Building Bigger

Sometimes, with the pressure of one's daily obligations, a piece of work can be produced and clean forgotten. Below is a model build-up feature I wrote years ago, and even then it was a retrospective on a project which had not been documented at time of actual completion. I was browsing for some information in old articles and came across the text, so figured it was high time this one saw the light of day!

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As I’ve ruefully mentioned before on this blog, some modellers build bigger as they get older simply because they can’t see the small ones anymore. That’s very true for me, yet I haven’t built large scale planes since I was a kid – in fact I’ve only done one 1:32 aircraft in modern times. My previous was 34 (now 36!) years ago!

In 2014 I tackled Hasegawa’s big scale Fw 190 A-8 and had a great deal of fun with it. There were one or two hassles – the fit of the engine cowling to the fuselage left a lot to be desired and was a tough contour to fill and sand but that was about the only structural difficulty. The decal sheet was a let-down – I had selected Hans Dortenmann’s Red 1 and as with so many Luftwaffe aircraft the markings and the camouflage scheme particulars go hand in hand. It was bad news when it turned out the sheet was unserviceable, as the paintwork was fully finished. Patching the markings together from AM sheets would have been a $60 job (three sheets required). Fortunately a friend in Europe had the same kit and was doing it in different markings and sent me his sheet, which worked perfectly.

It’s a big, beautiful bird, and at this scale the problems of airbrush mottling are minimised – overspray can still be an issue but the battle for fineness seems less acute. The cockpit was easy to detail, and the 1:32 etched harness was incredibly realistic. The outer pair of canon barrels is missing – by the time I was done I was more than slightly browned off with Hasegawa’s engineering choice to simply scab them onto the exterior as optional bits, as my confidence to get them lined up in both axes while glue dried was in negative numbers, so she’s a slightly odd-looking A-8 here. Better that than make a mess after so much work had been invested…

I didn’t weather this one heavily – weathering is a skill mated t0 scale and one must learn to use a heavier hand as scale increases. I’m not comfortable with really laying on filth so this bird is in very well-maintained condition – which they must have been at least some of the time.

So why so few models in this scale? Simple, somewhere to put them. You can store four, even six, 1:72^nd scale models in the same area as the “footprint” of a 1:32^nd scale project, and you very quickly fill display cases with the big guys. I have plenty of models in this scale and would like plenty more, but until the day comes I have some sort of storage designed to receive them – shelves of the appropriate depth and at a spacing which does not waste cubic volume with empty air – I fear I’ll have to leave them where they are, buried deep in the stash.

There’s also a lot of work in a big model, even if it’s structurally no more complicated. It certainly uses a lot more paint, you’re aware of your running supplies being used more quickly. But that’s par for the course, I can only imagine the investment in time and materials the ship guys go to when they’re building the new Trumpeter 1:200^th scale battleships. Now there’s a project to conjure with – it gives a whole new meaning to the term “big scale.” It is to ships what 1:16^th scale is to armour or 1:24^th scale to planes.

Hmmm, that reminds me, I have an Airfix 1:24^th scale Harrier hiding away in the stash. After more than forty years since the basic tooling came out it might be high time it got the full treatment… If only I had somewhere to put it!

Recently Completed: Airfix 1:72 Spitfire Mk. Ia (#A01071A)

Airfix and the Spitfire have been partners since the firm’s beginning, around 1954. Though the Spitfire was not the very first kit they ever produced (a farm tractor has that honour), a Battle of Britain-eraMk.1 was a very early release, followed by the classic Mk. IX in the late 60s, a Mk. V in the 80s, and so forth. In  1:48^th scale Airfix has filled in many of the gaps of the available marks, their super-accurate Mk. XIV due out soon filling a major hole – though many vocal hobbyists bemoan any new Spitfire from Airfix as a missed opportunity to kit something actually new.

The subject here is the kit that’s had a lot of folk talking in the last year. A UK newspaper did a promotion with Airfix, providing coupons for free kits, and some enthusiasts managed to wrangle as many as five or six, though to be fair others missed out. Accuracy is likely to be high, given the meticulous approach of the firm these days, and the availability of the originals for study. Compromises for the scale appear minimal, though panel lines are a little heavy. The kit is a great pleasure to build. There were no real issues except for the fit of the canopy (below), which is very tight and needed a lot of careful filing and adjusting to sit down properly into the aperture. When it reached final shape it literally snapped into place. The build was otherwise uneventful. The landing gear legs are molded integrally with the gear bay doors, which in view of the warped legs of their Mustang kit, was a good idea, as these are dead straight and drop home into their receivers with a comfortable solidarity.

Cockpit detail is entirely adequate, the canopy cannot be posed open and so little is visible it makes little difference – in this writer’s opinion – if one superdetails or not.

The cockpit was painted with MM Cryl British Interior Green, the the model was airbrushed overall with Tamiya Acrylics. The underside shade is a mix of Tamiya XF-21 Sky and XF-2 White at 1:1 (and it still feels a bit too green to my eye), the Earth Dark Brown is also mixed, XF-52 Flat Earth and XF-64 German Rotbraun at 1:1 (as their straight Flat Earth seems too drab), while the green is straight XF-81, one of the group of three especially accurised RAF colours released some years back. Microscale clearcoats followed, with the final finish being flat, though MS Flat is actually quite satin in lustre. I was uncertain about the general shades until the model was finished, but once it had the brilliancy of the decals in contrast to the paintwork, I was very happy.

The decals were pretty good but I found them rather inflexible and unwilling to conform to sharp curves – it took up to ten applications of Microscale setting solution to get the flank roundels to lie down close to the top curve of the fuselage, and at least as many to get the wing roundels to draw into the gun hatch detail, though still not by 100%. Note the red gun patches are absent, there was no way they would curl around the leading edge. If I find some decal material more willing to conform, I’ll add them at some point – I did not fancy backing up and painting them with the model essentially done.

The canopy was masked with the Eduard set, which behaved perfectly, plus Gunze masking fluid, and the camouflage was masked using the AML set for the type B+ scheme. Florey wash and MiG pigments provided the finishing suite. The antenna wire was rigged with EZ-Line, always the last job I do because it is typically frustrating in its delicacy, and so hard to line up accurately at this scale.

There’s not really enough weathering for a battle-used aircraft in the thick of it. The pigments don’t adhere well to a hard, bright surface, they are far better seen against flat where they can get a grip on the fine irregularity. The oil streaking on the underside is also very restrained – Merlins leaked oil notoriously and Spitfires became filthy beyond words on the underside during sustained action. However, I seem to have developed a great sensitivity to mineral spirits, as just enough to wet the brush and do the job in a few minutes left me with a cracking headache for the evening. I didn’t think the job was big enough to be worth pulling out the twin-cartridge respirator, but I was wrong! Okay, this plane was washed recently!

This is my first 1940, Battle of Britain-era RAF project since I did Airfix’s 1:24^th scale Mk. Ia around 1976! I’ll certainly be doing some more subjects in these colours – they have a new tool Hurricane, the Boulton-Paul Defiant, and a couple of Curtis Tomahawks in 1940 RAF livery, all of which should looks very nice indeed (and are served by the excellent AML camouflage mask sets, which save a great deal of time and effort).