhaps misting isn't a good word - basically I hold the airbrush a bit further away from the model than I normally would and I spray with the trigger pulled well back to get a nice wide pattern - rapidly moving the airbrush around the model so as to slowly build up a very light coat over a wide area. Do this until the black has been blended in to your liking - usually two or three "mist" coats when I do it.

I struggled enough with 1/48 PE rudder pedals! I can only imagine what kind of Satanic ritual is required to get 1/72 PE rudder pedals folded to shape and fixed in place! How many chickens did you have to sacrifice? I clearly didn't sacrifice enough because I still managed to knock the pedals off 3 times before fixing the cockpit in place. More progress this morning... Pre-shaded the underside with Tamiya Flat Black before going to bed last night: For some reason I can't find my pot of Lifecolor Sky anywhere so I went with Gunze instead. Here's the panels "coloured in" with Sky: And finally a few misted on coats of Sky to knock back the pre-shade: Sorry for the naff pics - as always I'm using a cheap point and shoot digital camera, it's a grey morning here and the lighting isn't too good... if I use the flash or my desktop lamp the glare is too much and you can't see the model! The Gunze Sky is actually a far more solid colour than it appears in the pics and is more yellow-green than grey as it looks here. I'll try and get some better pics later. I'll give it plenty of time for the Gunze to harden before cracking on with the upper surface camo scheme.

Moving on swiftly..... ...washed the whole thing down with alcohol. The canopy area got a quick blast of interior green and then I primed the model with Alclad Grey Primer. I used some crocus paper to smooth over a few rough patches where the Alclad primer dried with a rough texture, and then buffed the whole model with some kitchen towel to get a nice ultra smooth surface... I've given the wheel wells a quick shot of Tamiya Flat Aluminium, I'll pop some wet tissue paper into the wheel wells later to mask them off and then I'll start pre-shading the undersides, ready for the application of the main colour scheme tomorrow. I'm joining my next ship on the 2nd of September so I've had a fire lit under my backside to get this model finished!

You really should give the Tamiya Spit a go - it's a fantastic kit to build, excellent fit all round, no snags or pitfalls at all. I'm not sure if the cockpit interior was the same on the prototype, at the very least I'd imagine the gunsight would need to be removed. A little bit more progress today: I rescribed a few panel lines along the fuselage join that were lost during sanding. Some Mr Dissolved Putty was put to work to correct a slip of the scriber! I fitted the kit gunsight but modified it slightly by removing the reflector glass and replacing it with some clear plastic cut from some food packing - much thinner and better looking. I've put the Eduard Express Masks on the transparencies, as usual they worked a treat. This time I decided against dipping the transparencies in Klear as I'm finding it affects the paint adhesion and makes it prone to lifting when I remove the canopy masks. Hopefully this time the paint will adhere better to the bare plastic. I've fixed the windscreen and rear fixed canopy in place with Gator Glue, and just tacked the sliding part of the canopy in place with a drop of PVA for paiting. I've also taken the spare pilot's door from the kit and tacked that in place with PVA too to protect the interior whilst painting. The end result will have an resin Ultracast door without a crowbar Sometime this evening I'll give the model a careful wash down with some alcohol and then give the canopy a blast of interior green and then get some Alclad Grey Primer on the rest of the model and then we're good to go with the painting. A couple of months ago I compared the various brands of RAF Dark Green/Dark Earth/Sky side by side, and I'm going to go with Lifecolour for this model as I did with my last model (an Fw190) as they are bleedin' brilliant paints in my opinion!

I've been distracted with other stuff lately. The Spitfire has been looking a bit forlorn so I started working on it again yesterday. I've fitted the radiator, oil cooler, lower cowling, as well as the Ultracast resin elevators and rudder. I've also assembled the Ultracast resin propeller. In my enthusiasm to thin the tail to accept the rudder I ended up filing a notch in the bottom of the tail where it joins the rudder. This has now been fixed with some Milliput and a wet finger - ooh er! I've just got to fit the carburetor intake, do some minor re-scribing, mask the transparencies and fit them... and then I can get a coat of primer on the Spit and get cracking with the painting.

Right then, here's what I found: It looks and smells just like Alclad Airbrush Cleaner! I've shot it through an airbrush and it shifts both Tamiya and Lifecolor very well. On the tin it says the ingredients are: 15-30% Aromatic Hydrocarbons, esters, ketones and alcohols. I'm not a chemist so I can't tell you what this will do to nitrile rubber o-rings or nylon seals over time? Someone more qualified than me might want to chip in with that... So on the face of it, it certainly appears that this stuff makes a pretty good heavy duty airbrush cleaner, and at £2.99 for a 1L tin it's a helluva lot cheaper than specialist airbrush cleaners. EDIT - here's the technical sheet from the manufacturer's website: http://www.baufix-online.com/fileadmin/pro...inal-260110.pdf

My local Lidl has a load of painting and decorating supplies in from a German company called Baufix. I noted they had 1L bottles of brush cleaner for £2.99 It says on the tin: - Baufix Brush Cleaner is a special solvent mixture of aliphatic and aromatic hydrocarbonss. - Baufix Brush Cleaner is excellent for removing fresh paint, oil, grease, and wax. - Highly suited for cleaning machine parts, bicycle chains and motorbike chains. - Also suitable for thinning all solvent based paints currently on the market. It also says it contains xylene, which I know is the stuff that makes Premi-Air Liquid Reamer and Badger Airbrush Cleaner shift just about anything from inside an airbrush. Does anyone know if this stuff is suitable for cleaning an airbrush with? If so, at £2.99 for 1L it's a damn sight cheaper than "proper" airbrush cleaner. I'll dig out my cheap Chinese Iwata rip-off over the weekend and experiment, and report back. Cheers, Nick

Quite a lot of new stuff in the flight simming world recently, I know there's quite a few people here who might be interested in this stuff, so here goes: DCS: A-10C Warthog has just got a new patch bringing it up to version 1.1.0.9 http://www.digitalcombatsimulator.com/en/downloads/patches/ Free Falcon 5 has just had a two new additions in the form of Taiwan and Balklans theatres, each with three unique campaigns: http://www.freefalcon.com/forum/content.ph...reeFalcon-5.5.5 Rise of Flight has a new flyable aircraft - the Bristol F2.B - highy reccommended! http://riseofflight.com/en/store/planes/Bristol_F2B_F2 In the MSFS world..... A2A Simulations have released an update/overhaul of their Boeing 377 Stratocruiser package, called "Captain of the Ship". It's available at a reduced cost for owners of the original package. http://www.a2asimulations.com/ (I also HIGHLY reccommend their Accu-Sim Spitifre MkI if you don't already have it - it's absolutely superb) Mil Viz have released their T-38A Talon.... http://www.milviz.com/fs/item.php?id=T-38A The Orbx juggernaut rumbles on, having recently released their Central Rocky Mountains scenery package, as well as YPMQ Port Macquarie and Diamond Point http://fullterrain.com/ Unfortunately freeware for FSX has been in decline for a long time now, but there are still those out there fighting the good fight. Dino Cattaneo has released his new T-45C Goshawk: Download it here: http://www.mediafire.com/?5u6xngihu79cdz4 And finally, the really big news..... on 25th July PMDG announced their long awaited 737NGX will be released within 7-10 days... Check out this video showing the cockpit in detail. It really is absolutely stunning, this is set to be THE new benchmark in MSFS aircraft... http://vimeo.com/26700490 http://www.precisionmanuals.com/

Only a little bit of progress this week as I haven't spent much time with the Spit... The fuselage halves have been joined and the wings attached. Those who have built this kit will know that is pretty much the bulk of the construction done. I've also removed the kit rudder and thinned the kit's vertical tail surfaces in order to accept the resin Ultracast rudder. I've just painted some Mr Surfacer 500 along the fuselage seams and I'll smooth it down tomorrow.

After the Ka-50 and A-10C Eagle Dynamics are working on the next installment in the Digital Combat Simulator series. Speculation is rife as to what aircraft it will be and everyone is waiting for the announcement... What we do know is they said it's going to be a US fixed wing fast jet. So that means: F-15C/D F-15E F-16C/D F-22A F/A-18A/B/C/D F/A-18E/F AV-8B Now then, in the past they've said they will only do aircraft which they have unfettered access to and can get hold of all the detailed technical data. They've also said they won't do a two-seat type as they don't feel they can programme an AI smart enough to do the WSO's job while you're up front flying the thing. I don't think they would be allowed the access they require to the F-22, or indeed the Super Hornet, so that narrows it down to: F-15C F-16C F/A-18A/C AV-8B Lots of people seem to be betting on it being an F-16 (yawn) or a Legacy Hornet, which would be pretty good to have carrier ops. Having said that, if I absolutely had to make a choice out of the four above I'd go for a Harrier. I'd worship them eternally if they included a GR7/GR9 but I know that's not going to happen.

Quick fix! Hopefully looks better now under different lighting..... Now if I'm not mistaken the Spit had a lever on the left of the pilot's seat which controlled the radiator flap. Does anyone have a decent pic of how and what it attached to at the bottom? Cheers.

No the fuselage halves aren't joined yet and the cockpit is just dry-fitted. I'll pry the quadrant off and glue it back in the correct position. Cheers!

Some more progress on the interior today, which is mostly complete. The eagle-eyed will notice I still have to attach the radiator control lever on the left hand side of the seat. I've also got to do the gunsight and scratch build an oxygen hose. The white stuff on the instrument faces is Micro Kristal Klear which when dry will give a nice glass effect. Honest. It all looks a bit harsh under the light of the camera flash. I'll have to see if I can get some pics under natural light. Here's where I'm at this afternoon: And a quick pic with the fuselage halves closed up:

Turned out fantastic. Now when are you going to do a Dora?

Absolutely superb!

Got all the various photo etch bits installed in the cockpit now, ready for a blast of primer. Beware though - photo-etch rudder pedals = devil spawn Also noticed for the first time both the pastic rudder pedals Tamiya provide and the Eduard PE ones are wrong - I believe all the BoB era MkIs had the single bar rudder pedals. Not too bothered though as they're almost invisible once the fuselage is closed up.

It's yet another Spitfire, this time the ubiquitous Tamiya 1/48 Mk.I I built this kit as my first one on returning to the hobby over the Christmas period in 2008. The plan is to build the same kit in exactly the same markings and then put them both side by side to see how much I've improved over the last 2 1/2 years (or not as the case may be). The Tamiya kit will be spruced up with a a few Ultracast bits I've recycled from another botched model, some Eduard etch for the cockpit and Xtradecals to depict N3249 QJ-P of 92 Squadron at Biggin Hill in September 1940. So far I've just removed the moulded on elevators and made a notch in the horizontal tail surfaces to accept the resin Ultracast elevators. I've also removed the cockpit door and removed the moulded detail on the instrument panel ready for the Eduard etch. And so it begins.......

Yup it's an absolute can of worms. I built an Il-2 earlier this year and my head was left spinning by researching the colours. As has been said above.... Erik Pilawski's work has been the source for most VVS colour matches, although those in the know reckon his info is heavily flawed and paints matched to his work aren't accurate. Apparently there was a book made in the USSR in the late 40's that contains official colour swatches for the various VVS colours. However, from what I read there's only two known examples of this book still knocking around and they are held in museum collections in Russia. Also, being made after the war there is question as to how well the represent wartime colours - as we know at least some of the VVS colours changed over the course of the war. There are no reliable sources for wartime VVS colours. Colour photographs from the period are practically non-existant, and of course even if you did find period colour photographs the accuracy of the colour reproduction in that photograph is very much open to question! It's known that quality control suffered quite a bit in Soviet factories in the rush to produce as much as possible to throw back the Germans - so it's not at all unreasonable to think there was significant variation in the standard of paint being used as well. I doubt there was much fuss over making sure every batch of paint exactly matched the official shade! The bottom line is you can paint models of WW2 VVS aircraft pretty much any shade of the official colours you want and NOBODY can prove you right or wrong unless they have a time machine As for AMT-4 - I used Tamiya XF-5 Flat Green with a drop or two of XF-1 Flat Black added to darken it slightly. Cheers, Nick

Really nice, just finished the same kit myself last week but in different markings. Kudos on going with that scheme and the kit decals, you must've used some pretty strong decal solvents to get the thick Tamiya decals to settle on the cooling grills aft of the exhaust!

The Bristol F2b is now available for pre-order from the Rise of Flight Store... they're offering a 20% discount for customers who pre-order, it works out at about £6 for the aircraft. http://riseofflight.com/en/store/planes/Bristol_F2B_F2 Really looking forward to this one... one of my fave WW1 aircraft and it will be the first British 2-seater in the sim. Might have to see if we can get some BMers together to start some multi-crew flights..... would be pretty cool if we could get together enough of us to crew the O/400

As some of you know I work at sea, so a desktop computer has always been impractical for me. I've been using laptops since 2004 and never really had a laptop with performance which really satisified me for use with my various flight sims - Fujitsu, Sony, Advent, HP, Alienware... had them all! Funnily enough the worse laptop I've had was the supposedly top of the line £1,800 gaming enthusiast custom built Alienware - absolutely shocking design and build quality! I got a bit fed up with laptops last year and bought a custom built desktop with some monster specs - i7 950 overcloked to 4Ghz, 6GB RAM, Geforce GTX480 1GB graphics card, 64GB SSD and a 1TB HDD.... it runs everything beautifully, even FSX with all the addons I can load it down with. The time is rapidly approaching for me to go back to sea and my nearly two year old Sony Vaio AW31M laptop is starting to show it's age - Core 2 Duo P8700 2.5Ghz, 4GB RAM, Geforce 9600M 512MB graphics card and 500GB HDD. I thought it was time to move onto something more modern.... So I've gone and got myself one of these: http://www.scan.co.uk/products/156-msi-gt6...-bag-mouse-w7hp Ok I know the styling and silly LEDs are a bit OTT (thankfully they can be turned off). However, this is a pretty astonishing spec for a 15" laptop - and the price is pretty good to boot, especially when you compare it to Sony or the premium priced Alienware laptops. I'm hoping the combination of an i7 processor, GTX460 and 8GB RAM will power through most of my flight sims. I know it's not going to be as fast as my desktop but as long as it runs DCS A-10, Rise of Flight and Il-2 1946 to my satisfaction I'll be happy enough. I don't think I'll put FSX on it as I know I've been spoiled by my desktop. I'm also hoping the 1TB HDD means storage space won't be an issue for a while What's interesting is the MSI range of 15" gaming laptops pretty impressive. If you check out the GX660R series with an i5 processor and ATI5870 graphics card - a pretty damn powerful gaming laptop for £1,000 - extremely good value for money! Well worth considering if you're in the market for a high performance gaming laptop.