Looks good, Harm. It will be interesting to hear your judgement on the kit. I have heard several different opinions on ICM kits.

Will you finish it in normal British camouflage with Free French markings?

Thanks for the kind words.


The plane will have normal British camouflage (IIIRC Dark Ocean Grey / Dark Green, as it will be a 1943 plane) with British roundels, and Lorraine cross emblems on the side just in front of the cockpit.

Cheers,

Harm

hello all,
just a little word update,i am doing the cammo on the Spitfire and i do not like the brown cammo color i am using.it is a little to bronze to me.so i am going to use tamiya's flat earth instead.i am hoping to get some photo's of it up soon.
i have been looking at all of your photo's of your builds,and they are looking great.
@Carl,great news that your wife came through the surgery well,and i hope she has a quick recovery.
cheers,
Bruce

ok, i have a question.

how far east does Europe extend for the purposes of this campaign?

Some people would say Moscow is not in Europe, but others would say Europe extends as far as the Ural mountains.

I'm inclined to build a Yak 1b for this campaign, and I am guessing it is ok, even if the particular aircraft never flew over anything except Russia. Is this correct?

thanks.

Hitler got as far as Moscow so in my book it is all part of the same campaign, looks like you will have a wingman, I'm doing a Yak-3, but even OOB the aircraft illustrated flew in Poland. You get my vote.

Vance)- Go for it

I agree with Carl, go for it, Vance.
I would say Europe for this campaign would be Northen Norway/Finland/Scotland and all the way down to the black sea/tip of Sicily. From the Atlantic to the Urals. The possibilities are endless for this campaign

Here is a small update on my Mistel 5. Things are moving along quite nicely. Next is a few corrections to the paint work and then the decals. I am already considering my third entry for this campaign

More to follow....

Well some progress on the Swedish Gladiator. Actually i'm very confused now (petty normal state for me really). Something is wrong with Rodens camoflage scheme for this aircraft...it simply doesn't match up from one side to the other, and maybe is not meant to! As it appears that the camo on these Gladiators was quite random from the few period pics pics i've seen (none of this actual aircraft. They all look different. It's not helped much by the museum aircraft which seems to bear no resemblance to any of the wartime pics. It's even possible that Roden may have swapped two of the colours on one side!

So i've done what i always do in these situations and used educated guessing. I've gone somewhere inbetween the box art and Rodens 3 view. The markings are given as March 1940, and could have been applied immediatley after the end of the Winter War, after return to Sweden. The aircraft was flown by Ian Lacobi, who seems to have scored the first aerial victory for the Swedes. They are credited with 8 aerial kills and 4 on the ground. Whilst the contribution of the Swedish volunteers may not sound huge, it did represent fully 1/3rd of the Swedish Air Force at the time. And volunteers at that. And the Finns needed everything they could get against the Russians.




Andrew

Looks good to me.

Swedish camo patterns look just like their Ikea stuff. That never seems to match either .

Keep up the good work!

Cheers, nico

Andrew. Here are a few pointers. First IPMS-stockholms colour reference. Look in the top section 1940-1960.
http://ipmsstockholm.org/colorcharts/stuff_eng_colorcharts_sweden.htm

Second is a collection of SwAF a/c and shows the J8 Gladiator from various angles. You don't need to know swedish to see that the demarcation line is high up on all individuals.
http://hem.passagen.se/hankri/

This brings us to the Gladiator at the airforce museum. Here you can see right side views, BUT, the demarcation line is too low on this one. I would also say that even if your shade of green is "greener", it's not too wrong. The shade on the colour pics in the museum has become too dark and too grey. If you look at page two of this site you will see a different type of silver overpaint. It looks more like a zigzag made with a big roller on a broomstick. I guess it's like the d-day stripes. "Have them ready by morning, boys. And HUSTLE".
http://www.avrosys.nu/aircraft/Jakt/108J8.htm

Thanks Tony, for the Swedish Gladiator info. Actually the pic is greener than it really is because of the yellowish light used on my work bench. To the eyes it's definately darker. Actually i used the recomended colour from the IPMS Sweden charts, simply because i had no other reference to go by.

From looking at pics more i think i see how the camo was applied now. I assumed they began aluminium and had the green applied. But it appears to be the opposite was the case! It looks like the aluminium was applied over the green, possibly when the Finnish markings were applied for winter war service. So it makes sense it would be quite random. I think i will touch things up to look closer to photos of the wartime aircraft...ie sharper more zig zagged patterns.

Andrew

I have applied the decals to my Mistel 5. I have used the kit decals which are rather colourful and add a little "spice" the the camouflage scheme.
Since I took the pictures I have moved on with a dark wash. More pictures to follow on that later.

It is coming along real nice, Jesper.

The Gladiator very nearly came to a fatal end. I was rigging it my usual way, nylon monofilament threaded through holes and weighted with clamps, superglued. But this time i rested it upsdie down on the edge of the desk with the weights on and it fell off. Onto the floor. The rigging was so strong that it all held, but the cabane struts all snapped or buckled. At first i almost trashed the project, as getting everthing back into pace and aligned against the tension of the secured rigging didn't look possible. But it worked out. One of the cabane struts is still slightly buckled when you look closely!

But it's finished now. If anyone now finds detailed pics showing this exact aircrafts camo pattern, then i'd rather not know about it now! Thanks all the same. Of course it would have been much easier to do a standard Swedish aircraft, but then it wouldn't be a "Battle for Europe" aircraft would it? Hence the Winter War version.

The Roden kit is very nice. Fits together quite easily, though i feel the canopy must be left open, as it simply would not fit in the closed position properly for me. If i had of known that in advance then i would of also left one of the side panels dropped as well. Even the decals were ok on this one, applying well. Only the yellow was a bit transparent, so i touched in the yellow letters by brush to stop bleeding of the under colour. My reason for doing this aircraft istead of the other two Swedish Winter options was simply that the other two had the Finnish markings applied and i feel that the blue was too light in colour- a common mistake with Finnish decals from many manufacturers. I believe this aircraft had the skulls and 13 kill (most sources say the Swdes scored 12) marks painted on immediately after the Winter War finished, after returning to Sweden.







Andrew

That really is a nice one! Good you could finish it even after it fell. My compliments.

Cheers, Nico

Thanks for the kind words, Carl. Appreciate it

Andrew, what a great aircraft with a very nice camouflage. It looks great and your accident does not show at all - At least not to me. Thanks for participating

Well Andrew,

it is indeed a good one! Beautiful plane indeed.

As far as my own project, it has kind of crashed to a halt, due to necessary preparations for a wedding (of a friend) and having cought a cold over the weekend). Hope to go forward again from saturday onwards.

Harm

The Gladiator turned out just fine Andrew. I have to agree with Jesper, that I can't find the damage. The green looks quite allright too, especially on the top photo. About the markings, I believe the finnish swastikas were overpainted before crossing back over the border. Otherwise it would have been a finnish invasion of Sweden, by swedish pilots

Jesper, you got a cool minimi-mistel there. Looking forward to the finished pics.

Hi all,

My Spitfire is now done.. I will post photos in the Gallery when I get the chance to take some decent ones of it.









Comments welcome, good bad or indifferent!

Steve

Here is my finished entry for this campaign. The Dragon 1/72 Mistel 5 combination.

The Mistel 5 came about by mating the Arado E.377A (a dedicated flying bomb) and the He 162. I kept weathering limited - especially on the 377A as these things only took of once and never landed again.

Actually this is the second model I have started for this campaign, but the first model I have finished. My FW 190D is put on hold for now as I am 1200 km away from the model.
In a months time the FW 190D will finished in addition to this one to provide top cover during the battle for Europe.

A few better photos








steve

Jesper, that's probably going to be one of the more oddball entries for this campaign. I've never seen that actual mistel version before. And it looks good too!

Steve, very nice Spitfire. You're right about the newer pics- much nicer lighting which shows the colours to better effect for sure.

Andrew

Indeed - Jesper, your entry is exceptionally cool. Any idea how many of those were actually ever used? Or were they just tested.

Steve - nice looking spit! I tend to find lighting makes a big difference on how good the british camo colors look, and I found (as you seem to) that natural sunlight makes it look best.

Finally got a start on the Yak, nice kit. Still looking at markings. Here is progress so far


Kit fits very nicely just a few gaps need filling


I like the way the wing roots fit



Progress at last!