PK-401 Heinkel He115 - Finished!

[TonyW]

10 out of 10 for sheer determination here. I suspect I would have wimped out a long way back.

Seeing it in primer, and with wings all in place, has got to be a real moral booster at your end. It's going to be so satisfying once completed.

[mike romeo]

Looking good, Heather.

 

Rgds

 

Martin

[Heather Kay]

On 20/02/2022 at 16:49, TonyW said:

10 out of 10 for sheer determination here.

 

On 20/02/2022 at 18:37, mike romeo said:

Looking good

Cheers chaps!

 

 

The primer coat has shown some areas that needed work. Amazingly, considering the mauling the nose has taken, I think I’ll get away with the fine ridges after just a smidge of sanding stick.

 

Likewise for the fine seam line that showed on the fuselage spine. I’m being very critical, though. Once the camo is on, I doubt it will show at all.

 

 

Exhausts have been concocted from some styrene tube. I tried to kink the open end out a bit by carving a little V-shaped slot and bending things, but it didn’t take, despite using CA. I’m happy with it, though.

 

The next stage, then, will be to get some white sprayed in areas for the markings stencils I haven’t created yet.

[Brandy]

1 hour ago, Heather Kay said:

Amazingly, considering the mauling the nose has taken,

Are you going to name it Michael?

 

Ian

[Grandboof]

Well done to get this far . This will look great in the gallery . Keep going 

Martin H

[Heather Kay]

58 minutes ago, Grandboof said:

Keep going 

Will do.

 

If I can pull off the stencil markings, and end up with a halfway decent paint finish, I’ll be dead chuffed.

[PattheCat]

2 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

Will do.

 

If I can pull off the stencil markings, and end up with a halfway decent paint finish, I’ll be dead chuffed.

 

[Heather Kay]

I've been distracted by paying work.

 

 

This thing, to be precise. It's an O Gauge Heljan Class 37, which I've been modifying and upgrading. All the remedial works meant it needed a repaint, so this is the first blush of red oxide rattle can primer. It went through a stage of filler and rubbing down again before the final primer coat was acceptable.

 

 

Today saw the first proper livery colours go on, the yellow warning colour on the nose being the first thing. I masked everything off and squirted white primer on the nose to help the yellow enamel. For a change, the enamel had some half-decent pigment in it and covered remarkably well. Tomorrow, I hope to get the BR Corporate Blue on the main body shell.

 

 

With the paint booth occupied with a loco and wet paint, I decided it was time to draw up some stencils for the 'Einkel. The first thing I did was scan the original transfer sheet so I had an idea of the sizes Revell expected me to use on the aircraft. The "Marking That Dare Not Speak Its Name" is from an Xtradecal sheet. In my archives, I found a reference to how the markings were set out, by which I mean the proportions used to form the markings. Armed with that information and a calculator, it was a matter of minutes to draw up the basic shapes.

 

After a surprise that everything was way bigger than I expected on my inkjet printout, I rescaled to the correct size everything by reference to the transfer sheet. Now it's the right size, within a gnat's crotchet. I need to refine the lines, as some odd artefacts popped up on the printout, but I'm happy I can probably commit to Oromask film on the Silhouette tomorrow.

 

 

[AdrianMF]

Just remember not to put the crosses on the loco! Epic stuff. I didn’t think it would be possible, but you are making me glad I have the Frog version of this in the stash…

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Heather Kay]

I have to admit that if I hadn’t bothered with the aftermarket stuff, this build would be done, dusted and probably look okay.

 

Lesson learned. Don’t try to be too clever with older kits.

[Heather Kay]

 

I wrestled the Cameo software into submission, and after three goes got some Oramask film cut to my satisfaction. I’m hoping the stencils for the wing walkways will work. They certainly cut cleanly, but whether I can extract them from the backing remains to be seen. Anyway, I prepped the model for masks by squirting white paint on it. It looks nice there, but as is my way, I think I rather undercooked it. It may look a bit grey in the end, though offset against dark camo and the black cross parts I may get away with it.

 

 

Underneath, for my chosen scheme, it’s all black apart from some wear revealing the original RLM 65. The underwing crosses are simple here, just the white bits showing.

 

 

I made a bit of a boob drawing up the crosses. I stuck rigidly to the scale formula I had, not remembering the upper wing crosses were a different format. Well, they’re wrong, and they’re staying wrong. Hardly anyone will notice.   Sorting out which bits are painted and which bits are masked is a right puzzler, and made my head hurt for a while. There’s plenty of scope for it all to go wrong! Anyway, black on the upper works. I’ll leave the undersides until I’ve sorted out masking the various markings and got the camo pattern done.

 

[AdrianMF]

Looks great with a coat of primer!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Heather Kay]

 

You can’t see here, but the aircraft codes are in place on the black splodge, and all the crosses have been masked fully. I may just splodge masking fluid here and there where the Oramask didn’t quite want to settle into the shapes correctly.

 

 

I am tickled pink. Can you spot why? All the walkway demarcation strips, and the funny comb-shaped bits, all cut perfectly and laid down without a quibble. As they’re printed in grey on the transfer sheet, I decided simply masking the grey primer would be just the job.

 

I am really excited to get a camo coat on now! I might get one colour done tonight, which can dry for a day or so before I set about masking the splinter pattern. That might be Sunday, as tomorrow we have a visitor. They’ve travelled all the way from Australia just to collect a commission I’ve worked on. I’m sure they’re doing something else while they’re here in Blighty, but it’ll be great to see them again.

[Heather Kay]

 

A first light coat of RLM 73. I am using ColourCoats enamels, now that I’m a convert. As you can see, it’s going to need a fair bit more to lose the black underlying areas. I can’t wait to see how good - or bad - my second attempt at paint mask markings turns out. Patience is needed. Much patience.

[PeterB]

Looking good so far Heather and that's a nice split headcode Class 37 as well.

 

Pete

[Terry1954]

4 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

may just splodge

 

Excellent splodging there Heather, this is coming along superbly.

 

And I agree with @PeterB re that class 37.

 

Terry

[Dermo245]

Looking great!

 

 

[Heather Kay]

Oh, hello.

 

 

There's little contrast between the camo colours. I do understand why others choose colours that show up better, but in ColourCoats we trust.

 

I shall leave the markings masked for now, but I hope to get the black undersides done shortly.

 

Exciting times.

[JOCKNEY]

Well done Heather, hopefully on the downslope for this point onwards.

I know what you mean about the colour variation between the 2 greens, I felt the same way when I built my FW200 Condor.

cheers Pat

[Brandy]

That looks perfect. The lack of contrast probably explains why so many references quoted a single tone green on the upper surfaces for years.(Most older Airfix kits for a start!)

 

Ian

[PeterB]

1 minute ago, Brandy said:

That looks perfect. The lack of contrast probably explains why so many references quoted a single tone green on the upper surfaces for years.(Most older Airfix kits for a start!)

 

Ian

I agree Ian - the old Airfix Do-217E was a good example and even authors such as Green in his "Warplanes of the Third Reich" fell into that trap. There are quite a few B&W pics in Ullmann's camo book that either show very little contrast between the colours or none at all - at least until they weathered/faded a bit.

 

Looks good to me Heather.

 

Pete

[Heather Kay]

Cheers chaps! I’m happy with it anyway.

 

 

After some rough and ready masking, black for the nether regions. Black is black, as far as I’m concerned, so RAF Night does nicely. I am not bothered by a nice smooth finish, since the original was a temporary scheme over the RLM 65 for night ops. I’ll dry brush areas of light blue later, where the temporary finish got weathered by the marine environment.

 

I always get this far and remember some details I wanted to add. I think I can still do those without causing major disruption to the paintwork. One does get carried away sometimes. 

[TonyW]

2 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

 

 

 

 

There's little contrast between the camo colours. I do understand why others choose colours that show up better, but in ColourCoats we trust.

 

 

 

 

 

Sixties Humbrol dunklegrun and shwartzgrun straight out the can looked similar. I always added a bit of black to the darker colour for added contrast. It looks like Humbrol got it right back then.

[Heather Kay]

1 hour ago, TonyW said:

Sixties Humbrol dunklegrun and shwartzgrun straight out the can looked similar.

The maritime colours, which I’m using here, are probably even worse for contrast. I like it.

 

 

After some minor remedial work with the airbrush (note to self: pay more attention when you’re masking things next time), I couldn’t resist revealing the markings.

 

What's the verdict?

 

Well, aligning multipart stencils isn’t easy. Happily, I can get away with the fuselage crosses because the white bits were, apparently very roughly painted over with the camouflage colour they sat on - as was the code letter for the aircraft.

 

 

The wing walk area stencils worked really well. Very, very pleased with these.

 

 

 

The big underwing crosses turned out best, but they were only single colour and didn’t need careful alignment of multiple parts. The tail marking also turned out really well, on one side at least.

 

So, I’ll give myself a 7 out of 10. More practice required, but shows promise.

 

So, things will now sit for a while, letting the paint settle and harden properly. Back to the day job tomorrow.

[PeterB]

I am really impressed with your stencil cutting Heather. I could have used one of these gadgets years ago, but these days I don't do enough modelling to justify denting my pension to buy one. In your case I guess it might be of some use in the day job as well.

 

Pete

Edited February 28, 2022 by PeterB