Search the Community

The Royal Welsh Fusiliers 18 Airfix 01745 figures for the centre companies with 4 ESCI 215 figures for the grenadiers and light companies

My entry will be ESCI's 1/12 F-104 Cockpit. It has been sitting in the stash for a while, this GB seems the perfect opportunity to build it. Won't be starting until after Telford.

Specifically the aftermarket sheets ESCI used to produce in the 70s. 1/72 & 1/48 sheets for various aircraft. I've never been able to get these to work well...particularl. They REALLY seem to hate solvents or setting solutions if any kind. Which they really kind of need because they're so thick and inflexible. Has anyone ever found workable solutions for these decals? I'm wondering if heat is the only thing that would kind of make them conform...

Folks, I realise this has probably been asked before, but I can't easily find an answer. I'm building the Italeri/Esci Bishop and want to do the Tunisian or Italian scheme. What green should I use from Humbrol, Revell or Model Color, these being the only ranges readily available to me? Thanks.

Hello fellow modelers, I am looking for 1/72 decals from the Argentine Air Force for the F-27 friendship. I have heard about "Southern Eagles Decals". Any experience with these decals, or still some in the stash? Any response is welcome. Regards, Orion.

Hi folk's this will be the third Phantom I've attempted to build on BM the last two ended in disaster and my aircraft mojo has been missing for a few week's it doesn't bode well but here goes!VX-4 is the Navy test and evaluation squadron and received the Phantom in 1960 and used various mark's for thirty year's,many systems were tested during this time including pre service trials of the Sparrow,Sidewinder and Pheonix missile's,Esci's kit is over thirty years old and has it's shortcoming's but should build well and all being well will look good in it's all black scheme.Kit part's and cockpit started.

Took a l-o-n-g time to get finished, but finally completed the Esci Ferrari 'Berlinetta' last week. Definitely not my best work and half of the reason for that is my own lack of skills, but the other 50% is down to the quality (or lack of) in the kit. That said, if you really want a 1:24 SWB in your cabinet, and I did, then other than finding a rare Italeri or Ultra-rare Gunze kit, then this is pretty much your only choice. OK enough talking here's some photos: Please feel free to make any criticism, comment or ask any questions. Thanks for taking the time to look. AFN Ian.

Hi all, Having rested a day or two from my previous endeavors, I have decided to begin another project, hopefully a smidge easier, and pray God a little easier! I have decided to tackle the 1/72 scale F-100C quandary. I have read that some of the older kits are quite accurate, but lack modern detail. I have been told that the Trumpeter offering of the F-100C has detail, but is not accurate. Perhaps we can combine them for a better outcome. We shall see: My candidate materials for this effort are shown below: Model-wise, we have the Esci F-100D Thunderbirds marking kit (I have three in the stash, so there was really no other older kit choice for me), and the Trumpeter F-100C. Other potentially useful pieces are the Obscureco F-100C conversion kit, and the Aires F-100 wheel set and the F-100D cockpit set. (The latter is not really needed for the entire cockpit, as the Trumpeter's offer isn't bad, but the Aires set has one critically needed iitem -- secret for now.) In addition, "The F-100 Super Sabre In Detail & Scale" Part 1 by Bert Kinzey, features drawings direct from North American Rockwell, with a right-side view added by Mr Ed Moore. These drawing are accurate enough for me. This book only contains drawings for the F-100A and C models, with the D-F models covered in D & S Vol 33. The latter also has drawings for the A and C models, but fewer pics of these are in the later book. Now, for the background. There seems to be four major complaints about the Trumpeter kit: The too-shallow and flattened nose shape; the incorrectly shaped vertical stabilizer, the wing and the wrong ejection seat. These is also a complaint about the wheels being too large, which is easily corrected by sanding down the kit wheels, or easier yet, the Aires resin set. There is one other issue, the fact that the wings are too shallow, which leads to the wheel wells also being too shallow, I will ignore this problem, because my models will not get picked for examination, after they are complete. I also have read that the afterburner can (the original style, not the F-102 type) is too short front to back. The one in the kit measures pretty close to the drawings, so I will also ignore that concern. Now to begin sorting the rest, we have a comparison of the Esci F-100D wing to the drawings: A dead fit, except for the tiny area at the tips. Kudos to the older kit! By cutting back to the C-type wing outline, and filling the flap lines, and re-scribing a few lines here and there, you could have pretty much a nice C wing. You would not, however, have the open leading edge slats, de riguer for any Hun on the ground, whose crew hadn't taped up the slats. You can, however, chop up the wings and do your own slats, which I started on one of my stashed Esci kits. Next the Obscureco solution to the wing problem: It solves the problem, but the shape is a little off -- at least compared to these drawings -- but, they are also short, just under 3/8" short in real life. Now the Trumpeter offering: Except for being a bit wide, chord-wise, it's pretty much bang on. It is interesting to note that all of these possibilities have differing views on where the aileron and flap lines should be, They don't agree with the drawings, nor with each other. If this is a problem for you -- have fun. Next, we look at the Trumpeter vertical stabilizer: Here we can see that the shape is too tall, and not seen here, the chord is too broad, at the "kink". The model is not fully aligned with the drawing in this photo, to show the former. Next, the Obscureco tail: Pretty much an exact fit. And, for the final determining factor: The Trumpeter tail has too many segments in the area under the ECM pod down toward the fuse. This was pointed out in someone else's blog, but I couldn't find it again to give credit. My apologies. There is however, one bit of fairly good news concerning the Trumpeter F-100C tail -- It wouldn't take much carving (but a lot of scribing) to turn it into the earlier X and A style short tails: For me at least, the above information tells me that I'm going to build the Trumpeter F-100C, but use the Obscureco tail. Also, to be fair to Oscureco, my example was one of their very earliest copies, and they may be more accurate today, which might sway someone else's choice. Well, that's it to start with, as my brain is burnt out and it's almost time for the Super Bowl -- Yeah Falcons! When next we meet, we'll look into the nose issues, and my solution. Later, Ed .

OK a bit late but am ready to start. I will be building the old but good Esci F-16A and B. They have been in my stash since they were new in the local model shop. I am looking at something simple so one will be in Norwegian colours and the other in Dutch. Modeldecal do decals for both of them. Robert

HI all - I finally managed to take some proper RFI pics of this build. For the build thread - this will explain all http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981173-north-american-fj-3-fury-148th-esci-with-added-elbow-grease/ But here she is on the catwalk, looking shiny. All comments welcome, as ever. I have to say that one of these in FAA colours with Suez stripes would look amazingly cool as a WHIF - but after this build - one is enough!

Placemarker for now.....All the bits are to hand, will add photos shortly.

Since my Mosquito build has temporarily stalled, I thought that I would give something a little more straightforward a go. This is a 1/72 Airfix new tool Hawker Hurricane Mk 1 made up as YB-J "Flying Popeye" of 17 Sqn, RAF Debden, 1940. Generic Decals were Airfix (the large fuselage roundels being from Nicolson's GN-A from the VC Icons boxing) whilst YB-J, etc were from the old Esci set, the whole brush painted in Humbrol acrylics.

Been looking forward to this GB and changed my mind several times about what to build. Also have to ignore the many half-finished kits littering the 'man cave' several of which were supposed to be in previous GBs! So have decided to go for the 1/48th ESCI #4020 MiG-27 'Flogger D' which was issued in 1980 (this was re-released by Italeri in 2008). I purchased this kit on e-Bay five years ago for £7.99 in total. At first touch the plastic feels hard and maybe brittle, but detailing seems to be quite crisp and far better than the awful ESCI silver plastic of a few years earlier. Cockpit and external detailing is sparse however I do have the option of a couple of Eduard sets via the 'Big H'. The instructions are pretty sparse and also the markings and decals. The aircraft is shown as operated by the V-VS 16th Army in East Germany in 1978. I have checked several references and this continued into the 80's which I think makes this eligible for the theme of this GB. The decals are ok for their time but not sure I trust something up to 35 years old so again have looked for a replacement set but seems to be little out there. I have never made a Russian aircraft before so this is new ground for me. I do love researching and learning and fortunately I do have some excellent modern reference material Should be fun! Michael

Hi everyone HNY from a very warm (27deg) & sunny Middle Zealand. So this project is a sort of 'getting back to basics' build. Initially I started it back in April'ish last year, then after just two sessions, boxed it all up and found something else that was 'newer' and 'shinier'. I dug it back out just before Christmas but have only been able to grab 30mins here and there whilst 'Daddies little Stormtroopers' have been home on the SEVEN WEEK summer hols - I work from home, so guess who was on 'entertainment duties'. OK, 'nuff talk, this is the 1981 (?) Esci kit, released a couple of times by Italeri, this particular boxing is the one with the HUGE AdA decal sheet and the updated weapons sprue. Massive amount of PSR needed to get the wing-roots flush with the fuselage and various other filling chores. I built this purely for the fun of it, no detailing of any sort, even left the seat out (for now) just to have it sitting on the shelf alongside my Marineflieger TF-104... Kit - Italeri (nee Esci) 1:48 Paint - All Xtracolour enamels. Decals - Microscale 48-128 & 298. Extras - A LOT of filler & swearing. AMD Mirage IIIO 3 Squadron RAAF Butterworth, Malaysia Early 1980's Thanks for taking the time to look and/or comment, as ever all criticism, comments or questions are welcome. AFN Ian.

These pieces are not identified specifically, but a glance through the Osprey Elite Book (No. 16) 'NATO Armies Today' makes it clear that this was the source from which the figures were designed. The figures would appear to be as follows: British (illustrated in Elite No. 14 and No. 1) British infantry, one with rifle under arm, the second firing in a standing pose. The last two are British Parachute Regiment. One is running, holding his helmet and with rifle at the hip. The fourth man wears a 1974 flak jacket and is kneeling. French French Infantryman (with distinctive 5.56mm FAMAS assault rifle), a sniper armed with an FRF-1 rifle being held across the body, and a soldier armed with a MAT 49 sub machine gun under his left arm. The last two may be Foreign Legion, and the last figure is more suitable for the period up to the 1970s, earlier than the rest. France was not part of the NATO military command by this era they are not technically NATO troops at all

The build is available to view in Work in Progress if anyone's interested, Esci get something of a bad reputation due to accuracy issues but aside from the decals( which were pretty atrotious) it went together nicely and I'm happy with how it turned out. There is a far better Modelsvit kit on the market which I may be doing at some point in the future. Sprayed with Humbrol 11 Silver and painted with tamiya acrylics, panel line wash done with Humbrol black enamel wash and metals weathered with humbrol washes and acrylics. Hope you like it, I'm certainly pleased with the result. Next build will probably be another 1/72 bomber. -Flash

So with my Vietnam GB Phantom finished I've waded into my next project. Recently I've been getting into Soviet aviation and combined it with my interest in Cold War Bombers with this Tu22, which I purchased on here about a month ago. I'm quite interested in the aircraft, which has got a futuristic, unusual look to it quite in contrast to earlier designs and so have decided to go ahead with it. I will be building it in the Soviet metallic finish (as opposed to the desert camo Libyan/Iraqi schemes which are in the Revell kit of the aircraft). Here's the kit and what I've done so far: Not sure why the word Bomber is in inverted commas: Unboxing: Decals a bit minimalist: So I made a start by assembling the wings and the tailfins: Required a fair bit of cleaning up where the mould attachments were on the leading edges but with clippers and a file you can hardly notice tailfins were a lot neater and the wings are nicely detailed- the sticking-out bits (to use the technical term) make it look a bit different to the usual more empty wings that you see. Lots of clamps used and some tamiya tape applied to the wing fuel tanks (I think they are) to keep them together while they're drying. Overall it's come together quite neatly though. I also assembled the cockpit which I will be painting in the Soviet cockpit green, and then primed it: The dashboards- not massively detailed but then again it's quite literally physically impossible to see when the aircraft is closed up as far as I can tell anyway (certainly in the case of the rear one): These will be black and I'll use some drybrushing and so on to bring out the dials, should look ok. I went out to buy some green paint for the cockpit today after doing this- it's not exactly a common color to have in your inventory. Now, back to it! -Flash (P.S. General 'The Legend' Melchett, famous bomber maestro, is as many of you know a great fan and expert of the Tu22 (why I don't know, it's a right ugly aircraft- JOKING!) so hopefully he'll be having a look at some point and if that doesn't put me under pressure I don't know what will)

Hello all, I came across an old Esci decal No.57(Whitley/Short Stirling). One of the schemes was for a 15th Squadron Stirling Mk I(J-LS). This aircraft showed a court jester with bombing mission markings. The aircraft codes are painted in white and I was wondering if they were correct or should they have been mid gray. Also, are there any pics in the internet of this aircraft? I googled but did was not lucky. My plan is to use them on an Airfix Stirling a friend gave me as a gift. It is already half built but should be good as a SOB. Yes, I am going "old school" all the way. Thanks for any help.

Here is my latest build - the little 1/72 ESCI AV-8A Matador. Obviously this kit has now been superceded by the new Airfix offering, but I picked this up at the October Yeovilton show for very little money and decided to go straight in and build it. In the box it looks lovely, with very fine engraved lines on old fashioned silver-grey styrene. Putting it together is another matter however, and a fair bit of putty was needed due to the very poor fit of the major components. However, once it's together, the shape looks fine. The decals were really tricky with some silvering, and the roundels on the fuselage didn't want to go around the intake contour despite copious amounts of microsol. In the end I had to use a tiny bit of glue to the top and bottom to get them to stay. I built this OOB apart from adding some little seat belts out of paper and used Humbrol and Xtracolour enamels, with pastel weathering and staining.

Hi All, Just coming back to modelling after a 10 year break and I'm posting a few of the things I had just finished before my absence from the fold. This is a conversion I did of the old ESCI 1/12 scale F-16A cockpit to F-16AM standard. My day job is a simulation software engineer and at the time I was working on a sim of this aircraft for the Dutch and Norwegian AF. So I was lucky enough to have access to the appropriate TOs which hopefully means it's accurate! Although I'm sure some eagle-eyed Viper experts will spot something! As those who know F-16s will be aware, the F-16AM cockpit is very different from the old F-16A so I started by removing all the panels in the wrong place (most of them). From these I salvaged as many knobs and switches as possible. Then I assembled these in the correct place or scratch built from plasticard/rod any missing parts. The side stick I adapted from the kit version, but the throttle I whittled from a block of plastic as the shape is completely different. The AcesII seat is different too, primarly the headbox which has flip-out arms and the restraints which have some sort of immersion detection system attached. Oh and the HUD lens is made from a blister from a sheet of tablets There are excellent builds of the original version here on Britmodeller for those who want to compare and contrast. http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234930073-esciitaleri-112th-f-16-cockpit/ http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234957959-112-esci-f-16-cockpit/ Chris

The second of my three completed 1/48th F-4 Phantom IIs is this ancient ESCI F-4J, this was the Item 4067 boxing 'Bicentennial Phantom' which was released in 1982. I have made several of these kits and I wanted to try out more weathering. The original kit does not include weapons or alternative decals so I had to source these elsewhere. This was supposed to be a quick build but it still took a while! The markings are mainly from Superscale 48-857 'F-4J Phantom, VF74 USS America, 1972' with stencils and walkways taken from an old Hasegawa kit in the stash. The Superscale decals went on well for an old sheet but I had to apply a lot of Decalfix to stop the large red flashes from breaking (one did break). The old Hasegawa decals were very hard work, they took a lot of soaking to release from the sheet. The paint scheme is a standard USN light gull grey over white with 'natural metal' leading edges of wings, stabilators and fin. All colours were Humbrol enamels and Metal Cote for the exhaust areas. Weathering was a home made wash of black paint mixed with white spirit, this was applied to the panel lines with a fine brush and capillary action did the rest for me The weapons load consists of 4 x AIM-7E Sparrows and 4 x AIM-9B Sidewinders, these were sourced from the spares box (they might be Revell/Monogram). The ejection seats are from a Hasegawa Phantom FG.1 and these help to bulk out the cockpit. One of this kits problem areas is the poor fit of the cockpit canopies and I have not done a good job here, it would have been better to have had them open but as the cockpit detail relies on transfers I closed them - poor decision! Oh yes, I also masked and sprayed the cockpit transparencies separate to the aircraft and used the wrong shade of grey! This view of the top shows the panel lines in better detail: The model was finished with a final spray of Humbrol enamel matt varnish from a rattlecan, this is the first time I have used spray varnish and I am fairly pleased with the result, the only down side is that it has negated the metal effect of the Humbrol Metal Cote on the jet exhaust area. So there she is. I am pleased with this build, yes there are errors, but given that the original kit cost me something like £8 on eBay and the decals £3, and I have tried some new techniques - the end result is worth it. Critiques and pointers very welcome Michael

OK, first WIP, please be gentle! Quick background – built loads of kits in the early 80's before getting old enough for the pub. When I got my own house I started back with model railway layouts. Then a couple of years ago my wife gave me an airfix spitfire for christmas. And that was me off again. After a couple of 1/72 kits I got a 1/48 Canberra PR9 from modelzone. I had done a couple of 1/48, 1/32 & even 1/24 kits as a youngster, but I enjoyed the 1/48 detail. So, the Canberra needed a Hunter to go with it and then a Lightning. Now I live near Wattisham and the Hunter was a Wittering example, and the Lightning from Binbrook. Both (along with the Canberra) are in late 70s grey / green camo. So I fancied making a Phantom. Should it be FGR2? If its camo then its nots likely to be a Wattisham example. Maybe a 74 sqadron F4J (UK)? But on the cheap – not going to pay £50 for a kit thats out of production on ebay. Got to be sub £20. For me its about the fun of the build, not the extreme detail. Love the builds that do spend a fortune on etch & resin and when my skills get to the point of making use of this level detail I will have a go. So on ebay up comes a deal – not one but two phantom kits in one auction. One Esci, one Monogram, enough parts to complete both, but neither complete & only one set of (US only) decals. Won for less than £20. The kits were slightly started. Wings glued together & a bit of one cockpit started. One is a C/D, one an E/F. But a result on the E/F, the standard rad dome and all of the front wheel bay gear for a standard nose. So time to get started This is the result of 2 mongram cockpit interiors. One fits the Monogram kit (as it should!), the other needed to be modified a bit to go in the Esci kit. As I said I had one set of decals, so I photocopied them, cut them out & stuck them in. Hardly the high detail seen on other builds, but looks ok to me. Positioned in to their respective homes they look OK. The wings were just dry fitted at this point

HI Fellow modellers! Greetings from Uruguay Today I´m introducing to you my ESCI F-100D Super Sabre. This a very old but also very accurate kit. The only things I added were an Airwaves PE and made an intake duct with epoxy to a better effect. No major issues with this kit and the decals were in excellent condition and settled very nice. These planes were painted aluminium so I did no metal variations except on the wings. I hope you like it and every critic and suggestions are welcomed. Sorry for my basic english!!! Regards from Uruguay!!! Ignacio

This is my build straight out of the box of the old Esci kit, which is very easy to build, although it probably has its critics is still a nice model, although the panel lines are quite evident, I used aftermarket decals, anyway hope you like, needed something simple to keep my mojo going