Egilman

This is one of the reasons I like this hobby... You can illustrate a piece of humanities ingenuity in serving it's needs, a moment in time so to speak.... Impressive, and in paper no less, even more impressive.... Excellent representation of a very difficult subject... My hat is off to you sir! Beautiful work!!!

Yes it is, When people look at finished builds it's usually the first thing out of their mouths... (or the comment "I always thought they were toys") Kinda as an afterthought they add "Nice job, or beautiful work or the question on "How long did that take?" If you give them a truthful answer then the excuse comes I always wanted to get into model building but I just don't have the time..... What really gets their attention, is when you start telling them about it in the historical context, what it represents how it came about, what it was used for and so on.... That's when you can tell if they are shining you on.... Sometimes their reactions are quite funny actually when you realize that they want to get as far away as possible....

Nice!!! Now you need six machine gun tanks to make up the full attack group... they were platooned two MG tanks to a Cannon tank and the command/radio tank would support three to five Platoons..... And the smoke generators would be on the lead tank... Nice work. 1/72nd scale is difficult....

Well, at least you know you can.... (when you can get some) at least saves you the cost of a new pair...... Trust me when I say, if it is plastic, there is a bonding agent for it.... just figuring out which plastic you have to glue is the real issue....

Because they are made of acetate... a common plastic for eyeglasses... Neither CA nor MEK will stick to it.... Yes you can repair the break.... Give it a try, you got nothing to lose...

Trot on down to any decent craft store, they will be happy to sell you dozens of them.... (chuckle) Oh yes, they still make 5/0 & 10/0 fine liners.... (and they usually have more than one or two hairs, although it is hard to see them)

It's an industry standard connection when mating two completely different materials and one of them has to be hard plated steel and operate while maintaining strength. The melted pin maintains the connection while the glue acts as a locator..... There were many items of the period when the kit was produced that were manufactured that way.... Think plastic box cases with a lid that contained operating machinery like a child's record player. They had a steel piano hinge along the edge between the lid and side opposite the handle side. Usually the top has a row of plastic pins molded into it, the hinge is placed over them and the pins melted down over the hinge to hold it in place... With 6 to 12 pins being melted down there would be no need for glue to help secure the location. Very common metal to plastic connection back in the 50's - 70's....

You want to take as much of it as you can without sanding through to the paint, The idea is to remove as many of the divots and irregularities so the next coat can level itself over them.... When I do poly on a wood table surface, I apply thin coats successively with buffing in between.... the buffing knocks down the high spots... When the next thin coat goes on it fills the low spots and gets buffed down on the high spots.... Eventually, you build up the surface to where you have a mirror smooth finish on the entire surface... much like finishing real life autobodies... same process...... Fill, smooth, fill, smooth... that's what they are doing when you read about 27 coats of hand rubbed lacquer on a car body..... It's a lot of work yes but the end result is spectacular....

That's what we are here for brother... to ask and answer.... the pleasure comes from watching models come alive like this pair of birds... Nice BMF job as well, it fits the scale.... And yes get some nice dry nitrile gloves..... don't want no finger oils discoloring or taking the finish off..... Coming along nicely......

Yes..... too close and you get too much cause the spray pattern doesn't have the time to spread before it lands, too far away and the droplets thicken/dry before they hit the surface. The trick as I'm sure you are aware is to get a wet surface without overspraying in any one spot..... There is no hard and fast rule..... I have better results when I keep the can square to the surface and move it side to side making a complete square pass never changing the spray direction/angle... and spraying past the object your painting... Yes it's wasteful but you get a more consistent finish.... Also 8-10" away rather than the 12" the can recommends, fewer passes but more than one coat..... The good clear coatings handle this easy especially if your doing light buffing between coats... With paint what I have learned is spraying flats and then overcoating with several thin coats of gloss gives better results than spraying gloss directly, Flat paint doesn't have the heavy carriers needed for the gloss part of the paint... That's a rule of thumb for me, I never spray gloss paints on a model unless I know it goes down thin...... Most of this is trial and error and then there is always the manufacturing process to remember, not all rattlecans are equal even from the same paint line or batch..... That's why some modelers call it spray and pray...

If there is one thing that gets my motor running for early WWII USAAF it's the americanized British machines.... (the spit and mossie look especially good in US markings) {chuckle} Beautiful Job!!!

Yep spraying rattle can gloss coats has always been a roll of the dice with me also..... most of the time they do fine, but sometimes they just will not laydown right..... To be honest I still do not understand why it does that from time to time.... It happens cause the wet coat is drying too fast before it has a chance to level out... I think it has something to do with humidity, the air being too dry/warm but I've never been able to pin it down.... Polishing it down is the only solution I know other than completely redoing it.... in the real world using a spray gun I would spray just a little thicker/heavier, but in the scale world with a rattle can that's impossible as it leaves way too thick a finish when dry.... I agree with the idea of using the finer grits and don't try and take it all off..... Buff the whole thing lightly...... When you respray, use a fresh can of clear also, the old can might have gone bad..... Except for that quarter panel, nice smooth job.... I'm sure it's nothing you did, it just happens sometimes....

1/72nd scale aircraft is one place that aftermarket canopy masks are a real aid to the modeler. Especially the ones with greenhouse canopies.... A toothpick as a fine line paint applicator is a good technique but I would thin the paint to the consistency used for a airbrush and make sure you keep the tip of the toothpick wet.... it's like using a nib pen and inkwell... Nice work btw,

Yeah, our guv and his orders is a real peach.... (not too popular nowadays either) yesterday, I was thrown out of a Subway shop cause I didn't have a mask on.... I tried to show the lady my signed medical exemption, and she could have cared less, refused me service.... There are way to many absolutists in our society... what really gets me is two things... they way he keeps telling us that his micromanagements of every facet of our lives is good for us and we need to bear with it and that how this disease is an opportunity to advance the global warming agenda..... I think the state may go another way come this November.... Primary turnout was four times what it usually is.... and the opposition candidate is a real people/law n order type guy.... Coupled with the proven lies and manipulations I think it's going to get better in the future, I just wonder how bad it's going to get before we have the chance to fix it in november... Hang in there brother... My wife is in the same boat with you....

It was an impacted head wound with splinters. They believe that the leather helmet he wore slowed down the bullet sufficiently to only break his skull and not kill him... He recovered sufficiently to land the plane in friendly territory.... He was flying his Albatros D.V at the time and it wasn't painted red either.... It was shortly afterwards that he started on the red kick initially partially painting his plane eventually completely painting it red... His list of aircraft that he won each and every victory is documented but I don't believe there are images of each one.... There is a shot of his Albatros he was shot down in taken right after he landed it and it is clearly not red..... He had a 20 day recovery from two different surgeries to repair his wounds and started flying again.... He flew august into Sept. 1917 (getting 4 kills, 2 in his Albatross D.V and 2 in the brand new Fokker F.I ) when he was ordered to take convalescent leave which he did for another three weeks... No, he wasn't the same afterwards according to all the people he flew with... and this is when he started doing the red paint thing.... When he came back in November he got two more in his Albatros D.V which had a partially red painted fuselage.... He was sent back to Germany after that for the propaganda value which he hated.... In March, 1918, he was in the air again with his first Dr.I (152/17), which was almost all red... and then switched to a new Fokker Dr.I (477/17) which initially was all red, 100% red with black crosses, but quickly having the rudder painted white with white blocks under the crosses.... He got the remaining 15 kills in that aircraft.... The thing about it is that he broke his own rules of combat chasing that Sopwith. A lot of people said that he had developed a sort of tunnel vision when honing in for a kill and lost situational awareness which is why he was flying that close to the ground. Something that he had taught all his pilots about never doing...... He was a great ace and air combat tactician, and has come to represent the ideal of what a WWI fighter pilot was.... (although I believe he was an exception rather than the rule)

You mean they actually have step by step videos on how to do that????? I'll have to check that out myself....

Excellent work my friend.... I've always considered that the DR 1 was the prettiest aircraft of WWI.... (and there were a lot of pretty ones) A fighter pilots fighter plane...... Although an excellent airplane, the D VII was a crate in the looks department... Just my personal opinion you know.... {chuckle}

Yeah I understood and yeah a big part of why the Dr 1 was finished first was Richtofen.... I've always wondered what he would have thought about the D VII if he had lived to fly a production machine... If he had been flying one, I believe he would lived through the war.... I need to brush up on Bloody Red Baron, it's been a long time since I've read on it... (Gotta find out what Snoopy is doing also).... Anyway nice work.... I"m a sucker for a nice Dr 1...... And this is a superbe one...

No that was the Dornier Do 18 A diesel powered flying boat....

No it wouldn't, except they would be admitting that they do not make the PUUURRRFECT paint.... THAT is something they are unwilling to do..... Their paints are perfect as long as you buy everything from them and do it their way.........

NOW we are having FUN!!!! (I have a sneaking suspicion that stuned is a second cousin of stoned, halfway between tuned and stoned, and yes I've been there, chuckle) Nice work on the decal btw, I've also had to use that solution before, looks like you've got it down.... A nice smooth gloss coat should make that baby pop!

They are all going to say that, their paint works best with their primers and thinners.... You can expect that from each and every one of them.... Understand something, when it comes to paint there are two kinds of paint. (and true lacquer isn't one of them, it's poisonous, highly toxic and very flammable to start with) There are enamels (even the model paint called lacquers are really enamel paints) and acrylics. There are two basic types of acrylics water based and non-water based acrylics... So to a certain extent not all acrylics are equal... that is apart from the obvious branding issues... so that part of his argument is at least partly correct..... That's always the excuse my friend.... yes there are only a few manufacturers who make most of the paints in the country.... and that's not just in the US.... Alkyd enamels are what most model paints not called acrylic are, exactly the same as auto paint.... and you might be surprised in that they usually have little to no smell..... it's when applying them with a spray gun where they acquire the smell from the vast quantities of thinners needed to get them to shoot correctly.... and spray cans carry a lot of thinner to allow them to spray..... My opinion on acrylics and their use as model paints was the idea that they could sell the hobby to mothers if there was a paint material that didn't threaten to destroy everything the klutzy kid messed up with them being sloppy...... The much advertised water clean up and one hell of a marketing campaign as a safety measure. Which btw was completely false advertising... It takes twice as much work to put on a good looking acrylic finish than an enamel one...... (and almost requires an airbrush which is a luxury in this hobby imho) But most of us in the hobby go with what got us here, and for me that was enamels. I tried acrylics once, and immediately discarded them..... But then I guess it was one way to try and get more money from the hobby, thru their parents fear.... Bookkeepers have been trying to destroy this hobby for generations... Their excuses notwithstanding....

Yep, both sides took some huge gambles. Wellington knew that he couldn't win without the Prussians, but he knew that von Blucher was on the way with three corps... three days before the battle Wellington asked Blucher to try and divert some of Nappy's troops away from the battlefield while he prepared to hold.... Wellington took the risk that Blucher would arrive in time to reinforce his line..... Blucher upon arriving saw that Nappy had taken the risk of attacking without covering his left flank sufficiently and concentrated his artillery to reduce the British center.... Instead of reinforcing Wellington, von blucher made the decision to take a shot to end the war right then and there taking a page right out of Nappy's playbook sending his heavy cavalry into Nappy's left flank followed by his heavy infantry and light horse artillery while taking over wellington's right flank with the rest of his forces. This gave Wellington enough strength to withstand Nappy's killing field for a half day longer... And at the same time Blucher set up his own killing field...... Ney was committed fully watching his prize cavalry be decimated anong with the french heavy infantry reserves..... Wellington was right, it was a very close thing. without Blucher's intervention, Napoleon would have routed the British, he wouldn't have had much of an army left to face Blucher but Wellington would have had to withdraw as his army was virtually destroyed.... Napoleon would have lived to fight another day.... Neither the British nor the Prussians could have beaten Napoleon on their own, only together in cooperation did they win, but it was still a very close thing.... He almost pulled it off... In the end Napoleon's army was destroyed and he was forced to surrender cause he could not stop the allied advance on Paris following the battle.... Timing is everything......

As the summer of 1918 began, air tactics started to evolve, due to the increasing capabilities of the aircraft involved... It was time for this to happen given the pace of technology the same as Patton applying Cavalry tactics to the tank corps.... Warfare was beginning to modernize quickly.... It's just as well that the Germans surrendered cause there is no way of knowing what it would have evolved into. a 20 year pause and we had a good example of what it evolved into during the battle of France.... And another note: warfare at the end of WWII did not resemble warfare at the start either. Nothing develops faster than the techniques and technology of warfare during periods of war..... For example, at the start of WWII Radar was nothing more that a big jagged blip on a single small screen, basically showing you that something was there. By the end they were bombing from aircraft using downlooking radar profiling the target, and had radar guided antiaircraft guns that could pick out individual aircraft.... Artillery was still manual calculations and line of sight at the start, by the end they had computer programmed ballistic charts, Time on Target and radar controlled guns.... At the start you fired a torpedo and hoped that it functioned correctly, at the end they had sonar homing torpedoes... Warfare/killing is the fastest driver of tech mankind ever conceived of....

Well, Napoloeon knew about General Thielemann's Prussian corps and sent Grouchy to stop it, which he did. What he didn't know about was von Blucher's army (two full corps) until they struck his flank and at that point he was committed and couldn't change his plans. By the time General Grouchy and completed his task of blocking out Thielemann's corps, it was too late to return to Waterloo from Wavre..... (and too late to save Napoleon) Napoleon had the right plan at the right time and the right battlefield to complete it on, problem is, he didn't know how large a Prussian army was coming to assist the allies... Wellington and von Blucher had decided on this course three days before the battle... They guessed right and won the battle when they agreed to send Thielmann's III corps out on the left flank drawing off Napoleons strength. his orders to Grouchy to break off and return to Waterloo arrived too late (8:oopm) and after the battle of Wavre. By that point in time, the die was cast Napoleon was almost surrounded and the first French infantry was beginning to break....