Hobbyboss 1/72 MS. 406 - finished

[AliGauld]

It's all looking splendid.

Cracking work with the roundels and tailplane.

 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Heather Kay]

Looking good, Adrian.

 

I must say, if I can pin down definitive paint colours for French roundels I will be making masks and painting for future builds. The colour variations on transfer sheets are confusing, to say the least, making it very hard to mix and match from different sources.

[AdrianMF]

16 hours ago, stevehnz said:

smart now

Thanks Steve! I have my fingers crossed that I can avoid any more disasters and actually finish the damn' thing.

 

8 hours ago, PattheCat said:

To my eye your revised roundels and painting of the rudder look better than mere decals would

I'm quite liking them too, although, to Heather's point, it's possibly more a question of taste and choice (and what decals you have lying around) than accuracy! And the Frog decals were never going to be great even if they had settled down nicely.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

4 hours ago, Heather Kay said:

colour variations on transfer sheets are confusing

And proportions too! Ever since the Heller GB catapulted me into French military airspace, I've been consistently confused.

 

Given that RAF roundels are so well defined (even by Wikipedia amongst others) and that most of us would have a minor apoplectic fit on seeing a D type roundel on anything before 1945, it seems strange that "anything goes" in French roundel-land. I was driven on this model by the larger (1/3 of diameter) blue spots on the wing roundels from the MPM Blenheim, as it's easier to make the blue dots bigger than smaller! And my light blue (Hu 247+248/RLM 76+78), also driven by MPM, is only a gnat's away from the light blue of the underside (Hu 247/RLM 76), so I'm not claiming accuracy but I can claim consistency.

 

The modern Heller kits that I have seen tend to do larger blue spots and a lighter blue, so that's what I tend to go with for WW2.

 

I totally agree with you. I don't know if it genuinely was "anything goes" (after all, their camouflage patterns were not prescribed like the RAF ones) of whether the French readers of Britmodeller are perpetually shocked by our ignorance about French roundels! 

 

Regards,

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

…and while looking through my decal collection for some small white sixes, I come across some old Airfix Blenheim decals that would have been a perfect match for the Heller fuselage ones:

 

Where were they hiding when I looked through a day or two ago?

[PattheCat]

Hello Adrian.

As far as I know the "official" 1/3 rule for the roundel dates back to 1933, On French forums they often quote Humbrol 89 as a good match for the blue.

So I once more say that - to my eye (I'm somewhat colour blind 😳)- you nailed it better than on many decal sheets.

 

Regards.

Pat.

[AdrianMF]

After an evening of touch ups I’ve got to this:

 

I sanded off the six balls from the fin and found some sixes from an Xtradecal Pacific theatre sheet.
 

I’m calling that end done now, exhausts, canopy, pitot, under-aerial and weathering to go.

[bigbadbadge]

Looks good , great recovery from the decal disaster Adrian.   

Great work. 

Chris

[AdrianMF]

17 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

great recovery from the decal disaster

Thanks Chris. At normal viewing distances the repairs look fine to me.

 

I’m really impressed with the kit. I have built the Mig-3 and this from the Hobbyboss Easy range and they have both been a real treat.

 

I’ve added the last couple of bits and bobs (thanks @Ed Russell for reminding me about the pitot tube and underside aerial) and added a bit of exhaust staining, so all it needs now is a coat of matt varnish:

All the paint has been extensively handled during the decal repair phase and has stood up to the abuse rather well, so I don’t think I will do any more weathering!

 

[billn53]

1 hour ago, AdrianMF said:

 

I’m really impressed with the kit. I have built the Mig-3 and this from the Hobbyboss Easy range and they have both been a real treat.

I built Hobbyboss’s ‘Easy Assembly’ P-61 Black Widow, and also was impressed. Ten days, start to finish, and took a gold at my local group’s annual show in the “Out of the Box” category.  Who could ask for anything more?

[Ed Russell]

2 hours ago, AdrianMF said:

I’m really impressed with the kit. I have built the Mig-3 and this from the Hobbyboss Easy range and they have both been a real treat.

I'm really impressed with your build - well done! Some of the Hobbyboss kits are actually quite good.

[bigbadbadge]

I agree, an impressive build Adrian.  Great work. 

Chris

[AdrianMF]

I got some matt varnish on today and I’m calling it Done:

 

This angle is low enough to show off the underside folded aerial but not so low that you can see I haven’t bothered with the enormous white unit codes under the wing!

 

More pictures in RFI

 

Thanks for looking in.

Adrian

[AdrianMF]

12 hours ago, billn53 said:

I built Hobbyboss’s ‘Easy Assembly’ P-61 Black Widow, and also was impressed. Ten days, start to finish, and took a gold at my local group’s annual show in the “Out of the Box” category.  Who could ask for anything more?

I followed that build and really enjoyed it. I gave you a token “like” today, but didn’t at the time for some reason - maybe because I was sore at just having bought the much less detailed and harder to build Airfix kit!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[jackroadkill]

She's looking good, Adrian.  I particularly like the Jimbo-esque grin it wears.

[AliGauld]

A little cracker.

Nicely done.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Dave Slowbuild]

It does seem do me smiling doesn’t it!
Not a type I had given much attention to before but I’m really taken with it.

 

Which paint nos did you use for the camo?  For future reference….. I’d like to build a few French early war types, and the full extent of my knowledge is that the colours are a bit uncertain.  I like the colours on yours, good enough for me!

[AdrianMF]

1 hour ago, Dave Slowbuild said:

Which paint nos

Revell acrylic 79 blue-grey

Humbrol acrylic 155 olive drab

Humbrol acrylic 247 RLM76 light blue-grey

and

Humbrol acrylic 160 German camo red-brown

 

BUT on boxing this up with my other French fighters, I realised that on those I had used

 

Revell acrylic 84 leather brown

 

which is darker and looks better:

 

but it is in my “overflow” paint box so I missed it this time around

 

@Heather Kay does a lot of research and modelling for this period, and uses a much brighter set of colours, which may well be more accurate for WWII examples rather than museum and warbird ones. You pays your money…

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Dave Slowbuild]

Thanks Adrian, I shall bookmark this for when I get going.

I read @Heather Kay’s builds which was what has inspired me to make a few French types.  (From memory I think Heather used Colourcoats).

 

Many years ago I was in a meeting at Hispano-Suiza in Paris and I remember a profile of a prewar French design framed on the wall.  It looked like three independent committees had designed the front, middle and rear.  Afraid I don’t know what it was.  But it could have straight out of Dick Dastardly’s Vulture Squadron, if you remember that!  Bizarre but strangely fascinating.  Curious how a nation such as France, rightly famous for design, could come up with such extraordinary mish-mashes!