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I've been struggling with finding time to do much modelling over the past several months, so, when the Panzer VI Tiger STGB 2 Single Type Group Build appeared in the GB calendar, I thought this might be the oportunity to get something made! The start of the GB also coincided with me having some holiday time to use up and the Easter break was available too. I decided to make a 1/72 kit that I thought I could get built relatively quickly. So,, below, is the result of my efforts. I'd had this Dragon kit for quite a while and it turned out to be rather good. The original kit was released in 2010. The DS tracks were still okay. I know some people have had some real problems with DS tracks and I'd had one set where one run had crumbled before I got to use them fairly recently. But these seemed to work rather well in this scale. The kit also included some photoetched parts, which I think, added nicely to the detailing. The other thing was that I'd wanted to make a grey Tiger 1 for quite a while. As usual, everything was painted with acrylic paints, which were thinned with water, and mostly applied with flat brushes. I use fine pointed brushes for any detail painting. The only extras I used were the mud texture stuff, 'European Mud' from Vallejo and a brush bristle for the aerial. The WIP thread for this can be found: HERE And finally, to hopefully show how small a 1/72nd Tiger 1 actually is!: The Tiger STGB is still ongoing with lots of rather good modelling going on. Make sure you ccheck it out, or even take part, if you get chance. Comments and suggestions welcome. Kind regards, Stix

]You think i would return to miniatures / AFV, actually i spent one more week on same vehicle kit: mini cooper 1.3i (Rally ver) 😗. How fast will you throw away your finished kit🤔? For me, since i don't have display cabinet, my finished kits just share the gaps in bookshelf😂, so if it is tiny, i.e. minis, 90% will be displayed in bookshelf for next ten years; if it is AFV (although 1/72 is tiny too, but i built too many), 90% will be stored in boxes; if it is Sci-fi / vehicle / etc, 30% will treat like miniatures, 30% will keep in boxes, 30% will stay in bookshelf for a year, but there has 10% of unlucky one😏, the finished photos also its last photos... Since the result of mini cooper not up to my expectation, and i don't have next vehicle kit(s) to expand collection, i plan to throw it away once finished. But my friend suggested to me that i could practice weathering on it, turn it into rally🤩. So i dig out some remained spare decals from previous kits, do window masking, wash several times in sepia & black, etc. Now it could stay in bookshelf for months. Working Photos: Product Photos:

Gloster Gauntlet Mk.II ‘Special Markings’ (AZ7868) 1:72 AZ Model by Kovozávody Prostějov The Gauntlet bears a family resemblance to the Gladiator from the same stable because it preceded it, entering service earlier after an extended development process that would be worthy of a modern defence project. Its development began as early as 1929, but it wasn’t until 1933 that it was given the name Gauntlet, and another two years before it started to enter service with the RAF in small numbers. It was intended as a replacement to the Bulldog, which it outpaced by 50mph thanks to its Bristol Mercury engine, with heavier armament that included two machine guns in troughs in the fuselage sides, firing through the cowling and propeller. Only twenty-four of the initial airframes were made before there were improvements made, which were give the designation Mk.II, resulting in the initial batch being retrospectively named Mk.I. The Mk.II made up the majority of production, with over 200 manufactured in the UK, plus more built overseas. At its peak there were fourteen squadrons equipped with Gauntlets, but as the storm clouds of war began to gather, it was already outdated. By the time war finally broke out, only one squadron was left in frontline service, the rest having transitioned to more modern fighters such as the Hurricane, which was created by Gloster’s new owners, Hawker, still carrying over some design traits from the Gauntlet through the Gladiator to the Hurricane, particularly in the rear fuselage and tail areas. Fortunately for the Hurricane pilots however, the speed and armament of their new aircraft was much improved and gave them a fighting chance against the enemy. The Gauntlet lingered on as a trainer in the UK and abroad for a while, with a single Mk.II preserved in airworthy condition in Finland, one of its former operators, although the engine has been replaced by something a little more modern for practical reasons. The Kit This is a reboxing of a 2008 tooling from AZ that has been re-released with new decals that depict special markings of the Gauntlet in RAF and Finnish service. It arrives in a small end-opening box with a painting of a Gauntlet over a battlefield engaging with a Soviet i16 on the front, and profiles for the decal options on the rear of the box. Inside are three sprues of grey styrene, a decal sheet, a small sheet of clear acrylic with two windscreens printed on it, plus the instruction booklet that is printed on a folded sheet of A4, with a series of rigging profiles on the rearmost page. Detail is good, with just a wisp of flash here and there, and a good representation of the fabric covered framework over the majority of the airframe. Construction begins with the simple cockpit that is based on a well-detailed flat section of floor, onto which the seat, control column and rudder pedals are fixed, applying four-point decal seatbelts to the pilot’s position for a little extra detail. There is cockpit sidewall detail moulded into the insides of the fuselage halves, and once these and the cockpit are painted and weathered, the fuselage halves can be joined together, adding a two-part instrument panel at the front of the cockpit cut-out. The engine is supplied as a single part with nine cylinders arranged around the core, which is surrounded by a three-part cowling due to the teardrop fairings around the perimeter, finishing the cowling off with a separate lip at the front. The tail fin is moulded into the fuselage halves, adding the individual elevator fins to the sides in small slots, and a tail-wheel with moulded-in strut underneath. The lower wing is a single part that is inserted into a slot under the fuselage, and once the seams have been dealt with, the landing gear can be built, made from two triangular struts that are linked by the axle that has wheels mounted on each end, positioning the assembly on the underside of the fuselage using the small recesses that are moulded into the model to locate them accurately. Four cabane struts are similarly fitted to the fuselage in front of the cockpit using more guide recesses, which supports the upper wing that is also moulded as a single part. Four interplane struts are fitted between the wings, and a scrap diagram gives details of the tensioner rods that are suspended in the rigging, which is dealt with over the page. A pair of exhausts are mounted under the cowling, cutting the windscreen from the acetate sheet and folding it to shape before gluing it to the front of the cockpit, then slotting the two machine gun barrels in the troughs on each side of the fuselage. The final task (if we ignore the rigging for now) is the three-blade propeller, with a moulded-in spinner to the front. Speaking of rigging, there are four diagrams on the rear of the booklet, detailing the location of the wiring, which should assist with the process along with the box art for a three-quarter view. Markings There are three options on the decal sheet, two RAF, and one in Finnish service, which comes with the reversed Swastikas they used at the time, confusing the uninitiated for many years. The British subjects are away from the usual silver dope, including desert and night fighter schemes From the box you can build one of the following: The decals are printed using a digital process and have good registration, sharpness, and colour density, with a thin gloss carrier film cut loosely around the printed areas. This means that the carrier film on their decals can be coaxed away from the printed part of the decal after they have been applied, effectively rendering them carrier film free, making the completed decals much thinner and more realistic, and obviating the need to apply successive coats of clear varnish to hide the edges of the carrier film. It’s a great step further in realism from my point of view, and saves a good quantity of precious modelling time into the bargain. Conclusion The Gauntlet was a well-used interwar fighter that in its day was an impressive improvement over those that it replaced, but was soon to be left in the wake of the next generation of fighters due to the speed of development at the time. The kit depicts its fabric covering well, with a detailed cockpit, and it comes with some interesting decal options. Highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

You did right to add the yellow ; I like the way your Olive Drab turned out.

Thanks very much Mark, That is very kind of you. It was fun and trying new weathering techniques that came out better than I'd hoped was a little scary but I got lucky. Cheers, Alistair

Well... couple decalling sessions are done. 76 decals applied yes - I counted them! What can I tell you? - I did not manage to remove film from these new style fancy Eduard decals. Film just sticks so firmly. I tried in couple invisible places but it's more likely to remove it together with all the paint. - At the same time film carrier is super thin and invisible so honestly I see zero reason why I should even try to remove it. - Small stencils transfer with no problems at all. - Bigger decals are a little more demanding though. When they get to the plastic - it's quite hard to move them around. Especially that was the case with letter codes. I would suggest to actually cut it into separate letters as it would be much easier to move the decal to the right position. - Decals fit to shape excellently except for the letter codes again. They go to the curved surface while the decal is a correct rectangle. This resulted in number '1' being slightly inclined. 'NX' are aligned with panel lines but unfortunately I could not do that with the number. So another reason to cut this decal apart. - Decals stick quite quickly so make sure you place decals to the right position quickly. - One not very good thing - paint layer seems not dense enough. You can see it on the nose ring. There is small overlap of decals parts and it shows up. - At the same time decals are super stretchy and flexible. Here the decal is bent at 90 degree and it did not crack at all. Very nice. Tamiya decal would fall into approximately 10 parts here. Also you can see on this photo how decal drowned into all the recesses. No solvent used! Overall conclusion - these are very good decals. Maybe a little lacking in opacity. But the speed and simplicity of application is very nice. And I do not think you should even try to remove film. A little more work to be done yet. I'm a little concerned how I manage those huge decals for the tail...

On the back of the two current music threads, how about the bands you have seen who either raised the roof, or were just soooo bad live. In my youth I saw all manner of bands at all manner of venues. However, my choices for both best and worst performances were larger open-air gigs. First the worst. Meatloaf, Knebworth 1985. This was the Deep Purple comeback gig, Meatloaf was mid-billing, and truly awful. Deserved pretty much every container of 'recycled beer' that was thrown at him, and eventually took the hint and stomped off. Run a close second by a local Elvis impersonator who did other oldies for the first half of his set. He had some kind of voice changer in his setup, which was adjusted to 'nasel' for a couple of Buddy Holly numbers, and then left there for the rest of the evening. Painful. Best performance, again not the headline act, Ian Dury and the Blockheads at Finsbury Park in about 1991. Madness were top billing. Absolutely superb. A tidal wave of top-notch performance. Interested to see what your experiences have been. Matt

What scale are you going to pursue? Metal or resin?

This is one absolutely superb B-25, Alistair, you must be well pleased with how she's turned out! Great build thread, great work all round! Cheers, Mark

Thanks to you both! I had fun building this, especially the cockpit and turret areas. The kit was like an empty canvas that I didn't expect too much off. Maybe it's just me, but building an old kit like this is - for me at least - easier than one of the newer, more expensive 'superkits. I guess I'm less afraid to ruin a kit like this and hence i feel like I relax more and can play around a bit and do a lot more detaling than I would dare to do on said newer kits. And I have many of the newer kits, but somehow I end up building the older ones! Cheers Hans J

Superb Bf110

Nice Spitfire and good modelling, the rotol blunt spinner looks a bit on the bulbous side to me is that an issue with the Airfix kit?

The photos are fantastic and thank you for sharing them. The topic's title had me seaching my brain for jokes about how much faster jets in grease would be.

Absolutely stunning. One of the best. An superp example of scratch building. I also thought you had slipped in some actual photos.

Wow, Martin! That is outstanding! The bespoke decals are excellent and set off the whole scheme. Brilliant! Cheers, Mark

Thanks very much. That is really kind of you. Cheers, Alistair

Well, if it is confirmed, then they certainly intended it. However, they have just put a new and much larger tail on.. And now they run out of tail power? This would also depend upon the precise relationship between the thrust line and the cg.

Cracking Mitchell that, well done.

I'm in for a set of wheels. Any idea when V2 will be available? Malc.

Thanks very much Simon, That is most kind and all the support and encouragement you've given me has been gratefully received. Cheers, Alistair

Welcome aboard Simon, Should be fun. Cheers, Alistair

I would not worry Alistair. She looks very special indeed. Nice one sir. Simon.

Looks like a lot of Brass ware to be added there Alistair. I am in for this. What do Russians call their napkins? Soviets!!!! Simon.

No problems, can't remember to be honest. Maybe Spot model or Ebay? But they weren't Bastos decals, they were Lancia Chardonnet now I've had a look back on my builds 🙄

This got its first coat of Colorcoats PRU blue on the underside as well as a coat of green on the underside of the tanks. The Hi-Decals colour calls suggest Humbrol 02 Emerald Green for for this green. Looking at this photo posted by @Diego a couple of years ago though, I reckon it looks like a paler green than my tin of 02 anyway so I have gone for Hu 131. A mid green which I think will show up the lightning flashes which are clear in the centre part of the decals, just nicely. I think I might be looking for a slightly paler version of Dark Sea Grey to maintain the contrast visible on the wings too. Steve.