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

[Bertie McBoatface]

Good work, well presented, great thread, James

[81-er]

14 hours ago, Paul H said:

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.

 

I'm still debating the underwing logo as well. I might temporarily install the regular bomb doors, stick the decal on, then replace the doors with the ones for the big bombs. Alternatively, I may just leave it off the plane and stick it on a base of some kind. As for the bomb knowledge, that’s purely down to me having a hunt to try and visually identify which bomb it was, then finding replacements at a sensible cost. I'm no expert on Luftwaffe armaments by any stretch.

 

 

14 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

Good work, well presented, great thread, James

 

Thanks Bertie, good to know it's appreciated.

 

James

[81-er]

I finally got a bit of bench time last night, and it seemed right to spend it on the Heinkel as it hasn’t had any love for nearly a month. The first item to tackle was the bases for a couple of the panel Eduard supply in the PE set, which is partially what side-lined this while I waited for some styrene strip to turn up as I didn’t fancy trying to fold the minute boxes Eduard provide. A couple of suitable offcuts from the detailing of the Hercules u/c bays were selected and placed on the PE to compare to the respective boxes they’d be replacing:

 

 

They’re deliberately a little thicker than the Eduard parts (1.0mm square in section rather than 0.7x0.5) to make them slightly more likely to be visible in the end product. These were then cut to length and squared up before being glued to the fuselage side. I’ve made one slightly shorter and set back a hair to try and approximate what Eduard provided:

 

 

Exact locations are a little vague in the instructions:

 

 

All the other parts in that area are pre-painted, so this can now join the paint queue. Paint is becoming a bottle neck at the moment, partly due to the ongoing DIY and the massive amounts of dust that’s kicking up, and partly as I’ve had to be back in the office part of the week again and I’m struggling to find a free moment that’s not stupidly late and beyond the sensible time window for having the noisy extractor on to airbrush.

 

Moving on, I added these two strips of 0.5mm square strip to the column as I didn’t fancy folding up the Eduard bases for there either. I also thought solid strip would have a stronger joint than hollow PE as well:

 

 

I think I may need to add a third as these two don’t appear to be quite wide enough to take both panels, and yet again the instructions are vague on the exact placement:

 

 

Next job on the hitlist was to remove the detail from the IP so it could be painted prior to getting it’s PE overlay:

 

 

 

There’s a couple of nicks where I got a bit too enthusiastic with the scalpel while removing the detail, but I can live with those as they’ll be covered by the Eduard PE panel anyway.

 

Final job for the night was installing the rudder pedals, which was a hell of a game. Airfix only provide one location pin for each, meaning trying to align the pair to be parallel in plan, aligned in profile, and not canted in when viewed head-on was a challenge. I ended up gluing on the inner one first, then adding the outer one after that was set. Blu-tack was used as an aide to keeping them in the intended location, which has worked fairly well. There seems to be a tiny bit of Blu-tack that’s ended up glued to the outer pedal, but I’m sure I can get that cleaned up. The pictures below were from this morning once it was hardened:

 

 

 

Don’t you just love the way macro photos show up the flaws? Some filler required to the pedal faces then! I’ll clean the PE off with IPA before painting:

 

 

Hopefully there won’t be such a delay before the next update!

 

Until next time

 

James

[arfa1983]

Looks good James! 

 

Definitely a big fan of Lemmy and motorhead, so can't wait to see those decals applied! 

[PeterB]

On 2/15/2022 at 10:05 AM, 81-er said:

 

As for the bomb knowledge, that’s purely down to me having a hunt to try and visually identify which bomb it was, then finding replacements at a sensible cost. I'm no expert on Luftwaffe armaments by any stretch.

 

If you dig around on the internet you can find copies of the manuals produced by the US Army/Air Force/Navy on the weapons of many of the countries used in WWII - US, British, German, Japanese, Italian and French - I think they were orignally produced with bomb disposal in mind.  The current one I have on German Bombs is Part one of a two part set and has a reference TM 9-1985-2. It can be quite useful for modellers showing the shape, fusing and colour of most bombs the Luftwaffe used. There are copies available to buy but if you dig enough you should find free ones!

 

Pete

[Bertie McBoatface]

6 hours ago, 81-er said:

I didn’t fancy trying to fold the minute boxes Eduard provide.

 

Will you veneer the faces of your plastic boxes with the front sections from the photo-etch, or is it all just too small in 1/72?

[81-er]

7 hours ago, arfa1983 said:

Looks good James! 

 

Definitely a big fan of Lemmy and motorhead, so can't wait to see those decals applied! 

It'll be a while yet, but I'm rather looking forward to it myself

 

5 hours ago, PeterB said:

If you dig around on the internet you can find copies of the manuals produced by the US Army/Air Force/Navy on the weapons of many of the countries used in WWII - US, British, German, Japanese, Italian and French - I think they were orignally produced with bomb disposal in mind.  The current one I have on German Bombs is Part one of a two part set and has a reference TM 9-1985-2. It can be quite useful for modellers showing the shape, fusing and colour of most bombs the Luftwaffe used. There are copies available to buy but if you dig enough you should find free ones!

 

Pete

Thanks for that Pete, I've made myself a note so I can go hunting for a copy

 

5 hours ago, Bertie Psmith said:

 

Will you veneer the faces of your plastic boxes with the front sections from the photo-etch, or is it all just too small in 1/72?

Absolutely! Assuming I can ever find the time to get it painted. I was hoping to get some primer on tonight, but as I've only just managed to get some time to myself now and we're well past a civilised hour to be firing up the spraybooth 

[PeterB]

I can't remember where I got mine from but this site has quite a few manuals to download.

https://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/ref/TM/index.html

 

The British one was a US Navy publication!

 

Pete

[81-er]

That's fantastic! Thank you , Pete!

[Bertie McBoatface]

38 minutes ago, PeterB said:

this site has quite a few manuals to download.

 

Thanks Pete.

[PeterB]

Hi guys, this is the US Army version of the one on British things that go BANG!

https://stephentaylorhistorian.files.wordpress.com/2020/09/tm-9-1985-1-british-explosive-ordnance.pdf

 

and this should be one of the versions for the US

https://maritime.org/doc/ordnance/

 

The sources I used seem to have gone but the above may work.

 

Pete

Edited March 2, 2022 by PeterB

[81-er]

Thanks once again, Pete, much appreciated.

 

James

[Jasper dog]

Two tricky builds and laden with pe too!

Completely forgot about this one, sure it'll look very impressive once done James, good luck with the photo etch!

 

Cheers 

Darryl 

[81-er]

Thanks Darryl. For the most part the PE isn't too bad, though there are a couple of pieces I'm not using as they were extremely small and had complex bends. One is supposed to make up a console between the pilot and the bomb aimer/navigator/front gunner, which I managed to get mostly folded up ok, right up to the last bend. At which point it went too far and I genuinely don't think I can open it back up without it snapping, so I'm just pretending that bit didn't happen 

 

James

[Jasper dog]

On 03/03/2022 at 09:24, 81-er said:

so I'm just pretending that bit didn't happen 

 

James

Sounds like an excellent idea, my sort of modelling technique!

 

I remember using the eduard PE sets on 1/48 aeroplanes and finding some of the parts incredibly small and fiddly and really wondered who on earth would ever see most of it.

 

After that an awful lot of the PE set never got used....

 

Happy folding!

Darryl 

[Bertie McBoatface]

3 hours ago, Jasper dog said:

After that an awful lot of the PE set never got used....

 

Things no modeller ever said # 99

"Blimey, I used every piece of that PE set. What amazing value for money!"

[81-er]

I slightly tempted fate with the last line of my last update, didn’t I? Life has had a multitude of obstacles to bench time including the ongoing (and thankfully nearly finished) DIY marathon that is the hall & landings, “interesting” electrics (discovering the circuits for both the downstairs and upstairs lights ran through the same open-topped pattress box under the floor, with all connections done with twisted wires & tape), and rather unfortunately, the end of my relationship (not related to the DIY). On the plus side, I get more opportunities for bench time as I don’t have to jump when she demands anymore.

 

On the modelling front, I’ve been mostly working on painting. I’ve now got a 0.5mm needle set for my airbrush and suddenly the UMP primer is a dream to work with! The internals have now been hit with a coat of black UMP primer which was followed up with Mr Hobby H301 Grey, as I saw this mentioned in another build as a “lighter” RLM 66:

 

 

 

 

It’s amazing how rough macro photos make things look when they appear fine to the mk1 eyeball!

 

This lot are in a mixture of primer, Tamiya X-11 silver, Mr Hobby H301, and AK11820 RLM 66 (1941):

 

 

The floor of the bomb bay got the same treatment as the insides of the fuselage (though it looks a completely different colour here):

 

 

Having mentioned the AK RLM66, what my hope had been that by using the Mr Hobby as a lighter colour for the main structure I would then be able to paint the details that affixed to it in the AK RLM66, making them “pop” slightly as they’re darker. Unfortunately, the AK is considerably lighter than the Mr Hobby, making it look closer to RLM02 in comparison. Lesson learnt here, and Mr Hobby RLM 66 on order! I might grab the 1938 version of the AK RLM 66 as well, as that appears to be darker than the 1941, We’ll see.

 

Cockpit floor painted in Mr Hobby H301 and the pilot’s seat in primer & Vallejo 72.740 Leather Brown:

 

 

 

 

Bomb racks in AK RLM 66. A bit rough, but almost nothing will be seen of them, so they’ll do:

 

 

And finally, the overhead IP and the pilots control column, both in AK RLM 66.:

 

 

Until next time

 

James

[Col.]

Good progress James.

Glad to hear you've caught those electrical issues before they caused a major incident! A good mate is a sparky and some of the sights he's shown me in the past are, excuse the pun, shocking with consequences that don't bear thinking about. Sounds as if single life will be an improvement for you as well.

[81-er]

Thanks Col. To add to your mate's collection, I went to remove a bit of ratty looking skirting board that appeared to be half filler. All was going well until I put the crowbar through the neutral wire of the cable running to the lightiswitch above!

 

 

 

Apparently they'd decided to just run the cable over the skirting board rather than behind it, held it down with a couple of screws and covered it with filler. At least we'd planned on taking the skirting board off, so the cable now runs behind it.

 

And just for completeness, a couple of the mess under the floor (which is now safely inside a proper junction box):

 

 

[Col.]

Yikes!

With those images fresh in our minds I'm looking at your signature and thinking that to really foul things up you need wire-stripers, some electrical tape, and no idea of what you're doing  

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Tell me there is a way to report someone for doing that in the U.K., thats bordering on the criminal if you ask me. 

[81-er]

Oh, it is Dennis. In fact it's because people did stupid things like that that we're not allowed to mess with our own electrics without having it signed off by a qualified electrician (which we did with putting it right). Sadly I have no idea who's responsible for that mess, or I'd report them myself!

 

I'm thoroughly with you on that statement @Col.

 

James

[Col.]

The frightening thing is many of the horror stories Alan shows me have been created by qualified electricians

[Galligraphics]

7 hours ago, 81-er said:

And just for completeness, a couple of the mess under the floor (which is now safely inside a proper junction box):

[81-er]

On 4/1/2022 at 5:59 PM, Col. said:

The frightening thing is many of the horror stories Alan shows me have been created by qualified electricians

Unfortunately, so have most of the horrors I've seen over the years. I think an awful lot of it is down to laziness, which is terrible when you think about the potential consequences if it goes wrong. I work in structural engineering, so I've seen some pretty hair-raising building work over the years as well. One that particularly stands out was a foundation for a steel column cast about 10" too low, meaning the top of the steel was too low to support the beam that was supposed to sit on top of it. Site's "solution" was to get some longer bolts and pack the gap between the two steels with anything to hand; bits of timber, slates, paper cups (really!). It was only spotted because the building inspector visited site as they were boxing it in with plasterboard. The beam sitting on the top was one of the main members holding up the 1st floor on a £1.2m house.