It's a bomber, it's a bomber...

[81-er]

Having mentioned in passing on Col’s thread that this was in my stash, he pointed out that it would be eligible for the GB as it is a bomber. Well, it’d be rude not to after that, right?

 

Here’s the box:

 

 

I’ll spare you the sprue shots as I’m sure most of us have seen an Airfix He-111 from this tooling. The only difference is that instead of the usual camouflage choices this one is destined to be painted black and adorned with Motörhead logos:

 

 

There’s some fairly sizable decals, notably the Snaggletooth logos that will take the place of the Balkenkreuzes on the wings, as well as the massive “Motörhead” script on the underside of the wing:

 

 

I’m hoping for a “quick kill” with this one, partially as it’s a novelty build, and partially because the Hercules needs serious amounts of work. I’ll be limiting the use of aftermarket for that reason. Paint masks are already in the box, otherwise I’m considering a set of resin wheels with separate tyres and maybe the pre-coloured Eduard cockpit PE, both purely for speeding up the painting process. I’m also going to hunt out another SC1000 bomb as there’s only one in the kit.

 

The most challenging part of the build is likely to be the decals, with the underwing script being the biggest challenge. I think I’ll probably have to build it with the undercarriage doors closed initially, apply the decal, then remove the u/c doors and add the wheels afterwards. Similarly, I think I’ll have to add the bomb racks after it’s in place and accept it’ll be slightly covered.

 

Naturally I’ll be listening to Motörhead at full volume while working on this ♠️🔊🤘🤘

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

Although I was disappointed to learn Airfix didn't tool a new chin turret for this one to improve the kit's accuracy I'm still delighted to see you've chosen to do this one James

Now get that music cranked up! 

[Scargsy]

Interesting kit - I've seen these advertised but never ventured near one but I'm very curious, especially given the cover art: does it come with old school vinyl music included?

 

[81-er]

13 hours ago, Col. said:

Although I was disappointed to learn Airfix didn't tool a new chin turret for this one to improve the kit's accuracy I'm still delighted to see you've chosen to do this one James

Now get that music cranked up! 

 

I'm disappointed that the turret wasn't included too, and that there are only the standard kit's very generic (and all identical) Luftwaffe crewmen.  I would have been over the moon if they'd included miniature representations of Lemmy, Eddie, and Philthy

 

9 hours ago, Scargsy said:

Interesting kit - I've seen these advertised but never ventured near one but I'm very curious, especially given the cover art: does it come with old school vinyl music included?

 

 

Sadly not

[Adam Poultney]

52 minutes ago, 81-er said:

I'm disappointed that the turret wasn't included too, and that there are only the standard kit's very generic (and all identical) Luftwaffe crewmen.  I would have been over the moon if they'd included miniature representations of Lemmy, Eddie, and Philthy

3D printer go BRRRRRRRRRRRR

[Col.]

4 hours ago, 81-er said:

I'm disappointed that the turret wasn't included too, and that there are only the standard kit's very generic (and all identical) Luftwaffe crewmen.  I would have been over the moon if they'd included miniature representations of Lemmy, Eddie, and Philthy

If Revell can include Eddy in the Iron Maiden issue Spitfire then Airfix need to raise their game!

[81-er]

4 hours ago, Adam Poultney said:

3D printer go BRRRRRRRRRRRR

If I had one, absolutely. Though given I draw buildings in 2D for the day job, I'm not confident that my CAD skills are quite up to rendering the guys recognisably. I could do a nice reinforced concrete bunker for Lemmy’s booze & drug stash though… 🤣

 

James

 

[desert falcon]

Awesome choice James 👍

[81-er]

As my chances to get to the bench over the last couple of days have been late at night, this has seen some action as I’d rather clean up parts on here than have to concentrate on getting things in the right place when rescribing the Hercules. I’ve ordered the Eduard pre-coloured interior PE set so while I wait for that to arrive (hopefully tomorrow) I’ve been cleaning up any part that I could get off the sprues that’s either not fragile or that I could safely number on a hidden area with a sharpie. There’s a couple of bits I couldn’t number that have been cleaned up, but those are pretty obvious what they are like the rudder or the main cockpit floor. I’ve also got one aileron off the sprues as well but that’s only because it broke free in transit. Luckily every other part stayed attached to the sprues until I started work on it, so it’s very obvious which one this is. I now have two bags of parts:

 

 

I did get the glue out and assembled the two halves of the main body of the bomb, as well as one of the wheel wells. The bomb needs a tiny bit of filler before I can attach the tail ring. I’m still investigating the best source of a second SC-1000 bomb too. The wheel well was a right pain to get together as Airfix would have you fit the long sides first, then attach the short ones after those are set. In practice I couldn’t get the long sides to sit in anything like the right place without the ends on and reversed the process. Much Blu Tack and tape came to the rescue to keep it all aligned! The detail is very good out of the box:

 

 

 

I think for now there probably won’t be much progress on this until the Eduard PE turns up and I work out how much of that I’ll be using, but that works as I have plenty to do with the Hercules.

 

Until next time

 

James

[81-er]

My aftermarket bits arrived on Friday. I’ve bought a set of Reskit wheels, a Metallic Details tailwheel set (as the tyre and rim are separate on those unlike the Reskit ones), and the Eduard PE mentioned previously:

 

 

 

 

The detail on the Reskit wheels is absolutely amazing, even the tailwheel has legible writing on it and the rims are very finely detailed. The MD set isn’t quite as detailed, but does include what I’m assuming are 3D printed legs for the wheels, complete with the brake line moulded in. Unfortunately, the one on the right appears to be a bit of a duff moulding, so I’ll be using the one on the left.

 

I’ll be having a more thorough look through the instructions on the Eduard PE to see what I’ll be using, but from the cursory glance last night there’s a fair bit that looks to be worth it. I’ll not be going all out and using it all and mostly sticking to the pre-coloured bits. The rest of Friday night’s modelling time was spent on the Hercules.

 

Last night was a different case, however. I spent most of the time removing details ready to add the photo etch and dealing with ejector marks. After prepping as far as I could, I glued the interior panel to the port fuselage:

 

 

That pin mark in the cockpit area isn’t entirely filled, but you won’t see the bit that isn’t behind some of the detailing.

 

Eduard wanted me to remove a big chunk of detail to the lower left area of this bulkhead in order to fit a box. I’ve elected to just remove the bit of ducting as I think I can still get the PE box in then and it would look like there are hidden cables running into the top of the box:

 

 

I’m building up a fair assembly of parts that are ready for primer now. I’m not cleaning up the pin marks on the two parts to the right of centre as they’re used to block some intakes on the lower nacelles so you can’t see through them, and the marks are entirely out of sight:

 

 

I got the pilot’s seat mounted on it’s support. Not quite sure how to hold that for painting yet:

 

 

The bomb got its tail and I stuck the main halves of the nacelles together. The middle panels of those aren’t glued yet, they’re just taped in place to keep the geometry:

 

 

Like the port side, the starboard side had the worst of the pin marks dealt with and it’s interior panel glued in. I‘ve removed some detail right at the front of the fuselage to receive some etch, and filled a big and prominent pin mark:

 

 

This shot shows how I’ve dealt with the pin marks further back on both fuselage sides. I don’t think any of these will be visible in the finished model, so a bit of a sand/scrape back is all they’re getting:

 

 

Final job for the night was to whack some filer over the pin marks on these parts:

 

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

Nice progress with this one James  

[81-er]

I must admit I'm enjoying bouncing back and forth between the two builds as both have their challenges in different areas, and I can work on one while the other's drying. I desperately want to get the rest of the paint on the Hellcat as well, and will as soon as a suitable opportunity to get the airbrush out appears.

 

James

[Col.]

I keep forgetting to look out for your progress updates on the Hellcat project  Sorry about that James but it was going well last time I checked.

[81-er]

It's all good Col, it's hard enough staying abreast of all the action in this group build, it's a really busy one. I'm seriously impressed at how you're not only managing to stay on top of all of that, but also be dishing out all of the encouragement as well, makes for a really nice vibe 🙂 The Hellcat is still ticking along, just waiting for a decent opportunity to get the airbrush out for the final gloss red coat before I do the grey tail. After that, it should just be decals & a small amount of weathering. I think that'll mostly be some exhaust stains and some chips to the prop, they seem to have generally gone on their final mission fairly soon after the snazzy paint job. If I'm lucky, I may even finish it before the anniversary of starting it...

 

James

[81-er]

A Little more progress last night as most of my time was spent looking into panel lines on Hercules. First job was cleaning up the filler from the last session, which has increased the number of parts now awaiting primer:

 

 

Having cleaned the filler on them, I assembled the first of the parts for the cockpit floor and hit the gaps with some PPP:

 

 

Not shown here, but I removed the rear console (that sits in the slot at the back of the cockpit floor) from the sprue and gave it a clean-up. It’s had a whack of filler as well as there was an enormous ejector pin mark on one side of it.

 

Last job for the night was some filler on the nacelles (and much relief that I’d succeeded in not gluing the covers to the main body yet!):

 

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

Nice progress on the ancillary components

[81-er]

As there seemed to be nothing stopping me now, I figured it was probably time to start making up some of the main structure:

 

 

 

My idea about not removing quite as much detail from the rear cockpit bulkhead as Eduard suggested appears to have worked, a bit of filler in the gap and then it’ll look like the trunking feeds the PE box (which has a pre-coloured piece to be fitted after the bulkhead is painted):

 

 

Although not mentioned in the Airfix instructions, I’ve decided to make up the internal bomb racks anyway. Without them, the area between the two bulkheads would just be a void (not that I really expect to see that much, but…). There’s also a part of me that could absolutely see Lemmy & the boys dropping the SC1000’s and then coming round for a second pass, ditching the external racks/doors and then dropping whatever was in the internal bomb bay. Alternatively, it would provide a handy place to store the JD:

 

 

They just need a bit of filler and a tidy up, then they’ll be ready for paint as well.

 

I’ve tidied up the filler on the cockpit, added a tiny bit of PE that will hold an instrument (a compass maybe?) that sits between the pilot’s feet, as well as gluing on the centre console. That still needs some filler though:

 

 

 

 

There’s some pre-painted PE parts to go into the well under the bomb aimer’s station after painting. There’s a couple of areas on the righthand cockpit wall and on the control column that are supposed to have tiny PE boxes made up to support PE panels. I think it would be far better to make the support boxes from solid styrene strip, which is now on order and should be here early next week. Until that’s here progress on this may slow, which isn’t a bad thing as it means I can concentrate on the Hercules.

 

The final bit for now, I’ve had a very nice delivery from Hannants, including some very nice SC1000 bombs from CMK. These are much crisper than the Airfix offering, which I’ll now move to the spares box. They came in a pack of 4, which means another pair for the spares box as well:

 

 

They weren’t the only goodies from the big H, but the rest are for upcoming projects

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

I like your idea of repurposing the internal bomb racks for JD storage  

[fittedkitchens]

Excellent choice for the GB! 

[81-er]

2 hours ago, Col. said:

I like your idea of repurposing the internal bomb racks for JD storage  

I wonder if I can find some 1/72 JD bottles...

[Colin W]

I saw this when it was announced but Ive never seen the kit or one made up so looking forward to see this finished.

 

On 1/25/2022 at 4:02 PM, 81-er said:

pre-coloured Eduard cockpit PE, both purely for speeding up the painting process.

Interesting, I usually find the addition of any form of aftermarket slows me down!

[81-er]

On 2/4/2022 at 4:13 PM, Colin W said:

I saw this when it was announced but Ive never seen the kit or one made up so looking forward to see this finished.

 

Interesting, I usually find the addition of any form of aftermarket slows me down!

 

The pre-painted stuff is a definite time saver for me, my detail painting skills are not great.

 

I managed to shoot some primer over all the various bits that were ready for it on Friday lunchtime, I'll try and get the time to snap some progress shots later.

 

James

[Paul H]

On 03/02/2022 at 22:27, 81-er said:

I wonder if I can find some 1/72 JD bottles...

And with that location, easy to jettison the empties too 😉

 

Will be following this with great interest - will the port side bomb be launched, like the artwork?

 

Thinking of that, have you seen this?  The end result is displayed in a great way:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yy8GaV6u2oI

 

[81-er]

I'll be having both bombs attached and displaying it with the gear down, "pre-takeoff" for the album cover, as such

 

I may well have seen that video a couple of times... 

 

When I checked the primer in daylight, it was rather patchy and "spotty". First time using UMP primer, so I suspect most likely user error. Will try again the next chance I get to have a painting session.

 

James

[Paul H]

20 hours ago, 81-er said:

I'll be having both bombs attached and displaying it with the gear down, "pre-takeoff" for the album cover, as such

Ah - guess that would solve the issue of the correct crew too!

 

20 hours ago, 81-er said:

I may well have seen that video a couple of times... 

It is entirely possible that I may also have watched it a quite a few times too, but I can neither confirm nor deny anything 😉

 

I am still undecided as to how I will build mine, however, I may well copy how he has used the Motorhead script decal for the stand instead of on the underside of the wings. I really don't fancy trying  to get that to fit over engine nacelles & undercarriage doors, especially if open!

 

Forgot to say in my previous post - many thanks for the info on sourcing the second bomb, which is very useful, as that was bugging me & my knowledge of Luftwaffe stuff is not detailed enough to know what to search for.