1:72 Valom Northrop BT-1 Dive Bomber

[Learstang]

Interesting you should mention the canopy, Bill. Didn't this kit come with both an injection-moulded and a vacuform canopy (or did I dream it?)? If it did, I've lost the injection-moulded one. No big deal - I've dealt with plenty of vacuform canopies in my travels. And you are correct - this canopy is going to be a right b****r to paint with all the frames. I'd already starting painting parts silver/aluminium, but luckily nothing has been glued together yet, so I'll just go over those parts with my zinc chromate green. Stoicism or Epicureanism? Hmmm, interesting choice there - I think I'll stick with good, ol' Zeno and Marcus Aurelius as it seems to go with my personality, such as it is, better. However, I can assure you that when I plunge an X-Acto blade into my finger, I forget my Stoicism very quickly! At any rate, get better already so you can finish this so I can build mine! Do get better, mate, and be careful!

 

Best Regards,

 

Jason

[Navy Bird]

If I wasn't 2/3 of the way through masking it off, I would have gone for silver decal stripes for the framework. Would have taken a lot less time!

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. I don't plan on using the injected canopy so if you want it you can have it. Wait until I finish this thing first though - there is still plenty of time for me to muck up the vacuform.   

[Terry1954]

Sorry to hear Covid has given you greif Bill, but sounds like you may be on the up.

 

12 minutes ago, Navy Bird said:

there is still plenty of time for me to muck up the vacuform. 

 

Ha! Tell me about that! I ended up vacforming quite a few new canopies for the Viking glider, having screwed up the original, and one or two replacements.

 

The expert on this subject is young Steve @Fritag who has produced some pretty neat Hawk canopies, as I'm sure you may recall. It was that famous thread (you know the one) that was partly to blame for me acquiring a dental vac form machine myself. And I'm sure you once said you have a similar machine?

 

Maybe time to make a buck before you ruin any single vac form you have?

 

Just an idea?

 

Terry

 

[AdrianMF]

Hope you get better soon Bill! Airbrushing while feeling sleepy could end up with interesting camo schemes indeed - on you!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[StephenCJ]

On 9/18/2022 at 7:18 AM, StephenCJ said:

Bill you live in the wrong country, no Covid here

I lied, plenty of covid.  Been talking to the wrong people, even the quak I see has had covid and happily spread it among his staff until he was tested.

 

Stephen, teller of porky pies.

[StephenCJ]

On 9/17/2022 at 5:51 AM, Navy Bird said:

Yeah, for an old guy he sure was shredding some solos.

Old guys are some of the best

[Navy Bird]

2 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

... And I'm sure you once said you have a similar machine?

 

Maybe time to make a buck before you ruin any single vac form you have?

 

Yup, got one of them dental vacuformicating machinen. My buddy in HK got it for me - $50 USD. Cheap! One of these days I'll give it a try.   

 

I've already cut out the canopy and filed it to fit the fuselage as best I can. I think all I can muck up at this point is the masking - I'm going very slowly and have it more than half done. Personally, I hate manually masking canopies like this, with all those individual panels. The only things I hate worse are removing parts from the runners, test fitting, assembling, seam filling, sanding, painting, stickering, detailing, weathering, fiddly bitting, and displaying. Other than that, I love modelling!   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[81-er]

I'm glad to see you haven't lost your sense of humour, Bill. And it's good to hear you're recovering too 

 

James

[Navy Bird]

What a hare-brained virus this COVID. Yesterday I felt pretty good, now today I feel like, well, words that Mike would ban me for. Give me a break.    

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

Currently annoying wifey with The Loyang Tractor Factory by Andy Mackay

[corsaircorp]

Take care my friend !!

Wifey needed 4 month to get free from this da.... S....

Can't wait to see that BT-1....

So far, I did'nt start my conversion yet.....

Sincerely.

CC

 

[Navy Bird]

Well, it didn't actually require 120 hours, but after five days I'm calling this done.

 

 

The pounding COVID headache and the difficulty in maintaining focus (even using my opti-visor thingy) really made me struggle. Sorry if it sucks.    

 

Did I ever mention that I hate vacuforms?

 

Next up is finishing the cockpit - basically painting the seats and adding harnesses. Then I'll add the canopy and get ready for some paint. The BT-1 was not natural metal, but rather aluminum paint. Regardless, I will use something like Alclad Aluminum as it has negligible grain. Standard hobby paints have too much for my taste. The aluminum will go down first as it is the majority of the fuselage. Then we'll do the yellow and the squadron colours.

 

The gun sight looks like one of those telescopic jobs, and it extends out through a hole in the windscreen. I did not drill such a hole, as I've only one of these vacuform canopies and with my luck I would have ruined it. I will fake the gun sight later.

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

Annoying the neighbours with There's a Riot Goin' On by Sly and the Family Stone. Funk, baby, funk!    🎷

[corsaircorp]

Hello Bill,

For painted aluminium, I use Alclad "White Aluminium" 

It match both the Bri'ish high speed silver and U.S.N silver paint

For the U.S, I let it more shiny...

Just my token 

Great masking indeed !!

Sincerely.

CC

[Navy Bird]

1 hour ago, corsaircorp said:

For painted aluminium, I use Alclad "White Aluminium" 

<snip>

Great masking indeed !!

 

Sounds like a plan.   

 

I don't know if the masking is great, but it sure was slow and tedious.   

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

11 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

Sorry if it sucks. 

Looks good to me, even on the big screen  

 

I hope you get better soon, Bill

 

Ciao

[Navy Bird]

I've just learned that somehow we gave COVID to little 1.5-year old Dexter. This had to have happened two days before wifey and I tested positive, as we were doing our babysitting gig that day. He should handle it better than us old fossils, but still - I hate to see the little guy sick.

 

Gawd, I hate this virus. Not much sleep last light, nausea, cough, chills, and a persistent earworm in the form of "don't need no hand me down world" courtesy of Burton Cummings. Upon waking, the earworm had switched to that "hang on to your life" Psalm 22 thing - "my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death." Um, what?

 

This virus is making a muck of what's left of my brain. Arghh. And I never was a big Guess Who fan to begin with!   

 

Anyway, I hope to finish up the cockpit today, fingers crossed. After I have a lie-down of course.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[Terry1954]

Oh dear Bill, sorry about little Dexter. Hope he and you shake this off soon.

 

What amazes me about this virus, is that when I had it (not as bad as you it seems) we decided not to isolate from each other during my quarantine, and ate, drank, slept and generally lived life together as normal, yet Mrs T remained completely unscathed, even though she almost tried to catch it, to het it done with! That was last April. Then last week we had our boosters, and I felt like the world was ending for 48 hours, much much worse than the real thing for me, then felt totally fine.

 

PNuts virus!

 

Get well soon both!

 

Terry

[81-er]

I really hope this is the last of the run of bad luck for clan Navy Bird, and that all of you are fullly recovered soon, Bill

 

James

[AdrianMF]

If you can mask a canopy like that with Covid, you can do anything! Hope all y'all feel better soon.

 

Regards,

Adrian

[Navy Bird]

I am so ready to cover this up - probably the worst cockpit I've ever done. I blame it on COVID.    😬

 

To be honest, I really haven't spent much time on it since I planned a closed canopy. Normally, I like my canopies open, but I think the unique framework on the BT-1, with the vertical frames on the sides leaning forward, loses all its appeal if the sections are opened up. The circular antenna in front of the gunner is, I assume, part of the radio gear. The photo of the prototype in the Ginter book shows this half-black paint job, but after I installed it I noticed that I couldn't see the antenna in any photos of production aircraft. Hmm...

 

 

Ugh.

 

You can also see where I've placed those two pieces of mystery photoetch. I think this area of the model, with the dive brakes open, should look pretty nice. However, I'm still thinking of how to make the actuators...no clue at present.

 

The ring around the gunner's seat has a semicircular piece of photoetch around its circumference to which the resin machine gun is mounted. It is this bit of photoetch, hinged at each end, that would move upward when the gun was deployed. Stowing and deploying the gun seems just like that on the Skua.

 

Today's dispatch from der Marinevogel Krankenhaus: Feeling better, but with a worsening cough. Continuing to isolate and do what Herr Doktor tells me. He gave me a script for yet another pill, this time for the cough. I'm finished with the Paxlovid treatment, so that's three pills I don't have to take twice a day. I tried to count how many pills I do take in a day, but I ran out of fingers.     🖐️

 

Cheers,

Bill

 

PS. Whilst rummaging through the fruit cellar, I came across the Airfix Club kit of the Meteor F.8 (Queen's coronation flyover I think). I forgot I had that one. I believe it's actually the MPM/Xtrakit/Special Hobby kit, and it looks really nice. Maybe I should build it sometime?

[Fritag]

Hang on in there Bill.

 

Not sure how I feel about the fact that an ill-Bill can still out-model the rest of us. Them skills must be deeply imbedded 

[Brandy]

8 hours ago, Navy Bird said:

The circular antenna in front of the gunner is, I assume, part of the radio gear. The

It's a DF (direction finding) loop. It would be rotated to find the strongest signal, and when that point was reached the navigator would know in which direction the source of the signal lay, and could then navigate to/from that point. On later RAF aircraft it was housed in a teardrop shaped fairing.

 

I hope you all get over the infernal bug soon!

 

Ian

[Navy Bird]

On 23/09/2022 at 15:54, Fritag said:

Them skills must be deeply imbedded 

 

After my adventure with the razor chisel, I no longer use the word "imbedded." 

 

18 hours ago, Brandy said:

It's a DF (direction finding) loop. It would be rotated to find the strongest signal, and when that point was reached the navigator would know in which direction the source of the signal lay, and could then navigate to/from that point.

 

Ha! I knew that, replaced by the old football rugby ball. Man, I keep forgetting this stuff - maybe I am old and decrepit like Carter says.

 

*****

 

Canopy has been attached and I'm now fairing in the windscreen portion with the fuselage. The rest of it, save one section, slides around and/or hinges forward so there is a noticeable gap/seam. Once I'm finished with the windscreen (using PPP) it's off to the paint booth. Wait, I don't have a paint booth. I'll just spray here at my workbench and let a technicolour cloud waft its way into wifey's TV room.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[corsaircorp]

Ah ah !!

I'm not alone, I have an old cabinet thet I use for spraying...

No long ago wifey asked me about the strange colors on the cabinet's door....

So the colors clouds.... I know a bit about it....

Then for Alclad, I wait that she went to work.....

I hope that you and Dexter will get rid of that bug as soon as yesterday...

Sincerely.

CC

[Navy Bird]

On 06/09/2022 at 09:44, Terry1954 said:

..... and noticed that the wing chevrons on that particular aircraft seemed to be set aft compared to any others I've ever seen. Thus makes them seem to have been cut short at the wing walkway area.

 

I think I finally found the answer to your question. The chevrons were re-positioned in October 1940. Why, I don't know. Since the scheme I'm using is from 1938, I'll use the original position of the chevrons.

 

*****

 

I have finished my 10 days of isolation (instead of the usual 5 days as I'm immunodeficient). This means I am free to wander amongst my fellow mortals. Stupid virus came at the wrong time, I not only missed my local club contest, I also missed the local theatre group's production of Spamalot. And we had tickets that I had to give away!    

 

Meanwhile, the BT-1 has been painted a very light gloss grey. I always use a gloss colour as a base for Alclad, and I typically use white or a light grey. I know that most folks use gloss black, but if I did that it would require a white base for the yellow and red which I'd rather not do. Besides, Alclad only recommend gloss black for their super shiny colours like chrome, etc. And, the BT-1 was not natural metal, so I don't really need to get that effect. I used a gloss white base for my F-104 and I like how it came out. The gloss paint does a nice job of filling minor scuffs and scratches that always pop like crazy with metallic colours.

 

Luckily, I don't see any major issues with seams, etc. The canopy doesn't fit as well as I hoped, but it will do. The cover for the forward machine gun will need to be made from card stock - I can add that later.

 

 

Anyone use Alclad RAF High Speed Silver (AC125)? I seem to have two bottles of it that don't look like they've ever been used. Might be worth a shot here.

 

Cheers,

Bill

[giemme]

Smooooooooth!   

 

Ciao