Landlubber Mike

I have the same kit in the stash and was planning on doing the D scheme as well. Looking forward to following along!

Amazing work Alan - looked like a very fun project!

Looks really good - nice job!

EG - not sure if you saw, but Roden apparently makes a 1/72 Curtiss H-16. Very similar, except has the Liberty engines, a different cockpit window configuration, and some other bits and pieces. The Roden Curtiss H-16 boxing is essentially the same as their Felixstowe boxings minus a pair of new Z sprues and the clear parts sprue. I'd love to do this fish version!

Hey EG, I can wait on the Catapult until you are ready to go. I'm working on the Hs 129 at the moment which will keep me busy. That's really cool about the Curtiss H-16 - never knew of that plane. Some really cool pics here: https://flyingmachines.ru/Site2/Crafts/Craft187693.htm

Last night, I started work on the cockpit. The CMK set has a nice replacement tub that includes the fuel tank behind the pilot's seat. To display the fuel tank, you need to cut off the part of the fuselage that covered it, which you can see in the top fuselage half below: Next up was trying to fit the CMK tub. It was a bit too big for the fuselage halves to close properly, but after sanding back some of the interior of the fuselage and portions of the tub that will not be visible, it fit nicely: Thanks for looking in!

Thank you Gary, really appreciate it!

Hey Alan, after my marathon sprint on my JRS-1, I've been catching up on everyone's build logs. This came out great! Roden kits can be really tricky from what I've heard in terms of fit and decals. You did a nice job for a difficult kit! I think I mentioned this on my JRS-1 log, but if you ever want to do your Roden Felixstowe, I have two and could build alongside you if you'd like. I think you mentioned you have a Roden Gotha as well - if you build that one, I can build my Zeppelin Staaken and we can tackle the two beasts together. A couple of things I thought I'd pass along, though feel free to ignore this unsolicited information. For filling gaps and holes, I use different materials depending on the situation mostly to deal with potential shrinkage. For small holes or cracks where shrinkage doesn't matter, I use Tamiya putty - I've also used Vallejo putty, Mr Putty, and CA (some people use black medium/thick CA so they can see what overflow needs to be sanded off which seems like a good idea). I've actually started using CA more and more for small gap filling, as you can add it to an area, and before it's fully cured you can start sanding off the excess fairly easily making cleanup fairly simple. Larger gaps are always tricky. I usually try to stuff thin pieces of plastic in the gap to fill up as much as possible. In some cases, that can be enough or you can fill the remainder with Mr. Putty, CA, etc. On my JRS-1, I also started using Tamiya's two-part epoxy putty. That is now one of my favorite approaches to larger gaps or even to build up areas where there is a depression because it (1) doesn't shrink (or at least doesn't appear to), (2) it is very strong and won't crumble, yet when dry sands very easily, (3) takes a while to dry so you can take your time working it into the area, and (4) isn't messy like Tamiya putty. I guess like all materials, it's just getting used to the strengths and weaknesses of the products and having a little experience on what works best in certain situations for you. On the metal finishes, I really love Vallejo's Metal Colors for their ease of use, clean up, etc. For me, it will spray perfect 98% of the time, but then there are times when it just doesn't look right. Sometimes that's a result of spraying too high of a pressure or too close, where it's almost like the paint doesn't want to adhere properly so you get a weird darker spot. Once I learned about the pressure/closeness issue, I made sure to avoid that and still would occasionally get those odd spots. Not sure what caused it - maybe oils from my fingers? Who knows. For my JRS-1, I tried Mr Color Super Metallic 2 series. I absolutely loved it - sprayed really easily and evenly, and as a lacquer, but on a good hard shell for decals, taping, etc. I sprayed it over a base coat of Mr Color GX 2 Ueno Black per recommendations I saw online and was very happy. So, I think that line of Mr Color will be my go-to for larger areas where you need a pristine finish like fuselages. I'll continue to use Vallejo on smaller items like engines and the like. Also, I was able to use the Vallejo paints to do some minor touch ups on the Mr Color and it worked perfectly - I found you can brush paint the Metal Color paints, but the Mr. Color paints aren't meant to be brushed. For what it's worth, apparently, there is an earlier line of Mr. Color metallic paints that are meant to be buffed, but I forget what those are. Anyway, I'm still very much in the learning phase on all this, but thought I'd pass along what I learned on my last couple of builds. Looking forward to your next one!

Hey Alan - I’ve got two of the Felixstowe and the Zepellin Staaken. Same deal with you - if you start the Felixstowe, let me know and I can build mine alongside yours!

Fantastic EG! Thank you! Let me know if you’re building the kit and I can build alongside you!

Oh wow, a 1/32 US catapult? Do you have the Kitty Hawk kit? That would look really cool. I'm planning to put my Walrus on the NeOmega catapult, and also have the HpH catapult for my Arado and the NeOmega catapult for the Hurricane. I think these seaplanes look really cool on catapults, which ends up being a nice diorama setting for the model. For biplane yellow wings, I have some of the old 1/32 Hasegawa and Williams Brothers kits, along with some from Silver Wings and Lukgraph. I really like the interwar paint schemes.

Hey Lou! I know i complained along the build, but looking back, it wasn't too bad. Although there were lots of fit issues, particularly with the canopy and windows, I think most of it probably boiled down to me having a lack of experience on tackling these types of issues, along with the time pressures of getting it done before the expiration of the LSM group build. The scratch landing gear itself probably took me 20 hours to do, mostly because I hadn't used a lot of the materials before. All in all though, a fun build that turned out nicely that taught me a ton. This will help me go back and finish the Vindicator and Buffalo that I stalled on, as I wasn't sure how to approach certain areas of the builds. Also, I have a Pro Modeller PBY-5A kit in 1/48 in the stash that I wanted to start, but worried about hearing all the nose weight one needs to include yet the landing gear tends to collapse - now that I scratched it on the JRS-1, I think I feel comfortable scratching it for the PBY-5A. On other flying boats, you definitely gave me a case of hives with a lot of itches to scratch. I have quite a few flying boats in the stash as I find them quirky yet very interesting. Sorta like how I prefer to model IJN auxiliary ships over the typical warships you see. Except for two, I've always bought them second hand at significant discounts from retail, though the aftermarket usually ends up making up the difference and then some. Here are the ones I have in the stash - would love to see your list! US: Sikorsky S-38 and S-39 (Czech Master Resin 1/48), J2F-5 Duck (I Love Kit 1/48), Grumman Widgeon JF-1/JF-2 (Signifer 1/48), Grumman Goose (Signifer 1/48), PBY-5A (Pro Modeller 1/48), OS2U Kingfisher (Kitty Hawk 1/32) Japanese: F1M2 Pete (Hasegawa 1/48), H8K2 Emily (Hasegawa 1/72) UK: Felixstowe F.2A (Roden 1/72 and WNW 1/32), Sunderland Mk. III (Special Hobby 1/72), Walrus (Airfix 1/48 and HpH 1/32) German: Hansa Brandenburg W.29 (WnW 1/32), Dornier Do 24T (Italeri 1/72), Blohm & Voss BV222 (Revell 1/72), Arado Ar196 (Revell 1/32). I also have a Ju 52 kit that I might use a conversion set for to add floats. French: Caudron Hydravion (Copper State 1/48) Ouch, that's a lot more than I thought I had. I need to be more efficient on my builds 😵‍💫

Wow, thank you for the very kind words gentlemen! I'm especially flattered coming from modelers with immense talent as yourselves. Really appreciate it!

Glad to have you Dave!

Thanks Dave!

Thanks Dave and Ken! Thankfully, a lot of the AM is plug and play, minus some cutting out of panels, etc. in the fuselage and wings. So, it hopefully shouldn't be that bad. There's definitely some duplication amongst the AM sets, so I'll just pick whatever looks best.

Thanks Dave and Ken!

Thanks Alan! Hoping it goes well! Thanks EG! It would have been fun to try and model that scene - flat tire and all - but I have a lot of aftermarket to open the plane up so I probably will just model it undergoing maintenance or something. There are some other cool pics out there of US and UK soldiers coming across fields of wrecked Hs 129s in Tunisia. That would be another fun diorama to try out.

When I was researching this a few weeks ago when the GB topic was being considered, I think I found a picture of the particular plane I will be modeling: The caption for the photo I believe said something to the effect of US soldiers inspecting a captured Hs 129 in Tunisia in May 1943.

For the "Sandbox" group build on the LSM sister site, I'll be building (and hopefully finishing) the Hobby 2000 Hs 129B-2. I've got probably every piece of aftermarket for this kit so I'm planning on showing this bird fully opened up. I hadn't heard of Omask before, but when researching, I found they offered a lot of great AM for this kit, including a 3D printed Mk 101 cannon (which I couldn't find elsewhere in this scale) and stencil masks for the two color schemes offered in the kit. I'm planning on building the one on the cover: I also managed to find some scale camels to add to the diorama. Should be a fun ride!

Thanks OC!

Thanks guys!

I found a 1/72 scale Navy WW2 pilot from CMK and a picked up a resin concrete tarmac off of eBay the other day, so decided to use them for a simple diorama with the JRS-1. I like adding figures to help better show scale. Here, the figure shows how big this plane was.

Finally finished! This thing has been fun, but a bit nerve wracking. There are so many PE and other fragile detail pieces, that I kept breaking things off. I figured out a way to hold the model, but one time I accidentally held it a little too firm a popped one of the windows into the fuselage - let's just say, I said a few not so nice words 🤬 Somehow, after shaking the fuselage for a few minutes, the window popped back down into the slot. It took a while, but I managed to get it glued back in. It's not perfect, but better than terminating the build. Thanks to everyone for your support and help!

Thanks EG! I agree - the colors really make for a beautiful color scheme. You can build later war schemes but I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do one of the yellow wings.