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Tired Old Puffers at the Last Ditch (3 x 1/72 Arma Hurricanes)


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5 hours ago, Procopius said:

the Hurricane got a few licks in.

 

Indeed, Archie McKellar was another Hurri pilot who got multiple kills in a day, five on the 7th October and I believe post-war analysis confirmed all of them. However 109 pilots never admitted to being shot down by Hurricanes, they always said it was by a Spitfire... 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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11 hours ago, Procopius said:

Of course, I could foley the entire Battle of Britain movie from memory if I had to.

I usually hum the theme from 633 Squadron on test flights.

 

AW

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So tonight I watched the recent Spitfire documentary and masked the canopies, nearly lost several fingers when my vision kept inexplicably going blurry, but got the job done:

 

IMG_20190114_213630

 

Then one of those disasters that so often grace my build threads struck: as I was clipping off a carb intake, it slipped through my fingers and vanished with a dull sonic boom. A protracted search and sweep of the floor failed to turn it up, but did discover a dead mouse(!!!), which was disposed of in the outside dustbin with a short non-denominational service. After some mild panicking, I remembered I had a Hasegawa carb intake left over from a botched attempt to make a metal wing Hurricane I out of that and the Airfix Hurricane (glad I failed now, for obvious reasons), and so I tried it on the kit.

 

IMG_20190114_223437

Hasegawa (L), Arma (R). 

 

Hm. Well that's not great.

 

But then I realized something.

 

IMG_20190114_223744

 

Problem solved. (Yes, my handwriting is poor.)

 

IMG_20190114_223946

 

(As you can just make out, I also did the prop tips.)

 

This leaves me with a long-term problem (the only decal option I have for a Vokes Hurri I is the kit option, which violates a personal modelling rule [the "Lethal Weapon 2 rule"]), but I've spent my whole life alternately screwing Future Me or becoming the me being screwed, so I'll figure something out. 

 

 

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Don't be so hard on yourself mate, if you are anything like me you are perpetually doing stuff for the benefit of Future Self that he never appreciates, or even notices, the bloody ingrate :D 

 

I don't suppose you have this set of transfers in the stash, do you? There's a very nice 75 Sqn Hurricane I (Trop) with a colourful fuselage flash... or this one which also contains a tropical Mk.I.

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

 

P.S. I give up. what is the Die Hard 2 rule?

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4 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

I don't suppose you have this set of transfers in the stash, do you? There's a very nice 75 Sqn Hurricane I (Trop) with a colourful fuselage flash... or this one which also contains a tropical Mk.I.

Damn you, Stew Dapple! Looks like a Royal Navy Fighter Squadron Hurricane I Trop is in my future. 

 

7 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

P.S. I give up. what is the Die Hard 2 rule?

I meant to type "Lethal Weapon 2", which should clear things up a bit.

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"No Carb" sounds like a new diet :D

Lucky you had another kit eh? Er, how many kits did you buy PC?

7 minutes ago, Procopius said:

I meant to type "Lethal Weapon 2", which should clear things up a bit.

Sorry, it doesn't, even after I Googled it… I give up too :shrug: 

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7 minutes ago, Stew Dapple said:

Is it "Don't go to Africa"? I don't know, sorry to be thick, I'm in my usual early morning state, which approximates a form of coma but with forced activity thrown in...

I feel a little uncomfortable doing Rhodesian or South African subjects because of their policies of minority rule and apartheid. I know, I know, I build actual Nazi aircraft, but those are unambiguously the bad guys. Everyone makes their choices about what to model, I suppose.

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Ah got you mate. For balance, it never hurts to point out that the great 'Sailor' Malan was a vociferous opponent of the sort of nationalism that led to apartheid, but perhaps we'd best keep clear of what might conceivably be interpreted as politics.

 

Hurricanes are looking great, by the way, I suspect we might see a lot of this kit in the BoB Group Build :) 

 

Cheers,

 

Stew

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11 minutes ago, Procopius said:

I feel a little uncomfortable doing Rhodesian or South African

Well I only bought the expert set for the SAAF markings, so there. :P  I like the boxing grass hopper. :) plus I've a thing about the East Africa campaign. 

Steve.

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Oh dear, if it all came down to minority politics for me I'd probably have to pee off my friends by going on about the partitioning of British Aviation

 

I mean, have you seen how positively nasty Naval and Air Force types are to each other? 😱

 

Makes me glad to have been a brown job, we used both Arms as taxi services

 

😎

 Hurris coming on very handsomely PC, very handsome

 

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8 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

Ah got you mate. For balance, it never hurts to point out that the great 'Sailor' Malan was a vociferous opponent of the sort of nationalism that led to apartheid, but perhaps we'd best keep clear of what might conceivably be interpreted as politics.

He was, and he's a great hero of mine; it's rare that kind of physical and moral courage combine in one man. But, it must be noted, he flew with the RAF. In any case, reasonable men, I'm sure can -- and do -- differ on this sort of thing, and I make no judgement on anyone who chooses to do so. Apartheid was only introduced in 1948 in any case, and the USA has its own grim, grim history in that line. As The Hold Steady sing:

 

She likes the part where one brother kills the other. 
She has to wonder if the the world ever will recover. 
Because Cain and Abel seem to still be causing trouble.

 

 

 

8 hours ago, Stew Dapple said:

Hurricanes are looking great, by the way, I suspect we might see a lot of this kit in the BoB Group Build :) 

I know I was looking over my Xtradecal BoB Hurricane Part 2 sheet and thinking of buying Part 1.

 

8 hours ago, stevehnz said:

Well I only bought the expert set for the SAAF markings, so there.

Steve, you naughty man! There is, to be fair, an incredible story behind that marking option.

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7 hours ago, Procopius said:

Steve, you naughty man!

Oh how I wish but maybe we're talking at cross purposes here.  ;) :D 

 

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

There is, to be fair, an incredible story behind that marking option.

Its long been a story that has entranced me, when I saw these markings on the sheet I tried to sell my first born to buy one but he just told me "bugger off", he wasn't available,& seeing as he is near as big as me that was that :( , I was forced to save up in the old fashioned way, SWMBO wonders why she didn't get much for Christmas this time. :D

Steve.

Edited by stevehnz
too long ;)
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I plumb forgot to do the radiators!

 

IMG_20190116_210703

 

Easily rectified. I even managed to squeeze the PE grilles in, though I don't know if they can realistically be seen.

 

As you can see, these are about the worst-fitting parts in the whole kit, which isn't saying much, since the rather clever engineering of them allows them to be built and cleaned up as subassemblies before being added to the model. 

 

IMG_20190116_210716

 

I also needed a dab of filler behind the carb intakes on each aircraft, but discovered that my ancient bottle of perfect plastic putty had more or less packed it in, requiring drastic measures to open it to gain access to the good stuff:

 

IMG_20190116_212051

 

A new bottle is soon to be on its way, for obvious reasons. 

 

Pretty close to primer. 

 

 

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PC, thanks for showing us how not to do it as well as how to make this kit.  Very instructive.

 

I've just picked up my Junior versions from the postal depot having been stupid enough to have been at work when they tried to deliver yesterday.  All I can say is WOW!  Arma have really pulled out the stops with this one, having bought the Iskra when it first came out and was impressed with that but this is a step up from that.  I am very, very impressed.

 

One slight minus mark though, the crystal clear transparencies were packed loose in with the rest of the kit but fortunately, no damage had been done!  I've just had a session with some ziplock bags to rectify that.

 

I'm going to have to revisit my GB plans for this year to see if I can shoehorn one of these into my modelling window between studies.

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That's fine radiating PC very fine

 

When your new PPP arrives you might try this little tip...

 

With the tip open (the new thin nozzle is err, poor in use) and before screwing on the cap drop a few droplets of H2O inside will help stop the contents petrifying

 

Er, do remember to put the top back on then!

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50 minutes ago, Wez said:

One slight minus mark though, the crystal clear transparencies were packed loose in with the rest of the kit but fortunately, no damage had been done!  I've just had a session with some ziplock bags to rectify that.

My only criticism so far too.

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Wow, it's been a while since I updated this, hasn't it? My apologies. On Thursday, which thank heavens is my work from home day, Grant fell backwards down the entirety of our second-floor staircase, which is narrow and steep. I was moving over to get him when he fell, because he was sitting at the edge of the staircase, and so I found myself running after a baby bouncing down step after step and always just out of reach. I'd love to say I remained calm and collected, but Mrs P informs me I was screaming "No! No! No!" desperately over and over again. It's no exaggeration to say the experience was straight out of the sort of nightmare new parents are tormented with. When I got to him, Grant's nose was streaming blood and he was bawling, which though horrible, was a relief because I expected him to be dead. I spent an anxious day working from home while he was with the sitter, and emerged from my study every hour to make sure he wasn't leaking cerebo-spinal fluid from his nose or ears. He did not enjoy this. Poor Mrs P had a late day at work, and in the confusion, she forgot she had no car (because it stayed with me in case I needed to race to the emergency room), and so missed her last possible train home and was unable to reach me, because I'd fallen asleep putting the kids to bed. (She got home eventually, don't worry.)

 

Grant is fine, aside from some exciting new bruises.

IMG_20190119_121835

 

If you question the value of your NHS, incidentally, I invite you to consider that we opted not to go to the hospital unless we had clear evidence our baby was about to die, because we simply couldn't afford to go to the ER for anything less than a life-or-death emergency, and we're not doing too badly compared to most Americans.

 

Anyway, that only took one day, but it's left us all a little worn down here at Hedgehog Manor, so it wasn't until tonight that I got back to the grotto.

 

I've now primed all three Hurricanes.

 

IMG_20190120_005238

 

One thing I want to reiterate here is the incredibly user-friendliness of Arma Hobby's photoetch, which actually fits the kit. When I built, just for example, Eduard's 1/72 Fw190A-8, this wasn't the case. And they've been making PE (and kits) for a while! The thing I love about the Arma Expert kits I've worked on so far is that you really get the sense that the people working on them build them, too, and they've put a lot of time and effort into the parts of kits that normally cause problems. 

 

Case in point: the tiny PE landing lights fit perfectly into the clear parts for the lights. I mean P E R F E C T L Y. Some work had to have gone into that. 

 

The downward-facing light on the aircraft is lacking a mask, so I used masking fluid on it:

 

IMG_20190120_005244

 

I also had two of these little f...I mean, parts ping off into the ether, though I was able to recover one, so when building yours, maybe keep some tape handy.

 

Lastly, I masked off the prop tips and painted the blades and spinners:

 

IMG_20190120_005359

 

If I have time tomorrow night, Sky goes on the undersides. Exciting!

 

 

 

 

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06/24 jnr went head first down a metal flight of steps at about Winston’s age, he went rigid with shock so I had to watch him pivot (on his head) before crashing  down the next few steps. Like you I was just to far away to intervene.

 

Fortunately humans are resilient, and while we may not bounce, we recover quickly. He also knocked himself out at Grants age falling into a table.

 

Which brings us back to the lovely lovely hurricanes. Beautiful work!

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Glad that the wee one is all right. It's so scary when these things happen especially when you're attempting to do something about it in the first place.

Watching your progress with the Hurricanes with great interest. Looking really good.

 

 

Cheers,

 

Alistair 

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