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Nie pójdziem żywo w trumnę (1/72 IBG RWD-8)


Procopius

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Then out spake brave Horatius,    
  The Captain of the gate:    
“To every man upon this earth    
  Death cometh soon or late.            
And how can man die better    
  Than facing fearful odds    
For the ashes of his fathers    
  And the temples of his gods[?"]

-- Thomas Babington Macaulay, The Lays of Ancient Rome, "Horatius at the Bridge"


"Your son is in a burning house. Nobody can hold you back. You may burn up, but what do you think of that? You are ready to bequeath the rags of your body to any man who will take them. You discover that what you set so much store by is trash. You would sell your hand, if need be, to give a hand to a friend. It is in your act that you exist, not in your body. Your act is yourself, and there is no other you. Your body belongs to you: it is not you. Are you about to strike an enemy? No threat of bodily harm can hold you back. You? It is the death of your enemy that is you. You? It is the rescue of your child that is you. In that moment you exchange yourself against something else; and you have no feeling that you lost by the exchange. Your members? Tools. A tool snaps in your hand: how important is that tool? You exchange yourself against the death of your enemy, the rescue of your child, the recovery of your patient, the perfection of your theorem...Your true significance becomes dazzlingly evident. Your true name is duty, hatred, love, child, theorem. There is no other you than this."
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras


Nie damy miana Polski zgnieść
Nie pójdziem żywo w trumnę.

[We won't have Poland's name defamed,
We won't step alive into a grave.]

--  Maria Konopnicka, "Rota" 

 

 

Earlier this year, which seems about a hundred years ago at this point, I built some Polish Spitfires. As you know, I always try to only build aircraft I'm interested in, flown by people I care about. Weird old H P Lovecraft, whose grave I visited earlier this month in Providence, once wrote that "without interest, there is no art." (He probably capitalized art, because ol' HPL raised pretension to an art form in and of itself.) In any case, in some stupid little way that merely exposes how sad and tawdry my own little life is, the builds were acts of love, a way, however imperfect, to express how I feel about those men and women (and children, too), now mostly long-gone, dead of old age or stolen from us by the war. In any case, I guess some people liked the thread, because I got a PM from @GrzeM , who had seen I was interested in building IBG's RWD-8 kit. As it happens, Grzegorz does some work for Arma Hobby, and he had a hand in the resin correction sets they've produced for IBG's kit. He offered to send me the resin sets for free, which was incredibly graciously of him, and, as if that wasn't more than enough, he even dug up a set of custom-printed decals for a WWII-era RWD-8, "White 8", WWII markings for the type being otherwise impossible to find in decal form. The package turned up at my office in May (which gives you an idea of how behindhand I am these days.)

 

34848052535_db23690acc_k.jpg2017-05-23_12-44-36 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

 

Needless to say, I'm not only deeply touched by his generosity, but also wholly unworthy of it. But I shall do my best.

 

35869574403_081f746fdb_k.jpg20170819_152506 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

The RWD-8 was a small high-wing monoplane, not unlike the Tiger Moth in terms of both looks and pre-war popularity as a civilian aircraft. Most of the civil RWD-8s were impressed into service by the Polish Air Force at the start of the September Campaign and subsequently lost in action. Today none survive, but they were the last Polish aircraft flown in Poland during the fighting in 1939; a handful of RWD-8s flew during the Battle of Kock in October, the last major battle of the German invasion, in support of the last remnants of the Polish Army in the field. Though the planes themselves were unarmed, their pilots carried grenades and flew at low level to lob them out of the aircraft at enemy troop concentrations. The Germans had not yet fully realized that while they could kill Poles, they could never conquer them.

 

I did the usual thing and washed the kit off, paying especial attention to the resin, which I clumsily extricated from its casting blocks. 

 

35843947294_2f0ba29af2_k.jpg20170819_160658 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

This mostly went well, but the entire leading edge of the wing (the kit wing is slightly the wrong shape, and, get this, too thin) is connected to the casting block, and I'm rather inept, so I took a bit out of one side of the inner starboard (I think) leading edge which is very visible in person. I'll either need to sand down the other side or somehow extend the leading edge on the damaged side. 

 

35869567473_ebd8d3e59e_k.jpg20170819_152556 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

The resin cowling isn't exactly a drop-fit (there are no instructions on how it attaches to the kit with it, but let's be real: we all know where the cowling goes), as one needs to remove the kit cowling first. I accomplished this mostly with a Tamiya scribing tool, but this still leaves the raised "lip" that was the rear edge of the cowling attached the fuselage.

 

36554410250_692d7acf2e_k.jpg20170831_210341 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

 

No problem, I'll get out my X-acto knife, and --

 

36779535932_6cf8af8fc4_k.jpgFB_IMG_1504231184664 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

 

Fortunately, I keep isopropyl alcohol around to thin paint, and so I immediately sterilized the wound (after rushing upstairs to take this picture for you all, blood pumping lustily from my finger the whole time) and bandaged it. We think we can save the finger, but if not, I'm left-handed anyway. 

 

Then I finished up on the cowl:

 

36810949411_e0c832ff61_k.jpg20170831_210436 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

And checked the fit of the resin item:

 

36554409490_fd430c98bd_k.jpg20170831_212607 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

Hmmm. This will likely need some filler at some point. 

 

I also pulled out some of the Hataka Orange Line paints for the Polish Air Force. I've heard a lot about Hataka lately, little good, but what other choice did I have for Polish colours? None, really. I was pleasantly surprised, however!

 

36810947711_669312d9be_k.jpg20170831_212401 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

I thinned their Interior Silver (a tricky colour to work with for any paint manufacturer) with Gunze Self-Levelling, and sprayed it right on the cockpit floor and sides. It looks pretty good to me, and came out smoothly. 

 

Anyway, more later. Mrs P is days away from giving birth (due 15/9, but the midwife thinks this weekend), so who knows when I'll update again.

 

 

 

 

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Superb! A LOT nicer than the MisterCraft version. In my view, the RWD-8, as the aircraft that (largely) trained the Polish Air Force, which had such a massive impact on the final allied victory, is a vastly more significant design than it first might appear.

 

I'm on board for this one, so hurry up and heal your finger so we can see some more!:popcorn:

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Hello PC,

Here I'm if you don't mind !

Brilliant idea and a good reward for the received kit !

Sure that yuou will carry it on the right way !

But please, cut the resin, not the fingers :whistle:

Sincerely.

CC

PS I also appreciated the first text, really like the references from which you make a good use of !

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Now this is a thread that I'm looking forward to.

 

I've made the old ZTS and whilst it's a pretty little thing, I'm hoping that the IBG with correction sets will be better. I bought the kit around a year ago.

 

I also paid hard earned cash cough, ahem, cough :rolleyes:, for the correction sets around 3 months ago :whistle: . I do so hope that they're very good :D!

 

Have fun with the saw PC :frantic: .

 

Judging by recent events it might be useful to keep a tourniquet and cauterising set by the bench, in addition to the rubbing alcohol (maybe a cigar box and some ice):o!

 

Best of British to Mrs. PC for the forthcoming event being as easy as possible :).

 

Best regards

TonyT

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Hi!

Good to see your new topic!

To be honest, only the decals came from my personal supply-depot. The resin parts have been donated by the producer, Arma Hobby.

 

The original RWD 8 manual is availalble online on the Polish Aviation Museum website: RWD 8 airplane manual It is in Polish, but includes lots of useful pictures.

 

Please let me know if you need some more pictures, informations etc. about this airplane. Good luck with this build!

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10 hours ago, GrzeM said:

To be honest, only the decals came from my personal supply-depot. The resin parts have been donated by the producer, Arma Hobby.

 

I'll do my best to honor both your gift of decals and their gift of resin! I have a lot of Arma Hobby stuff (if you build Polish aircraft, they're pretty indispensable; I have bits from them for Polish F-16s, MiG-29s, Spitfires, their PZL P.7 kit, which looks very cool...) so I'm really pleased that they liked something I did.

 

For the kit, I'm using some of the photoetch set put out for it by PART, (in)famous Polish photoetch maker of incredibly intricate sets for WWI 1/72 kits. 

 

20170904_195912

 

I'm not using all of it, because some of it looks really hard. But the seats were easy to make, so here we are. They're a bit bigger than the kit parts, so I may not be able to use them in the end.

 

I also got the resin cowl together:

 

20170904_194524

 

 

The resin looks a bit different from the kit part:

 

20170904_194559

 

Which is kind of the point of resin, I think. Especially as in this case, the resin's larger upper intake seems more correct.

 

PIC_1-P-3004-2.jpg

 

 

As you can also see, the cowling is flush with the fuselage on the real deal, which is not the case with the cowling in the kit. 

 

As for the interior, I've used a dark enamel wash to set off the internal framing. I'm not sure weather I want to do more in the painting line with it before I close it up. Your thoughts, gentlebeasts?

 

 

Today Mrs P spent two hours packing to drive to the beach near our house, which is a special rich people's beach, so we had to swap cars with my parents so we could use their sticker to gain access. Only when we got to the beach did she realize that she hadn't brought swimsuits for herself or Winston. Amazing. 

 

I hate the beach, by the way.

 

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Nicely made seats PC, I hope they fit. The cowl looks better, definitely better :thumbsup2: .

 

Regarding Polish colours; Agama do a Polish range too:

 

http://www.agama-model.cz/obchod/en-kategorie_56583-0-poland.html

 

I've been using them since around 2003. They are really very nice for airbrushing. I normally buy at least two of each colour I need. Their RLM and Czech colours are good too, so I tend to buy a fair old selection once 'every now and then' (read as: '5 years or so')  to offset postage costs. The paints are very reasonably priced. Some AZ/KP kits have call outs for Agama paints, which is nice :winkgrin:.

 

Best regards

TonyT

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34 minutes ago, TonyTiger66 said:

Regarding Polish colours; Agama do a Polish range too:

I've seen some prior mention of Agama, particularly by people who do Warsaw Pact jets, but I've never seen it available over here. Not that that would stop me, given that Hataka are hardly local boys, of course. How well does Agama play with other paints, Tony? Is it like Tamiya, rebellious and prone to cracking? 

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2 hours ago, Procopius said:

I've seen some prior mention of Agama, particularly by people who do Warsaw Pact jets, but I've never seen it available over here. Not that that would stop me, given that Hataka are hardly local boys, of course. How well does Agama play with other paints, Tony? Is it like Tamiya, rebellious and prone to cracking? 

 

It's very forgiving so far PC. I have used it over and under Gunze water based, Tamiya and Hataka acrylic. Under AK.

 

I used Alclad Aqua gloss over it and all was fine. In one of those cases the whole 'sandwich'  was:

 

Stynylrez grey primer, Agama Polish light blue, Tamiya tape mask, Hataka early Soviet Green, mask again, Gunze Red Madder. 

 

I was surprised that they all got on together.

 

The caveat is that, especially with e.g. Gunze, I had to leave it a long time before applying Agama (or anything) over the top.

 

Agama beneath e.g.  Gunze Aqueous is fine, The Agama dries very quickly, self levels, is happy to have Gunze aqueous or Tamiya acrylic on top maintaining a modelling 'flow'.

 

The other way around I've had Gunze eg Red Madder (admittedly a very strong colour), bleed through the Agama. I didn't realise just how long Gunze can take to dry. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but Gunze Aqueous doesn't appear to like other manufacturers paint or varnish on top for around two days :confused: ?

 

Tamiya actually appears dry, but I have observed that a day for safety before eg Agama/Hataka/Aqua etc on top is a good precaution.

 

The Agama Polish light blues are especially useful shades, I can't find anything else to match the  Agama Polish light blue P9P. 

 

Given one of my modelling fetishes; I can find no other model paint colour I that like more than Agama P9P, to represent the light blue found on some fragments of later Republican Spanish I-16 aircraft. 

 

I like their P4P Khaki for late 30's Polish fighters. I'm puzzled as to why Hataka haven't released other Polish camouflage colours e.g. for Lublin XIII:

 

IMG_2516.jpg

(no copyright notified for this profile).

 

Or the Polish naval aircraft green colour.

 

Way back in 2004 I read that Agama had used original paint fragments to match the Polish colours. Then around 12 years later I read that Hataka had done that too :shrug: .

 

An observation: Sometimes the Hataka acrylic simply peels off, like a thin rubber mask (Micro Mask etc). It seems to penetrate the primer and then the lot just comes off, rather than be micromeshed or lightly sanded. I didn't think I had done anything wrong leading up to it. Extremely frustrating and tricky to fix.

 

The Agama hasn't done this so far. It's ok for brush work too with some thinning. Agama sell their own thinner but, I guess ironically, the best all purpose acrylic thinner I've used so far this last 18 months has been: Hataka!

 

I'm happy to remove all this, but to give an idea of different products working together; this model has (all acrylics) Hataka A11 light blue, Agama A11 'Russian Green', Tamiya Matt Black with a touch of white, AK interactive white distemper. 

 

Distemper weathered Roden LaGG 3

 

So far, so good (well, good enough for me, for now), although it's on the shelf of doom because I've mislaid all the other parts of the kit :dunce:.

 

Just to finally mention that Agama also do Alcohol, Laquer and Enamel paints, but I haven't tried them.

 

I think I'll drop them an email to see if they can do something about distribution outside of Europe. Also to tell them that the horizontal navigation bar on top of their welcome page doesn't work (for me), and that the option to change the language from Czech to English is too hidden away on the shop page. It's top right under 'Jazyky':

 

http://obchod.agama-model.cz/en-kategorie_56548-0-acrylics-colours.html

 

Took me weeks to find that :dunce: !

 

Have you tried the Hataka Polish Khaki yet PC? It sounds as if you've gone for the laquer version?

 

I'd be interested to know what it's like. The Acrylic too. I'm on paint overload but, like yourself, really could use a more easily obtainable (outside of Europe) pre- mixed range of Polish colours.

 

Apologies for the vast post, happy to edit.

 

Best regards

TonyT

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3 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

An observation: Sometimes the Hataka acrylic simply peels off, like a thin rubber mask (Micro Mask etc). It seems to penetrate the primer and then the lot just comes off, rather than be micromeshed or lightly sanded. I didn't think I had done anything wrong leading up to it. Extremely frustrating and tricky to fix.

 

He shouldn't be having those type of problems as he said he is using the new hataka orange (lacquer) line. 

 

Plus the red line has been reworked now so any new stock won't have the problems of old.

 

I don't work for hataka or anything, but judging by the amount of traffic this thread is going to have, people may get put off from using what is now a very sorted paint range (blue, red and orange lines) in a very wide range of colours and themed box sets 👍🏿

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6 hours ago, Tony Oliver said:

He shouldn't be having those type of problems as he said he is using the new hataka orange (lacquer) line. 

 

Plus the red line has been reworked now so any new stock won't have the problems of old.

 

Thanks Tony, I thought that there shouldn't have been such issues. I only mentioned the Hataka to try to cover PC's question regarding Agama interaction with other paints as fully as possible.

 

After reading the second paragraph you wrote, regarding the red line being reworked, I became curious and hopeful.

 

I did a small search and found a thread where you were able to correspond with them Tony, about the changeover. They were very accommodating about it:

 

I feel that it's highly likely that the sets I used mid 2016 would be of the original, very early batches. 

 

I'm currently still mainly bedbound due to long term illness,  away from the office/bench ; I can't check at the moment but the dates would certainly suggest they are early sets. I purchased from BNA Model World in around March 2016. They could have been with BNA for months.

 

They are offering full exchanges as in the linked post above. By an unusual route it looks like you chaps have helped me a lot.  :)

 

Many thanks. 

 

Posting the two sets back from here in Oz won't cost as much as two new sets. 

 

Apologies for thread drift PC.

 

Best regards

TonyT

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I forgot to post a photo of the cockpit sides, because I'm a dope.

 

36225997973_d1f5aab28a_k.jpg20170904_200257 by Edward IX, on Flickr

 

This is the Hataka Polish interior/underside silver from their Orange line of lacquer paints, as I mentioned earlier. It's really very well-behaved.

8 hours ago, Tony Oliver said:

I don't work for hataka or anything, but judging by the amount of traffic this thread is going to have, people may get put off from using what is now a very sorted paint range (blue, red and orange lines) in a very wide range of colours and themed box sets 👍🏿

 

7 hours ago, johnd said:

Seconded, Tony O. Hataka is my go-to choice for Acrylics now. The set of Red Line paints I have (the Polish one, as it happens) brushes on well too even though it's optimised for airbrush. 

I like acrylics in general, but I think I'm slowly moving away from them these days. If the rest of the paints in the set perform like the silver, though, I can see myself buying quite a few more of their Orange Line sets. I already have the one for the modern Polish Air Force.

 

9 hours ago, TonyTiger66 said:

The other way around I've had Gunze eg Red Madder (admittedly a very strong colour), bleed through the Agama. I didn't realise just how long Gunze can take to dry. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but Gunze Aqueous doesn't appear to like other manufacturers paint or varnish on top for around two days :confused: ?

 

My experience also, Tony.

 

On 9/1/2017 at 1:15 AM, Mitch K said:

Superb! A LOT nicer than the MisterCraft version.

The kit is really nicely engineered (so far); it's a pity about the cowl and the wing being a bit off, but it seems they haven't made errors like that on their PZL 23, and I'm looking forward to building more IBG kits. We've long needed modern toolings of WWII-era Polish aircraft, and right now between them, Arma Hobby, and Hataka, Poland seems to be undergoing a bit of a renaissance in the modelling world. 

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The pictures:

d4c3878ceecf7c00.jpg

23e1a77a0a081e5e.jpg

I know that the view is very sad, but the Germans have made a lot of good quality photos in 1939 in invaded Poland and now, when their grandchildren are selling on the E-Bay grandpa's albums found in the forgotten drawers we are able to learn a lot about our own Polish equipment. Often things which had not known previously.
In pre-war period the top-secrecy of military was very strict and it included total ban for unofficial photographying military airplanes. As a result we have lots of photos (and knowledge) how Polish military planes looked before the 1938, but the photos from 1939 are very few and comes only from the official sources (parades, producer's catalogs etc.). Majority of the photos showing the real stuff used in the war are - sadly - those made by Germans. Tanks, airplanes, cars, cannons. Abandoned, damaged, destroyed. So similar to those from 1940 France, Belgium, Norway... But these photos includes a lot of useful information.
This one is not an exception. It shows most probably the most photographed RWD 8 plane, apparently abandoned near some of the strategic routes of the German army, and many "tourists from the West" left a selfie with a plane in their collections. That's why we know a lot about the painting and marking of this airplane.
This PWS-made RWD 8 serial number 34.73 (painted most probably in red) belonged to the 6th Aviation Regiment from Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine) and had regiment underwing white marking S 2 ("s" comes from the Regiment Airbase Skniłów near the Lwów city) and tactical number 8 on the fuselage. Apparently it belonged to the regiment training squadron so had the fin (not the rudder!) in blue colour (light, pure blue, not the greyish blue used for undersurface camouflage - you may use German RLM 65).

Edited by GrzeM
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17 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

I think the scalpel is meant for the resin/plastic bits. Not your flesh. ...I hope its better. And i think we all have our share of war wounds from the battle against plastic. 

 

Technically scalpels are designed to cut into flesh, as they are the initial tool in the surgeon's armamentarium. As modellers we are the lucky beneficiaries of these rather sharp medical instruments.  However, it is usually the patient that receives the incision not the surgeon. 

 

Good start on this interesting and fascinating build PC. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses. 

Edited by 825
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2 hours ago, 825 said:

 

Technically scalpels are designed to cut into flesh, as they are the initial tool in the surgeon's armamentarium.

 

4 hours ago, GrzeM said:

This PWS-made RWD 8 serial number 34.73 (painted most probably in red) belonged to the 6th Aviation Regiment from Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine) and had regiment underwing white marking S 2 ("s" comes from the Regiment Airbase Skniłów near the Lwów city) and tactical number 8 on the fuselage. Apparently it belonged to the regiment training squadron so had the fin (not the rudder!) in blue colour (light, pure blue, not the greyish blue used for undersurface camouflage - you may use German RLM 65).

Thanks, Grzegorz! Would the cowling have been left unpainted metal, do you know?

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Well chaps, work continues. This is a test fit; nothing (aside from the seats) is glued together. 

 

20170905_214125

 

Still a little more work to get the cowl to join smoothly to the fuselage, I think. In the background, you can see I painted the PART instrument panel transparencies with a white back -- I accidentally brushpainted with lacquer, and boy did it smell!

 

Tiny stirrups for the rudder pedals:

 

20170905_214149

The kit doesn't actually have rudder pedals or the little post-and-bar they attach to, and neither does the PART set. I could, should I wish to, fabricate my own, but I'm not sure the result would justify the investment of time. 

 

 

I annealed the photoetch fret and tried my hand at bending the PART replacement part for the aft cockpit coaming:

 

20170905_214157

 

They look quite different, and I'm not thinking I'll use it, but it's nice to get into the habit; you never know when you'll want to use a lot of photoetch but your lack of skill with it will force you to do something fun and easy instead.

 

I've been in a weird mood as of late -- the impending arrival of Protoprocopius Mk II has me in an introspective mood. I'd love to say I'm excited, but mostly I'm just thinking of all the ways my life hasn't turned out like I planned or (as I'm not much of a planner) as I hoped. 

 

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5 hours ago, 825 said:

Technically scalpels are designed to cut into flesh, as they are the initial tool in the surgeon's armamentarium. As modellers we are the lucky beneficiaries of these rather sharp medical instruments.  However, it is usually the patient that receives the incision not the surgeon. 

 

 

825 😃 ...  I understand that. I was being Facetious, & trying to lighten up the moment. I have so much scar tissue from my scalpels and 35 yrs of cutting, stabbing, and not paying attention. That i'm quite aware of what scalpels were created for. 

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