Landlubber Mike

I ran into similar cowl dilemmas on my early-WWII planes. I'd probably paint the interior of the cowl first, then assemble over the engine, then paint the cowl exterior as a separate paint job from the rest of the plane rather than pre-paint the exterior of the cowl halves and try to then assemble it over the engine. I found - at least on my kits - that the fit of the cowl pieces can be tricky and less than ideal, so there was clean up required after getting the cowl together.

Hope everyone had a nice Memorial Day weekend, at least for those in the US and other places around the world where this important day of remembrance is observed. Thank you to all our veterans! I managed to find some time this weekend to move the Albatross along. I have to say that I'm very impressed with the kit. The resin parts are very nice, and the PE is very well done for great details. Everything fits together very nicely, and seems to be accurate relative to the real thing from the sources I have. I decided that I'm going to install the deck items after painting the deck, as I think in the long run it will be easier, particularly with some of the hard to reach areas on the build. So, I primed the deck with a thin coat of Mr Surfacer 1500, then sprayed the decks with Tamiya Deck Tan. I also started to work on the main mast. My kit didn't include the rod for the main or rear masts, so I used 0.8mm rod for the main mast and installed the PE for the crows nest and other details. There is an upper section of the mast that needs to be included as well - I have some 1/700 aftermarket mast sections that I'm hoping will work. I also worked on assembling the catapult components. The kit allows you to built the catapult extended or retracted. I built out the extended version which I think will match up with the extended version of the NeOmega catapult I'm planning on building for the 1/48 Walrus. Here's a picture of the guns, cranes, and catapult parts that will be painted and then separately added to the model after it gets painted. Next steps are to finish building the main and rear masts, and rather than use the 2D PE parts for the bow and stern posts, I will scratch build them for a three-dimensional look. At that point, I can start painting the hull - light grey for the hull sides, and a darker gray for the sections above the decks. Thanks for looking in!

Great start Chris! Looking forward to seeing what you do with these kits.

Wow, that's a beauty! Really nice job. You work so fast and with such great results!

Wow Craig, that came out really nice. Nice job my friend, mucho respecto!

Really came out great John! Should be the advertisement shots for the model!

I made a lot more progress on the Albatross the past few nights. Managed to get the bridge completed, and added a bunch of other items to the rear half of the ship. I changed my mind and am going to paint the deck before adding all the various deck items. Part of the issue is that if I put on some of the platforms, I really won't be able to paint the deck underneath. Plus, a lot of the deck items are resin with their bottoms attached to the plug, so I can paint them off the model, cut them off, and then glue them onto the deck - at least that's the idea. Next I worked on the Walruses. I probably only need one, but built the second up as a spare. I thought building a biplane in 1/72 was tricky - at 1/700, it's a completely different story! Good practice for future builds I suppose as I have a few 1/700 aircraft carriers in the stash. Thanks for looking in!

Awesome Kevin, looking forward to this one!

Great start! What do you think of these Airfix 1/72 kits? They look pretty good. For some of the bigger subjects, I think 1/72 is a much more manageable scale than 1/48 or 1/32.

Thanks Kevin! Yeah, the Albatross is a tiny model, but the Walrus isn't very big either. I was surprised at how small it actually is.

Thanks guys! I think you're right that they are likely Mark VIII depth charges. Chris' picture looks spot on.

While putting off thinking about the rigging, I did start on the Albatross build. I didn't realize this, but Niko makes two kits for this ship - one from 1939, and the other from 1942. The 1939 version has a plain gray camo scheme, while the 1942 version has the more intricate dazzle scheme. Otherwise, except for a few minor modifications, the kit/ship is the same between the two versions. I have the 1939 kit - fortunately or unfortunately - which matches up with the 1939-1940 schemes for the Walrus I'm planning to model. I still haven't fully decided which of the two versions I'm planning to model. I'm heavily leaning towards the 9F (first below) over the 9U, as I have the 1/32 HpH Walrus on the shelf and the scheme I like from that kit is very similar to the 9U. Back to the Albatross, the Niko kit is very nice. It's a mostly resin kit with a sheet of PE. It's a welcome change from having a plastic kit where you need to eliminate details to replace them with tiny PE parts that you need to glue and fold together. Building guns in 1/700 using PE is not fun! Much easier when the guns or other parts are already fully, or mostly fully, molded in resin. The hull is nicely cast, and didn't require much cleanup. There is a small tab on the stern platform that you need to remove, but that's about it. I gave it a lot of thought, and whereas some builders first paint the hull, then add the various details, I decided to add as many details as I can, then will paint the hull -- first painting the wooden decks, and then taping it and painting the rest of the ship. I think in the long run that will be easier, though there are always advantages and disadvantages to either approach. I built most of the bridge and side platforms up. Here's where I was glad I took the approach of building before painting as it's pretty fiddly trying to get all the various parts to line up. If I painted the bridge assembly first and then tried to install it, there was a good chance it wouldn't fit right. That being said, I'll add the top level of the bridge separately after priming with black primer as there are lots of nooks and crannies that I might not be able to get to with the top level installed. I also built up the AA guns, and mostly built up the three bow cranes which will get cables and hooks. Very nice details on these parts. Thanks for looking in!

Anyone know what Parts E34 and E35 are intended to be? It's some kind of tube that fits on the under-wing bomb racks. I wasn't planning on adding bombs to the build (at least not the E38 small bombs), but might add this tube thing.

I've been slowly making some progress on these builds over the past couple of months. Managed to get the fuselage buttoned up and attached a lot of the exterior Eduard photo etch which adds some nice details to the model. Fit was very good, and it almost snapped together perfectly. I did find that there was a bit of an overhang at the front section where the side fuselage halves met the bottom fuselage part, so I feathered in a thin strip of card which eliminated the step. One odd omission in what has so far been a really well done kit is the lack of the rudder antennae post. It was fairly easy to add one: Another project in itself was building up the wing bomb bays using the Eduard PE set. A fun little side project which adds some extra detail to the model: At this point I'm a bit stuck as I'm trying to figure out what to do about the rigging. Eduard adds some PE attachment points that give a little more detail than the kit parts, but I think I would need to drill holes through the PE into the wings in order to fully seat the rigging. On the rigging, I have this AIMS PE set, but need to measure to make sure that they all fit as they are supposed to. One build log said many of the wires didn't fit. Two others I came across said they were a Godsend. Hopefully they work, otherwise I need to figure out an alternative.

Nice! I have some of their decals - they are very nice. Glad they are still around!

Someone on LSM mentioned back in January that they had closed shop. Maybe they had bad information.

Is Yellow Wings still in business? I thought I had read they were shutting down, but maybe I’m mistaken.

I'm a big fan of yellow wings - looking forward to this one!

Nice Andy! I'm a fan of CMK accessories, they do a nice job. I used a bunch on my Buffalo build.

Looking really great Dan! I think Barracuda makes some replacement parts that specifically addresses some of the odder design choices. For example, if I remember correctly, they made some replacement flaps because the way Eduard designed theirs, a lot of the detail had to be sanded off. Same thing with the Eduard Spitfire - Barracuda makes a bunch of parts to avoid things like seams and other things.

Hey Kevin, I'm still around. Just busy with spring time activities. I try to pop in from time to time I still need to finish the group build on the sister site - running out of time 😑

Really great work Andy!! Excellent build and paint job - congrats!

Another beauty Kevin, great job!

They have hand stabilizer tools out there that can help. I recently bought this one from Dspiae though haven't had a need to use it yet. Looks good to have, especially if I've had too much coffee before modeling!

Holy squid Glen! That looks amazing!!! So creative and well done. Congratulations!