Reini's KUTA bunfight

[reini]

@JeroenS Thanks! Eduard Hellcat is truly a great kit.

[reini]

Oh I'm also working on a fourth (or is it fifth?) KUTA build elsewhere - a Special Hobby Sea Otter Mk.I that I started last summer. I already had a build thread for it so I continued it there instead. You can follow it here:

 

 

I just put some paint and decals on it  

[reini]

Hercules spent some time in the airbrush booth:

 

 

 

 

Next I can start detailing the interior. And after that, some weathering.

 

 

[reini]

Interior work done

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These guys are ready for the fuselage come together 😎

[JeroenS]

Excellent job! You managed to make that vast interior look interesting. 

[arfa1983]

Wow this is looking good. Are we going to be able to see any of this when fuselage comes together? 

[reini]

19 minutes ago, arfa1983 said:

Wow this is looking good. Are we going to be able to see any of this when fuselage comes together? 

 

I'm planning to leave the cabin door and back ramp open so... maybe a little bit?

 

[helios16v]

Lovely work.  

[reini]

Testing paints - I opted to go for the ROK Air Force machine with the beautiful grey and two greens camo.

 

 

Here's what I came up with.

 

This is my subject:

 

Not my photo, image taken from here: https://www.airliners.net/photo/South-Korea-Air-Force/Lockheed-C-130H-Hercules-L-382/1288811/L?qsp=eJwtjUsKwkAQRO/Sa10E8ZddvIAuvEDTU8SBMTN0d8AQcnfHwV3x6lG1kuTJ8fHnUkA9GVjlRTsqrPw26ldSjNFc2WOeBvGZU/Wux313vlTPsvptqSSwYxBBcYQ/v2uA/iqYtMmxXnQ1QB8t0%2BFUeYhWErcNOMdE2/YFLEEx0w%3D%3D

 

Dark green is bit darker but I can lay it down thin to make it less stark. I think the tone is quite good. My choice of light green might be a tad too yellow maybe?  Grey looks pretty good.

 

What do you think, am I on the right track with the colours?

 

 

 

[JeroenS]

I think your light green might be a bit too "golden", isn't it more like a light olive green?

[reini]

52 minutes ago, JeroenS said:

I think your light green might be a bit too "golden", isn't it more like a light olive green?

 

Yeah, you are probably right. I will check my paint selection if I have any suitable. And if not, I'll check my local hobby shop  I'd rather have a ready paint than mix my own for such a large project.

[JeroenS]

39 minutes ago, reini said:

my local hobby shop

😄

[reini]

Not an official KUTA build, but it's there in the spirit of things - my unfinished Sea Otter from last summer is finally finished:

 

 

RFI:

 

WIP:

 

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The work on C-130 continues.

 

 

Fuselage and wings.

 

 

 

Dryfitting the wings. This is starting to become so unwieldy build that I think I have to atleast start the painting project without the wings glued on.

 

[reini]

 

Just to give some perspective - C-130 is slightly larger than the things I normally build  Granted, Gnat is slightly smaller than the things I normally build too...

 

 

 

It's the boring stuff now. Little bit of putty here and there to make extra nice seams. It seems quite a lot but most of that will be sanded off just to cover few blemishes along the seam line.

 

 

Cleaning parts up. Again, not much to clean up but there are lots of stuff so it takes a bit of time. Here's most of the engine parts, apart from the cowlings itself. And some other extra bits.

 

 

 

Wheeeels! Big and chunky. Tiny bit of filler on couple of them to make them nice and smooth.

 

Cleaning part is mostly done but there are still quite a bit of assembly done before the actual painting can happen. But I think engine assembly requires some painting beforehand, just to make things bit easier.

 

 

[JeroenS]

Ha! That picture of the Gnat really does add perspective!

[reini]

On 28/01/2022 at 08:35, JeroenS said:

Ha! That picture of the Gnat really does add perspective!

 

I love putting Gnat next to other planes, it makes everything else look huuuge!  I mean even WW2 fighters...

 

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Engine parts had a coat of metal, mostly the bits that go inside.

 

 

 

Here's the bits ready for assembly. And oh boy. There is nothing wrong with how Zvezda has made these engines - and every even half experienced modeller would have had no trouble at all with the build. They would have paid attention to the instruction manual for the parts numbers for example.

 

But it seems I'm not that smart. I just took a quick look and decided that the nacelles are all the same. Now some of you might have already noticed that there are two different kinds of nacelle halfs (and their counterparts), difference is in the top corner where they sit into the wing. Now I know that there isn't too many combinations that you can actually make with these parts but I glued these engines FOUR TIMES, thinking I have done it right this time. I hadn't, I cracked open the seams, glued them again. Done. NOT. WRONG. _Four times_. Uhh. I couldn't even be mad at the kit as it was 100% user error. Boy, I haven't felt that stupid since... well.. for days 

 

 

 

But I think I finally got them right. And I think I got them cleaned out decent so my harsh modelling methods don't show too much.

 

 

 

It all works out to be quite impressive looking wing.

 

 

 

Fuselage seam tidied up and rescribed the lost details.

 

 

 

Noseweight added! It needed 25g so I had to slip some to the nose wheel well too. I have to get some heavier weights...

 

 

 

These guys are happy that their plane is secured, not gonna be a tail sitter. After checking out the reference photo the tanks inside the cockpit were bright and yellow and not black as suggested in the instructions. So I had to pry open the windows and repaint them. I'm usually not too worried about small details such as that but those things are in quite visible place and I thought it would be nice little touch of colour anyways. And now I can sleep at night knowing it's corrected.

 

[reini]

 

It's a big hunk of junk!

 

 

 

I rarely buy ready made canopy masks but I made an exception this time. Due to the shape of the windows it would have been quite easy to cut them out - but there's quite many windows so I guess I just wanted an easy way out...

 

 

 

 

 

Gray basecolour done and I've post-shaded it with darker grey and patches of light grey here and there. I added another opaque layer of the base colour after this to bring it all together.

 

 

 

Grey done and masked over. A lot of work I wouldn't have needed to done as the amount of grey on the upper side is quite little but I guess I got little carried away...  And I guess with light enough layers the shading will add some slight variation to the greens too.

 

 

 

I know! It looks extra bright! But it's bit out of context as the amount of the lighter green is not that much in the final product plus my camera settings were bit wonky. I changed the colour as @JeroenS suggested, but in reality it really is not THAT bright and and... it will be toned down with the weathering and what else? I dunno, I just hope it all works out in the end!   I went with pretty heavy shading with this build as it seems, I guess it's fun to try out different things. I just hope it doesn't look too cartoony in the end but hey, I guess there's nothing wrong with that either. Same recipe as with the grey - base colour, shading with darker green and patches of lighter green here and there. Final layer of base colour again to bring it all together.

 

I'm kinda curious how it all looks in the end as now it looks like ... maybe bit too much. But I'm pretty confident that weathering will make it all work out.

 

 

 

Props I painted black first and then masked the silver bit in the middle. This is not mentioned in the instructions BTW, they are just all black, but looking at the photos the middle part is dull silver.

 

 

 

I'm glad they are not all black as they look kinda snazzy this way

[JeroenS]

Nice work Reini, especially those props! 

 

I think the whole thing will probably work out in the end, some weathering and varnish will tone it down. 

[reini]

 

Dark green is done, ready to take out the masking tape....

 

I bet you wanna see the tape coming off?

 

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Well, here it is:

 

 

Looks pretty nice, eh?

 

 

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Just kidding, here it is

 

 

 

 

It looks VERY vivid under the desktop light I mind you. I mean it's a bit on the bright side but it's not THAT vivid. I'll try to take a pic under natural light tomorrow to see if I can get bit more realistic photo out of it. But the colours aside, the masking job was succesful I only need to do couple little touch ups. Now I will let it dry for a day or two and mask couple smaller metallic areas to finish the paintjob.

 

 

 

 

[helios16v]

Looking sharp.  Will make for an eye-catching addition once it's complete.

[reini]

 

 

 

 

It seems impossible to catch the real colours on photo - these still show the greens brighter than they are. Oh well, we will see once I take the final photos how they turn up and if I can get a decent photo out of it. But for now, I lightly sanded the surface and added some paint patches on some of the more used areas that might have been repainted. Looks a bit messy still but makes more sense after additional weathering and panel line washes.

 

 

 

We are ready for decals!

 

 

 

And quite big decals they are  First ones I did in the tail I cut out the film in the middle, just leaving the black lines but they were near impossible to align neatly and not to break into million pieces. Much nicer to put down with the big carrier film but quite easy to trap air bubbles under it. Decals themselves work ok, I don't have bad thing to say about them but next time I will paint line decals such as this, no question about it.

 

 

 

I'm also working on yet another KUTA build which will probably finish before the C-130 - the Italeri 1/72 Carrier Deck Section. I've done the main paintjob and decals, once dried there will be plenty of weathering to be done.