Landlubber Mike

Great start on the Kraken - very clever!

Glad to have you man! Need someone to keep me straight on these builds!

Excellent work on your figures OC. Really impressive! I just did a few figures for my two plane dioramas and took me forever! You make it look too easy

What a really cool project Alan! Great job so far. 8500 bricks?? I have been dreading coppering the hull of my Pegasus, but maybe I should feel lucky!

Thanks Andy, really appreciate the kind words! Yeah, the ejector pin marks were a bit of a shocker, but looking quickly at the remaining parts, I think I should be ok going forward. On the PE, I'm used to extensive PE sets on my 1/350 and 1/700 ship builds, so for 1/48 planes, it's almost easy. I'm probably a bit odd in this respect, but I find the PE work on builds to generally be relaxing and therapeutic, except when a part pings off the tweezers and I'm on the ground looking for it. I've been following your builds too - you set the bar very high for the rest of us! I think you had a Pegasus build that was an inspiration for my currently mothballed Pegasus. If I remember correctly, I'm following the color scheme that you did.

This is where I am now. After cleaning up the ejector marks on the bottom and sides, I installed various pieces into the bottom which included some Eduard PE. After being annoyed about the quality of the kit from the many ejector marks, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the pieces are fitting together. Test fitted the fuselage sides as well, and everything matches up well. I worried about the orientation of the first bulkhead as you only attach it along the bottom of this stage, but its angle is locked into place perfectly by the two floor pieces on either side. So, kudos to Airfix on this step - big redemption from the ejection pin fiasco 👍 The two main PE assemblies in the picture above are molded by Airfix as pretty much flat, non-descript platforms similar to the rest of the floor pieces. The Eduard PE ends up being quite complicated/detailed assemblies for these replacement details. Who knows if they will be seen when the fuselage is buttoned up, but it was fun making them. Thanks for looking in!

Spent one evening soaking all the sets, and then started with the fuselage (or is it a hull if it's a boat plane?). It's a little smaller than I would have expected - maybe a touch longer than the Wildcat and Buffalo I just finished. The kit's parts seem very sharp and well defined with lots of detail. The one crazy thing is that the bottom and side pieces have a ridiculous amount of ejector pin marks! I don't think you can see much of the inside of the model when it's buttoned up, but I went ahead and sanded and filled them. Here's a picture showing all the pock marks! Thanks for looking in!

Some pics of the Niko kit, which is really really nice. I have a few 1/700 Niko kits, and am really impressed by what you get. Lots of resin and PE, and the hull already includes lots of crisp details. Should be a fun one to put together.

Some cool pics of the Albatross: Some catapult pics - these I think are from other ships:

I entered my first group build on the LSM sister site. I'm building the Airfix Walrus in 1/48 using this kit: With lots of aftermarket goodies, including a Vector resin engine given how prominent the engine is on this plane: Resource: I also have the catapult set from NeOmega: I wasn't too enthused by building this as a "silver wings" scheme, so I went looking for decals (unfortunately I couldn't find the earlier release of this kit which had the two tone camo scheme which I preferred). That led me to picking up the following decals and mask/stencil sets: There were a few options I liked that were ship-based and launched from catapults. In particular, I really liked these two schemes which were based on the HMS Albatross. Although I like the first scheme a little better, I have the HpH 1/32 Walrus kit which has a similar scheme so I'm leaning towards the second one.: The Albatross was a quirky looking ship, which really piqued my interest and I came to found out that Niko Models made a fantastic 1/700 kit for it. Even better, it includes a 1/700 scale Walrus to add to the catapult at the bow. After an extensive search, found a kit at Freetime Hobbies, and here it is: So, I'm planning to build a combined display of the Walrus on the NeOmega catapult, coupled with its ship the HMS Albatross. I'm thinking a two tiered display with the 1/48 Walrus/catapult as the main, higher tier of the display, with the 1/700 version presented on a lower tier to the side and/or front of the main Walrus. Hopefully can pull it all off!

This is really beautiful work Gary. What a fantastic job - this is going to be a stunner when completed.

Looking good Patrick!

Nice start! For primer, I like using Mr. Surfacer. You can get it in a rattle can or get it in a jar that you have to mix with thinner (I love Mr. Color Leveling Thinner). It comes in lots of colors, including white, grey and black so you can use it not only as a primer, but as an undercoat/first coat. For PE, I usually use medium CA that I apply with the head of a pin. I've come around a little to also using Gators Grip white glue, which works pretty well but takes longer to set. For me, I like medium CA in that there is a 5-20 second set time, and if I need it to set quicker, I can just use an accelerant to get an instant bond. I use a very fine pair of tweezers from Dumont (pricey) for most PE work. For bends, the Tamiya ones work well, and if you ever get into sets with larger PE, I have a couple of the folding sets from The Small Shop. I saw your note on the Vallejo running. It looks like you might be using Vallejo Model Color in your airbrush? That line is intended to be brush painted. You can run Model Color through your airbrush, but you would need to thin it. It's better to just use Vallejo Model Air if you are shooting through an airbrush. I find I get better results using a little of Vallejo's Thinner and/or Flow Improver in the airbrush as well.

Thanks Ken, Alan, and Frolick, really appreciate the kind words. Frolick, I think you're right that they used the 239 against the Russians.

Thanks Ken and Alan!

Thanks again Bob, really appreciate it! And I feel like the motto in your signature applies to me as a lot of bad words fly out of my mouth during these builds. Good thing I usually build in the basement! Thanks Elmer! This is my sixth plane model, and while I'm slowly getting better, I feel like I still have quite a ways to go seeing some of the absolutely stellar modelers out there. Thankfully there are a lot of them that populate these forums, puts videos on YouTube, write articles, etc. The amount of information sharing that happens in the modeling community through the internet is just amazing, and people like me nowadays can move up the learning curve faster as a result. This was a lot of fun to put together. I learned a ton, especially with all the aftermarket I used on this kit. When you model these planes with the engine panels off, I almost feel like they beg to be put in a diorama setting. When I found the Aerobonus figure with the beer, I could instantly picture the setting of a mechanic wanting to enjoy a cold brew after working in the hot Australian sun. 🍺

Thanks Bob, really appreciate it! Elmer, thanks very much for the kind words. And really, I truly appreciate all your insight and help on this build and others. You've really been an invaluable resource, so thank you. Hope I can repay all your help some day. On the deck grey, I had to guess from black and white pictures so I'm glad I wasn't too far off. I started with black primer, then sprayed a thinned coat of a dark grey over it, leaving some of the black to show. Then I sprayed a very thinned layer of a dark metallic (I think it was something like gunmetal gray) to get a little bit of a metallic finish to it. It was a comedy of errors and took me three tries to get it the base right. I had the color ok, but the first time I tried using white glue to adhere the plastic card to the wooden base, and a week later the base was all rippled and bubbling up. Second time I think I accidentally spilled CA on it, so had to toss the attempt. Third time seemed to finally work, but I came very close to throwing it and the model out the window!

Thanks guys! Really appreciate it! The Special Hobby kits are limited run kits, so they are a little rough around the edges in places. They seem to take older molds, and then update the kit with resin and PE details. Instructions can be lacking in detail at times which can be frustrating. But, Special Hobby has some really interesting subjects out there, and the kits can build into nice models with a little extra attention. @ccoyle, I have to say that I really like their look as well. Reminds me of a little bulldog. To take the lessons and experience I got with this kit, I'm going to build the 239 Finnish version from Special Hobby in 1/32 next alongside a group build for LSM. Don't have anywhere near the aftermarket goodies I had on the 1/48, so should go a little faster now that I have one Special Hobby kit under my belt. I just love the color scheme used for this plane, and it was legendary for the Finns in WW2.

Thanks guys! Really appreciate it! Thanks Paul! It's been interesting trying to learn this diorama stuff - a little more complicated than it appears. To me though, having figures and/or a scene around the model helps to show scale, and especially, helps bring it to life. Best of all, it's fun, and allows you bring a little creativity to the project.

And I put it in a diorama setting. Figure from Aerobonus, oil drums, ladder and wheel chocks from Brengun. Thanks to everyone for your help and support on this build!

Finished the Brewster Buffalo. It's the 339-23 version that originally went to Australia, and then was given over to the Americans. Actually found a picture of the plane I modeled: Here are pictures of the final build. Last picture shows the view down the cockpit into the fuselage floor window. Would have been scary looking down!

Finally finished with this one. Probably a bit steep on the difficulty level given that it is my fifth plastic plane model, but I'm quite happy with how it came out. Given that the engine and other panels were removed, I tried to model it as maintenance work on a hangar deck of an aircraft carrier. Couldn't find good color pictures of what the deck looked like, but some of the pictures showed what appeared to be larger squares that were dark gray and/or metallic in color, so I went that route. Just wanted to thank everyone for the help on this build, I really appreciate it. Thanks! Here are the pictures.

That came out great Craig, nice job! Can I ask where you got the Flory Washes? I looked for them once before but couldn't find them. I saw Hannants sells them, but they won't ship them to the US.

Another interesting subject Craig - looking forward to following!

Great job Glen! Looks fantastic! Reading about the epoxy application, did you add it to one of the halves in the video before inserting into the bottle? I saw you were worried about the lines getting in it, but were you worried about getting it on the bottle or the sea? Or did you insert it into the holes for the two halves to join? Just curious about how that process works. Watching you work the two halves together, did you consider epoxying one of the hull halves into the sea, waiting for it to set, and then pushing the second half against the first? Thinking out loud here, in a way that might be easier to join the two halves together where one is fixed in position. On the other hand, you'd have to make sure that the first half was in the proper position otherwise if too far over one way or the other, you could have a problem. So it's probably safer in the end the way you did it, but I would be nervous running against the clock with the epoxy setting time trying to join the two halves. Just glad it worked out!