realworkingsailor

Judging by the gentlemen in suits and ties at the far right of the photo, probably a demonstration shoot, but yeah, a very impressive photo!
 
Andy
 

Judging by the gentlemen in suits and ties at the far right of the photo, probably a demonstration shoot, but yeah, a very impressive photo!
 
Andy
 

Judging by the gentlemen in suits and ties at the far right of the photo, probably a demonstration shoot, but yeah, a very impressive photo!
 
Andy
 

Photo time

Evening all,   more  water  gel  in the  wheel tracks  and  a few  more puddles.
 
OC.

Hi,
this post is dedicated to a problem that I had once I mated the fuselage halves and wanted to install the canopy included in the kit. Actually, the canopy of the kit is very well made with a very clear plastic, but unfortunately it was found accidentally separated from its tree. Consequently, the plastic in the vicinity of the gate was torn off and stress cracked in the bulk of the part as shown below:

The depth of the of the frame at this location is very narrow and once painted it is not enough to hide the offended area. After some attempts to sand and polish the defect, where instead of improving I worsened it, I decided that the canopy had to be binned and replaced. After a search on the web, I bought two vacuum-formed canopies produced by Squadron.

I must say that I never used these types of canopies and I was uncertain about their quality. The bag contains a blister with two canopies, but only one of them is usable for the model I want to build (i.e. the standard type).

My doubts were associated with the very thin material used and with the necessity of precisely separating the canopy part from the rest of the blister. However, according to some articles, these canopies with their thin thickness are supposed to be even better than the original kit parts. For cutting, as prescribed by Squadron, I used a fresh X-acto blade making multiple passes with minimal pressure while the canopy was supported by a blu-tak plug pressed inside it. I first practiced on the bulged canopy before proceeding with the good one. At the end, the cutting and subsequent trimming fortunately turned out to be quite precise:
Next, the gluing operation followed. According to Squadron and to most of the articles that I read, the most suitable glue to be used is the Micro Kristal Klear. The glue had to be thinned with water to decrease its viscosity and allow it to penetrate by capillarity in the gaps between the canopy and the sills:
 
I brushed the thinned glue along the gap cleaning the excess with a wet pointed cotton swab. Because the thinned glue shrinks a lot when cured, this process has to be repeated as many times as necessary to satisfactorily fill the gap and obtain a fairly strong bond. So far it is going fine, but I will be able to see the quality of the result only when I will brush some paint over the joint.
That's all for now,
best regards.
Dan
 
 

I've been having a play with mixing colours and trying some pre shading for the first time in the cockpit. I'm trying to get somewhere close to this..
 

 
First I built it up and then primed it with Vallejo Black

 

 
Then fairly heavily pre-shaded with white, all paints are Vallejo Air range by the way. 
 

 
Then I mixed a combination of olive green, BS dark green, black, white and yellow until I thought it was close and then thinned to about 50%. Then applied 3 coats gradually. 
 

 
I'll let that dry now and see how it looks. Then I'll hand paint the rest and do some light weathering. As it's going to be in a museum it shouldn't look too shabby I'm thinking. 
 
 
 
 

Gradually the fuselage lengthens.
 

Don’t quote me on this as I’m really no expert, but I don’t know of any amphibious aircraft that are fully capable of landing on the open ocean in anything more than almost calm conditions.
 
From what I’ve read, a seaplane is a catch all term for any type of water capable airplane. A flying boat is a seaplane in which the fuselage is boat shaped and provides the primary floatation. A float plane being the other option.
 
Andy

I call this next one the "last time you'll ever have a clear view of this cockpit" shot.
 

 
And here's the cockpit section all closed up and mated to the forward fuselage. The butt joint did not turn out as nicely this time.
 

 
A simple fuselage slice is next, followed by construction of the observer's position.
 
Cheers!

There we go 😀 Thanks EG.
 

Macro is a little fuzzy. Probably from not holding my camera still enough. Need to add the harnesses.

Beautiful, with one exception, the front reduction gear cover should be grey... (your pics will give you the color) They were painted that way, (every single one) on the production line before they were ever shipped....

Hi all, 
 
So I've finished the engines, well almost, still the exhausts to add to the rear of them although I don't think they will be visible at all.
 
I'm pretty pleased with these though.
 

 
Shame that not too much is visible when built up... Dry fit test to see what they will look like reveals not much!
 

Looks great Dan! I’m glad the Yahu IP worked for you!
 
Andy

If you just want to replace the IP, try Yahu models. Here’s an example from a Canadian retailer:
 
https://thunderbirdmodels.com/en/132-aircraft-accessories/446-yma3210-yahu-models-132-mosquito-nf-iifb-vi-instrument-panel.html
 
They’re relatively inexpensive, and ready to use.
 
Andy

All the cockpit bulkheads have been prepped.
 

On the left is the assembled pilot seat, on the right, all the parts that make up the RIO seat.
These seats build up as well detailed as any aftermarket seats I’ve bought in the past.

I guess I stuck my foot in my mouth. I found this bag of seat harnesses buried inside the box along with everything else.

I am going to need to research reference material to determine an appropriate bomb cat load out. If any of you know about it or are aware of reference sources, please chime in.

As well detailed as this kit is, I am disappointed that seat harnesses were not included. Maybe I’ll rob the figures from my Tamiya tomcat in lieu of harnesses.

 

It required some very clever thinking to get all of this plastic organized into one smallish box. Once removed, it won’t be easy to get it all back inside if possible at all. I like the way they separately boxed up certain fragile pieces. There’s a ton of plastic trees in the box with much of it being ordnance.

Weathering  done,  but to  be honest  I am  self  critic-ing  it   -  not sure  if  I  have gone  over the  top?
 
OC.

Hi Lou, great to hear from you and thanks for the kind words.  I have the following book which has a lot of great pictures of both the civilian craft (including the Howard Hughes plane) and the military craft.  It's definitely worth buying if you're going to build this kit I think.  
 

Interestingly, the interior of the military craft looks very similar to that of the civilian craft, down to the interior curtains.  I decided not to open the model up in part because I wasn't too certain about whether the interior from the kit was accurate or not.  
 
For the wheel wells, the photo etch actually adds some nice detail like the rivets and the panels which seems very consistent with the pictures I've seen of the actual wells.  The PE is also really helpful to cover up that dreadful, hard to get to, ejector pin mark in the deep recess of the well.  Though, this is not an issue if you use the CMK wheel well replacement parts which actually fit better.
 
The kit is ok, and the CMK set is a nice add-on, but things like the need to clean up pretty much every piece, as well as the fit of the pieces, including the windows, the canopy, and the engine cowlings, make this a bit frustrating.  There's also the issue of no interlocking connecting points for the wing and tail struts (as well as a number of other detail parts) which is annoying.  Then there is the matter of certain details that are helpful to add, like the nose center rib in the book picture above, and the location and angle of the antenna mast in the center wing that is different from plane to plane.  Also, the tail wheel in the kit looks nothing like either of the two versions of the tail wheel on the real thing, so of course now that I've seen the actual pictures (the book above has great close-ups)  I feel obligated to scratch build a more accurate one, though not really looking forward to it.
 
I've started to lose interest in finishing the model, but am going to try to push through to get it finished by the beginning of June for the group build on LSM.  It didn't help that the model took a nose dive off the table last week and three of the interior windows fell off.  Thankfully the top two pieces of the fuselage had also loosened, so I was able to take them off and reinstall the windows.  If it was one of the windows further back I probably would have had to junk the model.  If you end up building the kit, I'd probably try not to be as OCD as I have been and just enjoy building it.
 
 

When this kit first arrived, I noticed that it is designed to use butt joints. I really dislike butt joints. Because it uses butt joints, no joiner strips are provided -- not even the sort that are typically used to close rings. Hmph.
 
Work proceeded on the first fuselage section. Regardless of what the kit designer intended, I simply made myself a joiner strip to close up the ring, which, as you can see in this first photo, is not entirely ring-shaped. It's a ring where it joins the cowl, but then flares to a flat bottom along the rest of the fuselage. The forward-most bulkhead is a simple circle, but the aft bulkhead has a cutout where cockpit elements will be located. I stiffened the entire flimsy-looking bulkhead with thin CA. I also painted the interior a sort-of canvas-colored tan, because I don't know how much of it will be visible once the fuselage and cockpit are assembled. (BTW, that's just an old, dried glue blob in the lower left corner.)

 
Both bulkheads required some sanding to get them to slip easily into the ring. Here's the completed fuselage section, now mated to the cowl assembly. The cowl has numerous blisters, which I will add later to avoid smooshing them while working on the fuselage.
 

 
That first butt joint turned out well. I'll be very happy if the rest turn out as nice. Moving to the next fuselage section, construction of the forward cockpit begins, so there will be a lot more elements.
 
Cheers!

The big bat is finished now, that I found the courage to paint the figures. The young boy with the broken toy plane is exclusively painted with Scale 75 acrylics. I had to strip the oil colors off his skin, because they never cured and I couldn´t touch the figure for further painting.

Thank you all again for participating in this log, which helped me a lot in form of encouragement and practical information.





































Cheers Rob