Thanks.

I got a bit confused masking her, because after a while it was more mask than open surface. But i decided that more tan than blue would give a lighter impression.

The big sweeps in the curves however, are more due to the small width in Tamiyas masking tape, than anything else. :-) :-)

Hi all!!!

Wow! I'm so very impressed with all the work put in to the campaign contributions! Simply incredible!

Personally, I've been absent for some time. Life took a couple of turns (good ones, mind you!), and with a new business, a new girlfriend and a new apartment... Well, all the moving about has made me pack all the models in a couple of big boxes, and it might take a while before a get up and running again.

As is common with regard to campaigns, there is often a demand for extentions of the time limit. Please indicate if you need that, and I'll see what I can do. Given the amazing interest in this campaign (kudos to all the tank builders, btw!!!!), I'm sure that we can keep on building for a while...

Cheers!

Give me a few more weeks and we'll get the HUP-2 flying as well!

Will you be at C4 in Malmö this weekend?

Regards

Magnus

Hi all of you!

I haven't been around here for a while, and must say I am impressed with all the nice models that are on the way!

My Mystère is almost finished. The first one's bare metal finish looked so bad that I made it into a camouflaged version instead :-) , but my second try is now being equipped with decals and getting its Suez-stripes

It has also been given a pilot from a Matchbox Do 28 kit and an instrument panel and control stick from a scrapped Heller SAAB Safir - so now the cockpit looks a bit more busy at least, no correctness at all but better than no detail at all!



There it is!




And may I present its pilot!

Hi All!

I enlisted on this campaign over on Aeroscale and I missed this tread entirely!

Björn; I hope I´m in on this campaign, If not please enlist me!

Well, here´s a link to my build for this campaign;

https://aeroscale.kitmaker.net/forums/84939&page=1

Hope it works!

Cheers!

Stefan E

Hi Björn!

I see you are back! I was a little anxious by your disappearance Now that I know the reasons for it I'm a little angry! All this just because of a new girlfriend!!!

Anyway, it's good to see you again... and good luck to sort out all the new entries, post a new thread over at Aeroscale, edit a new table etc... :-)

Jean-Luc

Great work, Mozmig and Phantom 2!!!

Life became very important for a while (more than "just a new girlfriend", Jean-luc, but we'll get back to that later). As I said earlier, it seems like it is going to be a while before I get back to modelling. Hopefully, I'll find the Meteor and the Vampire (and the Avenger!) in any of my moving boxes within the next couple of months...

Do I detect a hint of some friendly "schadenfreude", Jean-Luc?! :-)

As I wrote over at Aeroscale, I will try to see to it that this campaign is summed up in the same great style as it has been executed by all participants. With all likelihood, entry time will be extended for a couple of weeks, provided that this is ok. I'll get back to you on that note, though.

Cheers!

IMPORTANT NEWS!!!

Given that some people want to continue building Suez machinery for a while (who can blame them!), we have decided to prolong the entry time for this campaign until December 31st!!!

Cheers!

Ooookaaaayyy.

I'm off to the east again but given time until newyear... Hmmm. Maybe you should keep my T55 Vampire in the loop. The cockpit has a first layer of paint, so it must be possible.

Great news on the extension! I may yet go for the grand slam. My Centurion is ready to paint, got some replacement parts for the ones I fat-fingered on an SU-100, and recently landed an M-50 Sherman. Already have an AMX-13 in the stash. With a couple more months it may be possible to do them all.

Hi Björn!

Not that it will help me as I'm locked into another project but when does this great campaign officially expire?

Thanks,
Gary

Hello friends!

I am posting this on behalf of RickardM who says he is a bit binary challenged...


This is the result after the first evening of Il-28 model building. In fact this is the Trumpeter H-5 Harbin model but I have been told the Chinese H-5 is the same as the Il-28, I hope that is correct.

Day one
Actually I have been following the instructions so far, well more or less… I haven’t painted anything, as I didn’t have the correct colors at home. Furthermore I wasn’t sure whether the Chinese H-5 and the Il-28 had the same colors in the cockpit, wheel well and bomb bay. The instruction says aluminum gray but I think Russian aircrafts were grayish green (like the MiG 15). I will brush paint the interior as I haven’t got any airbrush and compressor at home for the moment.
The interior detail is sparse especially in the bombardier/nose compartment. The two ejection seats are quite good though. The engine gondolas are built up by nine parts each and the fit is ok, if you remove some location pins. The level of detailing in the wheel bay and bomb bay is ok but that’s it. The panel lines are engraved but a little on the heavy side. On the other hand this is not a Tamiya or a Hasegawa model and I just paid ~8$ for the model.



Day two
Today I painted the interior, I decided to use the same color as Tamiya recommend in their MiG 15 (FX 23) but instead of Tamiya color I used Vallejo (Pale blue), as it is much easier to brush paint. So the cockpit, wheel well and bomb bay turned pale blue. I also picked out the details in the cockpit using black, white, red and a little fantasy, as I don’t want to use any reference material. I also painted the front of the engine, metallic gray. While the paint was drying I looked over the seams created as I glued the engine gondolas together. I wasn’t all satisfied so I applied some filler here and there.







Day three
Frustration! I was about to install the cockpit in one of the fuselage halves today which I thought would be easy. Earlier the bombardier compartment floor and bulkhead was glued together with the cockpit floor, rear bulkhead instrument panel and side consoles as per instruction. This sub assembly will fit inside the nose of the aircraft with the aid of locators. Sadly this won’t fit, either the bombardier seat will pop out of the air frame or the pilot won’t even see over the side frame. The solution is simple thou, just cut of the cockpit floor where it is glued to the bombardier bulkhead and install the bombardier compartment and cockpit separately. I also cut of a little of the upper outer section of the side consoles. To hold the parts in place in the cockpit while adjusting them I use artist clay. It makes me able to get them where I want and when I am satisfied I apply a little superglue, leaving the artist clay where it is as it won’t be seen anyway. Everything ended up quite nice but after a little more work than I had expected.





Day four
The glue has set and both the cockpit and the bombardier compartment fit just fine inside the fuselage. So today I glued the fuselage together. I also included a coin, which I glued to the cockpit rear bulkhead. The instruction says the model needs 20g of ballast but honestly I do not think you need it at all. Next I cut off the parts for the wings and glued them together. The leading edge is a little too blunt for a high speed sub sonic bomber I think but I won’t do anything about it. The locators on the inner wings are a little off center which create a step in the leading edge that I noticed too late. It will be fixed with filler.



Day five and on
Now there was a lot o sanding of the seams. The fuselage seam itself didn’t need more than sanding and the same goes for the wing leading and trailing edge. No big deal so far. But to get the rear gunner hatch at the bottom of the tail and the bombardier hatch on top of the nose to blend in nicely required lot filler and sanding. This took some time to fix. Then there was a few sink marks on the base of the horizontal stabilizer that needed some filler. This base, ~5 mm, is part of the fuselage.
Next thing was gluing the horizontal stabilizer in place. As the base has no dihedral I glued the horizontal stabilizer level, with no dihedral. Later on I found out the horizontal stabilizer is to have a markedly dihedral, all the way from the base. The wing and engine gondolas were glued in place using super glue. It took some effort to get the wing-fuselage seam ok and I lost some detail in the process. The panel lines were rescribed later on but I didn’t restore the engraved squares along the seam. The engine gondola fit to the wing leading edge is incorrect and I didn’t adjust this. On the trailing edge they meet up perfectly tough. The problem is there will be a ~1 mm step, from the top of the engine gondola to the upper side of the wing but they are to meet each other on the same height. The easiest fix would have been to carve some plastic out from the forward part of the wing, so that the engine gondola would fit deeper in the wing. The drawback is this would give the engine gondola a strange looking angle of attack.
The fit of the clear nose section was not good at all. It took a lot of filler and sanding to get an acceptable fit and I had to polish the clear parts to restore the finish. Thankfully the fit of the canopy and the clear part for the tail gunner was better. I masked the clear parts with Bare Metal Foil.

Painting
I started by giving the whole model a layer of gray paint. Then I masked of most of the panels and sprayed a few of them white then I gave another couple of panels a dark gray color. Now I had a model with panels in three different colors. On top of this I sprayed Tamiya Titanium Silver. The nice thing about this is the different colors underneath the Titanium Silver will shine through, giving the panels different shades, a kind of pre-shading. Using Future I gave the model a gloss surface. The decals is from Super Scale, originally they were meant too be used on a MiG 15. By adding a little Tamiya Flat Base to a cup of Future I gave the model a semi flat surface.
After gluing the landing gear, landing gear doors, bomb bay doors and a few other details in place the model was finished. …or so I thought! The model turned out to be a tail sitter! The coin I glued to the rear cockpit wall was not enough. By adding a 9mm bullet to the bomb bay front wall with artist clay, the model stood on its nose gear.



And some photos of the finished product:











The model was to my surprise rewarded at the Modell Göteborg 2006 event.

/Rickard Malmborg
IPMS Stockholm

Thank you Tomas Enerdal for the decals!

That is great news Björn!

I for one would love an extension, as my Mystère just had an accident, canopy shattered and pilot ejected :-( , so need time to get a replacement from Revell...

And, I have a Egyptian Mig-15 on the way!

Cheers, Peter

Finally finished my entry. Hasegawa, 1/48 F4U-7 Corsair, in French markings.
A very nice model. I had to get my dad to help me with some parts as it was a bit complicated in places and i couldn't quite work out where some parts went.
Hope you like it.
Courtney

Nice work! It certainly is my favourite Corsair!

Did you use decals for the stripes?

In order to "save time" I did it with my Avenger. When using Micro Sol (starting at the top of the wings, where else?) I got kind of a wrinkle disaster There was no way to un-wrinkle the mess so I sanded the decals carefully and started to over-paint them. When I peeled off the masking some of the underlaying decal went with it. I did this process a few times until finally realising that there was no chance in the world to succeed!

Now I am slowly removing all the stripes using alcohol, sanding sticks and a lot of foul language. The next step will be painting the stripes... So much for "saving time"...

regards

Magnus

Great work, Courtney!!! You've really put some effort into the weathering of the aircraft! A ribbon well deserved!

What's next on the table for you?

Cheers!

Working on the Vampire.
Got sidetracked with some other stuff, but now it's ALMOST finnished.

The bigger decals on wings are send to me by Gary (aka gbkirsch, thanks again Gary!!!), the smaller ones on the back are homemade, using the decals Gary send me. I scanned them, made them smaller and printed them on Testors decal paper. I just used glos coat to fixate the inkt on the paper (to make it waterproof).
Also the black stripings and the arabic text are homemade decals.

Paul

Hi Paul,

You are very welcome!!! It's looking great and I'm so glad I had something that you could use.

Cheers, Gary :-) :-)

Paul: Unfortunately I can see by the pincher that you ended up a bit like I did on my swedish Vampire (J 28) - with a slight tailsitter. My question to all of you out there is - is there any liquid weight that can be injected into the front fuselage when this ocurs.

Any thought on this would be helpful, as I don't know any other remedy than overweighted noses, and that might upset other parts. I've bought fishing weights to cure this, but you never know the amount needed in the beginning, do you?

Otherwise I like your Vampire. It's sleek, like they should. I'm a prop-man myself, but given the choice to pick a jet or die - it would be a vampire!

Courtney: I like the Corsair. It looks like it's been through three wars, waiting for the fourth, and in no desperate need of maintenance. Cool hard weathering.

Might as well cal it a BIG tailsitter :-) :-) :-)
Actually, I forgot to put in some weight and discovered it after I glued the kit together... The weigt is still on the table!!!!

As I'm planning to place the plane on a dio, I think I just glue the plane on it. But indeed, a liqued weight would be great idea.

Hey Paul,

Wish I had a few baubles for everytime I glued something together and left something out! I guess that's why I keep building, in the hopes I will eventually get something right!!!

Gary :-) :-)

Well, the tailsitting is not to be noticed anymore: just glued it in place on a little base.
Click here to visit my gallery for more (and bigger) pictures
Tell me what u think guys!

Allright. Now she stands proud.

I get the feeling though, that they measured the kits landing gear from stripped, sprung out parts. It doesn't look as beerbellied and heavy as photos of the real thing.

I got this kit as a christmas gift from my best friends son, and mine turned out the same. I my case the green/blue Swedish AF camo added a little visual weight though.

I'll steel your advice, put mine on a plate and glue her right down. It doesn't have to be a big lump of wood in this case, right? Maybe add some concrete and grass, and maybe some green mosquitonet might work as field camouflage. Then I'll give her back to the little guy again.

THE reference has landed. Just a bit too late of course but it is very interesting anyway!



It is crammed full of photos I've never seen before. Interesting when comparing with the recent Suez issue from Aeroplane Monthly that mostly included the same old photos we have seen many times before. OK, this is in French but the photos and profiles are there and it certainly will do your school French good!

Available from http://wingmasters.histoireetcollections.com/

Regards

Magnus