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mitchem

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Everything posted by mitchem

  1. Fear not JR. I'm hoping to have your flight ready for boarding by the end of the year 🤣
  2. You're right. I don't know how it happened, but this popped through the post this morning: ...is it too early to start another one? 🤣 ...and that's exactly what I did. The cockpit window on the kit isn't the easiest thing to fit, and I lost count of how many times it nearly became part of the cockpit furniture. In the end, I replaced it with 10thou clear sheet and white decal stripe. mike
  3. Excellent stuff Tom. Such a classic scheme 👍👍
  4. Many thanks to everyone for taking the time to comment - much appreciated. 😆 You haven't seen the underside 😆 Many thanks. The decals were relatively easy to use and Transport Wings did provide duplicates of the cheatlines. Having said that, I tried to get clever with the tail markings by cutting them up to remove the carrier film - big mistake. They were designed for the Airfix kit, so there were a few adjustments that needed to be made. Central African Airways (CAA) originally had eight C-47s in their fleet - all of them originally built for the USAAF in 1943/1944. VP-YKO was written off in 1955, and with the break up of the Federation in 1963, three of them remained in Rhodesia, with three going to Zambia, and one to Malawi. Two of the three C47s were transferred to the RhoAF in 1976 (VP-YKP and VP-YKN), and both of them ended their careers with the Air Force of Zimbabwe. VP-YNH flew with Air Rhodesia before ending up in the colours of Air Zimbabwe. RhoAF had other C-47s in their fleet, but that's a story for another day. Thanks Keith. It should be making a landing at the club on Wednesday, if it survives the flight over the Loughor 😆
  5. Nostalgia trip for me as I can remember these in the late 60s / early 70s. (In fact, I reckon that if I trawl the depths of my memory bank, I can even remember these in the markings of Central African Airways !) Italeri C-47 finished off using AIMS - Transport Wings decal sheet (TWF72002) I really struggled to fair in the port landing light cover, and if @PhantonBigStu hadn't come to my rescue with replacements, it may not have managed to get over the finishing line. I hate working with metallic finishes, so I'm hoping that this model will motivate me to finish off my 1/72 Air Zimbabwe 737-200. Thanks for looking. mike
  6. Cracking stuff Matt. 👍👍 Plenty of variety in the pipeline to keep an eye on as well - I might just end up cancelling my telly licence and access to streaming services 🤔 mike
  7. Fantastic finish on both of them Matt. "Flowers from Mazowsze" has turned out a real treat, and I can officially announce that your decal-making skills have now surpassed mine by a few thousand miles! 😆 mike
  8. Extraordinary amount of work involved to get it over the finish line - well done. 👍👍
  9. Many thanks to everyone who has taken the time out to comment - much appreciated. mike
  10. Thanks Keith. I did drag them into the club on Wednesday, but I'll make an effort to bring them along to the next meeting. (Sorry that the 'flu got the better of you this week). Thanks Steve - the FAF blue was from Colourcoats (ACF10 - Gris Bleu Ciel (Sky Blue)). The majority of the paints on the SAAF Mirages were sourced from the Hataka Orange Line Paint set (South African Air Force Vol.1) 😱 (Looking forward to seeing them appear on Britmodeller) Thanks Kiseca. Boring back story I'm afraid - I lived in South Africa for 18 years, but had nothing to do with the South African military. As far as "Cheetah Killer" name is concerned, the SAAF Mirages were eventually replaced with the Atlas Cheetah - a heavily modified version of the Mirage III. Some Mirage F1 AZs were used for annual supersonic Air Combat Training, and parts of these aircraft were painted white to distinguish them from other Mirage F1s and Atlas Cheetahs.
  11. Three in a single posting may help to explain why I've been keeping such a low profile on BM recently. Not too sure if building all three in parallel was such a good idea as things got a bit tense near the end - just needed to paint 16 wheels and carefully glue on 24 undercarriage doors....... 😢 Nice kits with plenty of detail and very comprehensive decals, but I did have to apply a bit of elbow grease here and there. (One thing for sure is that the cockpit canopies were not designed to be closed, but brute force, ignorance and 240 grit saved the day !) Left to right : Mirage F1AZ - South African Air Force - 1 Squadron Mirage F1B - French Air Force - 3/33 Mirage F1CZ - South African Air Force - 3 Squadron Mirage F1AZ - South African Air Force - No. 1 Squadron (1996) - "Cheetah Eater" Mirage F1B - French Air Force 3/33 (2004) - 60th Anniversary of D-Day : Mirage F1CZ - South African Air Force - No. 3 Squadron (1981) : Three down and three to go - two more SAAF jets and another French one.... ....but not this year 🥴 Thanks for looking mike
  12. I'm afraid that I've been AWOL for some time, so apologies. My rendition of a South African Air Force Mustang Mk IV of 5 Squadron, based in Cervia (Italy) in 1945. ICM kit 48152 painted with Gunze paints. Markings were painted on using my own masks based on the MAV decal sheet. (Nothing wrong with the decals - just wanted to try something different) As far as aftermarket additions were concerned, these included some Eduard etch, Look dashboard and Eduard stencil decals After the home-made masks, I thought that weathering might just be one experiment too far 😆 Thanks for looking mike
  13. ...probably because Trigonometry hadn't been invented yet ?.. 🤣 Many thanks Flying Badger. I'd urge you dig it out and make a decision. Loads of colour schemes to choose from 😆 mike
  14. Based on the photographic evidence, it doesn't look like much has been happening, but.... new decals were printed before applying them to the fuselage. All of the windows were remasked. Panel line wash was applied to the rudder hinge line (this appears to be quite prominent in online reference photos) Everything was sealed in with a coat of satin varnish Boeing grey was applied to the wings outboard of the engines (for some reason or other, the port wing proved to be a bit problematic) Panel line wash was applied to the horizontal surfaces that had been painted. I reckon that I should now be in a position to mask off the fuselage, before permanently attaching the wings....and filling the gaps. (The hole at the front of the starboard wing root should be interesting?) (The sister build taking place behind the scenes is proving to be a bit trickier than I had hoped for. (How many of us ever thought that we would use Trigonometry after we left school? 😁)) Until next time. mike
  15. Thanks Matt - good idea. I was considering low-tack masking paper, but that was before I discovered exactly how fragile my decals are!.... All of the markings in my previous post had to be removed after they came into contact with water. Occupational hazard of ink-jet decals when you don't seal them in correctly. 🥴
  16. Classic scheme - Excellent stuff ! 👍👍 I remember passing through Lisbon once and seeing one of their 747s in the same scheme. Kind of blew my mind as to how striking the scheme was then. mike
  17. Awesome build, and as for your collection..... mike
  18. Thanks Keith. Loads of cunning plans ahead revolving around masking, spraying, masking, spraying, etc. I can see it in my head - it's just a case of making it happen in the correct sequence. 😁
  19. All winners IMHO ...and I'm going to have to vote for the A300 John. (Hope Dave has been ignoring the recent political circus, as he could very well end up building the Cessna ) mike
  20. Been building models for more years than I care to remember, so why on earth did I decide to jump the gun and apply decals to the fuselage before joining the wings? I guess I needed the motivation 😁 It looks like "Great Zimbabwe" is coming to life 👍 mike
  21. Thanks Keith. I think the bin would have been safe as the air was too blue to see it 🤣 (ICM P-51D? Now searching for any scheme without stripes ! 😁 Thanks Moggy, More like blind obsession and pig-headedness Thanks Matt. You should see the other side 😁
  22. ...so the 737 and I had a pretty serious falling out, inasmuch as the fuselage fell out of my hands and hit the floor. The tail snapped off (not where it was joined to the fuselage) and broke into four pieces; one of which is still missing. Cue blue mushroom cloud above my head 🤯 Nearly three weeks later and I have managed to repair the damage. This involved making a new part from plastic card, gluing the fragments together, rescribing the panel lines, gluing the tail back on, blending it in, and then repainting the tail stripes from scratch. And when I mean "from scratch", I mean that I had to sand the paint back to plastic and start with a gloss white base. (Useless tip if you weren't already aware - self-levelling thinners is pretty good at blending colours togeether and spraying more and more paint on top doesn't help. I realised this when the yellow portion of the tail stripes looked more orange than yellow, while the red on the other side of the demarcation started looking more orange than red! 😱) Anyway, I got there in the end, and while all the repair work was going on, I managed to get the engines painted too. I also took the opportunity to tweak some of the paintwork, and this included reducing the diameter of the door port holes by gently sanding the silver surrounds off After temporarily attaching the horizontal tail surfaces, this is where we are now : ...and from a lower angle (The location of the Pratt and Whitney engine logos were masked on both sides of each engine, and while the registration decal has been applied to the back of the fuselage, it will be removed before being replaced with a thinner version as the varnish layer is a bit thick). Next step is to mask the fuselage up completely before joining the wings permanently. Thanks for looking mike
  23. Impeccable finish there Dave 👍👍 Thanks for sharing. mike
  24. ...I may have to borrow one of your "things" Keith.... My KUTA build backfired big time, but on the plus side, I now have six things on the go for our next KUTA Competition! 🤣 mike
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