Revell (CH) 1/72 de Havilland Sea Vixen FAW1.5ish. - FINISHED

[Ngantek]

21 hours ago, AliGauld said:

Looks marvellous with the decals on.

Hope the new nozzle comes soon.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks Alistair. Yeah decals are always a good moment... when they work, which is definitely not a given if you're me.

 

Nozzle still stuck in the post somewhere (along with some generic number/letter decals that I'll need to finish some of the smaller and more irrelevant markings), so in the meantime, I blundered on. The semi-gloss off the mr color EDSG is right on the cusp of 'dare I risk it?'. I managed to get the decals onto a rougher finish on the martlet recently with (so far) no ill effects, so fingers firmly crossed, I started on the starboard side.

 

They're going down okay so far I hope. The carrier film is very noticeable in the light, as always, but hopefully they're adhering well enough. It's a case of hoping that it'll come together once I've sealed with a gloss cote. The tail squadron emblem is a bit dodgy. They used a smaller version without a white border in the video. I thought once I'd cut the border off (badly! It's pretty shonky) it'd be the right size, but it's still clearly too big. Short of sourcing some decals just for this one part, I think I'll just live with them being not quite right. (another thing is the 890NAS witch seems to be facing backwards on the starboard fin as far as I can make out, but the kit provides two mirrored). 

 

Still loads more decals to go, but it's probably not a bad thing to be gently chipping away at them section by section. 

 

So not much progress. I did pose the dodgy canopy to see how it would look with the new nose:

 

The prognosis: I think I've been a little harsh on the Quickboost nose. It's a vast improvement on the kit and a much bigger improvement than Pavla's attempt (which doesn't really look any better to me). It's still not quite right, it does need a fair bit of blending, but it's improved the look no end and made the dodgy canopy a little more bearable. It's a situation I'm sure many of us are familiar with; starting a model thinking 'ah I hear it's wrong, but it looks fine to me.' Of course the more you look, the more you research, the more obvious it becomes, and the 'look' of the whole Cyber Hobby Sea Vixen nose area is just too off for me now. I think for reasons to do with facial recognition and how the brain tends to anthropomorphise what we see, the cockpit and nose is disproportionately important in the overall look of an aircraft, and it's the bit that CH got the most wrong I think.

 

Anyway slowly slowly

Andy

 

[AliGauld]

Nicely done,

Looks good from this end.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Fritag]

On 11/27/2022 at 10:53 AM, mark.au said:

Somehow missed this one to now, glad I caught it in t8me for the painting.  It’s an impressive looking aircraft and yours is looking every bit the part.

 

I’m even later in catching-on; but caught-on I have and thoroughly enjoyed the catch-up. So to speak.  Interesting and impressive paintwork, Andy. 

 

On 12/4/2022 at 12:03 AM, Ngantek said:

Had a mess around with shading today

 

Like that.  Lots.

[bigbadbadge]

Looks good Andy, glad you got yhe decals on okay too.   That nose certainly looks better .

Great work

Chris

[Ngantek]

On 07/12/2022 at 21:05, AliGauld said:

Nicely done,

Looks good from this end.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks Alistair. the undoubted advantage of seeing it from a distance

 

On 07/12/2022 at 21:56, Fritag said:

 

I’m even later in catching-on; but caught-on I have and thoroughly enjoyed the catch-up. So to speak.  Interesting and impressive paintwork, Andy. 

 

 

Like that.  Lots.

Good you missed (I hope) the bulk of the whinging and fussing then! You're very kind about the shading, I'm a total beginner at this and have not earthly idea what I'm doing. But thanks, I flip flop between thinking it's far too much and far too little depending upon the light, the time of day and probably what I had for lunch. I'm just going to hope.

 

23 hours ago, bigbadbadge said:

Looks good Andy, glad you got yhe decals on okay too.   That nose certainly looks better .

Great work

Chris

Thanks Chris, I'm slow at everything, but particuarly decals I think. Speaking of which,

 

I think I'm pretty much done with them. There are a few identifiying numbers that I can't quite make up from the kit and spares (typically, I have large black numbers and small white ones; I need the opposite), but the bulk of the misery is over I hope. Until they all silver, but hopefully the nozzle wont be too much longer.

 

Shuffling up the tail serial is right pain in the proverbial

 

And we're here. The carrier film sheen stands out painfully, particularly on the top, so I'm itching to get some gloss on there.

 

First though, I've got to mask and spray the radome without trashing the decals. paper masks I think, but the demarcation is going to need tape of some kind. As with all kits in this scale, the smaller stencils stand out a bit and are probably quite overscale. I think a light overspray (or maybe even a pindrop of paint in the first gloss layer) might be necessary to blend it all a little. The wing and horizontal stabiliser fit is (hopefully) good enough that I've left them separate, but those flaps will need some tactical bending into shape when the time comes, since they're not really designed to be posed down.

 

Bit of work to be done fitting the seat and canopy if I'm still delayed. Or I could get on with finishing all those other uncompleted kits of course!

 

Andy

[AliGauld]

It's all coming together in a rather splendid way.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Ngantek]

15 hours ago, AliGauld said:

It's all coming together in a rather splendid way.

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Thanks Alistair. Still so much to bugger up!

 

Airbrush still out of action, so lots of house keeping today. The joystick got lost back in the dark ages, and rather than just bung in some dowel, I decided I could use the practice and bodged something together from the unused fuel vent pipe, airbrake actuator and some lead wire, with the odd bit of tactical 'cheffy cutting'.

 

Cockpit has got about as much care as I can be bothered with, and looks plenty rough, but here we are:

No prizes for guessing why I don't do figure painting.

 

All that work slicing through to the observer cockpit was time 'well spent'...

 

 

Tidied up the pylons, which annoyingly still had some prominent mould lines that needed cleaning an shonkily repainting. I added some arbitrary detail to the underside, since three of them won't be carrying anything. Really it was an excuse to justify all the cash I spent on tools in telford. These trumpeter chisels are really awesome.

 

 

The off white on the canopy really hasn't worked out; a lot chipped off and the lines were a bit shabby. Given the down time, I figured I should mask up for a repair. Masking the canopy twice in one build just seems like a cruel and unusual punishment, but there we are:

 

Mashed together an adaptor for the Firestreak, and that'll do for now. Not much more to be done without the airbrush.

 

Cheers,

Andy

[Dunny]

Coming along nicely Andy! Twice masking the canopy does seem rather cruel,

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

[bigbadbadge]

Great work on the decalling and the control stick looks good.  

Crikey masking the canopy twice , that is dedication. 

Chris

[TallBlondJohn]

Grand job so far. I've asked Santa for one of these, I suspect I'll get one for being bad.

[Ngantek]

12 hours ago, Dunny said:

Coming along nicely Andy! Twice masking the canopy does seem rather cruel,

 

Cheers,

 

Roger

Thanks Roger. Serves me right for doing such a shonky job the first time. I've never yet learned to redo canopy masks if they don't look right, rather than just spraying and hoping it'll all be okay.

 

1 hour ago, bigbadbadge said:

Great work on the decalling and the control stick looks good.  

Crikey masking the canopy twice , that is dedication. 

Chris

Cheers, Chris. The stick (being basically an actuator that needs to push several tonnes of loaded airbrake) is way out of scale, mostly I felt obligated to do 'something'. The canopy might have been okay if I had just left it well enough alone. But I didn't! 

 

23 minutes ago, TallBlondJohn said:

Grand job so far. I've asked Santa for one of these, I suspect I'll get one for being bad.

As they say, be careful what you wish for! If you're able to just build it out of the box and not get side tracked by corrections, modifications and THE INTERNET 😭, you'll have a lovely time. It' builds beautifully.

[TallBlondJohn]

1 hour ago, Ngantek said:

and not get side tracked by corrections, modifications and THE INTERNET 😭, you'll have a lovely time.

 

Story of my life - have you seen any of my builds? I'm already thinking about how to tackle that nose. 😞

[Procopius]

18 hours ago, Ngantek said:

Cockpit has got about as much care as I can be bothered with, and looks plenty rough, but here we are:

No prizes for guessing why I don't do figure painting.

 

 

 

You have nothing to be ashamed of there, the seat handles especially are exquisite, and not at all easy to paint in this scale.

[Ngantek]

9 hours ago, TallBlondJohn said:

 

Story of my life - have you seen any of my builds? I'm already thinking about how to tackle that nose. 😞

ha! Best of luck, I'm looking forward to seeing this one done properly. Re: the nose, I would say that in my humble opinion Aires > Pavla in this case.

 

8 hours ago, Procopius said:

 

You have nothing to be ashamed of there, the seat handles especially are exquisite, and not at all easy to paint in this scale.

You're too kind PC. Detail painting is like scribing, in that it's one of those fine motor skills that I will monthly drop a silly amount on some new tool or brush in the hope I will magically become non-awful at it. 

 

Still waiting on the nozzle which will probably not arrive before the new year with the current industrial action (for the record, I'm entirely team 'please don't deliver my stuff if they're not going to pay you enough to eat'). So instead I've been sticking bits of Martlet together, which in true style, was basically finished last month but I apparently have a compulsion against actually finishing stuff.

 

 

[Ngantek]

Nozzle arrived! Hooray! I did the maths and found that if I want to get this finished for my entirely unrealistic deadline, I really need to get a shift on, so straight on we go, black bits, white bits, and a lot of clear bits

 

 

The gloss cote is hardly glassy, it's more a 'functional. layer to seal the decals, give some surface for washing and hopefully not turn into a glazed doughnut with stripped paint underneath. Which is my standard style of gloss. We'll see how that turns out. 

 

In the meantime, the firestreak got far too much attention. I thinned the leading edges and added some 'strakes' with styrene

And then a metric tonne of masking tape

 

 

Sadly, off yellow on off yellow is a bit hard to see and my mask-logic-fu was not up to the task!

 

 

So I'll have to go back over with my entirely random, on the spur of the moment blend of golden yellow that I entirely can't remember how to make. Ach! 

 

Nevermind, progress, as they say. A few decals still yet to arrive, so they'll just have to go over the gloss. like they should've in the first place. Aiyee.

 

 

Andy

[bigbadbadge]

Glad the nozzle arrived,  great to see the nose cone, white bits and gloss coat sprayed on and the masking on the Firestreak is something else. Great work. 

Chris

[Ngantek]

1 hour ago, bigbadbadge said:

Glad the nozzle arrived,  great to see the nose cone, white bits and gloss coat sprayed on and the masking on the Firestreak is something else. Great work. 

Chris

Thank Chris. A bit rough but good to push on.

 

In the middle of a work panic at the moment so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to waste an hour doing an oil pinwash.

 

 

I haven't really got a formula for what works on EDSG yet. Last time I went EEDSG and it gave a bit of a stylised effect, so I'm going the other way this time, with a bit more brown thrown in around the engine. Looks a bit OTT at first glance but we'll see in the morning, the pigment is usually more sparse looking once the carrier has dried off.

 

In some ways, I'm beginning to think the obsession that we have with panel lines in this hobby is not necessarily a good thing; the real effect tends to be much more of a case of shades divided at the panels, not having a great big line between them. The question then is how to deal with the panel lines; leaving them unwashed gives a decidedly toy-like look often. Anyway just my 1-in-morning-I'm supposed-to-be-working pontification.

 

 

Cheers,

Andy

 

 

 

 

[Procopius]

The pin wash looks incredibly promising. For my own part, I found oil paint dots have given me the best results for a semi-realistic finish, but I'm far from an expert -- or even at all good at it.

[bigbadbadge]

Looking good to me Andy, we certainly are obsessed with the panel lines.  I use a black and brown (raw umber) mix for the panel lines and it works well over the EDSG,  once you add a Matt varnish the colour lightens and shows the panel lines well.

Chris

[Ngantek]

7 hours ago, Procopius said:

The pin wash looks incredibly promising. For my own part, I found oil paint dots have given me the best results for a semi-realistic finish, but I'm far from an expert -- or even at all good at it.

Thanks PC. I look onto your dot filter results with much envy! I might have first try on this one, maybe once I've cleaned up the pinwash and sanded the gloss down to more of a satin. Past experience has shown that sanding  before washing the panels is doomed to failure.

 

14 minutes ago, bigbadbadge said:

Looking good to me Andy, we certainly are obsessed with the panel lines.  I use a black and brown (raw umber) mix for the panel lines and it works well over the EDSG,  once you add a Matt varnish the colour lightens and shows the panel lines well.

Chris

Thanks for the pointers Chris. I use the same for generic grime in wheel bays and whatnot, will certainly try over EDSG. This is as much an experiment to see what lighter panels look like. 

 

I've had issues with pin washes in the past in that the lines would never conduct the wash along the grooves in the way it seems to on people's videos, instead having to rely on leaving standing pools to dry for a long time over the details before wiping off very carefully. This time however, it worked very well. I had put this down variously to too much gloss, too little gloss, wrong finish etc. I think really it's down to getting better at not gumming up the detail and just generally at keeping the layers thin and the detail crisper. Still a ways to go but hopefully an indication of incremental improvement.

 

Andy

[AliGauld]

Oh wow this just keeps getting better and better.

Really nice work again.

Looking forward to more progress.

So, get a wriggle on Andy 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Ngantek]

2 hours ago, AliGauld said:

Oh wow this just keeps getting better and better

Better than the alternative, which has been known to happen not irregularly! 😄

 

2 hours ago, AliGauld said:

Really nice work again.

Looking forward to more progress.

So, get a wriggle on Andy 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

Aiyee, I'm going full steam; and bulldozering through no end of errors. Still, even working on just one model, I'm entirely unable to keep up with your infernal rate of progress!

 

I did manage to tidy up (ish) the wash, and was going to hit it back, but had mental images of dust sticking irrevocably into the panel line oils, so have opted for quick sealing layer of gloss first. Given how slapdash my cleaning effort was, I'm pretty certain I've sealed in lots untreated wash stains for all eternity, but bah, who cares about 3 months of work when I can save a few minutes being lazy?

 

 

Even with Gunze varnish's speedy cure times, I'm not convinced it will be hard enough to resist finger prints by this evening, but I might have a quick go nonetheless. The upper panel lines look decidedly untreated until you see them next to one that I actually did miss, and the difference is clear, so perhaps that's not the worst thing.  

 

So, hit back, repair the inevitable damage, dot filtering and general oil weathering, a really light satin cote, then final assembly with all the associated breakages and touching up. Can it be done in two evenings!? Betbetbet!

 

Andy

 

[AliGauld]

That looks wonderful.

The staining looks right to me.

 

 

Cheers,

Alistair

[Winded Penguin]

For some reason that escapes me as a regular on WIP, I seem to have only just registered this build 😱

I've just scrolled through all of the pages so far to catch up.

 

I'm really enjoying your journey of discovery on the pre-shading.

The effects you are getting are truly knock-out 👍

 

The Sea Vixen is a top topic, and you are clearly doing a great job here.

Hard to think the AM ejector seat detail painting is 1/72 scale. I would be happy to get there in 1/32 scale.

In fact, that sentiment goes for the entire model IMO.

[bigbadbadge]

Looks good to me too Andy, I am sure your Vixen will look splendid when complete. 

Chris