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Piper L-4 Cub Special Hobby 1:48 This is the 'European Cubs in Post-War Service' boxing of Special Hobby's 1:48 series of Piper Cubs, reviewed by Mike Here. It is a very finely moulded and detailed kit, that looks every inch a Cub. A few notes & tips on construction: The first thing I did was I glue the side glazings to each fuselage half , rather than risk messing them up later in construction when the interior had been painted. 2 of the options in the kit have reduced rear fuselage glazing that stops aft/level with the trailing edge of the wing, including this one, HB-OUD, Once the fuselage was together I filled and sanded the window frames away and blended the area in. The main wheels are meant to be a butt join to the undercarriage leg assembly. I cut the long legs from the central 'X' part and replaced them with brass wire to give me an axle to attach the wheels to, I was going to attach the wings after painting, but changed my mind as fitting the strut work would have been difficult without damaging the paint, as well as making it all weaker. I strongly advise attaching the wings before even putting any primer on the model. Likewise the tail wheel has a tiny contact area to attach to the tail leg. I drilled an pinned it with an 0.4mm drill for strength. I used the inside/outside masking set M48015 which was a real help. Each panel fitted to perfection and gave a superb result, they really were excellent. Cubs have to be yellow! I used Halfords grey primer, followed by an airbrushed undercoat of Tamiya X-17 Pink, followed by X-7 Lemon yellow with a dash of red mixed in to tone it to a deeper yellow. The red decals on the nose do not have a cut out for the engine cylinders. Before assembly I took a 'brass rubbing' of the front fuselage so that I had a template to guide me in cutting a hole in the decals before application. Note that I cut a much smaller hole in the decal so I could give it a final trim after fitting. It is a nice little kit and we don't get many 1:48 light aircraft. Thanks for looking John

Sabrekits is to release a 1/48th - in fact 1/50th ! - Piper J-3 Cub kit based on the vintage (1979) but modified original 1/50th Heller L-4 kit. Not sure that good broth may be made in an old pot. Source: https://www.facebook.com/Sabrekits.cz/posts/168891478295645 Source: https://www.facebook.com/Sabrekits.cz/posts/180484357136357 3D render from the new part and schemes. Box art Source: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=3905983159413070&id=208070375871052 V.P.

Hi, here's the latest build using the opportunity afforded by furlough(!) Not an easy kit to put together (but I am just an assembler rather than a proper modeller!) with plenty of superglue and filler used. Decals from Authentic decals which were ok but not as good as other aftermarket decals I've used. Hope it's of interest (yes she's a tail sitter btw) oh and the Krystal Klear is still curing in some of the pics 20200502_173917 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173902 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173852 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173720 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173705 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173627 by bryn robinson, on Flickr 20200502_173947 by bryn robinson, on Flickr

Good morning (or whatever) and happy new year all, here I am with another attempt at a Work in Progress... emphasis on progress. No, emphasis on "attempt"! It is, in case you haven't already figured it out, the Bronco 1/35 Piper L-4 Cub (aka Grasshopper). A friend of mine recently purchased an actual (1:1 scale) Piper Cub, and enlisted me to help him truck it to its new home in Maine. You see, in a former life, I went to school to get my aircraft mechanic's license, and had some involvement in "real" airplanes. (He went to school to become a professional pilot, which he is. So my job is to protect the airplane from him 😉 !) Should I proceed, I might include "work in progress" on that one, too- it is a lovely airframe that has been sitting in a hangar for a while, and we (or rather he) got it sans engine and prop. Now, to introduce a bit of schizophrenia, this Cub was built in February 1945 as an L-4J (45-4635), promptly moved to New York, boarded a freighter, and sailed off to adventure in Europe. I'm in the process of decoding the individual aircraft record card, but according to Joe Baugher's website, she was assigned to 9th Air Force, and was damaged in a taxiing accident in Germany in late May. She was sold surplus while still in Germany, then came back to the states and was "civilianized" in 1946. I believe that she's looked like a perfectly typical* civilian J-3 Cub ever since. (We're keeping her that way at present, but if/when the time comes to re-cover, I'm sure we'll be tempted to go back to L-4 configuration.) * One exception to "typical Cub"- the L-4J differed from the H in being equipped with a Beech-Roby variable pitch propeller. Supposedly, these were quickly switched to the usual fixed-pitch wood prop in service, but this one had one fitted in early civilian life, so perhaps retained it in the Army. I have found some photos of L-4Js postwar still wearing the Beech-Roby, so this is something I'm rather curious about. "It's only a model." (Shh!) [Pull the wings, put it in a truck, bring it home. It sounded pretty simple at the time...] So, that's the backstory. What about the model? Well, 2019 was a VERY dry year for me, even by my own standards. I bought some pretty nifty kits, but did hardly anything in terms of actually messing with plastic bits. As for this one, I'd been in a "trainer" group build sometime in the last few years, and was planning to build a 1/48 (or 1/50) L-4 that I'd logged some flight instruction hours in. The Cub is spectacularly ill-served when it comes to plastic models. Heller's L-4 isn't really 1/48, and is a pretty lousy kit. Hobbycraft's J-3 is more 48th-ish, and is perhaps a somewhat better kit, but has its own peculiarities, such as all-clear fuselage. It also doesn't lend itself to being an L-4. So I bought the Bronco kit from a local modelling buddy, eagerly took a look, and was underwhelmed. First of all, I'm REALLY not into 1/35 and the non-flying stuff that it implies (though I admit I have one or two trucks and such just because they're kinda nifty). A quick comparison to Revell's 1/32 Super Cub (now THAT'S a pretty good kit) shows that, yes, size DOES matter- and if you think about it, there's about a 10% difference between the two scales. So, the L-4 languished on the stacks, and I even put a price tag on it at a couple of contests where we had a sell-table. Having gotten sucked into the real Cub project, I took another look at the Bronco kit- and again was, if not frightened off, at least discouraged. But I decided that it was now or never, and with the start of a new year, what better time to make a go of it. So when I got up ridiculously early this morning, I resolved to start off right, by actually doing some work on a model. Having looked at the instructions, I thought I'd start with the cylinders. They're each split into two, with a separate rocker-box cover. And what do I find when I look at the cylinders on the sprue? (sorry about the fuzzy image: ) Yep, a molding ejector pin (?) right on EVERY face that is supposed to mate to its 'better half'. Oh bother. Too early to fire up the Dremel to obliterate those, though I did snip off what the cutters could reach, as a start. Resisting the impulse to once again set the kit aside, I thought, "Right then, I can glue the two crankcase halves together." Reaching for the Tamiya Extra-Thin, I... Hmm, where the heck is it? Not on the bench where it usually is. Not in the traveling tool kit I use for build-nights with the local club. Not on the stairs coming up to "my" upstairs headquarters. Where else could I have left it? Not over there in the "catchall corner"... After going back and forth searching the suspect areas repeatedly, feeling ever more futile and still thinking what else I might have done with it, I finally found it hiding on the steps amongst the (small) clutter. I have now glued the crankcase together! So, does this mean that it is going to be that kind of year? Or does the fact that I kept going and finally achieved ONE immediate objective, despite the obstacles, imply that there's hope? I guess we'll have to wait and see... By the way, what I'm thinking with this build is to show what our Cub might have looked like in Spring 1945, but also (approximately) reflecting the details that she now has or soon will (seats, instrument panel, etc). In other words, kind of a teaser for how this airframe would look as a (future) current Warbird, rather than trying to precisely replicate its 1945 appearance. Both of us being modellers, we'd try to be faithful (no "gloss olive drab"!), but since the intent of this venture is to have a Cub to enjoy, we also wouldn't get so fussy that it got in the way of utility. Wishing all of us, and especially the world at large, a far better new year, bob

Antonov An-12, pics from Graeme H