Landlubber Mike

Insanely good work, wow! Could swear I was looking at the real thing. Great job!

Thanks Dan! And glad to have you along for the ride as always Craig!

Great decision on how to do the suction cups - looks fantastic!

Finally got through assembling most of the interior. The Eduard interior PE set is pretty intense with a ton of pieces (close to 100 if not more if I remember correctly). Probably took a good 3-4 evenings of work to get in, and my guess is 95% won't be seen. But, good practice I suppose. I've gotten a little better with some of the types of PE that have vexed me in the past, including circles/rounds. Had a few to do here with the two gun cockpits, and improved my skills there. Here are the pieces with the Eduard interior, minus most of the pieces from the colored PE fret that will go on after I paint these interior pieces: That little piece in the middle of the bottom row is actually the ship/boat's anchor - interesting! After taping the various edges, I ended up priming these pieces and a few other interior pieces this evening. Then it's onto painting the interior green, adding the remaining Eduard pieces, and a bit of weathering. Thanks for looking in!

Thank you Christian! I agree, would be a lot more complicated to accurately represent the damage if it extended below the water line. I could not find any pictures of the damage to the Asashio, only reports that the damage was light and that the ship continued operations until it reached Truk. So, I assumed that the damage was limited to above the waterline - artistic license I suppose

I'm in too! Great pic of your son! Looks like a very detailed kit. My first Airfix kit was an old Citroen kit which was a bit underwhelming. I wasn't sure what to think of Airfix after that one, but my current Walrus kit from Airfix is really impressive. Looks like your Airfix kit is similarly very detailed and well done.

The MDF used in these kits is very hard - much harder than plywood. At least that was my experience with my Pegasus kit.

Hey Dan, thanks very much! Really appreciate the kind words. These particular versions of the 339-23 that went back to the US weren't used in combat from what I could tell, so I went easy on the weathering except to show a little dirt and dust. I was particularly excited with how the painted insignia and numbers came out - a little more work than using decals, but cleaner finish and no chance of silvering. All in all, a really fun kit to put together, and a good learning experience with all the aftermarket.

Thanks Dan and Hermann, really appreciate it!

Did you use Future for this? And did you spray it on/brush it on the mask edges/dip the canopies? I haven't tried that approach yet, but have had bleeding issues in the past. I was going to try sealing the edges on my Buffalo by painting on some kind of clear by brush along the edges, but in the end decided not to and just crossed my fingers (luckily it worked).

Wow nicely done Andy!! Sharp looking plane there. Great job on the masking for glass - I'm sure the turret was fun Hope your shoulder is doing better.

Wow, what a fantastic job Andrew! Love all the details! Congratulations on a wonderful build.

Wow, great pic OC! Now that would be a fantastic diorama to recreate!

Thanks guys! Glad to have you along. Shipman, I agree with you on the Walrus. I tend to like the quirkier, lesser known subjects, so I'm glad there are kits available for it (I also have the HpH resin kit in 1/32 scale). Unfortunately, I have a feeling one won't be able to see any of the details inside once it's buttoned up. Interesting that Airfix decided to add so many details to the interior, which then Eduard complements with a ton of additional details. As for the Albatross, to me it seems like it is backwards, but probably a very effective design. Just quirky looking like the bird it's named after.

Andrew, thanks for looking in. I hope I can pull it off! NeOmega also makes a cool 'Hurricat' catapult which is a little more detailed with a bunch of PE. The Hurricane by itself isn't very appealing to me, but on this catapult, it looks really amazing. I think HpH may also make catapults in 1/48 and 1/32 scale for the Arado.

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!