Jump to content

Frankenschmitt (1/72 Tamiya/ICM Bf109E-3 crosskit)


Recommended Posts

This is coming along very nicely. I think modelling out of your comfort zone is rather liberating as you don’t have the angst of ‘knowing’ that there is a missing panel line somewhere or that the firing button on the tip of the control column wasn’t quite as naive* as you had been led to believe.

 

Of course doing ‘the enemy’ gives your Spitfires and Hurricanes someone to play with. Bit like mine

 

37808801376_d547e9ca13_b.jpg

 

Yes I know the 19 wouldn’t have fired a shot, but it would be taking the pictures. 

 

Trevor

 

 

* MAUVE! predictive Texas strikes again

  • Haha 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And a good evening to you, Mr. P,

 

impressive salvage job on the harness. Congratulations!

Had I kept my big mouth shut, nobody would have been the wiser, but we would not have been treated to this impressive display of your ability.

Kudos.

 

JR

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, jean said:

we would not have been treated to this impressive display of your ability.

It really wasn't that hard, in the end. I used white glue on the canopy and I'm up to the challenge of pulling a glued-by-white-glue part off, and then my little microchisel turned out to be the perfect tool for the job; the PE went through the hole it made without difficulty. And I'm not even mad at you about it! It's pure coincidence I've been throwing hobby knife blades at a picture of a baboon for the past few days, really!

  • Like 1
  • Haha 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Still puttering along. It's hard for anything to look cool at this stage, but here we are.

 

20181206_234753

 

The white is on the nose, wing tips, and horizontal stab tips.

 

And RLM 70 is on the spinner and prop blades. 

 

We're getting close to the land of extensive masking, as we'll need to mask the nose off and so much more. Excitement.

 

  • Like 12
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hiya fellas! I've gotten a new phone now, replacing my old Samsung Note 8 with Google's new Pixel 3XL -- that probably means little to most, but the Pixel's camera is supposedly the best available on a cell phone, and as I use mine for work quite a bit (and get to go to Las Vegas at the end of January to cover our Midyear Meeting, which should be nice, as it will be warm, which it definitely isn't here) I made the switch. It's pretty impressive -- a lot of what it can do is not because of the camera itself, but because of the awesome power of Google's photo processing algorithms under the hood. My home is a challenging environment for taking photos, because Mrs P's eyes are sensitive to light (a real problem, because I have zero night vision and struggle to see anything in low light conditions) and the things I mostly photograph, my children, are incredibly erratic in their movements. The camera did a good job of catching Grant doing his favourite thing: consuming:

 

00100lPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20181209135003745_COVER

 

We also went to a mall today with the children (Mrs P's idea: an hour at the mall with two toddlers is equal to twenty years in prison in terms of how the passage of time affects one), and Winnie discovered the Lego store. It's a dangerous place to walk into with a credit card, let me tell you.

 

00100lPORTRAIT_00100_BURST20181209152312835_COVER

 

 

Mercifully we left without the $800, 15 kilogram Millennium Falcon kit.

 

Anyway, tonight I masked the white ID markings on the 109E and sprayed Colourcoats RLM65 over, and it went on exceptionally nicely. 

 

IMG_20181209_193459

 

 

 

 

IMG_20181209_193448

 

  • Like 9
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What a day. The zipper on my coat got stuck and then broke this morning, and I spent all of today at work in an interminable series of meetings with some consultants who told everyone the same things I've been telling everyone for the last four years and then added that we should use "more hashtags on Facebook", which is straight out of cloud cuckoo land, and then latterly captioning videos* which I'd initially believed were for a marketing campaign, only to discover they were actually going to be blasting a three-year-old value proposition at us on permanent loop in our own fricking cafeteria, like the saddest idiot mimeograph of 1984 you could imagine. This has taken up hours of my time, because the person in charge of it is a terrible project manager and only checks the two subassemblies after they're assembled, which means that we have to redo both parts, not just the screwed-up part. 

 

Oh, and the check engine light is back on in the car, which means a $500 part is needed to fix it. Our 2011 Subaru has been largely trouble free for years, but now everything is slowly starting to fail. Cars only need repairs right around Christmas. At least Grant starts school in February, so we can save some money on childcare, which has been crushing the life out of our savings plan. I don't want to say it was a mistake to have a second child, because despite the low-return-colossal-expense of doing so, the real mistake was having any children at all. 

 

So for future reference, the area immediately after the cockpit on the 109E could probably do with some shimming, for the ICM fuselage to join perfectly with the Tamiya canopy (which makes one wonder how well the Tamiya part would work on the Airfix kit...), but it's too late to fix now. I masked off the RLM65 parts...

 

IMG_20181210_230843

 

...and laid down a coat of Colourcoats RLM02:

 

IMG_20181210_232155

 

Once that dries, I'll mask for the RLM71 and spray that.

 

 

 

* I foolishly taught myself how to add open captions (ie captions that are always "on", unlike closed captions) to videos so that we had better accessibility for mobile users (SRT-based closed captions, the most common kind, don't show up for people using their phone to browse) and better reach because who bothers to listen to a video when they can just quickly read the captions. Amazingly, our 900-person organization doesn't have anyone who does this as part of their job.  

  • Like 10
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ouch, sorry to read about your woes PC. These misfortunes and complications always seem to happen all at once. I write from experience!

 

At least modelling is a great way or relieving stress (that's what I keep telling myself anyway and I wish I could get back to spend time on my project but that's stalled because of some "stuff' that's going on around us at the mo) and the Frankenschmitt is coming along beautifully. Take heart...it will look terrific when finished :smile:

  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Broken zipper? #annoying

Consultants suggesting what employees have said for years AND not knowing what they're doing with old videos? #parforthecourse

Sick Subaru? #sadcartrouble

 

Sorry I can't keep that up… #tooold

(See - that looks vaguely rude - it's 'too old' not, er, tooled)

 

The boys will bring you joy, eventually PC. Or else.

 

Nice 109 though - it's gonna be great!

  • Like 2
  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

What a weird and long week. The big news is that Mrs P has received a performance bonus this year which has effectively doubled our rapidly depleting savings and keeps us covered through the rest of the school year. We probably would've been fine without this, but it would've been a tight and stressful squeeze, and this took a huge load off of us. We drank champagne tonight. 

 

In other news I putter along at work, and've had my revisions of our organization's social media rules described as "brilliant", which makes me nervous: the higher the esteem they hold you in, the further you have to fall. For now this is translating into more work, including the strong likelihood of chairing a few committees and running training sessions (both of which as a shy yet intemperate person, I hate), but no extra money or promotion, so we'll see how long this lasts. The classic Catch-22 here, of course, is that if they keep giving me the work without the title and pay, I should leave. But until I get the title and pay, my bargaining position with any other employer is very poor. So I putter along. I'm at a very weird part of my life: I have probably thirty to thirty-five years in the workforce ahead of me (if I'm lucky) unless I develop a work ethic and turn out to have the writing power of JK Rowling (and neither is likely), and I just can't imagine sustaining this for that long. I've been in the workforce since I graduated college when I was twenty, so I've spent fifteen years doing various jobs, but only in the last four have I seemingly settled into a career, one that so far I seem to be at least okay at, but which I find stressful and exhausting, and I'm also at an age where reinventing myself is going to become increasingly difficult (not to mention I'm not really a fan of starting over and doing something new and having to learn the ropes, unless that thing is becoming a British subject, in which case sign me up). 

 

Oh well. Just gotta live while I'm alive.

 

Anyway, I masked off the spots for the RLM 71 camo on the 109 and sprayed it (Colourcoats still, so nice to use, no fuss, no drama). Here she is unmasked, aside from the engine area; next up is to do all the little RLM02/71 mottling on the flanks, for which we'll employ the .2mm needle of my Badger SOTAR, under the delusion that tools equate to skill. 

 

I leave for Michigan and a week's vacation on the 22nd, so I have a little less than a week to finish this. Hopefully by the time I get back, my Arma Hurricanes will have arrived and I can start one or three.

 

 

IMG_20181214_201729

 

 

  • Like 15
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...