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Recently I've been hacking away at Airfix's new Tempest. It being a fairly agricultural attempt at a relatively simple, common kit, all OOB, I've so far spared you all the WiP; but I've accumulated enough questions that I felt it was finally worth starting one. So here it is you poor sods, with my sincerest apologies! So far it's been mostly plane sailing, this being a really well designed and great fitting kit. The radiator inner surface is part of the lower wing, and it locks nicely over the radiator assembly. The undercarriage bay walls are a single piece that provides a lot of strength to the wing and with little care, the wingroots came together perfectly in a tight, filler free join. The only real issue has been the trailing edges, which are very thick and needed a lot of scraping to bring to a reasonable edge. Aside from a drop of filler under the spinner, the seams have all been tight enough to just require a little sanding and a quick brush of Tamiya extra thin to 'sprue goo' the resulting dust. Just a little modification of the vertical locating pins between the two sides was needed to prevent an offset ledge along the cowl. The cockpit floor is part of the upper wing assembly. Aside from eduard PE belts, the cockpit was bosched together in my usual lazy shambolic and ineffective style, and having not taken pictures, I can't honestly remember how it went; I guess we'll see when it gets unmasked. I've gone with the usual 'RLM66ish' (xf63) for black, and @Casey's mix for RAF interior green. The only slightly strange part is the separate upper fuselage around the cockpit, which would've benefitted from being a more sensible shape. A plus of airfix kits is the provision of wheels up parts, which I've repurposed into spray masks. The fit is excellent to the point that I'll probably have to drill a hole in them to get them out again. Its simplicity meant this was a good kit to assemble in part, when away from home, so I used opportunity to try out brush painting the undersides, which I figured might be a useful skill to have. Tamiyas are notoriously poorly suited to brushwork, so this attempt used a mix of about 50% xf83, perhaps 30% x-20a thinners, a good dollop of tamiya acrylic retarder (which was blimming hard to get hold of, I believe it isn't listed by UK tamiya distributors) and a similar squirt of x22 gloss varnish (my current theory is that I might get a smoother, tougher and even straight decallable finish by cutting my matte tamiyas with gloss, thanks to @John Laidlaw for the tip). @Troy Smith I believe suggested water for brushing tamiyas, but I thought using the (deliciously) chalky Cambridge variant that was available to me was probably asking a bit much of chemistry. I should point out that I'd given the model a layer of Mr Surfacer 1500, straight from the can, to help give a surface for the paint to key on. The hard part was leaving enough time to cure between coats since tamiyas become touch dry so fast. 3 hours or so seemed enough if one is able to resist the temptation to keep 'going over' too much. Certainly I think the mix needed more retarder as the coat became tacky after a single stroke, after which it would bobble or lift up with repeated brushing. 3 or 4 coats, brushing in alternating directions yielded this: The result was I think decent for a first effort but certainly room for improvement. The gloss at least, has come through, though the thickness has certainly blunted the detail somewhat. Notice I immediately ruined the colour with overspray from the yellow leading edges, which will need fixing at some point. I've opted to go for a mishmash of schemes, using the included pre- D Day 486 squadron decals, but over a later 'just the under fuselage invasion stripes' scheme, along with all the kit parts that suggested a series 2 aircraft rather than the series 1 that the instructions portray. Of course the serial number won't be historically accurate, but it's not the kind of thing I lose sleep over if it looks okay. A lot of jiggey pokery with masking, some tactical use of a 72nd scale rule that @Troy Smith was kind enough to refer me to, and hopefully it won't be too horrific when the tape comes off. Turns out I've not built anything in DFS yet, and I hear Tamiya's Ocean Grey is too cold and their Dark Green too warm, but I figured I'd press on with the lazy option. Back home by this point, here's the OG cut with some x22, sprayed over the masked off leading edges and invasion stripes. I'm broadly happy with this new (for me) approach of glossing the xf paints, but the proof will be in the decalling. After my rather unsuccessful attempts at freehand with the martlet, I've opted for good old blutack worms this time. Again some gloss thrown into the mix. Side note, XF81 does look a little 'brownish' to me. Bit of patching up needed here and there, and we're caught up with my current progress. Now this is one of my four on the go builds, all meant to be simple kits that I would just enjoy, get off the bench 'quicky' and not get too bogged down in making 'just right'. It's not working out for me so far! I had planned to do this one as clean and factory fresh as possible (tidiness has not been my forte), but even the sharp clean look benefits greatly from some shading, as I've discovered with much envy, while poring over @mark.au's back catalogue. My attempts at this technique so far have been pretty awful, so I'm at the decision point as to whether to just get this one done as simply as possible with uniform blocks of colour, or to let it slide into the same hole of failed self improvement that my other builds have succumbed to. I've been looking at pictures of 'clean' tempests all day with a view towards the kinds of shade variations and spray shapes that might work, but with little free time and other builds getting bogged down, perhaps it's a good idea to 'play to my level' on this one. I'm having enough issues with techniques use regularly anyway. So there we are, sorry for the wall of text, perhaps starting a WIP early is preferable that this alternative 'lead with an essay to the face' approach! Thanks for looking in if you've managed to make it this far! Cheers, Andy

Afternoon. My second entry for this GB will be the later Pierre Clostermann Eduard 1/48 Tempest - with suitably prominent Lorraine Cross on it for the Forum prefect... Interestingly, I seem to have been a bit over zealous in the past, and have purchased an additional canopy mask set for this model. If anyone needs it please DM me and let me know. Thanks for looking, Icarus

Hi, I have the Eduard 1/48 Tempest Mk. V and HGW's wet transfer decal and stencil set. It has 140(pairs) of these little red lines (to go each side of a fastener, presumably). I can figure out where they go, but apart from my hesitance for loads of stencils anyway, I'm reluctant to plaster them all over my model. I can't seem to find a photo of them on a real aircraft. Can anyone point me to a reference, so that I can at least decide how it would look?

This is a build from a couple of years ago which has been resurrected and cleaned up. When I built this I was quite pleased with it until I was taking the pictures. I was trying to take a picture to compare to the one shot of the real aircraft I could find. I just couldn't get the angle quite right and it dawned on me that I have a model with one wing slightly low! I did take the model around the show circuit and only a very few noticed but it nagged at me and she was swiftly retired to the Loft. However, a friend loved it and started his Mk.II. Forewarned by my problem has done a splendid job including a metal spar to keep things in line (He's and engineer or something!). Anyway, he has asked me to resurrect my errant build to display at Telford alongside his Mk.II so here she is. Actually, it is an absolutely beautiful kit - Special Hobby have come a long way. Other than the wing, the only problems I had was resurrection of lost panel and rivet lines on the nose after cleaning up the joint. Everything is out of the box except for the radio aerial which is nickel wire. So, with a warning to prospective builders........ And this is the picture I was trying to emulate.... Cheers Malcolm

Hello everyone... straight from the D-Day group build i present this. It is a Hawker Mk.V series I Tempest of 3 Squadron June 8th 1944. I modified by adding the extensions to the barrel's as the kit represents a Mk.V Series II Tempest. There is some debate about the 3 Squadron crest on the vertical tail. I know its supposed to be a post war only thing. I have a photo from my research that appears to have the crest painted out. However i believe some aircraft had them. They were either painted over at the time or airbrushed out by censors during the war. I've had a couple of discussions about it and I'm going to leave the crest on as i believe they were there. Please feel free to Question, comment, tell some good stories, or pass on your thoughts. Dennis

A Quote: "The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds, And ‘twixt the green sea and the azured vault Set roaring war: to the dread rattling thunder!" William Shakespeare wrote the "Tempest". I have borrowed quotes from the Tempest which to me at least, fit the idea of a Tempest Roaring in to press home the attack over the Normandy zone. I borrowed the quote idea from @Procopius, who also donated the kit to me. I will be building a Tempest Mk.V from 3 Squadron. Initially the Tempest's were held in reserve. There primary responsibility was still defense of Great Britain from V-1 attacks. But they were allowed to roam and support troops as of June 8th. I will be using the Academy Tempest Mk.V. I will be able to use the Majority of the decals from the kit. Though i will have to change the E to another letter. The Roundels are also incorrect for a D-Day aircraft. I believe the upper wings should still be the Blue/Red roundels. Here are the sprue shots. I have both a canopy mask and a camouflage mask. This will be a 1st for me to use camouflage masks. Though Ive used and made canopy masks before. Questions, comments, tips, or good stories are always welcome. Dennis

EDIT: This build was started in the Made in Britain GB, back in 2016. As usual with me, I didn't manage to finish it in time and it's been on hold till now. I'll try to finish it now. Thanks for looking Jaime ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hi, This is my second entry to this GB and constitutes the second of a two-part series.This one is Academy's 1/72 Tempest Mk V, which I'll build as flown by F/Lt Pierre Clostermann, of 3 Sqn RAF (Free French Air Force), in July 1945 . His aircraft was marked JF-E NV724. The first part of the series is a D-Day Typhoon Mk Ib. Here is an interview with Pierre Clostermann. I'll build the kit using Eduard's zoom set and Quickboost's resin exhausts: IMAG0648 IMAG1654 In April I primed and painted the resin exhausts for the Typhoon and the Tempest. This was done at the same time as I painted the exhausts for my Bf 109 G10, like shown in the next picture: IMAG1808 No additional work has been done. The plastic parts are all still in the sprues. I'll try to build the tubular cockpit structure using styrene rods. I'll use the Typhoon's zoom set cockpit structure as a guide for the rod lengths. Let's see if I can make it. I'll also try to scratch build the flaps to pose them dropped. Thanks for looking. Jaime