Jb65rams

A timely kick, I have run out of space on my shelf of doom. Currently occupied by Wildcatfish, Corsair, Hellcat, 2x Bearcat, Spitfire Floatplane, Jaguar, a couple of tanks, The big Airfix Bentley, HMS Furious and a Eggplane Shuttle. Will start a build thread later this week.

Fuselarge has been closed up. The tail was a nice fit, but needed some plasticard shims and filler to get the nose to blend in.

Tom, marked up photo below, highlighted the panel lines i cut on. I fixed the new nose and tail to one side of the fuselage whist it was flat on the work bench to get things straight. The assembled cockpits, painted with lifecolour deep cockpit black where then glued in place. Needed to cut the rear cockpit floor, where it butts up against the front cockpit bulkhead.

Sprue shots to start. MPM basic F.8 sprues. The additional spure with the additional bits for the prone. First up was a bit of surgery to remove the nose and tail of the standard F.8 Hoping the use of the mitre block will give me some nice square edges. The F.8 tail has been stashed away for my next build.

My first build will be MPM F.8 Prone. Ever since I saw it at RAF Cosford I have want to build one, as I like odd looking experimental planes. Will post the sprue shots when I start, as they are still sealed in the plastic bag.

Decisions, Decisions. I have made my mind up. Starting with the F8 Prone. Second build will be Martin Bakers Mk7.5 test aircraft WL419. Will probably save the NF11 for the Matchbox GB if it gets past the vote.

Thought I would share a few photos from yesterday Yorkshire Air Show held at Church Fenton (now know as Leeds East Airport). It was a bit overcast to start but improved during the afternoon. C-47 Skytrain Spitfire XI Meteor NF11 Mig 15 Spitfire LF vb & P-40F P-51D Ferocious Frankie A pair of Gnats And finally the lady I think we all came to see. The last time I will hear and feel that wonderful Vulcan sound. More photos of XH558 and her friends can be found here . The programme says that the Yorkshire Airshow will be back next year, this time run over two days, 2-3 July 2016. Hope they sort out the car parking by then!

I'll be up for this. Must be able to find something on eBay.

As you may have guessed, based on the date of my last post, this build isn't going to happen. Apologies. I started, but don't know why it really sapped my modelling mojo. Came close to binning it a couple of times, but for now it sitting on the shelf of doom. Basically stepped away from the bench for a couple of months. Mojo slowly returning thanks to a nice easy, uncomplicated build of Hobby Boss Easy Assembly kit of a Wildcat. Hope to have better luck with the GBs coming up.

I would be up for the challenge. No idea with what yet.

Nieuport 17 1/32 Academy N,1895 of Lieutenant Charles Nugesser, Escadrille N.65.

After a week on tying myself in knots with the rigging, and gluing myself to the model at one point I am calling this finished. Rigged using EZ Line. As this is my first rigged biplane, i learnt alot and enjoyed it. Hopefully will put the lesson learnt to uses building Academys 1/32 Camel. In the end I went with fitting a Lewis,Gun, because I think it makes the finished model look more interesting. Replaced the kit gin with a GasPatch Lewis Gun, a big improvement.

My entry is the Whirlykits model of the Short S.B.5 swept wing research aircraft. The plane flew with different degrees of wing sweep and high / low tails. The kit represents the plane in its final configuration with a 65degree wing sweep and a low tail. The kit a mixture of vac-form parts, (fuselage, wings and tail), with resin and white metal details.

After a slight hiccup when I put my back out picking weeds out of the lawn, don't think I will ever win that battle, got some progress to report Paint and decals applied applied. Used humbrols silver. I struggle with the decals, they are thick it didn't sit down well even when bathed in softening solutions, just seem to turn very brittle. Finished with a flat vanish. Wheels, propeller, struts and rudder painted. Holes drilled for the rigging, and top wing added. Plan is to use ezline (thick) for the rigging and ezline (thin) for the control cables.

The new seat is nice. The instructions called for "Desert Yellow" for the inside, so I used Humbrol Desert Yellow. Although now I have the joined the fuselarge, you don't see much of the inside bar the seat.

Not a big update, but have splashed some paint on the seat and finished the interior

Finally got around to updating this thread. First up the usual ' whats in the box?' photos The fuselage had faint markings representing framing and bracing wires, decided to use some plasticard to improve the look. The photo below shows a before and after pitcure. The kit supplied seat was also a bit non-discript, so decided to replace it with a Mastercasters resin seat. (Magnum ice cream sticks come in useful, good excuse to keep eating them.)

My entry for this group build is Academy's 1/32 Nieuport 17. Bought a couple of years ago as a cheap kit to practice on before building a couple of WNW kits. kit Whilst doing a bit of research on line came across the following website, http://albindenis.free.fr/Site_escadrille/escadrille065.htm, which made interesting reading with the help of google Translate. Some nice photos. I am going to complete in the markings N,1895 of Lieutenant Charles Nugesser, Escadrille N.65. Came across a couple of sites that suggested he used N.1895 on a number of planes he flew. Photo show planes with the tri-colour identification stripes on the top wing only, both wings. Also some debate as to whether they had a Lewis gun mounted on the top wing, a couple of photos show a mount but no gun. Think I am just going to go with the kit decals, but currently undecided about the Lewis gun. (Don't think the kits gun is very good)

"Shark mouth over China" Lt.Col. William N Reed. 7th FS, 3rd FG, Chinese Air Force, Liangshan. August 1944 P-40N. 1/48 Eduard.

Count me in.

Thanks. Having failed to finish my last two GBs I am determined to finish this one. Bit more progress to report, Started with the decals, beginning to look the part.

Haven't posted for a while but progress has continue, although at a snails pace. Got some paint on it now, and it looks a lot better. Tried to put some warn areas on it by spraying the OD over some aluminium, with micro mask dotted on to represent the warn areas. The result wasn't quite as subtle as I was aiming for, think I might have left the mask on for to long as when I tried to remove it, more of the OD came up that I was hoping.

Unfortunately I had already glued the top and bottom of the wings together, plus the gap was that big I not sure it would have help. Gap was filled using a mixture of scrap bits of plastic card and plastic putty. This was followed by a quick trip to the paint booth for some primer. A big improvement, Just need to spend a bit of time tidy up and re scribe a few panel lines that got obliterated.

Update of the last couple of weekends work. Resin cockpit insert added and painted. This next photos shows were things started going wrong. Somehow I ended up with representations of the grand canyon at the wing join. Look closely you will also notice that I forgot to add the instrument panel when I closed everything up, think I was too focused on getting the resin floor to fit correctly. Finally I managed to break off a couple of the gun barrels. Got the day off, so once I have watched the Patriots - Colts game I am going to try to fill the gaps. Just waiting for a call from Ready Mix!.

There is a can of worms. Not decided yet, but have the life color olive drab set. I thinking of trying to achieve a faded worn look.