My project for this campaign is the Italian Trainer Nardi F.N. 305 using the 1/48 Special Hobby kit 48018. We'll see how I do with the vacuformed canopy.....



Thanks

So, I finally managed to get some work done on my 1/48 Stearman PT-17! I finished the cockpit, and am now working on the engine & fuselage. Things are progressing well (despite help from the cats ), and I've only managed to break the tail-wheel off once . Quite an achievement for me.

Here are some pics of the cockpit assembly:







I still have no idea how I'm going to rig the wings, or what I'm going to use. Maybe I'll head to the LHS today to see what they have.

Jim

Sorry guys, haven't looked in for a while since I finished the Tiggie.

Great builds coming on well done all.

Si

This is my entry but with Canadian colours and decals:-

Hi again,
I've got a little progress on my Silver Star, the body is together and seam filling and sanding has begun. Of course as soon as I do that parts start to fall from the cockpit That's my luck with everything. The picture shows the wings attached but it they are not glued to the body, just for show. Looks like there might be a big gap there to fix

That's all for now
Ron

Time for another incremental update on my AT-11 build. Since the vertical stabilizers weren't doing anything, and other parts were curing, drying or just being contemplated, I figured I'd launch into the rudder stripes. For those of you out there not thoroughly conversant on between the wars American aircraft heraldry the rudders on US Army Air Corps planes consisted of a vertical insignia blue stripe and thirteen alternating red and white stripes, the same as the US flag. Like the flag, there have to be seven red stripes and six white ones. This means that unless the somebody is thoughtful enough to provide a decal for this purpose, the modeler has to do the math. The longest length of the rudder has to be divided into 13 equal parts (there's a nice even number to work with) and in 1/72 scale you've got to be kinda creative in your units of measurement. This is what it's suppose to look like:



Painting the rudder white and then the vertical blue stripe is straight forward enough, but all those little fiddly red & white suckers are a chore. Once I figured out how wide each stripe had to be (note: the rudder in this kit is not evenly divisible in any known measuring system with the possible exception of something like furlongs-per-fortnight or some such) in any event I finally got something I could approximate and went to cutting strips of masking tape. I then found the center of each rudder and laid a center stripe as perpendicular to my blue stripe as I could eyeball it and ran all of my other strips off of that one. This approach was necessitated by the end stripes being to short to work off of. The result:





These things still need a coat of clear semi-gloss to darken them up a little and blend them in some, but they should work.

Now that it's time to put the fuselage halves together another nifty feature of this kit reared it's ugly head.



You will note that the bottom of the left fuselage half is at least twice as thick as the bottom of the right half. This wouldn't be a big deal except I wanted to ensure the aft compartment was snugged up well against the right fuselage because of the open door on the left side and I wanted to avoid an ugly gap in the bomb-bay. Naturally the side I glued everything to was the narrow side. Now I've got to deal with all of that nasty overhang on the outside.



The fit of the horizontal stabilizers to the fuselage is also pretty atrocious which explains the large glob of milliput in that area. On the original kit the tail wheel just sticks into a locating hole in the bottom of the fuselage, but on the real aircraft there in an actual wheel well. I used the C-45 wheel well covers as a guide and cut out a wheel well and used a piece of 40 thou. sheet styrene to box it in. It's a little shallow probably but it'll do once I put the doors on.



With the fuselage together I need to start closing up the interior because this beast is going to generate a heap of sanding dust. Masking all the compound curves on the bombardier's nose was a little tricky which wasn't helped by the kit part's panel lines being very faint to boot. Micromask filled in the big gaps. I'm not an unbridled fan of the stuff (I've had issues with coverage in the past) but I'm hoping it'll do the job, I layered it on pretty thick. I ran a couple of strips of 20 thou. styrene along the base of the cockpit opening to help support the vacu-form glazing during what will undoubtedly be some intense sanding. A little paint on the strips to blend them in and they should work good. I've got a sizeable gap on the right side bulkhead that may need attention, but I might get away with it once I get the cockpit glazing on, I'll see. As it fits now:





This shot of the vacu-form cockpit cover makes it look like there is a big overhand on the left forward corner, there isn't, it's just the angle of the shot and the light colored tape in the background. All in all it isn't a bad fit for do-it-yourself. I especially like the smokestack!
Carry on

Cockpit primed:-

I know this has taken a long time, I have finally got some finished shots of the Vampire T11 for you!







sorry this took so long, the trouble is that I did not have a particularly good experience with the decals. For one thing, these were possibly the most flimsy set of decals I have ever used, and disintegrated the second I looked at them, even when they were on the kit and dry. I was considering starting over with the markings and painting them on instead, but in the end I just decided to do a couple of these a day and stop at that to both avoid frustration and give me time to work on other projects for various campaigns, so here it is.

Some great builds going on here, looking forward to seeing the finished products!

Really nice looking Vampire, Simon. Well done.

I really have to get in gear & get working on my Stearman!

Jim

Got some more work done on the Stearman today. I have been stressing over what to use for rigging, and I think I've found a solution: 0.005" steel surgical suture. I did a couple of tests, and it really looks good. Spent some of today drilling holes in the tail, horizontal stabilizer, & fuselage for the rigging connection points. That might have been a complete waste of time as those tiny holes will probably get filled with paint. We'll just have to wait & see.



Also got the fuselage assembled. There is some seam work to do on the front cowling, but it shouldn't be all that difficult. Here is the fuselage as it stands right now:







Here's an overhead view:





I did place the wings & engine on so I could get a better idea of how big the finished model will be. Hey! It's starting to look like an airplane! (And I still haven't broken the tail wheel off again. )





Jim

Hi Everybody

Been a while but I have made progress on the Silvershark. I have the model assembled and painting of the bottom have completed. Just have to finish taping it up to paint the upper half.

I originally installed the front windshield first so that I could paint the black strip on front but when I tried to install the canopy, I found that I had the windshield way to far forward . Had to remove and re-glue and then repaint the black.

Underside painted a light grey with a hint of blue. Looks better than the picture shows. Hope to have it painted by the end of the week and decaled before August
Ron

So i am finally done with RWD-8... Lets be honest it is not an easy model to make. Actually it is harder to build then Classic Airframes A5M. Definitely not a kit for someone who just started to builds kits. But on the other hand it is the only RWD-8 in 1:48... This kit cost me actually need to drop off from other compaigns so i should get more then one ribbon
And some pictures of in progress and finished model:

Hi everybody
Made a lot of progress on the Silver Shark since my last post. The model is painted and I've started decals .
The Paint turned out better than I expected with only one hiccup when i tried to clear coat it. The decals are amazingly easy to use and are going on nicely for 15+ years old. The only issue that I am having with them are that they were designed for the old Testers T-33 and not the Academy one that I built. Even so I only had to cut 2 decals to make it work nicely. Here are a couple of pics

The rear stabilizers fell off as I was handling it for decals so I hope to remember to glue them back on



Ron

Here is a update on my build.
The cockpit is done.
I used the kit decals for the side panels but the instrument decals were way off from any photos that I found so I used a fine tip black marker.
I added brass rod for the front seat cross bar on the canopy breaker.





Nice builds every one!

After a bit of a delay, the AT-11 build lumbers on. I got the franken-vac cockpit roof and windscreen attached with the help of gel superglue/ten fingers and two toes to hold all the stray edges. Trying to keep all those digits out of the glue AND trying to do something useful was not small feat. In the end it all went, although not without some issues. This is the result after an interior green coat:



The windscreen masks are are de-tacked painters tape cut using the original C-45 windscreen for measurements, and eyeballing the size of the overhead windows from reference photos. I used the original kit nose glazing and followed their panel lines which didn't look to bad (just fiddly). Up to this stage things are looking pretty good on the nose end. The horizontal stabilizer fit, like most of the rest of this kit is horrid, plus upon closer examination the kit's rudder/elevator depiction is a physical impossibility. Whoever designed this thing showed the elevator spanning the entire horizontal stabilizer and meeting the rudder. This is what it's susppose to look like:



I filled in the original elevator hinge line for the last 1/8 inch (3mm) and rescribed new elevator lines. I would have sanded the horiz. stab. trailing edge at more of an angle to meet the vertical stabilizer and not the rudder but Matchbox or whoever put a locating pin to far aft and I didn't want to lose that. There are enough alignment problems with this kit without having to fiddle with both vert. stabs. on three axis, so I fudged a little. I opted to paint nacelles and the anti-glare panels before I attached the wings to the fuselage thinking it would ba a lot easier to do the masking and spraying. I debated on doing the anti-glare panels at the same time as the gloss black primer coat and then dull coat it later, but decided to go ahead and just paint them flat black and mask over them before spraying the primer. That way I could do the masking without having the fuselage in the way. This is a layout shot before the wings went on.



All the appendages on, and only a couple of more sandings before the primer coat.







As is my usual method, I sprayed the underside first so if there is any problems they will show up on an not-so-noticeable surface. I used Model Master gloss black enamel, which I know takes forever to dry, and I normally spray enamels with lacquer thinner which helps with the drying time. This works fine with flat enamels and usually with all enamels but in this case (naturally) when I got done I had a very rough coat, even on the wings which were smooth to start with. I suspect the thinner reacted in some way that prevented the paint from leveling out. This was the result:





I switched to Model Master stock thinner for the top with much better results.





With the gloss coat I found that in my attempts to keep my fingers out of the superglue in attaching the cockpit roof that I had ended up with a couple of slight gaps and a noticeable hump on the top where the roof and the fuselage meet. Due to the thickness (or rather lack thereof) of the vac roof, I was limited in how much I could sand things down and not go through the thin plastic. With a bare metal finish, it's not going to hide. This is a view with the masking removed and a start on the decaling. The decaling is a monumental pain because all of the numbers have to be cut individually and placed one at a time. I've found through past experience that doing individual letters/numbers, that the digit next to the one being worked on has to sit long enough to dry before applying the next one, especially when using decal setting solutions, or it will float away and now you've got two digits to try and align. Moving one will dislodge all the rest and you have to start over. And, to add insult to injury the only early war national markings I've got on hand are the type that the manufacturer wants you to put the red circle on as a separate step, and they want to go anywhere except in the center of the star. I used a strip of scotch magic tape painted with the same Model Master non-buffing aluminium metalizer as the rest of the model and wrapped it around the bottom of the navigator's astro-dome and secured it with white glue. The net result:









That's it for now.
Carry on

Very nice Vampire T11 Simon.

Finally, the last bits are on the AT-11. The aircraft serial numbers were as anticipated a hassle due to their small size compounded by having to be made up of individual numbers. Of course not to be satisfied with the inherent hassle, I managed, in spite of taking precautions not to get the lettering on the opposite side (right side) misplaced, I did just that. I discovered my mistake about three numbers into the "807" (remember there is quite a delay between numbers) so I was only able to move the 80 part. Naturally the "7" was the one number that I didn't have a back-up for on my decal sheet. After an extensive and time consuming search, I managed to pirate a passable 7 from an ancient F4J phantom sheet. Good thing too, my plan-B was to order another sheet from Hannants, that would have set the old project back. The aircraft data stencil under the pilot's window was just prominent enough that I thought I ought to add it. Of course I'm fresh out of AT-11 data stencils, so if someone is inclined to read it, it's for a P-39, but what the hell, it looks the part. With the exception of one of the right cowling numbers wandering out of position while drying (caught and corrected) everybody else went on with out much extra drama.







All the various doors were attached at this point along with the landing gear. The C-45 doors were used, but required a bit if filing with a half-round file to get them into any sort of useable shape. The main gear torque struts were laboriously filed out to look like struts and not an aluminium wedge. This was done to make up for my wimping out on dealing with the brake lines on the gear struts (too much hassle at this scale, at this point in the build) The final item was putting the aft crew door back on. It was a laminate affair made up of the original scribed door from the AT-11 fuselage, which by the time I got it out was a bit smaller that the resulting opening. It is now the inner door lining and was used as a pattern for a slightly larger version made for 10 thou. styrene sheet made for the outer portion.

Beech's version:



My version:



The holes drilled in the original door were beveled on the inside to make it look more like a separate sheet.

So as not to use too many of the same number off my decal sheet (remember the near disaster no. 7?) my inspiration was the second aircraft in this line-up.



Submitted for your approval:



I also blew off the antenna wires, I've already broken off one very flimsy antenna mast, and the wires mount to the leading edge of the vertical stabilizers which are exceedingly thin on this kit. The gain to loss ratio at this point is in the negative range.

A few more shots to round this out:

















Some final thoughts: This build accomplished what I set out to do, namely it was a test bed to see just what I could do at detailing in this scale. I've got some ambitious plans for my MC-130E build and wanted to make sure I wasn't biting off more than I could chew. There are some alignment issues with the final result, some are inherent in the AT-11 kit, some are of my own devising, and some just in the Frankenstein nature of the build. If I had it to do over, I'd probably just scribe the bomb bay doors which would give a little more support to the fuselage in the wing root area. Thicker plastic for the vacuformed cockpit roof would also be a plus. In it's native form, I wouldn't recommend the basic AT-11 kit to anybody for any reason. There ain't enough lipstick in all of Christendom to make this pig pretty. If you really got to have an AT-11, wait for ICM or somebody to make a conversion for their 1/48 scale C-45 kit, you'll be way ahead.

Carry on

Very nice job on a very unique subject. Well done.

Jim

Hi Everybody
I have completed my Silver Shark and have pictures posted to the gallery. This was a fun build with a few challenges along the way. The Leading Edge decals were the easiest to use decals that I have ever used, even for being around 14 years old or older. I had one issue at the end with the main landing gear, the left side had a very loose fit and i didn't notice until after the superglue had set that the wheel had shifted. Oh well.


The forward wheel well has some extra weights glued in there. I put a lot of weight in the nose before closing the fuselage up but she still sat on her tail
Sees yas in the next build
Ron

That's a cool looking airplane, Ron. Well done.

Jim

Making some headway on the Stearman. Still really have no idea how I'm going to rig the aircraft. I have some ideas, but more trepidation that solutions. I guess I'm just going to have to bite the bullet & rig it.

Here is where it stands right now:


WIP on the prop. I tried to used the Revell supplied decals, and that was a disaster. I'm going to go with paint & hope for the best. I'm hoping that the Hamilton Standard logos are salvageable so I can put them on the prop.


Looking more & more like an airplane!


Jim

Ready for masking, I have framed the canopy on the inside as this will be modeled open:

Im in with a hawk,.. Not my favorite airplane but I must say I like the Airfix model,.



It's a quick and easy build



The office got some extras and I also added antennas plus the special tail cone smoke pipes specific to the Red Arrows to make the aircraft a bit lively



No problem with the easy one tone color and a drop of blue



Decals was a other story,.. But with a bit of care and a scissor to cut them it turns out OK



So here it is a Red Arrows Hawk









Thanks

Nice build and stand Jan.
My entry is ready for top coat, it will be tight to get done by the end of the campaign.

Nice work here all! Only a day left, everyone about done?

Michael