With the F15 locked away in my classroom closet and the cleaners waxing the floors, and after finishing the Mi-8T for "Unfinished Business", my attention has turned to Russian aviation.

Italeri 1/72 Su-25, all but built with the underside coat of lt blue grey probably been sitting for 6-8 yrs waiting for a decent color profile and some reasonably close paint matches. In rolls a back issue of World Air Power Journal via evilbay and some Akan paints via Linden Hill. Surprisingly small patches of sand and now chocolate brown. I'll have to use Tamiya Nato/Dk green for the green though, the Akan stuff is WAY too mustard-y yellow.
The masking material is some old worn out Power putty for hand rehab/climbing strength.

Also up and now I know why it sits, Hasegawa 1/72 Hind F backdated to an Afghan era E, again underside paint in place, but that cammo and oh my achin' the canopy masking... here is about as far as my poor old eyeballs (and optivisor) could get me in one sitting.


Linden Hill decals for both eventually.
unless my attention shifts again.

Great work on that Re-2000! The camo must have taken a while to paint; I presume it's hand-brushed?

I've been making some progress on my Defiant. Airframe assembled, with seam work nearing completion.


This bulge that looks like an intake (anyone know what it is? I doubt it's an intake since it's right behind the nose intake) took some hits when cleaning up the fuselage seams.

Replaced with a shape made from styrene rod.


And to round out this update, here's the turret guns with Master Model barrels replacing the featureless and seam-ridden moulded-in kit barrels.

That bulge that looks like an intake is an intake. The Merlin's carburettor intake was at the rear of the engine. On fighters such as the Defiant, Spitfire and Hurricane, it was placed at the leading edge of the wing root area. You may wish to plunge form a sheet styrene intake over your plastic form so you can show the open leading edge

Here's the relevant area of the RAF Museum's Defiant

I note that the real intake is considerably longer than the one Classic Airframes gave you.

Hmm, are we talking about the same thing?
I was referring to the small bump behind the small bump. Here's the kit intake part blu-tacked in place. The instructions tell to glue the intake right in fron of that bump. And oh, this the 1:72 scale MPM kit, not the Classic Aiframes kit.



Doesn't look that different compared to the real thin, IMO. I'm no expert on the Defiant, though.

Aha! That little bit is the aft end of the intake then! I'm greatly relieved

And it's amazing how pictures on a computer monitor look larger than they really are.

You got my curiosity up and I dug through my stash for my MPM Defiant kit (MPM No. 72519) and looked at the parts. My kit does not have any small bump behind the small bump. In fact there are no bumps at all other then where to put the exhaust. :/

Cammo on the Su-25... boy did Italeri screw the pooch with this one.. old engines with no blades for the front, missing upper fuselage antenna, mixed and matched fuselage blade and odd rods antennas, flare launchers for the engine tops, and landing light shields under the wingtip pods.
A real dogs breakfast of old and new features.
As it stands now with Akan sand and brown with Tamiya Nato Green, still too green to my eye, but gloss, decals and weathing will sort that out.
Cruising through references for a more interesting Afghanistan era weapons load than Ub rocket pods and 500lb bombs. Gunpods maybe?


still some masking issues to deal with, but as it is intended as a 6footer for my classroom ceiling, Not too shabby.

Mike

Been busy doing bits on and off to the Gecko over the past few weeks. This morning this is how it looked following it paint job using the salt chipping technique.





and this is how it is now just need to get the weathering done, dull coat it and then attach all the clear parts then it will be done hopefully might have another update tomorrow

Its finished

Nicely done. It looks quite tired

I've been slowly plugging away at my Eduard BF109-E4 that I originally started for the Looney Toons Campaign. The kit was shelved as I had an issue after painting with having the engine visible and decided to close it all up. this was what the kit was left like.



Unfortunately I've lost the SD card that had the progress photos but here it is finally finished in the markings of Obstlt. Adolf Galland, Geschwaderkommodore JG 26, Audembert, France – Dec.1940.

This was my entry in the Smurf scale campaign, but it came to a halt for various Amodel typical reasons.
Just this week Ive brought it out and made some advances.
masses of joint fill and sculpting to get the wings on and the cockpit glazing in place, and a first coat of primer.




I feel alot better about this now than I did last week.

Assembling the fuselage was not easy. here is a fine Amodel challenge. I havent decided how or even if I am going to improve this cargo door.

Sam and Allen - couple of corkers there, and you've already loaded your pics into the gallery, which is good

Hiya all,

dug out an 1-72 HobbyBoss MiG-15. It's the intake pre-colouring in gloss black from the local Baumarkt (don't know the english word). Next will be Alclad aluminium.



See ya, HP

Hello everybody,

did some Alclad polished aluminium over the black and got me some fingerprints because I didn't wait long enough for the black to cure.
The pilot is an Airfix one.

See you, HP

Hi Hans some great progress there, keep up the great work


A Baumarkt by my translation (from what I can remember when I lived in Germany) would be a Construction Market. In the US they would call these Hardware Stores. In the UK they can be referred to as DIY stores or the same as in the US.

Have dragged my Hasegawa F-14A out of the cupboard.

Hi everybody,

for today 2 new photos of my HobbyBoss 1-72 MiG-15 bis (now it starts looking like a real plane):

and


Since there wasn't any gunsight for my poor pilot i scratch-built one from Evergreen. Now some filling and sanding.

See ya all, HP

Here is my entry, originally from the 55 Years of Phabulous Phantoms campaign!

Cheers Rob.

And done..

EDIT: NOT done... weapons are out of order on the rt wing.. the number of times I re-re-re glued these things individually. Somehow when I knocked TWO things off, I reglued them in the wrong order.. FRAK!

None of the kits I THOUGHT I would be finishing were actually finished, but the Su-25 came out of the stash and got done.

Not a completely realistic Soviet loadout for Afghanistan as a whole, but stuff I like the look of.

The Italeri kit is rough and a mismash of old and new features. The main gear bay is impossibly shallow and true to form the gear bay doors fit for wheels up is also bad.
When will we get a modern tooling of this bird?

I went in thinking I wanted shark mouth decals, but the Afghan loadout, cammo scheme and Rook decal all precluded that. Next build.
Actually I am thinking of doing a modern, upgraded, all eggplant grey vers as well.

Akan paints (Tamiya Nato green instead of and Akan though), Linden Hill 20th century Sturmoviks decals for Bagram airbase 1990, DML weapons with Begemot decals and some Mig/Ammo washes and oil fading. Actually the bottom side of this bird is probably WAY too clean, the operational tempo there at that time was pretty quick.

Not the best build ever, but after 10+yrs it's DONE.



pics going into the gallery next.

Mike

Nice Mike!

Cockpit is ready to install.

Cheers Rob.

Hi Mike,

your Sukhoi looks great. She's well battered and looking badass. What I also like is, that she's inflight! I'm doing my new plane kits also inflight because ... well, their aeroplanes, not groundoplanes, aren't they?

See ya, HP

Thanks H-P,
I was surprised how beat and batered the Russian a/c in Afghanistan looked. Rockets are swapped back into the right order.

As for wheels up, yeah, planes look better 'in-flight' but they are hard to display that way. I've got a timeline of powered flight hanging from the ceiling of the 4th grade (10yr olds)classroom where I teach. But I am going to need to rationalize a really good reason to include this one as it is not really a record breaker or a famous first, but more of a "Plane Mr D thinks looks cool"

I REALLY hope Hasegawa or Trumpeter decide the world needs a more modern kit of this a/c soon. Even Zvezda if they can do the job they did on their new Hind kits.

I might even get the F15 done, that one I could ALMOST include as a record breaker as the airframe set several speed and time to altitude records.

Mike

I'll jump right in with my 1:48 scale HobbyCraft SeaFury. It got started in early spring but my bachelors degree (As if one masters degree wasn't enough ) put it on hold. Then my airbrush and compressor started acting up. (I had to replace the compressor, luckily a guarantee-issue). And now I've postponed it again because there were other kits I wanted to start. So I guess this campaign might be just what the doctor ordered to get it done. I'll snap a picture of the current status later tonight and post before I get going!