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Well since I've got an SR-71 Build going on in the Main Gallery, I might as well throw my ushanka in the ring and do the Blackbird's arch nemesis the Mikoyan-Gurevich Mig-25PD from ICM. And this will definitely be done in Ukrainian livery. Let's see what's we gots.... The Ukrainian decals will come from my stash. ,but I'll use the stenciling and whatnot from the kit set. All I'm waiting on right now is my correct colour paint and some P/E and I should have that by early next week.

I am not much of a photographer and this one was particularly difficult for me to get good images of. I think I managed to capture a few good enough pics for here. The figure is from the old ICM set 48082 'German Luftwaffe Pilots and Ground Personnel (1939-1945)' - although mine is the Revell re-box. ICM really do make wonderful figures and their 1/48 sets are, in my opinion, absolutely exquisite. This one was painted as a warm-up to another 1/48 project I have on the go but I think by the time I'm ready to paint those figures I'll have become rusty once more and will need to warm up all over again! The figure is painted mostly with Citadel acryics with a a little Vallejo thrown in and I had a lot of fun playing with light and shade on this one - hence the extra difficulty I had photographing it.

The ICM 1/48 Ju88 family are certainly an improvement over the Dragon family of Ju88's. However the ICM kit suffers from a couple of flaws, the cockpit interior bears no resemblance to the actual machine - flat cockpit floor????? This unfortunately results in the seats being too tall!! The other main flaw being the radiators which lacks detail. The cockpit can be resolved by using Aim's resin substitute and either resin seats or some chopping of the kit's seats to get them to fit. The radiators again can be replaced with Quickboost's resin items, or if you have any spare Dragon radiators to use, as these are more accurate than the ICM ones. Now being awkward I had a spare Aires resin set for Dragon's Ju88 cockpit, so decided to see if it would fit ICM's Ju88P-1 which I had just purchased. A fair bit of cutting and sanding later the result was :- This certainly improved the cockpit of ICM's Ju88, being an idiot I failed to take pics. of the completed item!!!!. Other items used to complete this kit were :- Brassin wheels Schatton Modelbau Cannon Barrel (brass) Quickboost resin exhausts for the Dragon kit Dragon radiators Eduard Ju88 Exterior photo etch. Another inaccuracy with the kit were the wing actuators being far too small, replaced with plasticard items. The tail wheel was modified to take the Quickboost replacement. I could find no reference to the set up for the gunner's position at the rear of the gun fairing so it was left bare but fortunately nothing is visible through the transparency. Finish was using AK Real Colours, RLM70/71/65, I used the decal sheet supplied with the kit these were excellent and didn't need any decal softener! I tried to find different markings but despite a trawl through references and the internet was unable to find any pics other than of GH. This machine was a Ju88P-1 of 3rd Staffel, Anti Tank Operational Trials Unit, Poltava, Southern Russia, Spring 1943. Another desperate attempt to stem the flood of Russian tanks, to add to the Ju87G and Hs129 in my collection. Cheers Andy

After the 1/32nd kits (link), ICM is reported working on 1/35th Bell AH-1G Cobra kits. Source: AlexGRD V.P.

Another of Bristol's twin engined beauties to add to the collection. Picked this one up soon after it was released, and it did not befall the fate of many of my purchases and end up in the ever growing stash/loft insulation. I attempted to reduce the size of the engine cowling by running a strip of 20 thou card round the inner edge and blending in. Typically, soon after, resin replacements were available, but that's a few quid saved. I did add the Eduard "space" set to the cockpit to improve the detail a bit. Lots can be seen through the very clear transparencies. Having said that, the details added to the radio compartment are completely invisible, so may be I should have saved these for some other use. Paints were my usual go to Humbrol 29 for the earth and Coulourcoats dark green and sky. The green was sprayed on freehand (well following a pencil line I had drawn on) to get the camouflage pattern. Decals were from the box. A very enjoyable build. Tim

I have a project that's nearing completion, at least it will be once I get my mojo back. It started out as an ICM OV-10A Bronco in 1/48 scale, and I've done some conversion work using scratch building, 3D printing and vacuform. Here is the model as of tonight: (note: if you don't see the image it's because your browser is blocking it. It works on Firefox.) The build was coming along nicely until I hit some bumps in the road. The first bump is that the propeller blades are set at the wrong angle - they should be in flat pitch (blade angle = 0). No manufacturer of OV-10 kits has ever got this right, so it's hard to fault ICM for this. If I squint I can pretend they're at flat pitch. The other road block was the decals. I really should sand them off and re-do them, but I don't have enough mojo left for that. From a distance they look fair. The most arduous part was building the kit without the sponsons. This required sanding and filling the recesses for the sponsons, then scribing over them. 3D printed parts are: jet engine pod, ILS antennas, 230 gallon external tank, main landing gear, winch operator's seat, and a mold for vacuforming a clear cargo bay door. To do: install winch operator's station, finish and install cargo door, finish decals -- Dave

I finished this one a month or so ago but only got around to the glamour pics today. The ICM kit isn't the best Spitfire Mk.VIII kit by a long shot, but I still quite like it and it builds up well enough once its idiosyncrasies are known and managed. Here's the WIP. TL;DR Built mostly out of the box but some angst over the markings and paint scheme, plus scratch built the bomb carriers and a photo which is possibly/probably of the subject aircraft taking off on what would turn out to be its last sortie. Lt. Norman Cullen was killed in this aircraft on 10 July 1945. He was last seen pulling out from his bombing run on enemy targets in the vicinity of Tawao, Northern Borneo, it's assumed he was hit by ground fire. This was the final offensive sortie RAAF 452 Squadron undertook in the war. Cheers.

Good evening folks, today I want to present my latest finished kit. It's the fantastic ICM x Revell 1:48th scale kit of the Soviet Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-25 RBT Foxbat-B reconnaissance plane. I'll keep this one short - I had an absolute blast during the build. At the first glance it looks rather complicated although the box doesn't contain that many parts but as ICM has a few different MiG-25's on offer, the modular construction of the fuselage makes sense but as mentioned it looks strange at first because it isn't the usual top and bottom half. But the whole thing goes together nicely and because the kit is cleverly engineered, the construction leads to fewer seams and edges which need cleaning and sanding. The only thing that was a bit problematic was the gear. At least on my kit it was a bit wobbly and only became stable after the Loctite super glue dried. Also on a lot of photos the MiG-25 RBT seems to be slanted a bit to the back, which isn't the case here, the main gear struts would need to be shortened for that. The rest is absolutely fine in my opinion. That said - I'm not counting rivets Apart from adding a lot and I really mean a lot of weight into the nose and some blackout curtains onto the canopy made from wax paper, the build was strictly OOB, painted with mostly Tamiya and Vallejo paints and weathered with AMMO panel line washes, oil paints and micro chipping done with other Vallejo paints. It was also the first time I used chipping fluid. In the end everything was sealed with semi gloss Tamiya varnish as usual. P.S. this thing is large! Hope you like it Till next time!

Hi everyone! Today I want to present you my new build of a new model from ICM. This kit went on sale about a month ago and I decided to make it immediately. Model is very nice , especially considering it`s price, although it have some drawbacks ofcourse. Realy weak point are decals, it was difficult to give them a decent look. As usial - some parts in cockpit and engine were added and modified, rivets are made, and some exterior parts are added too. Machine guns - Vector resin parts. Some photos of build proces are incuded. The kit is painted as a plane from 3/Aufklärungsgruppe Ob.d.L, Ukraine, August 1941.