In Appreciation of Palmtop Panzers

Many years ago I dismissed 1:72^nd scale armour as too small to take seriously, calling them “palmtop panzers.” Well—even then I had a sneaking interest, as I’d seen some wonderful dioramas in the scale, but working so small evoked memories of Airfix OO/HO scale (87^th ?) back in the 70s, and for a 1:35^th scale modeller it was hard to imagine going back to the little guys.

But the wheel turns eventually, and I tackled a small scale armour kit for for a group build in the second quarter of 2024. I did some stash-diving and pulled out Dragon’s 1:72 Jagdtiger, and at once could appreciate that they had packed in much of the detail one expects to find in a larger kit. The mouldings were sharp and attractive, a photoetched fret was included for the engine deck grills, and assembly was generally straight forward.

Small scale equals a quick build—the main structure was done in no time. The painting was the big deal, really, as order of priority comes into play no matter the scale, and I found I was investing the model with all the same techniques as I would apply to the larger, standard size kit. This was especially true of the running gear, which was sprayed, clear-coated, shade/dirt coated on the back of the wheels, wash-detailed, then treated with graphite to simulate the resilient steel rims. The one-piece tracks were sprayed with a deep umber acrylic mix, drybrushed with metallic and finished with MiG pigment dust... In other words, all the same tricks that I would use at larger scale.

This kit is of the Henschell suspension type, with eight pairs of roadwheels arranged on double bogie units. The bogies were keyed for proper alignment but the fit was loose enough for the keyways not to be effective. I ended up push-fitting the bogies and idlers, then looping the connected tracks into place and meshing the drive sprockets into the tracks, then securing them to the final drives with a spot of superglue.

I chose a scheme from a Squadron volume, and only long after committing to it did I realise the vehicle in question had Porsche suspension—nine axles, like the King Tiger (P), not eight. Hey-ho, I’ll build this subject again at 1:35^th scale and do it more justice!

If I have a specific criticism of this kit, it’s the alignment of the hull top and bottom. I must have tried twenty times to find their natural mate-up, but couldn’t. There are two internal pillars meant to mesh with receivers, and two mysterious screws which are not mentioned in the instructions but might have something to do with the pillars... As nearly as I could manage, I still needed to file away the top of one of the pillars to get the parts anywhere near fitting, and this left a fore-and-aft misalignment of about 1.5mm. The result was an “overbite” at the front of the hull, and a gap where the engine deck meets the transom (which I doctored with a strip of 010” plasticard. It’s not too noticeable at small scale, though in real life it would be a four-inch mismatch!

I sprayed Tamiya Acrylics overall, using the new-take shades, XF-87 and -88, which behaved very nicely. I lightened them at a ratio of three parts colour to one part white, to obtain a scale colour effect, as I was very conscious of how small the thing was going to be. After a little touching up to fix overspray, I overcoated with Microscale Flat, leaving a low lustre to accept the decals, which were then sealed the same way. Dragon provides two styles of balkenkreutzer and a large selection of turret numbers in both red and black, so you can get close no matter what subject you fancy.

As with 1:35^th scale Dragon armour, you end up with loads of spare parts—a sprue of detail parts was clearly in common with other Tiger kits, and one ends up with hatches, tow cables, U-connectors, spare bow MG, AA MG, track plates and more.

Overall, I’d have to say I really enjoyed this kit, and it won’t be my last “palmtop panzer.” I must finish the Revell Pz. III I was referring to all those years ago, and I have several more Dragon kits, collected over twenty years back. It’s a good job I have them in the stash—I checked the price of small scale armour and you’re looking at $40 or more at hobby shop rates these days!

Photos were taken with my phone and processed through Irfanview. Still hoping to renew that studio lighting and get back to fully controlled miniature photography!

A New Bit of Kit

 I’ve not put on a new piece of “plant” in a very long time, but circumstances recently compelled me to update. For something like 35 years, I’ve run my airbrush on a cylinder of compressed air, which has worked very well indeed, however complications with supply forced a rethink. When the yearly hire cost of the bottle crept up toward a dollar per day, I knew I needed a cheaper alternative.

I’ve resisted the idea of a compressor for years on two counts—the noise they’re liable to make, and the cost. I looked at units years ago and they were still substantially more expensive than bottle hire, but, lo and behold, there are more modest units designed specifically for the hobby/craft marketplace that are not so expensive, and, being meant for domestic or public-contact business applications, also run quietly.

It turns out I didn’t have to look far. This is the Artlogic AC1418, which is compact and tidy. I originally looked at the 1318 model, but on having a chat with the customer service folk at Airbrush Warehouse, I found the 1318 was not recommended for use with syphon-feed airbrushes, like my Paasche VL. The 1418 has a 3-litre collecting tank, which smooths the delivery, and this is certainly essential. The 1418 was on special, only $20 more than its smaller counterpart, so I was very much into pocket.

The unit weighs only 4.15kg, and is small—370 x 170 x 350mm. It neatly occupies the same floor space that the gas bottle used to, and is less obtrusive in the room (I can get to drawers without moving the cylinder now!) Operation is very straight forward, and the first thing that impressed me was how quiet the unit it. It generates only 47 dB with the pump running, which is no louder than a normal conversation!

Default setting on the pressure control valve was 35psi, which turned out to be way higher than I’ve been using all these years. My CIG gauges (yes, they’re so old they predate Australia’s Commonwealth Industrial Gasses concern being taken over by British Oxygen Corporation!) read in flow (litres per minute) rather than pressure, while the compressor reads in psi, and there is of course no objective way to convert between those measurements. A comfortable spraying pressure for my settup seems to be a touch under 20psi. I dialled it way down in the first session of experimentation, and will take it even lower for some applications.

The Paasche connector’s quarter-inch thread screwed straight onto the compressor outlet, and didn’t even need thread tape. I find the AC1418 easily delivers more power than my usual applications demand: I could see using the higher end (up to 60psi) for painting something big, a large-scale tank or battleship kit, or perhaps doing airbrush art in which I’m laying a solid base colour onto a large panel area—say a solid black over which to do spacescapes. I used to do paintings like that back in the 80s, with my old Badger 350—but I “blacked-up” the board with a 1” brush in those days!

I’ve done several sessions of work so far, and I must be using the unit well within its capacities. The instructions caution the user to let the compressor cool down before touching, but so far it’s only been mildly warm. Also, this is my first time working with a moisture trap, and I have yet to see any liquid collect in the trap chamber.

The price was very attractive. The unit plus courier costs came in at under Aus$200, and I’m very happy with that. I’m optimistic that this will be a new lease of life on my hobby and art. The next step is to renew my workshop lighting—the old strip light gave up the ghost years back, so it’s high time to get back to bright, daylight-type illumination for both working and photography, and the real kicker is that I can probably do it and still be into pocket against the savings on a single year’s tank hire . This blog could do with some serious revitalising, and soon I might just have a work flow worth talking about again!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Tamegawa and the Case for Retooling

 

(This post was first published on June 1st, 2009. In the course of updating the image files for better quality and to retire Photobucket as the image vendor, the original post seems to have been lost, which is very annoying as this new version now appears thirteen years out of synch with its neighbours! Appologies...)

The giants from Shizuoka City need no introduction, there must be very few modellers in the world who don’t have Hasegawa and Tamiya kits in their stash. I find myself trying consciously not to talk too much about Tamiya, I don’t want to bias the content of this blog or have it become a Tamiya fan club, but quality does deserve to be discussed as and where it is encountered.

Hasegawa is a company for which I have had the greatest respect for the last 25 years, and I have a great many of their aircraft in my stash. I recently had reason to pull out their Bf 109 K-4 and was very pleased with the engineering, the look of the parts and the overall general accuracy. Detail by detail, she matches up with research for a very fair K-4. A few details can be added from styrene, you need to cut away the battery box of the G-10 behind the headrest and make the access hatch and canopy locking bars from scratch, but that’s easy enough. Same with adding the radiator actuator struts and some stiffeners inside the split flaps. The fuselage detailing right and left of the centreline doesn’t quite match up, but given that this kit was probably engineered in the earlier days of CAD-CAM, that’s fair enough.

One might expect the fact that the kit shares multiple parts for the G-6 and G-10 versions to cause problems with fit and engineering, this is fairly common. Indeed there are three instrument panels, redundant drop tanks and cannon gondolas, all sorts of bits not needed for the subject in hand, but they don’t seem to be a problem. In the old days Airfix would have sold this kit as the Bf 109 G/K, with instructions for using all the parts, and marking options for each type included on the sheet. (Remember their F-4 Phantom, with options to build the B, C, D, E and J all in the one box? Not a great kit but a versatile one with heaps of options.) Then companies discovered their range looked a lot bigger if they packaged the kit for each option separately, and each issue simply contained redundant parts.

But that’s by the by, the point of this post is that there is always room for improvement, and sometimes in ways you’d not expect.

I have completed two Tamiya 1:48th scale WWII fighters in the recent past, a Bf 109 E-3 and a P-51D. I was very impressed with their accuracy and ease of construction, and the quality of engineering throughout, and I was essentially expecting the Hasegawa engineering to be on a par. Overall it is, parts-fit is superb, dimensional accuracy looks spot-on, but I was frustrated to find an unexpected hitch. The cockpit. I thought initially that Hasegawa’s design solution of building up the cockpit from several parts as a subassembly to be mounted through the wing gap was a rather good idea, and it should have worked well, but…  

 First of all, the instrument panel is a different shape to the fuselage contour into which it is introduced, smaller, so it’s not simply a case of reshaping it with a bit of file work. This is a blunder I would not have expected of Hasegawa. Second, there is no positive location device for the panel either, so you’d be trying to tack it in place and keep your fingers crossed that it stays there. Third, the cockpit tub, though it assembles as a box structure, is not so accurately molded as to remove the tendency for the left wall to toe-in, so that the upper edge overhangs the cockpit sill. Fourth, there is no solid ledge against which the tub can be seated, so you’re supergluing it at its contact points and hoping for the best.

Hoping for the best? This is Hasegawa we’re talking about! The big guy, the one who makes Fujimi look second-rate! My solution was to glue the instrument panel to the cockpit walls and reinforce the joint with some scrap styrene, then use angle stock to reinforce the mounting surfaces behind the seat and some rod alongside the edges (below). With this lot it will hopefully stand up to the amount of handling to come without the panel becoming detached and disappearing forever inside. This was after a silly amount of fiddling, pulling apart and re-gluing, and the panel falling off and trying to vanish under my desk three times: not the experience I expect from this company.  

And not the experience I had with Tamiya. It’s been pondered why Tamiya have not yet expanded their 1:48th scale range to embrace the multitudinous possibilities of the Bf 109 F, G and K series aircraft, and the standard answer must be that Hasegawa have that market sewn up, with Hobbycraft taking up the slack for the cheap end of the field. ICM’s F-series planes are also very good, and strong contenders in the same race. But after my experience with the cockpit of this model I am dismayed to see that Hasegawa have used this device as standard engineering, certainly on their other Bf 109s, and the fact is that if Tamiya was to offer me brand new tooling of these subjects, engineered the way their other planes are, I would buy them in preference ever after. With Invisi-Clear decals such a kit would build as a stunner right out of the box.

So I find myself now doubly cautious about the asking price of models these days: Hasegawa’s K-4 is nearly Aus$40 on the shelf here, and that’s a lot of wedge for the firm to fall down on the details. I’m not asking companies to be perfect in every aspect, I have no doubt that this will be a superb subject in my display case when it’s finished, but I do look for sensible engineering where strength and fit are crucial. For instance the keyed alignment of the landing gear struts in Hasegawa’s 1:48th scale P-51D – a marvellous bit of planning and forethought. Maybe divinity really is in the details, and if so the race for sainthood will never be over: let’s just say, this cockpit fubar has delayed Hasegawa’s beatification slightly!

Talk About Busy!

This is less a post about modelling than about the reason for the absence of that quantity--this has been an exceptionally busy year for me in my writing career, including work on two novels, and I have not completed a single model project during 2022!

I have a couple in fairly advanced stages--a Trumpeter 1/35 LAV-25 to be completed in USMC markings for Iraq (Desert Storm), and an old Italeri F-100D to be finished in markings for the 48th TFW, from a vintage Superscale sheet. I hope to have both done before the end of the year, maybe even work on another, but I'll be happy if I can close out the year with two finished projects.

To be fair, I've also had airbrush problems--my trusty Paasche VL developed a fault late last year which required service attention, some new parts, and I had trouble seating the new syphon tube in such a way it would pick up paint properly. This deterred me from the model bench for a long time, freeing me for writing work, but eventually I switched out the tube for the old part--vintage 1989--and it picks up paint just right--so I'm back on as far as paintwork goes.

Then there's the saga of waiting for parts--I needed etched diamond mesh for the LAV (it's the original issue, before Trumpeter added an etched fret for the bustle rack and engine grills). I've chased lots of options but nothing is actually correct and I'm aware I'm looking for a "nearest option" solution. I might just hang a lot of stowage in the rack to disguise the fact the mesh is not right!

I have a long list of models in various stages of completion, some have been waiting years for attention, and I hope to get a few off the shelf of limbo and into the display case during next year, mixed in with some new builds. I have a hankering for a Tamiya Spitfire I, and have the Eduard and AML mask sets lined up, along with aftermarket decals for Johnny Johnson's Battle of Britain mount.

I'll also try to pay this blog the attention it deserves in future!

Thanks for reading,

Cheers,

Mike Adamson

Long Time, No See!

 I last posted here nearly two years ago, and that's crazy, I'm the first to admit! What happened, you ask? Well, in a nutshell, my lighting system died on me, and I had no way to properly photograph my models at publication quality. I keep meaning to either get it repaired or replace it--I need the light for building, plain and simple, and have been making do with daylight, as best I can... No wonder I've churned out only small numbers of projects in the last two years.

It hasn't actually stopped me building, but my eyes are not what they used to be, and the photos I can get in natural light leave a lot to be desired. I've done maybe a dozen models since I last posted, and will post about those projects when I can do them justice.

My most ambitious build is probably the Hobby Boss 1:72 F-14A, from last year, a lengthy and complex project, both structurally and at the painting stage. My simplest, probably the 1:72 Moebius Viper VII, also from last year.

This blog has been around for a great many years and I hate to see it languish. I do intend to fix up my working lights and get back to the bench the way I used to! Posting the finished results and discussing projects is part of the pleasure of the hobby!

It Worked!

Sometimes the manufacturers really do know what they’re talking about… I’ve been working on Tamiya’s 1:12^th scale Suzuki Katana off and on, a 2017 build that’s been on the shelf (full build post to come) and the wheel rims are in bright finish, which Tamiya recommend be done with an X-11 Chrome Silver enamel paint marker pen. I’ve never used their paint markers before and ordered one up with some trepidation, thoughts of floods of paint or dried-up tips going through my mind.

I searched YouTube for how-to videos and found one out of Russia which, though I could follow not a word, was pretty self-explanatory as far as appropriate touch for applying the tip to a surface was concerned. Even so, I put the job off at least a month before there was not one other thing to do on the project before this task.

Of course, when I finally opened the marker, gave it a good shake and started the flow, it worked perfectly. The corner of the chisel-tip seated comfortably into the wheel rim and I applied the paint in short, controlled sections. Before I knew it, it was done and the parts were set aside to dry. Some commentaries have remarked that this can take a long time, into the second day and still tacky, but I find myself wondering if that indicates the paint was insufficiently agitated beforehand. This oaint was dry in an hour.

               

The bright silver rim does not show up very well in the available-light photo at top, and the marker pen, which ships in a plastic shrink-wrap, has been resealed with tape at the cap juncture, to preserve paint life. The picture below shows the front wheel, with a gunmetal finish, and the chrome rim shines beautifully in a flash shot.

When these parts are ready to be handled, I can do most of the remaining build-up, indeed the only painting left to do is the front brake units and the rubber protector around the windshield transparency (fiddly masking required on both). But this project should hopefully come together quite quickly now.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Kit Review: MPC/Round 2 Space: 1999 MK. IX Hawk

I can’t remember the last science fiction model kit I completed. I have a few in my stash but I actively can’t remember completing one in recent times, so this Hawk is rather a milestone. In the late 70s I did a couple of the very disappointing MPC Eagles (under the Airfix label), and obtained their Hawk as a built example from the famous collector Phil Rae ten or more years back, but brand new kits from this cult TV classic have started to come available in the last few years from Round 2, under the MPC label, as a direct result of interaction between company manager Jamie Hood and both the fans who would be buying the product on one hand, and the leading experts on the originals, on the other. This fusion culminated in the Eagle Transporter kit in 1:48^th scale, which has done great business and spawned a family of secondary releases. The first guest-star hardware to join the family is a 1:72^nd scale Hawk.

The Hawk appeared in the episode Wargames, familiar Earth craft which mysteriously appeared from an alien planet and attacked Alpha. They were mental projections, plucked from the Alphans’ own minds, as was the entire unfolding scenario of destruction, as a means to persuade the humans not to attempt to settle on the planet they were passing, no matter how compatible it seemed. This meant a craft could be designed to reflect the same general era and mode of design as the familiar Eagles, which leant itself to rapid production of the needed models. Two were built, a definitive model scaled to the 1:24^th scale Eagle, and a distance model at 1:48^th scale. They were very different in detail when studied together (both have survived and are well documented photographically, and appear at fan conventions).

Round 2 based their detailing on the “hero” 1:24^th scale Hawk and on inspection I was most impressed with the degree to which almost every detail of the original has been captured at one third the size. I studied the Hawk with a view to building a studio scale replica some years ago, amassing a fair bit of reference material in the process, and as a result I am able to say that the company has captured the important features to an amazing degree. Proportion and detail, including precise replication of the kit parts used as dressing on the original, are all there. The only notable exception I could find was the absence of the ribbing on the Saturn V-derived parts, this being more than likely due to the limitations of moulding technology. When the firm produces the promised 1:48^th scale version to go with the larger Eagle, this omission will hopefully be corrected.

Assembly was quite straight forward, though fit was not as crisp as one might have hoped for, giving rise to some seams to be dressed, mainly on the command module sides and where the fuselage, split in upper and lower halves, comes together just behind the stub wings, and at the rear. Otherwise there were few hassles. The worst parts are the tiny Lunar Module legs, five of which are produced at a third their original size. The originals were forever breaking on the studio model, and these are so fragile you hardly dare breathe on them. The one above the cockpit broke and was repaired four times, while the ones around the engine barely fit (locator holes in the wrong places?) and the modeller is reduced to “superglue and prayer” — not ideal. Whitemetal replacement parts would be highly desirable.

I built the model in subassemblies, the lateral boosters and engine, solar panel and underslung weapons pods, the X-girders, plus the underside girder/rod/pipe parts all being completed separately, including decals and topcoats, and brought together at the end. This eased painting of the fuselage and side boosters, and I noticed that proper alignment of these units to each other depends largely on all parts coming together in one go—so they needed to be fully finished at that point.

In 1:72^nd scale no cockpit is provided, just black decals for the windows. The Hawk’s interior was never shown in the program so any attempt to add one to a kit is an exercise in what-if. It will be interesting to see how the company tackles the issue at larger scale.

The biggest “wow” factor was the decals. The sheet is very finely printed, featuring over 130 markings for the craft as seen on-screen (orange trim) or the prototype model (white overall). I did the latter for simplicity, though picked up two kits and will do the on-screen version at a later date. The decals reproduce every marking seen on the original, including many which were actually drawn on by hand. They behaved very well indeed, were a delight to work with, and reacted well enough to Microscale chemistry. The small coloured bands took some work to wrap around the girders, several applications of Microsol were needed to get them to conform, and they could have done with being somewhat longer to wrap fully and seal to themselves. The anti-glare panel decals were sprayed with Micro Flat and trimmed closely from the backing paper, producing a decent flat finish in those areas, contrasting with the satin finish white I selected overall.

Improvements are always possible, and when I do the second kit I’ll make some small changes. The original had rows of holes drilled into the leading edges of the stub wings, weapon pods and solar panels, and these are represented as silver dots on the decal sheet. Dressing those edges very carefully to fully eliminate mould lines and drilling in the holes is an obvious enhancement. Being forewarned about those LM legs might ease that aspect too.

The model was a pleasure to build, notwithdstanding the acute frustration of those aforementioned LM parts. On the provided stand it looks the part, and is a milestone as the first fully accurate depiction of this craft to be produced as a conventional styrene kit. If the larger version eventuates, it will build upon the experience from this one, and be the perfect compliment to the big Eagle—as surely as the soon-to-be-released 1:72^nd scale Eagle compliments this Hawk.

Full marks to Jamie Hood and Round 2 for giving us the kits we craved long ago and never expected to be possible!

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Recently Completed: Fujimi 1:72 F-86F (Kit No. F-18)

I’ve only done two Sabres previously – the Airfix F-86D when I was a kid, and the Matchbox F-86A at a teenager. The Sabre is a very elegant and impressive plane, historically and technically important, and surprisingly long-lived – I was not really aware of the fact at the time, but there were Sabres still flying with several countries, in secondary roles, certainly, at the beginning of the 1980s. This example, as befits a Japanese kit, is a Mitsubishi-built Sabre, distinguished by the small engine bay intake on the right rear fuselage.

This is only my third completed Fujimi kit, the others being their Ju-87 G-2 Stuka and A-7A Corsair II, in the same scale. It was quite a fun build but their engineering leaves a bit to be desired, creating problems of alignment – all around parts fit was nothing to write home about, and did the instruction to add nose weight have to be in Japanese? The parts look good in the box – also very familiar, I built a Hobbycraft F-86E many years ago, part of a conversion project which is still incomplete, and it’s quite obviously the Fujimi kit reboxed. The kit features excellent recessed detail, deep enough to take a wash and hold it, but the separate gun panels are a pain, as the fit is far from exact. They were tooled separately to facilitate swapping out for camera nose parts on the RF-86, an example of stretching the mould applicability at cost of builder ease. Likewise, the air brakes can be posed open, and do not fit as precisely as they should for the closed option.

Nevertheless, the kit builds quite well. It features the unslatted “6-3” wing, a pair of AIM-9B Sidewinders and pylons, and a choice of raised instrument details or decals. The decals would never lie down over the 3D detail, so drybrushing was used to bring out the instruments. The instrument decals were also far from crisp depictions.

The decal sheet provides sets of individual numbers so you can build any F-86 in the fleet (except the 500-series serials on the RF birds), though this invites alignment problems in the tail codes and makes for a lot more work. I chose a bird from No. 8 Squadron, Komaki AB, August 1977, sourced from a photograph, a fairly plain scheme which obviated messing on with masking for colour trim. The black and yellow stripes on the Sidewinders came from the Hasegawa US missile set (X72-3), though I used the Fujimi missiles.

Speaking of the decals, they were very matte, took their time separating from the backing sheet, and during the softening time exuded a milky goop I can only assume is the decal adhesive as it resembled nothing so closely as PVA whiteglue. I wiped away the majority and the decals adhered perfectly with what remained. The decals overall behaved better than I feared they might, so I’m inclined to give the kit sheets a go in more Fujimi outings of similar vintage.

I used my standard approach to painting metallic finishes, Tamiya XF-16 Flat Aluminium, overcoated with Microscale Satin, but resisted the impulse to use graphite to create panel variation as these birds seem to have been in metallic paint rather than natural metal, and were well-maintained, therefore clean and tidy. No weathering was applied to this model. The gun panels were probably stainless steel and always look darker, so graphite was used for this effect.

There are a few errors and omissions – joint lines needed more work, nothing shows up defects like metallics! Joints I would have sworn were perfect, adzed, then milled with wet 1200-grade paper, showed up hairline gaps under paint. Also, the fit of the jet intake pipe is not perfectly centralised and thus does not line up well with the nose part, necessitating work with a round rat-tail file in the intake to try to minimise the mis-match. I had tried chocking the fit with styrene shims, but it needed more. Next time I do a Fujimi Sabre I’ll know what to look out for. Same with the weight to keep her from being a tail-sitter, it should be superglued behind the gun panels, but the bird was finished before I noticed “3g” among the Japanese script and realised it was telling me to weight the nose. Two grams turned out to be enough, and the crushed lead shot is in fact simply lying deep in the intake trunk.

I mis-cued on masking in the wheel well, calling for brush touch-ups (in FS 34102, it seems North American used a green darker than Interior Green/Zinc Chromate for their gear bays on both major lineages of the Sabre). At the end of the day some details were left unpainted – a tiny black panel on the tail plane, plus the radome of the radar gunsight, because, with the rest of the model finished, I simply did not trust my wobbly hands to spot in that detail, especially with the brushing characteristics of Tammy acrylics. Risk spoiling the job at the last moment? I don’t think so!

I have a couple more E and F Sabres from Fujimi in my stash, and a couple of the Airfix tooling from several years ago, in the guise of the Canadair Sabre Mk. 4, to play with. I hope to line up a representative selection of Sabres in time, detailing the colourful schemes and range of variation among this milestone fighter’s thousands of examples.

On the bench in the not too distant future will be the Italeri F-100 Super Sabre, wearing Superscale decals and featuring a variegated metal finish.

Cheers, Mike Adamson

A Proud Moment!

It’s always nice when one’s hobby output is appreciated by others, and this week (first week of March, 2019) a rare pleasure came my way when a photo from my Tamiya Corsair shoot (see last post) was selected by the administrators of the Airfix Modelling Club page on Facebook as the new header/banner image.

Nothing like this has come my way before and I can only describe myself as pleased as punch! It’s a genuine delight to see my work used in such a context, as I’ve felt the models chosen to lead into the page have always been of the highest quality. It’s a great compliment, and an encouragement to do even better!

Next up, Sabre, Bf 109, F-4J…

Cheers, Mike Adamson

Recently Completed: Tamiya 1:48 F4U-1 Corsair (Birdcage), #61046

As a modeller who tends to have something like three dozen uncompleted projects at any one time, it’s always nice to get an older one past the finish line. This was a 2017 build that’s been playing shelf queen waiting for final details and paintwork ever since (it was a matter of display space, which opened up not long ago when I boxed for storage a batch of projects from around five years ago.)

This is the 1996 kit from the grand masters in Shizuoka City, and a sweet build it is. It can pull the odd surprise, but overall is a pretty friendly kit. To wit – the ovoid transparencies for rearward view on the fuselage sides are incorrectly identified in the plans, the numbers are reversed – swap them port and starboard and the parts fit perfectly. Interestingly, the masks for these parts on the Eduard sheet are also reversed!

The cockpit is quite well detailed, and if the canopy is to be closed you’ll see little enough. I used the decal seat harness supplied, and painted everything a dark bronze-green, as research suggested the cockpit shade of the time was somewhere about FS 34092.

I decided to depict a bird from VMF-213, companion squadron to -214, which became  the Black Sheep, when they entered combat in the Solomons campaign in February, 1943, the first Corsairs in-theatre. This is the two-tone scheme, which later gave way to three-tone, and finally to overall Sea Blue Gloss and its variations. I’m currently enjoying the 1976 series Black Sheep Squadron, which, though unavoidably compromised at a historical detail level, gives you a look at Corsairs in the field and the kind of effects the conditions created in their appearance. Solomons Corsairs were battered and heavily weathered by the elements, caked with dust and mud – one can certainly go to town on the weathering process, though I fancied something a little cleaner. Okay, a bird fairly fresh on the line!

The Tamiya Corsair is very well engineered, when it came out I recall reviewers raving about its click-fit precision. It’s not quite that easy, the folding wing option is a PITA to avoid an obvious joint line if building with wings extended, as I always do. The landing gear is very solidly engineered and fits into big receivers, but somehow the legs managed to be at different angles, meaning the wheels were a few millimetres out of alignment…

The paintwork is Tamiya Acrylics, mixed as per kit specifications – XF-18 + XF-2 (3:1) for the topside blue-grey, and XF-19 + XF-2 (2:1) for the underside grey, with soft-masked demarcations. I used Miscroscale Satin to seal both the paint and the following Florey washes, and Flat as the final low lustre after decals.

I made standby decals in case the masks pulled the paint off the canopy struts, but they were unneeded. This means I have 1943 blue-grey over black, with clear, decal material in stock in case any future USN/Marines project develops the issue!

Decals in this edition were by Scalemaster, printed by Vitachrome, and behaved generally well – I say generally as they did not offer to pull into engraved detail at all and did not seem to react very well with Microscale chemistry, wrinkling patchily. The roundel on the right fuselage side broke up somewhat after application and refused to settle in, being still wrinkled when dry. I removed it with the old tape trick, and replaced it with an identical item from a Superscale sheet; the blue is a fractionally different shade, but nothing the eye really catches. The Superscale item of course snugged down perfectly – I’d expect nothing else.

Oil wash and Mig pigments comprise the weathering – when I get a Prismacolour silver pencil I’ll take a crack at chipping but I aborted the attempt in paint when it became clear I had no control over the process at all. My hands seemed to do anything they liked, and I knew to quit before I made a mess.

The radio antennas were rigged with EZline, usually the last task of a model and not my favourite activity. I set the long piece first, pegged the mast end and managed to hold the thread in tweezers to secure the tail end (despite cramp in my right thumb…), then pegged the fuselage end of the short piece to dry over night. The upper juncture of the lines I found I did not have the dexterity for, no way could I hold the line in tweezers long enough for superglue to get hold. I made up a contraption of tweezers, two bulldog clips, a sanding block, a CD and two thicknesses of card that brought the end of the short piece into contact with the long, and left it to set. The applications of glue created a thick spot on the line, which suggests a ceramic insulator or some such, but of course there was nothing there on the real plane. The line was painted with black, some hull blue was used to touch up around the glue points and clear flat added to even out the lustre.

I hope to fit the 1000-pounder on the centreline rack, but the olive drab I sprayed it a year or more ago is very dark under a clear coat, dark enough for black decals to probably be waste. I’ll respray it in lightened olive drab when I next mix that shade, then apply the ProModeller decals for WWII ordnance and hang the bomb.

So, some work to do on her in future – hang the bomb, add the missing pitot probe (the entire project was complete and photographed when I spotted the omission – d’oh!) plus do the above-mentioned chipping.

Last year I built all 72^nd scale for reasons of storage space, and it’s nice to get back to something larger. I’ll be completing a 1:32^nd scale Bf 109 in the months ahead, too – at least that’s the plan!

Cheers, Mike Adamson