jeaton01

Nice! I am very happy that Airfix has seen fit to do the ground service equipment, and very well, too.

Towing a Gigant with two or three Me-110's? Yeah, not a good plan! Thank you all for the continuing nice comments. Sadly there is no Hengist in my collection, nor do I know of a kit for one. The Hamilcar would be nice to have, but so far as i know there is an expensive resin kit and a poor vacuform. I do have two Russian troop gliders, the Antonov A-7 and the Gribovskii G-11, in the stash. There was one Japanese troop glider that saw use, the Kokusai Ku-7, but I've never seen a kit of that either. Since it was never in civilian use I doubt we can get Moa to scratchbuild it. But at any rate, I am off in entirely different world right now, building an F-15. I did this Italeri He-111Z about the same time as the Me-321, and I've thought of doing a Stirling for the Horsa.

Impressive, and undoubtedly the only 1/48 210 on the block.

Very nice!

Some guy with a black glove is stealing your airplane in that last picture!!! It's a beauty, hope you can get it back.

Thanks, everyone. I appreciate the comments. Doing up collections seems to keep up my motivation and interest. Now I just need more time and energy!

Just finished the Horsa from Italeri. Fit was pretty good on the major parts but other parts like the landing gear had no locating marks so it was off to the photos, and Italeri would have you put the aileron mass balances on backwards. RC 56 glue for the windows worked well. Paint is Tamiya dark earth and dark green, Model Master for the flat black and the white. The decals from 3 kits were a complete mess so some are from spares and others are from a laser printer. The nose wheel was lengthened with brass tubing and music wire. With the Airfix C-47 (as a C-53), Italeri 1/72 CG-4A, and Airlines/Frog Hotspur Horsa, CG-4A, and Italeri Me 321 Gigant, with an Academy Dodge ambulance for scale:

Still looks pretty good, Gary. Doubt I have anything that old that would photograph that well. But I do have the OEZ kit in the stash!

Thanks!

The toe out is better for engine out performance. I measured the alignment of the engines in the photo and I see 2 1/2 degrees toe out on each side. Could be straight, and certainly not as extreme as on the Sunderland/Sandringham. I would like to have a photo from higher above, There is some distortion in the photo because the focal point is too close and it is not exactly above the centerline of the airplane..

Sweet!

That's a really nice model!

Well done. I just built the Tamiya F-84G and for the Tamiya decals I used water that was about 140 degrees. They seemed to like that.

Thanks, everyone. Your kind comments are much appreciated.

This Tamiya F-84 is a great kit, highly recommended. I had a Verlinden and a CMK resin set and I used one resin part and two PE parts from them, they just weren't that much of an improvement, and next time I do one of these I won't use anything but the Eduard seat belts, and maybe the instrument panel. The PE parts from the CMK set were the instrument panel and the rear view mirror, and the resin part is the detail that fits inside the back of the canopy. Alclad ALC 101 was used for the base color, a few panels were done in Alclad Dark Aluminum, 107, I think. Tamiya acrylics and Model Master enamels were used for the markings and other painted parts. The markings are for the airplane flown by Lt. Jacob Kratt, who shot down two MiG 15's and a Yak piston engine fighter. Not your usual F-84G record in the Korean war as they were tasked with ground attack most of the time, though they were used to escort B-29's early in the war. Jacob Kratt was in the 56th Fighter Group in WW II, and flew the U-2 for the CIA. He was born in 1925 and died in April 2019, a long and eventful life. I had a Cutting Edge decal set and used a few decals from it but it was primarily used a reference for the markings which were mostly painted, except for the stars and bars. A few years ago (August 2008, does time fly or what!) I built an F-86E in Robbie Risner's markings and it's a natural companion to this F-84G so you'll have to look at a few pictures of them together. Robbie Risner also had a long an eventful life, with a long period spent in the Hanoi Hilton, I built the F-86E in 2008. Here's the build log: http://yolo.net/~jeaton/mymodels/f86/1f86e/1f86e.htm

Well done, well photographed. I like the tug, too.

I finished the Airfix 1/72 bomber support set a while back, here it is with the Airfix C-47 (modeled as a C-53 glider tug), a Hasegawa GMC dump truck, and an Academy 6X6.

Masterful!

Looks like an intense build. Well done!

Looks like a well made 1/32 scale model, congrats!

Nice!

Very nice! I especially like the top colors. I think I need to find a buyer for my Classic Airframes kit.

John, thank you kindly for going to the trouble of finding that information! And thanks to all for the comments, much appreciated. I took a few pictures of the Betty with its contemporaries; Saburo Sakai's A6M2 Zero, and a B-26 from the Japanese attack on Midway. Too bad I haven't built Colin Kelley's B-17C so I could include it in a picture.

This is an airplane that participated in the sinking of the Repulse on December 10, 1941. Haruki Iki the pilot, was a Lieutenant commanding the 3rd Chutai of the Kanoya Kokutai, based near Saigon. Doing research for this build I came across an excerpt from a book on the Java Sea campaign, and it looked good so I bought it the book and read it. Rising Sun, Falling Skies, by Jeffrey Cox. It had a very detailed account of the attack on the Repulse and Prince of Wales. There was not much good news on the Allied side during that phase of the Pacific War! It might have been better if we had been as successful acquiring the Long Lance torpedo as we were later on finding the Zero in the Aleutians. Although Iki's airplane is one of the subjects of the decals in the Tamiya 1/48 kit, the number in that set is K-310, and apparently that has been found to be in error, the correct number being K-331. I painted all the markings and made a stencil for the numbers using a vinyl cutter. I did some weathering on this one, some oils and a silver Prismacolor pencil, along with rubbed in aluminum powder in places. The whole thing got rubbed down with a Q-tip followed by damp paper towels, all in the direction of airflow That subdued the white some because the rubbings from the dark green and red brown carried across them. I like that. There are no clear coats on this model, as there are no decals. I had on hand some of the Uschi thread and I used the super fine on the antenna above the cockpit. It's probably just about scale thickness, and therefore its also almost invisible. I can only see it against the blue background in the photos, and I don't think anyone will be able to see it in the display case. I think I will build a stand or a trolley for the torpedo, as no one will see it tucked up in the bomb bay. Anyone know what that should look like? Needs a Kurogane and some figures, too, I think. Shudder, figures do not come easy in my workshop. I noticed in one of the pictures that a mask was left on the tail gunner's transparency. Well, missing one of about 100 isn't too bad I guess. Eduard masks were used, along with others made at home to cover the windows on the inside while painting the interior of the fuselage. The eyebrow windows on the cockpit were a poor fit so I replaced those and one or two others but for the most part they were very good.

A great idea well carried out. Never heard of that raid, will have to enlighten my self.