krow113

A good go at a difficult kit. My apologies for not coming in sooner. I had one of these bikes in the late '70's . Its one quirk was the fact it had no valve springs , torsion bars were used instead. Also you have the carbs on upside down...they were an early CV type and the round pots are the top. Hopefully you can rectify.

Hdawg - no worries . Harley did get dragged into the present day technology...finally! And I managed to get the wheels assembled. The front halves didn't fit to well , I had to scrape the inner ring off , its about an inch in diameter and the two rings were keeping the outer edges of the wheel from fully mating and created a gap in all of the small holes around the wheel. There is no way to make precut masks for the wheel paint work , or I would produce them. Good old fashioned hand taping coming up! 1.5 hours.

Thanks Kris. And I was waiting for the first plonking to reply to your post. Plonked: Cheesy first attempt water with gel and debris, working on it... And 7 more figs to populate. And what looks like incredibly realistic and vast tracts of Iwo beach isn't really: Thinking about this for literally years makes fig placement easy and quick: Flamethrower guy is the last fig, he goes in the empty spot up front.

Going very well. ...watch out for dried paint flaking off the plastic sandwich bags ! I got caught by that one time.

Googling RAF flying wire rigging gives almost all of the info required to understand the flying wire concept. It is as I suspected the two clevis' are one right hand thread and the other left hand thread . Back off the corresponding lock nuts , set the tension by rotating the wire , and lock it with the nuts. looks like some of the Nueports had flying wires too..

Kept going today , mostly forward momentum, but a few re-do's almost through this part. After I get the chassis sorted I can mount it on the base and get the rest of the figs in place. Lots of small additions:

Pretty tough to see turnbuckles per se on flat rigging. Most likely because there aren't any.

Finishing up the inside of the vehicle , moving towards mounting on the base , includes convenient placement of some crates and introduction of some players. The driver or lookout , BAR guy , and .50 guy all get mounted, .50 guys head will be installed later: I can already se movement and action being installed in the piece , a really good sign at this point. Head on:

...and then someone throws a 4 blader into the mix... How to do the laminations on these has given pause for reflection.

Thanks Francis. Looking at pics and film of Iwo Jima there is little on the beach except for different sized lava , from sand to fist sized rocks. I have a lot of black and grey dio materials stocked up so it should be fun! I have some of the organic material on hand anyway... Lots of smallish stuff getting done , armament , stowage all getting attention on the main chassis: Rope still in unfinished state: Going full circle from model to figs to stowage to basework here is the base with some work: Detail: Materials: Now the fun will really start with the final fitments of the components. Thanks for looking in!

Thanks G ! .50 guy gets his due , he's a little aggressive and was made for the other side of the supplied stowage , but we make it work. I pinned the weapons body and carved out the handles and his left hand to fit. I think I got it pretty good: A walk on the beach examining the tide lines , I found some organic material for the beach detail: ...and who could resist:

Thanks Francis & Mark. And I will say that the kit was in perfect shape , some minor warping buy easily dealt with. My belief is that there is a .010" gap in the kit, that is to say whichever way you decide to build it , the gap will show up somewhere. I managed to split it into smaller gaps and dealt with them in a number of ways. One way was to leave one for the end and clamp/glue it , another was covered nicely with a weld bead. Careful prep and numerous dry fits kept the issues down to an easily managed level. I recommend this kit for its fit and the fun you can have building it. Working steadily and starting to get somewhere. Figs get some final wash' and detailing: The vehicle itself got a burnt umber wash, over the black wash , got ahead of myself there , and I started to tie things together: The stowage got some more work as well. These are oil wash' so a day or so to let things dry completely and then back to it as the best part is coming up fast!

I found the Gaspatch items to be of top quality. I ordered a full array of all the turnbuckles to counter any situation that came up. I also found that there is enough info on their site to make the correct choice. RAF flying wires are not cables they are actually flat 'bars' with built in threaded ends for stretching . The flat part of the RAF Gaspatch items are where the rigging material of choice is attached , WNW recommends Prym as it gains a flat profile when stretched. Avoid the p/e flying wires as they dont work. Researching my Gotha revealed that the majority of German planes had turnbuckles only on the bottom of the rigging. I also used 1/48 scale turnbuckles in my 1/32 Gotha Without knowing which plane you are researching its tough to supply more info.

Thanks Silenoz. And I'll leave you with this for a few months as I have some models I want to finish for the Fall Show. Here is the engine in its final primary colors. Both mags have been dealt with and the intake manifold is just plugged in. By no means finished: And these are some custom printed decals of tire logos and stencils for the Gotha ,all worked up from various pics , printed in white on an ALPS printer. The black shows what has been printed in white on the decals sheet: Gonna go dark here until the end of November. Thanks for looking in.

Thanks for looking in. Lots of work getting done. I painted out the welds and blended them in , which led to an onslaught of black wash and chipping pencils. A few go-overs later: Interior got it too , first of a few treatments I think : Oooooo and she got shoes on: The tracks fit ok a small battle , mostly my fault , leaving the water baffles at the rear off until the tracks go on would help , or leave the tracks un-connected , I did neither causing myself some grief. Figs , armaments , a buncha stowage , and the base all got attention today as well. Going well and hoping to keep the momentum.