1/72 Captured Luftwaffe Lioré et Olivier LéO 451T (Heller) - take two! +++ 15/3/21 - it's got me beat.

[TonyOD]

Happy days!

 

I've turned up a much better quality version of the main reference picture, that tells me everything I need to know about this aircraft.

• underwing codes present and correct.
• previous speculation on narrow white band on fin flash unfounded. No gold border.
• spinners almost certainly red, not yellow.
• stripes (yellow?) on prop blades. Was this a Luftwaffe thing?
• notable exhaust staining behind cowls.

 

[TonyOD]

Appeal for help... it's decal time, and now I pay a bit of attention to the matter I find that that size of the roundels on the ancient aftermarket sheet I've got are all over the place. Fuselage decals doo small, overwing decals too large. I've managed to partially sort it with bit from the spares box but I'm short a pair 14mm diameter (I have one pair for the top of the wings but need same size for the fuselage - the ones I have I took from an Italeri Spitfire Vb kit.) 

 

Don't suppose anyone can help?

 

[fightersweep]

Nice to see the LeO back underway. Great subject too! Re: the roundels. Don't know if you've had any responses yet, but I'll check the stash shortly for some 14mm stars.

 

Steve

[TonyOD]

5 minutes ago, fightersweep said:

I'll check the stash shortly for some 14mm stars.

 

Very decent of you Steve, thanks.

[fightersweep]

11 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

 

Very decent of you Steve, thanks.

 

No problem! I don't have too many stars sans the bars, but the closest I have in the stash is 13.5mm. Would that do? Incidentally, what size are the wing roundels? Only ask as the ones I have are from an early Corsair, so if the larger roundels are the same size, you can have them too so the colours match.

 

Steve

[TonyOD]

4 minutes ago, fightersweep said:

what size are the wing roundels?

 

The roundels sizes are a bit odd, and I've probably spent more time than is healthy holding a ruler against my computer screen trying to work out various proportions. I don't know anything about how it worked with painting or repainting markings when in theatre but I'm guessing that some kind of size stencils were issued by stores. The underwing decals supplied with the 1975 sheet look about right but I've replaced them with a newer pair, not that I need have worried because the 46-year-old codes have gone on beautifully! The fuselage roundels are given as the same depth as the codes but the pic above clearly shows the roundel as deeper which is why I'm going with 14mm. The overwing roundels are given as the same size as the underwing pair but I'm certain this is wrong - pics of Luftwaffe LeO's show small Balkenkreuze out near the wingtips and I think that the USAAF would have just overpainted these with smallish roundels as opposed to painting larger ones inboard and somehow colourmatching splinter camo overpaint the German markings. This is why I'm going 14mm on both fuselage and overwings, I'm sure 13.5mm would be spot on (it's hard to actually measure to half a mil with my aging eyes!)

[fightersweep]

@TonyOD

 

Yeah! that's a tricky one. Thumbing through the Classic Publications War Prizes book, there's a whole host of different ways the new owners painted their markings on their prizes. Directly over painting the old markings is one way, quite often to the same dimensions, sometimes not. Others have had the old markings painted out with camo colours with new markings applied in positions more akin to allied placements....the list goes on. All you can do is what you're doing now, going by a photo of the machine you're re-creating but the upper wing roundels will probably need to be guessed unless there are other photos.

 

Drop me your addy in a pm and I'll get those roundels in the post for you.

 

Steve

[TonyOD]

@fightersweep That's the fun bit Steve! In the absence if hard evidence i.e. pictures of the upper wings of this aircraft while in USAAF service (pretty sure there ain't none), a bit of conjecture has to come into play. I know what size the Luftwaffe Balkenkreuze were and where they were on the wings, and while it's possible the USAAF could have painted larger roundels in different positions, my guess is that they just overpainted what was there in about the same size. After all, where would they get RLM paints to overpaint the Balkenkreuze in splinter camo to the right shade? Couple of tins kicking around at the airfield where they found the LeO? Or could they have painted the crosses over with whatever they had to hand? Who knows? It's all a mystery 😁

 

The rest of the decals are done, it was a bit of a shift. The 46-year-old codes went on really well, very forgiving! But one of the other errors on the sheet was that they printed an N for the underwing codes instead of a K - the K you see here was painstakingly assembled from slivers of an RAF serial number.

 

 

Really grateful for the help with the remaining roundels Steve, I'll drop you a message.

[TonyOD]

I now have the right roundels for the overwings (many thanks @rs2man!, as it turned out) and I’m itching to crack on, but tonight I’ve been building a bed in 1/1 scale. I’ve half a mind to give an RFI. 

Edited February 24, 2021 by TonyOD

[TonyOD]

Close to completion ow... one of those fiddly jobs that I generally try to get out of the way earlier in the build, but I only discovered it had to be done when i found the better quality image, namely the stripes on the prop blades, presumed to be yellow, and presumed to be present front and back. Some infuriatingly fiddly prodding, nudging and teasing with a fine brush of some wraparound stripes that were originally intended for the rotor blades of a Westland Wessex. 

 

 

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by TonyOD

[TonyOD]

I've gone at the panel lines with Humbrol dark grey enamel wash, on the underside some of it looks overdone, some of it looks underdone but on the whole it's ok (I'm still a novice at this stuff). The top side is so dark it's not made a lot of difference. I wash thinking of doing an oil wash but I don't think it would add an awful lot, there's plenty going on with the underside already, so just a matt coat will do it I think. About to take a deep breath and try some exhaust staining...

 

[TonyOD]

Has the LeO finally got me beat? Maybe, maybe not but I'm certainly not in a good place with it right now. My ham-fisted attempt at some light exhaust staining with an experimental schlonk made up of Klear and weathering powder has left a horrible black muck-fest, and having taken the masks off the transparencies, they're a dog's breakfast. The canopy framing is so fine that whole sections of it have simply lifted away with the masking tape. I just don't seem to be able to get canopies right. 

 

It isn't over quite yet, but maybe I need to step away from it for a couple of week's while I mess around with Mobutu's chopper, then come back and see what remedial work I can be bothered with. I wasn't expecting a prize-winner of a build, but it just looks a mess at the moment.

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by TonyOD

[2996 Victor]

Please don't despair, set it aside for a few days and go back to it with a fresh outlook - it's far too good to abandon!I I'm certain you'll be able to sort out the transparencies and the exhaust staining.

Kind regards,

Mark

[AdrianMF]

It’s looking good from here. I’m sure when it’s all together you will feel a lot better about it.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[TonyOD]

@2996 Victor @AdrianMF  Thanks for the words of encouragement. I fished it out of its big plastic box this morning and it doesn't look that bad, it's just one of those builds with a string of frustrations. I'm sure I can tidy up the transparencies with a cocktail stick and some retouching. The staining does look a mess though, I need to decide if I can be bothered sanding and repainting those areas (yellow!) It's prompted a bit of existential navel-gazing about what sort of modeller I want to be... I can see a spectrum between representation and realism, where representation is adding detail (doable to a point at 1/72) and things like getting the colours and markings right but essentially accepting it's just a model, and realism is all the weathering and staining and stuff to try to make it look like the actual plane in miniature (very difficult at 1/72, I find), The build I'm proudest of so far is the Wessex I built last summer which apart from some panel lines and a bit of a wash on the exhausts had no weathering at all, and it looks great. 

 

Funnily enough I just joined a Facebook group devoted to British F-4 Phantoms, I posted a pic of an 892 NAS FG.1 that I built years ago (below). No weathering at all, clean as a whistle. One chap who had actually served on Ark Royal and worked with these  planes pointed out that in real life they were absolutely filthy - not having access to large amounts of fresh water while at sea they "cleaned" them with WD40 (in contrast to the RAF whose Phantoms were nowhere near as mucky). Another chap who is a member of the Ulster Aviation Society said that their restored Phantom painted in the same scheme as my model is equally clean. There's no right or wrong, just what feels good as an end result. I think I'm going to leave the weathering stuff to the experts in future apart from a bit of panel line.

 

 

Edited March 2, 2021 by TonyOD

[RidgeRunner]

17 hours ago, TonyOD said:

Has the LeO finally got me beat? Maybe, maybe not but I'm certainly not in a good place with it right now. My ham-fisted attempt at some light exhaust staining with an experimental schlonk made up of Klear and weathering powder has left a horrible black muck-fest, and having taken the masks off the transparencies, they're a dog's breakfast. The canopy framing is so fine that whole sections of it have simply lifted away with the masking tape. I just don't seem to be able to get canopies right. 

 

It isn't over quite yet, but maybe I need to step away from it for a couple of week's while I mess around with Mobutu's chopper, then come back and see what remedial work I can be bothered with. I wasn't expecting a prize-winner of a build, but it just looks a mess at the moment.

 

Don't lose heart, Tony.... The Bl**dy LeOs, they try us dont they! I'm not good at weathering an stick to Flory washes and the odd touch here and there with a silver pencil and Tamiya Weathering powders. However, I thinking I will try a bit of pre-shading with my Malian MiG-17F in the Africa GB. If not that I will certainly give it a go on my Indian Su-7BMK, which had extremely weathered areas. Put LeO aside and return in a week or two

 

Martin

 

 

[RidgeRunner]

3 hours ago, TonyOD said:

There's no right or wrong, just what feels good as an end result

 absolutely

[TonyOD]

14 minutes ago, RidgeRunner said:

Put LeO aside and return in a week or two

 

That's the plan! The transparencies will just need a bit of patience. I think I'll probably sand, prime and repaint those messed up areas.

 

I think if I want to get into weathering I need to throw and experimental kit together to try things out on rather than taking the risk of messing up builds that actually mean anything.

 

The other consideration is that as my little collection grows I want to see some kind of consistency on how they're all built.                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

[RidgeRunner]

13 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

I think if I want to get into weathering I need to throw and experimental kit together to try things out on rather than taking the risk of messing up builds that actually mean anything.

If you are like me you will have some old builds in a box somewhere. Try it on those. That's my plan

 

Martin

 

 

[2996 Victor]

Really glad to hear you're going to persevere, I've no doubt at all that it'll be worth it in the end!

 

As to "whether to weather or not", I think the majority of aircraft would be kept as clean as possible, even in wartime, as dirt can hide potentially disastrous defects. Even with the embarked Phantoms you mentioned, they were kept as clean as possible using WD40, and presumably thoroughly inspected in the process, even though the result of the "cleaning" would have been to create a smeary oily film over the airframe.

 

My take is that a light weathering is all that's needed - aircraft wouldn't be caked in grot, it would detrimentally affect their flight characteristics. Less is definitely more, but that's just my opinion, of course!

 

Looking forward to seeing the LeO finished  

 

Cheers,

 

Mark

[TonyOD]

4 hours ago, 2996 Victor said:

My take is that a light weathering is all that's needed - aircraft wouldn't be caked in grot, it would detrimentally affect their flight characteristics. Less is definitely more, but that's just my opinion, of course!

 

I'm inclined to agree. While I wouldn't dispute that effective and realistic weathering is one of the hallmarks of a skilled modeller, I reckon three out of four weathered builds are overdone in this respect. The Spitfire I just did for the Heller GB is horrifically overweathered for a new aircraft being flown on peacetime!

 

By happy coincidence my other current build requires no weathering whatsoever - my reference pics show the Alouette when it had literally just been rolled out of the factory. 😁

 

There is the option of getting some more decals (I can get hold of the same 1975 sheet but with postage it ain't cheap and this build is already into silly money) and stripping it and repainting with more appropriate RLM shades. But then, I've just fished it out of its box again and it doesn't look anywhere near as horrendous in real life as it does in my mind's eye. I just have a bit of a downer on it I think and a short separation should prove helpful.

 

 

 

 

[2996 Victor]

1 minute ago, TonyOD said:

 

I'm inclined to agree. While I wouldn't dispute that effective and realistic weathering is one of the hallmarks of a skilled modeller, I reckon three out of four weathered builds are overdone in this respect. The Spitfire I just did for the Heller GB is horrifically overweathered for a new aircraft being flown on peacetime!

 

By happy coincidence my other current build requires no weathering whatsoever - my reference pics show the Alouette when it had literally just been rolled out of the factory. 😁

 

There is the option of getting some more decals (I can get hold of the same 1975 sheet but with postage it ain't cheap and this build is already into silly money) and stripping it and repainting with more appropriate RLM shades. But then, I've just fished it out of its box again and it doesn't look anywhere near as horrendous in real life as it does in my mind's eye. I just have a bit of a downer on it I think and a short separation should prove helpful.

 

 

 

 

Sounds like a good plan, Tony  take a short break and concentrate of something else, then go back and re-assess. She'll be an absolute corker when she's done!

[TonyOD]

It's done me in!

 

Well, after a quite spectacular amount of time and money spent on this kit, or these two kits to be more precise, I've just dug it out of the box where it was hiding and it isn't to be, at least not for a good while, I just can't find the will. That said, it's been a valuable part of my modelling (ahem) "journey". These last couple of weeks I've been pondering what sort of builds I want to come up with. I've had all sorts of incredibly time-consuming misadventures with weathering the last few months and I've decided that isn't for me (the underside of the LeO looks horribly overdone now I look at it with fresh eyes). My build rate is slow enough without getting lost in that kind of high-stakes malarkey, this feels almost like a fresh start for my modelling in terms of I now have a clear idea of what what I want to achieve, which turns out to be a smart, "clean" model that's maybe quite detailed (I don't mind a bit of modest scratch) and hopefully reasonably accurate, but I'm not going to beat myself up with realism any more (I take the lightness of touch of @Heather Kay's work as my inspiration!) That's not to say I'll never look at this again, down the line a strip and repaint might be on the cards but I'm putting it aside for now. Thanks to anyone who's shown even the slightest interest in this build over the last six months(!), especially @RidgeRunner, whose Leo looks awesome by the way, and @JWM, likewise. Cheers.

Edited March 15, 2021 by TonyOD

[RidgeRunner]

That is such a pity, Tony @TonyOD, although I completely understand. I have ventured in to the realms of weathering and “realism” in the past that are simply beyond my skills. I then end up with a model that I am not proud of, after spending much hard-earned cash and valuable time on it. I’m with you. I hope your LeO does reappear In the future. It certainly is a kit that requires a fair degree of patience. I’m not sure I’d ever attempt another one. Meanwhile I get on with what I love - jets!  
 

Your Alouette is looking just right, by the way!

 

Martin  

[2996 Victor]

Hi Tony,

I'm really sorry to hear this, but I can totally understand where you're coming from.

I can't really say yet, as I haven't actually finished anything, but experience with railway modelling has left me in no doubt that deciding on a standard of finish and weathering is a good approach. My Arma Hurricanes started out as attempts at all-singing, all-dancing with Eduard cockpits, but I really don't think that going forward I'll bother with much more that an IP and seatbelts. Like you, my build rate is slow, and I don't want to spend forever on each model. Weathering is a thorny issue, and I'll be subscribing to the less is more approach when the time comes.

Please don't give up on the LeO - its a really great model and deserves to be finished. If you do decide a strip and repaint is in order, then fine, but in the meantime set it aside and come back to it in the future with a fresh eye.

Kind regards,

Mark