ccoyle

Ch. 6 Seat, Pt. I Seat construction in progress. Here's a shot of the basic seat and some of its components still to be added. . .but not all of them. 😮 And here is the cause for my most recent headaches . . . Now to get back to the fun!

Ch. 5 Cockpit Interior Details Even a Halinski kit can have minor issues, like this one: Yep, that's two parts 10f (the '+' sign only indicates that the part is to be doubled). I think I solved this riddle correctly. So far, 16 parts have been added to the starboard cockpit wall and 27 to the port side. Work will soon commence on the seat, which in this case is, in fact, a real piece of work. 😬

James probably has some secret way of doing this, but the easiest way for us amateurs is to chuck the mast dowel into an electric variable-speed drill and taper the mast with progressively finer grits of sandpaper. The taper should be repeatedly checked against the plans using calipers.

Welcome aboard!

I have seen some of these super-detailed to insane levels -- way beyond my abilities. Funny story: I have no idea what most of the cockpit elements are in real life. I just glue them together according to the diagrams and plug them in. One of the items I finished yesterday was a quadrant of some sort with a single handle; the diagram showed the handle protruding at what would be an intermediate setting on the real instrument. Later, as I surfed the internet for some cockpit photos, I discovered that the quadrant raises and lowers the landing gear: handle all the way forward is raised, all the way down is lowered. In between is . . . well, is nothing. Half-lowered gear are not very useful. Anyways, I tried to see if I could detach and reposition the handle without too much difficulty, but it is super tiny and stuck fast, so no joy. You wouldn't notice it unless I told you, or else perhaps you're a Spitfire pilot. So now I have told you, and you are sworn to secrecy!

Hi, Richard. This has never been an issue for me.

Ch. 4 Control Yoke The cockpit is getting busier with the addition of the control yoke, compass, and various bits on the starboard interior. It will get even busier still. I thought some viewers might be interested in the difference between an ultra-detailed and difficult Halinski kit and a less difficult but still pretty detailed Kartonowa Kolekcja kit. The shot below shows a portion of the cockpit parts for KK's Hurricane IIc. Of particular interest for this comparison are parts 1 and 21. Notice that a lot of the 3-D details are printed in 2-D, e.g. the interior framing, rudder pedals, and wall-mounted accoutrements. In the Halinski kit, these are all provided as separate parts. Yikes!

I believe those parts are more correctly made from wire. I'm afraid such knowledge is above my pay grade. To get the sort of neatness shown in that template, you're probably looking at some kind of soldering.

Ch. 3 Rudder Pedals Another half-frame and rudder pedals added. This bit of progress consists of 14 parts and took over 3 hours to cut, fold, laminate, paint, test fit, and glue. That's Halinski for ya.

Ch. 1 Cockpit Interior Construction begins with the cockpit. Inner skins were pre-formed, and internal framing is slowly being added. There is quite a bit of it to add. The bit of plastic rod near my thumb in the second picture is simply a spacer I added to help stabilize the second bulkhead frame during all the man-handling yet to come. It won't be easily seen once the cockpit is closed up.

Congratulations on finishing your model!

Great work and a very impressive model!

Once it's dinged, you're back to the realization that it's just a material thing -- an expensive thing, but a thing nonetheless.

Nope. Halinski provide very little information at their website other than a list of kits currently in print. Clicking a name in the list brings up a very small image of the kit cover, but nothing else. The best way to get information on a Halinski kit is to google it and find info at another site, either a vendor or one of the various dedicated card modeling forums. I have found kartonowki.pl very useful in this regard, and it is pretty easy to navigate, especially if you use Google Translate. There are presently three finished examples of this kit available for viewing at Kartonowki -- here's a link to one of them.

Introduction: Back on the Halinski horse! Okay, for anyone wondering where the Bloch build went off to, let's just say it ran into a terminal combination of issues (kit design, print quality, & builder interest) and has been packed off to the Land of Misfit Models. But let's not dwell on the past -- on to brighter horizons! Maybe! I say "maybe" because this kit is a Halinski publication, and Halinski are the Tamiya of the card modeling world. I have a lot of Halinski kits in my stash, but I have only ever attempted two of them, a Polikarpov I-16 that I completed successfully and a Brewster B-239 that sadly never made it past cockpit skinning, though I have another copy of it in the stash. The killer issue for me with Halinski kits has been the fact that the cockpit areas are double-skinned (inner + outer), and if the inner skit fit is not absolutely perfect (i.e. no gaps at all), the outer skin(s) will not fit. At some point I need to get myself past the Halinski Hurdle if I am to progress up the card modeling curve, so here I am. I actually had another kit in mind for this task, a P-39N in Soviet markings, but I discovered that the canopy for that kit got a slight kink at some point in its life and is slightly fogged as a result, so I will need to replace it. That leaves the Spitfire Vb as the next easiest option that doesn't have a radial engine but does have the desirable laser-cut frames and canopy. For those who are not big WWII aviation buffs, the Spitfire Vb is the mark that was in widespread service when the Germans sprung their Fw-190 surprise on the RAF. It was later phased out in favor of the Mk IX. This kit portrays the personal mount of famed Polish ace Jan Zumbach at the time he commanded the equally famous 303 (Polish) Squadron. As is the norm for Halinski kits, the cover is beautifully illustrated. Right around 2002-2003 is the time that Halinski was transitioning toward exceptional graphics in its kits, with a high level of detail and realistic weathering. This transition was completed prior to 2005, so this kit exhibits the high printing standards that Halinski is famous for. And as I said, I have the laser-cut frames and molded canopy, so I'm all set. I know I said elsewhere that I was looking for a quick project for my next model, and this kit definitely is not a quick and easy build. But eventually I decided that I'd rather focus my efforts on a model that will (hopefully) look great when finished. This kit will definitely challenge my abilities and require a great deal of patience -- which is okay. I plan to treat each sub-assembly just like wooden ship modelers are encouraged to treat those on their models -- each a miniature kit in its own right. Okay, I'm off to mix edge colors!

I do, too, but it's actually an optical illusion produced by the artist's rendering of the wing surfaces. Pawel's ability to depict this feature has matured over the course of his career, and as you can see he's gotten quite good at it. Not all card model designers have reached this pinnacle. 😬

Jimmy, you are experiencing the joy of discovery -- the joy of discovering all the niggling little foibles in this particular kit. Corel have a good reputation as a kit manufacturer, but it is my sincere belief that when it comes to their products, you get what you pay for. Their expensive kits get rave reviews, and their less expensive kits, like FF, often appear to be crappola grande. In the case of FF, they tossed in a lot of off-the-shelf fittings that are either period-inappropriate, out of scale, or both. You can see my version here. I took many liberties with the kit in order to make it somewhat representative of a West Coast bald-headed schooner. BTW, I ran into some of the same difficulties you have described, e.g. the round stern, which the kit instructions do not describe at all. I actually wrote a rather unflattering review of this kit on another now-defunct forum. It really is not much fun to work on a kit that frustrates rather than rewards, and I would hate to see your enthusiasm for the hobby wane simply because your kit is a bad design. As I said in your other thread, don't hesitate to set this one aside if it gets too maddening. Kit design and manufacture has come a long, long way since FF was produced, and there are many excellent kits out today that are designed specifically for beginning modelers -- and they can actually be built. Cheers!

Wow! Your close-up shots have been hiding the fact of your diorama's small size -- all the more amazing, considering how much detail you have packed into it. Well done!

Hi, Jimmy. I have built that Corel kit, and I can verify that it is not an ideal beginner's kit. Should it become too frustrating to complete, don't hesitate to find an easier (and probably better) project to work on. Good luck!

This one.

Done -- you can pay me later. 😉

You may need staff to take care of this for you. Provide me the links, and I'll do the deed for you -- dirt cheap.

Great workmanship on display there, Gary!

I still haven't made up my mind yet, and I've changed it at least half a dozen times already. Nothing in my stash is crying out, "Build me now! Build me now!" with sufficient conviction. 🤔

Believe it or not, even here in little SC we have regional rivalries. The state is geographically divided into the Low Country, the Piedmont, and the Upstate. The Upstate, where I live, seems to be largely populated by recent arrivals from the Upper Midwest.