Recently Completed: Airfix 1:72 Hawker Typhoon Mk. Ib (A02041).

This is the first Typhoon I have ever done (though there was a Matchbox 1:72 Tempest II back in the 80s). Tooled in 2013, this kit looks very nice in the box, and as a Series 2 kit comes on four sprues and with two decal options. I had intended to do the more colourful scheme with invasion stripes, but didn’t trust such large decals not to pose grab and alignment problems that might result in tearing; plus I wanted to get this one off the bench before New Year and wasn’t in the market for surprises, or for backing up and painting the stripes.

Another good-looking addition to Airfix’s stable of British aviation in miniature, the model’s pleasing lines conceal a few challenges. I got the feeling Airfix somewhat over-thought the engineering in this kit, especially in the way the cockpit interior locates, and the cockpit floor/wheelwells part, which demands a certain order of assembly and unavoidably introduces the potential for misalignment. Fit problems I found inevitable, steps at the wingroot being the most serious, though gaps manifested on the horizontal tails too: whiteglue to the rescue. I expected the keyed landing gear to be out of alignment also, but surprisingly it was not – the wheels are flattened and bulged, and keyed to the struts, and once the model is “up on its feet” the flat spots are firmly to the ground. Assembly took a little time, and there was plenty of prepainting to do, between the prominent radiator/carburettor intake assembly, the cockpit and surrounds, landing gear, bay doors and propeller assembly.

Overall, though, the model looks the part, and once it was together the finishing techniques flowed along well enough. I used Tamiya’s accurised RAF late-WWII shades (XF-81, -82 and -83) topped with Microscale clears and Florey panel wash, finished with oil wash weathering and Mig pigments. I used the Eduard mask set for the canopy and wheels, and the AML masks for the Type A camo scheme. The set includes an extra sheet of straight strips doubtless intended for painting the invasion stripes.

The best part of the kit was the decals, they were superb and pulled into surface detail even before MicroSet was applied. Very thin, they grabbed a bit quickly, but are of solid tone, fully in-register, and seem especially accurate. They behaved much better than the sheet in the Spitfire I finished last, indeed I completed all decals, with the exception of the leading edge yellow stripes, in a single day of work.

Criticisms? The small antenna on the underside of the fuselage did not fit its locator hole – I fiddled and fumbled with it for a good twenty minutes, most of which was involved in getting hold of the tiny component, over and over and over, while applying a file to the base until it actually dropped into the receiver. The tailwheel is moulded as one part and must be seated before the fuselage is closed, which ups the odds of damage during handling and makes painting the unit a matter of a small brush and prayer. When the propeller is finally installed, the mounting calls for a cylindrical unit to be inserted between four moulded guides which “tension” it into place – why so complicated? The fuselage aperture had to be filed to accommodate the outer ring of the cylinder, and when it slid home it became apparent the outer diameter of the fuselage mouldings is larger than the outside diameter of the spinner backplate, leaving a strip of unpainted plastic exposed – yet with the prop now quite firmly in place there seems no way to tease it free again to paint the strip. Chancing getting camo green on the satin black spinner is not a risk I’m willing to take at the very finish, so it stands as-is, and angle of view will hopefully conceal the flaw for the moist part.

I have another of these, in the “Dogfight Doubles” edition with Pips Priller’s FW 190 (an unusual combination, as the Tiffie found its forté as a ground attack plane and probably never tangled with a 190, at least not on purpose) but it may be a few years before I welcome going 15 rounds with this kit again. There are some lessons learned here, of course, such as leaving the main gear bay doors off until after the struts are in place, which would make it easier to keep the doors aligned and not “toed-in” a bit.

Enjoyable? It’s always nice to see a project come together, but I would have to say I was happy to see this one leave the bench in the end. Maybe the shake’n’bake kits have somewhat spoiled me, but I had hoped for better alignment. Recommended nevertheless, to those with a little experience under their belts.

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!

Kit Review: Academy (Tamiya) StuG IV, #1332

It was about a year ago that I was posting on building this kit and being stunned to find that Academy had thieved most of their early range from Tamiya. I mentioned one or two minor differences that appeared in the building stage, then this kit lay fallow for a long time waiting for its paintjob.

Having just this summer got back to the bench after a quite protracted absence, I have been finishing some shelf-sitters, this one being my fifth in a row. This was my first tri-tone “ambush” scheme and I enjoyed it very much.



The basic vehicle was sprayed overall with XF-60 Dark Yellow, then a slightly darkened version was applied to the hull sidewalls and underside as a shade/dirt colour. The airbrush was changed to the fine tip and needle and Redbrown (XF-64) and Dark Green (XF-26) were sprayed, following the pattern seen in the box photos. Some extra yellow was used to touch up overspray, then a pattern of blowing leaves was applied in the three colours by brush. More yellow was mixed for the fade coat, being thinned 800% overspec as a glaze which was misted onto the upper surfaces, creating the impression of faded paint, and visually tying all three colours together.



The usual suite of techniques was used, being drybrushing with lightened shades of the three main colours on all edges, then drybrushing silver to represent areas of bare metal, washes of black and dark brown oil paint to create rust streaks and dirt accumulations, some washes of orange here and there for fresh, bright rust, graphite dust around the gun muzzle, and so forth. Alliance Modelworks German Vehicle Templates were used to spray the wheel hubs, .015” wire was used for the radio mast, and the muffler was treated with applications of liquid glue and sanding dust to create the bubbled rust effect.



Another variation from the Tamiya original showed up, the spare track links on the lower forward hull had to be back-ground to reduce their thickness by a considerable amount before they would fit the rack, whereas the originals just dropped into place. There are probably other subtle differences here and there, but to all practical ends the model really is identical.



The paint scheme I used is featured on the box photos but the decals for this vehicle, of the Grossdeutschland Division by the looks of the insignia, are not featured in the kit. I brought out the spare markings from the Tamiya example I did about two years ago and did some online research for which StuG IV units were operational in the west in late ’44, and thus good candidates to be wearing the “ambush” scheme. I chose the 251st Assault Gun Brigade, whose colourful eagle badge was on the Tamiya sheet, and while this is obviously a best-guess situation, I feel it’s a reasonable one.



In conclusion, Academy’s knock-off of Tamiya’s StuG IV is an enjoyable build with a few quirks not found in the original but nevertheless a straight forward prospect for anyone with a few projects to their credit. I’m very happy with the result, it looks good, aggressive in its dust and rust, colourful in its blowing-leaves autumn paintjob, and demonstrates once again how much versatility there is in the early Tamiya kits. That’s two of these so far, and I know there’ll be more. Winter markings, full skirts, heavy weathering, mud, stowage, there are plenty of options for depicting these hard-used, hard-fighting workhorses of the Wermacht.

Simplifying Soft Masking

Back when I started this blog, one of my most-viewed early posts was about detailing Hasegawa’s Bf 109 K-4, and one of the techniques I explored was soft-masking, cutting card masks for the camouflage and applying them clear of the surface by an eighth of an inch to hopefully create soft-edged demarcations.

I have been putting together Hasegawa’s Bf 109 F-2 in markings for Operation Barbarossa, and when coming to soft-mask the camo this time an interesting twist struck me.

I had not particularly thought about the masking until I got to the relevant stage, then I compared the pattern on the K-4 to the one on Werner Molders’ aircraft to see if the same masks would serve, at least for the wings and tail, but the pattern, being hand-applied on the original aircraft, was different enough to warrant a new set of masks being cut.

Rather than a process of trial and error, holding pieces of card to the model and trimming them until they looked about right, and in the absence of a 1:48th scale reference drawing, I pulled another unbuilt 109 from my stash and laid the wing, tail and fuselage parts onto a sheet of light card, ran a pencil around them and abruptly had my profile plans. From that point it was an easy matter to copy the camouflage from the kit plans onto the sketch and outline the segments to be cut out. It doesn’t even have to be very exact.

The virtue is that you can pre-design cutaways to fit around the wings or to run under the tail surfaces, or long tapers to shield the sides of the fuselage, helping reduce tape usage. And, if you’re careful with the cutting out, you’ll have a negative mask as well, which you can lay over the opposite tonal area to touch up overspray if needed.

On this model I’m using Model Master Acryl paints (well, on three models simultaneously, in fact), so look for a review of these paints in the near future.

My too-full schedule has been cleared somewhat lately, so look for new posts rather more often.