Kallisti

Cheers @IMG1 I hope you post you Hawk and Eagle diorama sometime! As promised, here are some of the painting photos although I sadly forgot to take some of the later stages before it was completed. The main aim - and lessons I'd learned from my previous build was to keep things as sub-assemblies until the end to make it easier to mask and paint. So here is the rear engine mount after the masking came off. This was iniitally painted with white primer over the remaining spots of grey primer I'd used while sanding and filling joints - grey primer is much easier to see the faults with that white! After the white primer I then used Hafords Ford Diamond White paint decanted from the spray can and thinned with Mr Color Levelling thinners. I've still got a couple of cans of the proper Ford Diamond White from before they replaced the range earlier this year. I've also got a couple of the supposedly matching colours from the new range and one day I'll need to test them. I must admit to being really pleased how well the masking worked! The demarcation line around that corrugated bit that sticks out is really hard to mask and was a total mess in my previous build. The orange colour is a custom mix of red/yellow gloss Tamiya colours that is a bit redder then the colour I used before. Next up for the orange over Diamond white was the missile pods from the winglets. There were originally painted without the metallic painted nose so that could be painted separately and then added later There is a slightly larger gap on both of them where the orange meets the corrugated collars at the back - but I will fix that later with a decal on each one which will make it less obvious. The next one was wan important lesson from the previous build for the booster pods - keep the noses separate to make it easier to paint them orange! You can see that the white inserts were masked after the orange was painted and Diamond White sprayed over. They needed some cleaning up before assembly. The advantage of decanting the Diamond White from the spray can is I can also use it on a paint brush to make small touch-ups like here! The booster pods also needed some masking for orange These did need a bit of clean up after the masking came off, but it wasn't hard to sort out. What you also see in the background are the engine exhausts that were painted separately... These have been painted with a mix of Alclad colours, from Dark Aluminium though Aluminium to Polished aluminium, with a dusting of Pale Burt Metal on the ends. Next is the main engine exhaust This has a combination of Airframe Aluminium and Polished Aluminium. One of the new lessons for next time, although it is non-canon, it to leave the circular wrapper off and paint that Diamond White to go with the rest of that structure as it attaches to the main engine. I think that would look really cool! Here is a shot of the main body after painting with Diamond White - this looks so much better after weathing with some washes but stupid me forgot to take photos during the weathering stage Finally here is a shot of most of the small sub-assemblies after painting and ready for decaling, Klear coating and then weathering washes One thing I missed until the later stages and which caused some issues was the engine exhausts of the underside thrusters - I forgot until the last minute to paint them with metallic colours, so had to brush paint them later which was a bit of the PITA So thats the end of the assembly photos, I'm really annoyed at myself for not taking more during the later steps, after applying decals then weathering and varnishing. I'll post some completed photos soon, after I've been able to rearrange the spare room into its photo studio guise, but currently it has a hot exhaust pipe going from open window to the air con unit pumping cool air around the house 😎

Been a bit of a gap simply because of distractions Progress has been made - in fact the model is complete but I haven't got photos of the completed model yet, I'll take and post them soon. Before that lets rewind a couple of weeks to the construction of the command module. Here you can see the wiring setup to hold the two red 'flicker-effect' LEDs. I've used some self-adhesive metallic tape to act as a light blocker. Next is the upper side, which has the bulkhead and pilots in place along with more light-blocking tape and gloss black paint to fill the gaps The upper part was then tested for light leakage and fixed - this was most noticeable around the edges of the transparencies, so they got an extra coat of white paint to block them up Then it was finally closed up and a 2 pin plug was soldered onto the ends of the wires. The joints around the middle needed some significant clean up after this Here you can see the rear of the command module Next I moved back to the main body and how it would handle the wiring for the lights. First step was to attach the 2 pin socket to the ends of the wires from the battery pack and this was then glued onto a support at the front of the fuselage ready to accept the connection from the command module. I used hot glue to fix this in place, being very careful not to get the hot tip of the glue gun too close the plastic! Next was to secure the battery box at the rear. This time I didn't want to use the hot glue gun as I feared damaging the plastic, so instead I glued a styrene strip across the end with the wires from the battery box trapped underneath and then slathered the whole area with PVA glue and clamped it until set. Once that was set, I moved onto painting - and for that I'll do another post later as I've run out of time right now

This week's progress - first off attaching the rear engine panel using magnets The magnets have been installed with differnt polarities so its not possible to fit it the wrong way up. The fit and hold it quite firm which is good Lots of sub-assemblies have been worked on and all are ready for some primer... and the main focus this week has been on the cockpit It looks better in RL than in the photo There won't be much of this visible behind the windows, so what was important was giving an over impression of business. Sadly one of the pilots appear to have lost his hand! Maybe he has a cybernetic implant... Primer and some painting to do next and sort out the lighting.

So you remember what happened to the first attempt at a nuclear rocket Obviously Professor Quatermass wasn't involved in that design as he'd never have called it the Ariane

With the ending of my most recent build of Professor Quatermass British Rocket Group nuclear rocket here: I'm moving on to the next build which is to pick one of the Space:1999 Hawks from my stash, this time one of the "1:48" Hawk kits I've accumulated over the last few years. I've built one of these before back in 2022 but to be honest I wasn't happy with the outcome, so this time I hope to do better I have also built a couple of the smaller scale versions, most memorably two years ago with the launch gantry - bloody hell was that 2 years ago already??? I have some ideas for doing an alternate version of that using one of these larger kits, but that is for the future. For this one, I'm going to try to scratch build a cockpit again but this time not mess up the transparencies this time so it will be visible! I'll add an LED as well to Illuminate it appropriately. Some time back I was able to lay my hands on some 3D printed pilots and seats - I think it was from Shapeways before they went defunct, but they were sitting in the box for so long I've honestly forgotten. So here is the kit, its really not a complicated one to be honest... Sprue shot before debagging 3D printed pilots and seats prepped for primer Now, when building the previous large scale version and trying to scratch build a cockpit, it was a bot of a struggle, so I'm going to try an alternative process this time, which first of all requires the 'beak' to be cut from the main body with a razor saw This will allow the cockpit to be built independently of the main fuselage. The first step in this process is creating the rear bulkheads of the cockpit. This is done in two parts, designed so that when the upper and lower pices are glued together the bulkheads slide past one another and crate the illusion of being continuous. In a similar way to the way I concealed the batteries for the lighting in the gantry model, the rear bulkhead attaching the engine will be detachable to change batteries and access the power switch. The back panel will be held on using magnets.

RFI post is up: This turned out to be a great fun build, picking up from a couple years ago when I first ran out of steam.

It is 1962 and the Television announcer begins... "Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen to the Woomera Launch Complex of the Royal Space Force. The Ministry of Space has sponsored Professor Bernard Quatermass and his British Rocket Group to create Great Britain's newest nuclear powered rocket booster, the Churchill II ! Mounted atop this marvellous example of British post-war engineering is the Britannia V re-entry vehicle, a development of the original space ship piloted by Sir John Dashwood, the first man to reach space in 1950! This new era of rocket power will enable the further expansion of the British Empire beyond the Moon to Mars, bringing all the benefits of British culture and enterprise to the Martians. I wonder if they like Tea?..." The signal seems to be breaking up from this alternate universe... Based on ideas from the Ministry of Space graphic novel by Warren Ellis, this model was built using the Pegasus Hobbies Mercury 9 kit with custom decals to represent the Royal Space Force from the graphic novel. This is the kit and this is the graphic novel, a great idea with fantastic inspirational artwork!

Catching up now to more recent progress, the masking for the red was a success and so progressed to masking for the blue stripe as you can see here The scariest part of the whole thing was next however, which is removing the masking and seeing what sort of mess is left! Thankfully it was quite successful and only a bit of touching up was required Next job was applying the decals. Sadly I forgot to take any photos of this More later when it should be completed.

Lots of progress on the model since the last post, first the engine bells got painted with Tamiya XF-56, these are hardly visible so not spending a huge effort on these apart from a decent paint job. Custom decals have been printed and given a gloss coat to protect them. You can also see the fins that join the re-entry vehicle to the main body have been painted and given metallic highlights A large scale roundel has also been printed to allow me to experiment with paint mixes - it turns out the red is a decent match for Tamiya X-7 however the blue needed a careful mix of Royal Blue X-4 and Medium Blue XF-18 The main body has been painted with Halford white primer which was then buffed back to smooth and then a coat of Tamiya X-2 gloss white It was then masked for the red stripe including the re-entry vehicle Then experimenting with the layout of the base... The buildings have also been painted and weathered, but still not sure exactly how they will be laid out... More soon!

Just a small updated for now, but work has progressed on the re-entry vehicle, first off I cut out the windows in the nose and here you see it having had Glue and glaze added behind to glaze the windows. This has now been removed again to save masking the windows for painting! It will be reapplied just before the nose gets reattached to the main body. I've come to the conclusion that lighting this kit will be more trouble than its worth, so that whole concept has been abandoned - thank goodness! Next, the wings that will be attached to the main body have been assembled with some additional stabilisers created from the tailplanes from the spitfire on top and hurricane underneath... Next, task will be to attach these to the main body of the re-entry vehicle and start with painting...

I've stopped lending books as I've lost too damn many over the years!

Some time ago I started to build the Pegasus Hobbies Mercury 9 Rocket but for whatever reason, I gave up partway through. However, recently I've decided to try to clear some of my "shelf of shame" and the recent build of the Smit Rotterdam ocean-going salvage tug was vindication of this idea as I thoroughly enjoyed that build. Following on from that I pulled out from the stash a kit I've had for at least 12 years, the Babylon 5 Thunderbolt kit I completed recently: So now its time to reassess the Mercury 9 kit. This is the box I'd got some of it assembled and primer or painted: The main rocket has been assembled and primed As has the second stage of the rocket but I have some plans for this, which has required the careful cutting off of the nose cone as there are a set of "windows" moulded into the surface and I want to realign them so they are in light with the "hatch" and I might drill them out and install some lighting in the cockpit as well. I've acquired a base from one of the other members of my club who sells them and this is my approximate layout plan... Again here are lots of windows that might need to be removed and something put behind to represent a control room or similar. After my recent escapades scratch building 1:200 scale ship bridges which can't be seen, I think I might have the hang of doing that now The big inspiration for this build however is a graphic novel I bought many years ago and found again recently while tidying up the shelves. This is the Ministry of Space by Warren Ellis: It tells an alternate timeline for British space exploration post WWII where by various shenanigans the German rocket scientists ended up in Britain rather than the USA! I highly recommend it if you can get a copy, the designs are really good and has given me some inspiration. So I plan on doing a version of the Mercury 9 from the early 50s, under the auspices of Professor Bernard Quatermass' British Rocket Group, sponsored by the Royal Space Force. Which will give me a lovely set of elliptical shaped wings to attached to the "re-entry" vehicle part of the rocket The Royal Space Force in the graphic novel has its own roundel which I've managed to find a copy of that I can convert into an appropriately sized decal... If this works how I hope it will, it should look rather cool I reckon!

Oh this looks like it could be FABulous !!

Just recently I finished a SciFi build of the Thunderbold from Bablyon 5 which had a decal option with a Sharkmouth: Then I realised I had another kit in the stash that also had a sharkmouth option: So thats what I decided to build next for a change from SciFi or other weirdness It was a pretty straightforward build and I paired the finished result with a base I'd made a few years back for a Mustang! So this is the Curtis Hawk 81-A-2 flown my Flight leader Robert 'RT' Smith, 3rd Sqn, Kunming, China, June 1942

Grats on passing the exams! Patience is always required with decals, especially largish ones like you get with the extended decal sets for these. I've got a couple of those sets in the stash, but have still tended to mask and paint my panels on the 22" models in the past... Oh what fun masking is... ahem! On the 14" ones I do use decals, and have in the past cut down decals from the 22" decal sets! Keep going, your patience will be rewarded!