king derelict

This is a superb scene Richard. The landscape especially the hedges is so realistic and the Archer blends into the scene and the story instead of dominating it. Great Work Alan

The second planking finish looks very nice. Alan

Wow Andy; that looks really good. It shows the Wellington off beautifully. The variation in the grass colouring stops it looking like artificial turf. Alan

Yup, I was at Home Depot this weekend buying mulch, fertiliser and new plants for the rabbits to eat. Alan

Yes, I had great times on the farm as a kid. Of course nowadays Health and Safety doesn’t let you jump from the top of the bales into the loose straw.

Brilliant recovery alan

That would look great if you can pull it off. Would it be easier where there are troops in line and the smoke can be distributed across the row. Maybe then you could sneak a small yellow led into the smoke. Do you have some unpainted figures to try it on? great idea alan

My family were all farmers in North Wales; mostly dairy with a few sheep and pigs. I have happy memories of getting tangled up in the barbed wire fences or crawling under them and finding the nettles Alan

Mike You are right. The tiny parts just represent smaller items as the scale increases. The challenge remains This is just a deviation from my usual 1/700 because I couldn't resist a few more Flower corvettes. Alan

The fencing and gate looks great. Alan

Thank you OC. And now i realise that moving to 1/350 doesn't really make it easier. Its a bigger scale but now you can detail tinier elements. The braces for the venturis are absolutely tiny and there are ready use ammo holders for the 4 inch gun that are ridiculously small. I'm undecided whether to even try them If they escape the tweezers they will be lost forever. Alan.

Very nice work Patrick. The decaled camouflage looks great. Alan

Another day of absenteeism from work and some slow progress building up the major PE structures. The White Ensign set is not one of their best, some of the PE items don't even look like those shown in the instructions but I am slowly muddling through. I never did find the missing venturi so I used one from my second PE set. I don't think Zinnia will need the parts. I have realised that putting the black primer on before making up the parts was a silly idea. The black makes it hard to see the tabs that hold the part in the fret and it obscures the fold lines. It also makes it harder to assemble accurately being all black on black. So the bridge with the early radar lantern and the enclosed compass platform is complete. The replacement venturi is the brass one The 4 inch gun bandstand The 2 pdr gun tub As a bit of light relief I started adding weathering to the hull. I dirtied up the wooden decks and started adding rust at the port holes and scuttles along the hull. More or less complete on one side. I am back on the test site for a twelve hour shift tomorrow and Friday so I don't expect any progress untill teh weekend Thanks for looking in and the likes. Alan

I was excused from the test site today and therefore made a little progress. I started on the PE structures. The White Ensign PE fret looks very good and so far is folding well but for this set the instructions are very vague. I made up the bridge and sonar cabin very happy to be back folding brass, then I dropped the front structure of the bridge and had to virtually disassemble the work bench to find it. Unfortunately in the process of searching for the missing piece I managed to sweep away one of the venturi pieces and after two hours searching I still cannot find it. I have a second set of PE for the other Flowers so I could raid that sheet. I think early Flowers may not have had the venturis. I'm not even sure that Spirea had them. I don't see them in the colour plate of Spirea in the book and they don't show on the box art (highly authorative source!). Actually I haven't found them on many Flower photos online but they do look like a challenge to fit. I may see how I get on with the other side first. The instructions are horrible for this particular area. It looks like there are braces to hold the venturi panels in front of the bridge with the open slots folded back onto the upper edge of the bridge front. The remaining venturi piece can be seen just below the railing As light relief after the PE debacle I decided to see if the chipping fluid would work after multiple layers of paint on top of it and an extended drying period. Actually it worked quite well. Photos of home bound Flowers show them to be very beaten up with huge areas of paint missing. With a stiff toothbrush and a cocktail stick I worked the forward half of the hull over and ended up with some serious scruffiness. I'll be adding rust streaks next. It may be a little excessive but I have seen photos that show much worse. I finally got fed up with my homemade box for spraying and got this. I generally use acrylics but would prefer not to breathe even fumes from them and I would like to try lacquer paints after seeing the results on this forum. The lighting is considerably better with 4 led arrays and the vent fan will make things a bit more comfortable. Thank you for looking in and for the likes Alan

Thats an interesting way to apply static grass Andy. I've wanted to give it a try but didn't want to end up with more kit that is infrequently used. This looks a good way round it. The base is looking very nice with the addition of teh grass Alan

Thats a great looking kit OC; excellent job so far. I agree with Craig you can definitely achieve great things with the brush. during my online browsing to get educated about thinners I came across several guys doing similar projects by brush and with appropriate brush choice and thinning of the paint got great results. Alan

Thank you very much OC. I'm feeling better about it now that it has sat for a bit. I was just so frustrated about the mess I made with my airbrush. I had a quick look this morning and I plan to touch p a few bits and press on. i meant to point out that the blue haze on the light grey at the stern of the first picture (masks removed) is just an artifact of the photos. It was the first thing I checked this morning and its not overspray. Whew Alan

Hi Yves I do have a great affection for the Flowers. My uncle was in the RN during the war and served on escorts, mostly East Coast convoys but later up to Iceland. The Cruel Sea is an unforgettable book for me and captures the boredom, misery and dangers of convoy duties in a masterly manner. I hope there will be a few more Flowers from me over time. Alan

I am afraid things are moving much slower than I hoped. Life at the test stand has got busy again so I am back on the 3pm to midnight routine and that doesn't seem to leave a lot of spare time to work on the model. Little bits have been done here and there. I dug around the paint colours and found that MS4 is actually light grey and MS4A is grey green. I have some Tamiya IJN grey green and that seems to match the paint chips and the colour plate of Spirea in the Flower Corvette book. In the absence of any conflicting information I decided to go with that. The hull and basic superstructure was masked and sprayed with the MS4 and MS4A colours and then masked for the dark blue Pb10. That was when I learnt a useful but annoying lesson about air brushing. So far I have mostly used Tamiya, Vallejo and Mig acrylics and got on quite well with them gradually moving over to Mig for the wider colour range. I've diluted them all with Tamiya acrylic thinner which has uniformly worked well. The Pb10 is part of a set from AK interactive that I acquired somewhere and never used. My first attempt to spray it ended up with spluttering and then nothing. The airbrush cup was full of sludge. I cleaned it out and tried again after shaking the paint some more and wondering if it was too old even though it was unopened. This was no better and attempting a last try I realised that the problem came from adding the thinner. As soon as the thinner went in the paint curdled. The rest of the day was spent cleaning the airbrush and I thought the nozzle was ruined because it was solidly blocked with the sludge and seemed to have set. As a last resort I left it in a cup of alcohol and then poked it with an acupuncture needle and it cleaned up nicely. I rebuilt the airbrush and went back to the Pb10 now diluted with water (thats what it says on the box) and it sprayed on rather wetly but evenly. So now I have learnt about water based and alcohol based acrylics and need to be more careful about how I thin them. The internet seems divided about whether you can use Tamiya thinner with AK acrylics. So somewhere under this mess is a Flower corvette hull After letting it all dry off came the tape. I ws initially unhappy with how this came out but its been sat for a few days and I am beginning to think its worth continuing. I think the issue with the AK paint annoyed me (my fault) and overshadowed what was going on. I'm also conscious that I am feeling a need to rush because of the limited time in the morning and that is spoiling the satisfaction too. I will clean up some of the details in the paint scheme and at least see how the chipping works out before making a decision on whether to strip and try again. I also want to do some basic weathering before adding the mostly PE sections to the hull Next week is supposed to be a quieter week so I hope to get back at this again then. Apologies for the delay. Thanks for looking in and the likes. Alan

Second planking looks very nice Alan

Great job on the pitot Dan alan

An intriguing addition to your diorama alan

That is a great book. Sharkey upset a few of the brass with some of his insights as I recall. i just finished Hazard Spectrum by Nate Grey , one of the F-35 test pilots. He devotes quite a lot of his book to flying Harriers with the Fleet Air Arm. Very readable book and quite a guy The Harrier was a great program to work on. The difficulties and limitations but it’s great capabilities made everyone work together in a really positive way Thats a lovely model OC. I have 1/72 Sea Harrier, X-32B and F-35B kits and a plan for a small diorama at some point. If only I could speed up the process a bit Alan

Great idea for a diorama. Its going to look very good Alan

Great to se you back OC. This is one of my favourite builds Alan